Hi there, my name's Master Rose (IGN: Osiria), a peak and current Diamond 3 player on the NA server, and I'm going to share my personal playstyle on one of my favourite champions, Yasuo. I've taken notice to the idea that he can be played in all lanes and as all roles, not necessarily easily or well, yet, possible, and can have great success even in unconventional roles. So, without further ado, let's get into it because there's a lot to learn. In addition to Yasuo specific mechanics, I'll also give a minor introspection to warding and keybinds.

Pros

+ Is Super Mobile + Has An Extremely High Damage Output + Cooldowns Scale With Attack Speed + Excellent Synergy With Knockup Champions + Resourceless, Has Shield In Resource Bar + Crit Chance Items on Yasuo Are The Most Gold Efficient Items IN THE GAME

Yasuo is intended to be a mid and top lane Fighter/Assassin, and he accomplishes both of these things well. Despite this, he has decent-great potential in other roles. He is very mobile with his Sweeping Blade, has high scalings as well as decent base damages on his spells, has 2 spammable low cooldown spells, is resourceless, and with that, has a super clutch scaling shield. In addition to all of these, in a way specific to Yasuo, Yasuo can Basic Attack multiple enemies at the same time due to being considered a basic attack.

Cons

- Is Squishy - Requires Enemies For Mobilility - Needs Items To Be Relevant - Semi-Reliant Other Team Members to Have Knockups - Has A High Skill Cap - Banned super frequently, even more so as of the 10 Ban system

Even with all of his pros, Yasuo does have some drawbacks. Even with his potential mobility, Yasuo needs to have enemy units nearby to disengage or engage well. Also, it can be difficult and awkward to set up your own ult in a teamfight if you have no other knockups on your team, so it's necessary to have multiple sources of knockups to hit .

Before talking about any of Yasuo's item paths and roles, it's very important to have a good understanding of what Yasuo can do and can excel at based on his kit.

Way of The Wanderer: Way of The Wanderer is Yasuo's passive ability. It has two separately functioning passives, Intent and Resolve.
Intent makes it that whatever Yasuo would normally have as his crit chance is instead multiplied by two. (Example, purchasing a Phantom Dancer gives you 60% Crit Chance as opposed to 30%).
Resolve is what creates your shield in your resource bar. After running a relatively short distance, your resource bar generates a shield upon taking damage. This shield grows in strength scaling with level, but always decays one second after being triggered. Also, at levels 7 and 13, the distance required for Yasuo to travel to generate a full resource bar is shortened, meaning more shields in less time.



Steel Tempest (Q): Steel Tempest is a linear skillshot that is counted as a basic attack, so it can crit and also proc on hit effects. Landing a Steel Tempest on at least 1 enemy unit will give you a stack of Steel Tempest. Each stack of Steel Tempest will last 6 seconds as of patch 7.10, and at 2 stacks, the next time you use Steel Tempest it will instead unleash a whirlwind in a straight line, knocking up and applying damage, on hit effects, and allowing you to ult. It also deals more than the normal basic attack, however, when critically striking, instead of the normal 10% reduction to damage dealt by critical strikes by Yasuo, there is instead a 25% reduction.




Wind Wall (W): Wind Wall is Yasuo's W. When used, Yasuo throws up a wall of wind that blocks all enemy projectiles, additionally granting vision in the area it was used.


Sweeping Blade (E): Sweeping Blade is Yasuo's E. It is a short range dash that sets Yasuo off on a fixed distance dash, dealing a small amount of magic damage that increases with recent casts. After dashing through a target, Yasuo cannot dash through the same target for the next 10-6 seconds, depending on the number of points put into Sweeping Blade.



Last Breath (R): Last Breath is Yasuo's ultimate, which deals a large amount of damage to any airborne target(s) in a very large range. In addition to dealing damage, Yasuo refills his resource bar, and suspends the target in the air for 1 second, and once he finishes the attack, gains 50% bonus armour penetration when he critically strikes against the enemies' bonus armour, affecting items, runes, and masteries.

After explaining what his skills do, it's now a good time to explain what I take in what order and why. This also varies from role to role and from matchup to matchup, but usually only in the first three levels.

> > >

A majority of the time, this is the sequence of skills you take in top, mid, bot lane, and the jungle. If you're up against a skillshot heavy champion, such as Twisted Fate or Veigar, it may be beneficial to take Wind Wall early, but that's preference. As a support though, you should take W second for damage prevention on your ADC. In the normal build we max Sweeping Blade first, as it gives Yasuo higher mobility, mostly due to the fact that it decreases the time one has to wait before dashing to a target already dash to. We max Steel Tempest second for slightly higher damage, and Wind Wall last. Take points in Last Breath whenever possible.

Next up on the list after spells, are items. Yasuo scales particularly well from 3 stats. Attack Speed, Crit Chance, and Attack Damage. His Q cooldown is also lowered by attack speed. All crit chance he gets is doubled by his means of Intent , making crit chance items on Yasuo the most gold efficient items IN THE GAME. As far as damage goes, he has a 100% AD ratio on his Q, and a 150% Bonus AD ratio on his ult, in addition to being auto attack based. Based on this, I will now present his general core items, and explain why they are so effective on him.
This section of the guide has also been updated for the crit changes of 8.11 and are the current way to go.

Phantom Dancer is one of the two go to items for Yasuo, the other being Statikk Shivv. Unless snowballing, Phantom Dancer is usually the better option. It gives Yasuo 60% crit chance, 30% Attack Speed (which also lowers the cooldown of Steel Tempest), and 5% bonus movement speed. The real kicker, aside from the already incredibly excellent stats you get cheap as hell, is the unique passive: Lament. Lament makes it so that after you basic attack (which includes Steel Tempest) an enemy champion, you take 12% reduced damaged from that champion for 10 seconds, unless you attack a different champion, in which case Lament applies to that champion instead. That passive makes for an incredible duelist. It also has another passive titled Spectral Waltz, which within 500 units of a visible enemy champion, grants a bonus 7% movement speed to the carrier of PD, and also grants them immunity to unit collision. And I ****ing hate that ****.

80 AD. Quadruple crit chance. Crits do additional true damage. This gives you a huge damage spike, usually always get this.

The good boots to buy if you don't like magic damage and don't like CC. You can see the value.

Sterak's Gage has made it onto the scene as a really good item to take consistently into the more burstier seeming meta. Consider against comps/champs with strong bursts, but still rush IE and PD first.

Play Video
^That video is basically The Bible of Yasuo combo videos, credit to Kajetan Byczyński for such an excellent video. The times before the title of each trick below is going to reference the time it appears in the video above. I'd suggest watching the video also because there are going to be a few things in there that I won't cover, such as how his Q works against crowd control.

9:36 EQF Beyblade - This trick abuses flash. If you queue up your EQ combo, you can flash in the middle of your E dash to where an enemy champion is and you will knock them up.

18:26 EQR Air Blade - With an enemy that is knocked up already yourself or an ally, if you ult while in the middle of the EQ combos dashing portion, you will hit the knocked up champion with the Q.

19:55 EQF-EQR Keyblade - A combo that chains Beyblade and Airblade together. You EQF an anemy to knockup them up and while they're still knocked up you Airblade them. Note that you can also sometimes land an auto before the second dash.

20:13 QR T-Blink - If you launch your 3rd stack Q directly before you ult, you will launch your Q tornado from your new position of whever you're placed when you ult. Any enmy knocked up by your tornado will also be pulled into your ultimate.

20:39 EQR T-Blade - Essentially the same thing as T-Blink but with an EQR Airblade instead of the generic 3rd stack Q.

8:32 E-Q Cooldown Abuse - If Steel Tempest is on cooldown with 0.5 seconds or less remaining, if you use the EQ combo of Sweeping Blade and Steel Tempest, the combo will work even if Steel Tempest is on cooldown.

This section is dedicated to the use of using Sweeping Blade to pass through walls.

There's lots of spots this can be done in, and many ways it can be useful. It can be used to get out of lane quickly, gank a lane quickly, traverse the jungle faster, and it looks pretty ******* cool. Back in Season 6's jungle before they changed a lot of the camps up and added the plants in, there were a few more camps you could abuse the walldash with. However, you can still do it on most camps in their neutral positions, the exceptions being Blue Sentinel and Red Brambleback.

The video below does a pretty good job of explaining where you can walldash, except it's a video from Season 6 and so it's not updated for the current season.

Play Video
Keep in mind that you can not only just use this trick on jungle creatures, but also minions and enemy champions if you can pull them to the wall you want to dash through.

Warding is one of the mostly important and also subtle yet complex portions of League of Legends. Good warding habits will let you know where the enemy jungler is, and just as importantly, where they are not. This not only keeps you safer, but also opens up a lot of opportunities for counterganks, aggressive plays, and potentially the opportunities for other objectives.

Something I don't see often spoken of that's massively important is keeping track of the enemy jungler. You don't necessarily have to ward to do this, and something as small as paying attention to where the jungler started will influence where your first ward should be. Small tidbits of information you can absorb at a glance can make all the difference in the world for keeping you alive.

All of this starts at around 1:50. If you're in the mid lane, you'll be in lane already, and one of the other lanes will likely be leashing. This is true for the opposite team as well. You need to pay attention to who shows up where, and when. If their top laner shows up at 1:55 with full HP and mana, this tells you that they didn't leash; it would take much longer and they'd have expended some resources. Why is that important? Well, that means you know what side of the jungle the enemy jungler is on right now, you know where they are and where they will most likely be going. Junglers naturally flow from one side of the map to the other while they clear their own camps, so if they start at their red, they'll end up at their blue, and that's where you should be looking for them to be coming from, unless they're Shaco and want to cheese you at level 2.

So now you have a rudimentary idea of where they might be if they're a normal jungler. Now, as of the current patch, no jungler is going to clear their third camp before 2:45, so in most instances, you shouldn't be putting a ward down before then. Where you're going to want to ward depends on a few things.

Scenarios VS

Scenario 1 - Top Let's imagine a scenario. You're on blue side top lane against a Gangplank, and he leashed his jungler, Wukong at his red. You know that he leashed because Gangplank showed up to lane a little late and was missing a little mana/hp, thus you know where Wukong is right now, and where he's going to be going next, because the odds of Wukong ganking a Dankplank at level 2 is pretty low. So around 2:45, you're going to be paying attention to where Wukong is gonna pop his monkey headass out at, and that should be somewhere near his botside blue buff. You didn't leash, so your jungler will more than likely be top at this point, and your mid and bot lane should be warding the river so they don't get potentially ganked by the Wukong. You're probably going to be pushing on this Gangplank, so you have 2 real choices of where to ward in the next minute. You have the tribush and the river bush. If you don't see Wukong and he doesn't gank any other lane, he'll be backing soon which means you could be vulnerable, and you should ward the tribush because that's the most likely path he'd be taking. If you see him gank another lane or see him via ward you don't have to ward, you know where Wukong is so you can focus on your lane.

Scenarios VS

Scenario 2 - Top In this scenario, you're blue side against a Riven top. You're leashing your jungler Hecarim and at 1:50, you notice that Riven walks into lane, which is a dead giveaway she didn't leash, it would take far longer. You ascertain from this and the fact that their bot lane hasn't showed yet either that Elise started at her blue buff and will be in her topside jungle near 2:45, and that's around where you should ward unless she shows earlier. Ward the tribush if you're pushing or the river if you're not.

Scenarios VS

Scenario 1 - Mid It's a very similar game in Mid lane, except you have two sides you can be hit on. Let's use the same scenario as last game but you're mid against their Ziggs. They have a Dankplank top leashing their Wukong at red, and your bot lane is leashing your Nunu at your red. Since you know where Wukong is right off the bat, you know he's likely going to clear two more camps on his blue side and be looking for action in the bottomside river area. At around 2:45, you're definitely going to be looking to ward. You have a few options, you have the right bush strip in the lane itself, you have the island bush in the river itself, and the bush leading into their jungle. Odds are Wukong won't be all that healthy, so he likely won't be going to counterjungle on your bot side. He'll be looking to take either the scuttle crab, or gank you or your bot lane. The optimal warding spot here to me would be the island brush.

Scenarios VS

Scenario 2 - Mid Imagine for the final scenario that you're blue side mid against an enemy Twisted Fate and that the enemy jungler is a Shaco. All 3 of the enemy lanes show up to their lanes immediately and you have no idea where Shaco could possibly be, but you know well enough to not overextend and put yourself in a potentially bad position. In this case, it's usually good practice to assume the Shaco will do his red buff first and then attempt a level 2 cheese gank, so it's best to just play safe and farm and wait out level 3, then take all of your spells at level 3, then warding whatever side of the jungle you think he's on without extending yourself into a dangerous position. Some junglers just have the immense pressure right off the bat, and sometimes you just have to accept it and cope with it the best way you can.

Also, don't forget to buy control wards, and always pay attention to where the jungler starts. It's amazing how much of a difference the mental security will make.

A more subtle thing that a player can do to further personalize their setup is to customize the keybinds that they use to play. Personally I have a higher than average setup with a Razer Naga mouse to help me map controls to my mouse, and if you have a good gaming mouse or keyboard or other peripheral that you can customize, you could potentially set up things to help you out. Just remember, the settings below are just the settings I use, and might not be the best.

This is the Side View of my mouse (viewed in Razer Synapse), which shows what I have each numbered button on the side of the mouse set to perform.


Buttons 1-3 are set to input 1-3 respectively, which in conjunction with the settings inside of League, will in turn use any actives on the items in the first through third slot of my items in game.
Buttons 4+5 are set to G and H, which I have set to my summoner spells. I use G and H because I have another use for ASDF.
Button 6 is set for 6, which in my game settings is bound to activate a setting called "Target Champions Only" which dictates that when the button bound to it is held, you can't target anything other than an enemy champion with a targeted abiility. You can still aim skillshots though.
Button 7 is set to 7, which is what I have set to put down my trinkets.
Buttons 8-12 are what I have set to Taunt and the other communication commands.

This is the first page of the Hotkeys pages in the League settings.


There's nothing much special here. Just note that I have my summoner spells set to G+H so I can use ASDF for other reasons, which isn't a problem because I'm not actually ever touching the G or H key because I have them set up for buttons on the mouse.

This is the second page of the Hotkeys that I'm going to cover, which shows leveling up spells and Target Champions Only.



I really only bother doing this because Alt is closer to Space than CTRL is, and space is what I use to center the camera on myself. Also, Target Champions Only is useful for walldashes as Yasuo, as well as making sure you hit the right thing with your E if you need to.

This is the Camera Controls page of the Hotkeys settings.




The point of using Select Ally is to quickly check up on the other players on your team. Actually looking to Top lane to see what's going on gives you more information than just glancing at the minimap or their healthbar. This is especially useful as a jungler so you know what you're gonna walk in to before a gank. Play Video
^ That is LS' video about Select Ally, a very prominent and respectable analyst/coach.

This page is the Menus portion of the Hotkeys settings.



A smaller thing I like to do is to set my Scoreboard to not have to be held to view it. Press Tab and it comes up, press it again and it goes away. Also note that I have the Shop set to T, so you don't have to move your hands as far as you normally would have to.

This is the Interface settings portion of Options.



Another thing that could be useful is minimizing the size of the HUD and Chat. Doing this allows you to see more of the battlefield, which is a huge help if you're playing on a small monitor or just want to see more. Contrary to the picture, however, I actually maximize the Minimap to see things easier and more exact.

So yes, I'm aware that 99% of the League of Legends community doesn't acknowledge 3v3 as anything more than a meme, but I'll add this section, as this entire guide is meant to be comprehensive as possible. Yasuo on the Treeline is a pretty decent solo top laner, but if your team is utilizing the support meta, Yasuo becomes very very stupid very very fast. He hits his item spikes much faster than he would on Summoner's Rift and thus scales harder than he normally would.

Good Supports

+ Taric + Kayle + Sejuani + Braum + Rakan

Generally what Yasuo is looking in for a support is someone with knockups, that can clear waves really quickly, or someone that is goood at keeping him alive. Y'know, just like the kind of teammates he appreciates normally.

The goal of the game for Twisted Treeline as a hypercarry with a support is to balance killing monsters and lane minions to get as much of both as possible, and thus to increase your gold and XP advantage against your enemies much higher than it normally would be. It's extremely effective when done on Yasuo and a few others because of their unstoppable nature, and to do this, what you usually want to do is kill the first wave, then go kill wraiths and wolves, get back to lane for the next wave, clear golems and back/skirmish/wait, rinse and repeat. The faster you accumulate gold the faster you'll outscale your enemies, and the quicker you can end games.

I started this section really late, so a lot of what's changed since the beginning of this guide was created won't be here. However, as of 7.10, it's here, and I'll update this section whenever I make any further changes. Let me know in the comments if there's anything you guys think I should change or could do better, and thanks for reading!
Massive thanks for 100K likes :D and appreciation to Hesperrhodos for the Commendation!
Credit to Jhoijhoi for the excellent guide on coding
Credit to Skill-Capped for their excellent warding series, and also general champion guides.