As you might have read on yesterday’s PBE News, Riot is Buffing not only the range, but also giving him more Magic Resistance per level and incresing his Q Damage. Well, this ended up causing some controversy on the Discussion Boards at League Of Legends’ official forums. The community is almost begging for Riot to not apply the recent Yasuo buffs on Live.
The community argues that Yasuo is already in a good spot and giving him even more survivability is not healthy for the game balance . They also said that if the changes go through, Yasuo will yet again lead the ban rate charts.
Riot’s Given Context:
Mapple Nectar provided some context on the recent yasuo buffs:
Yasuo lost a fair bit of his power as we headed into the pre-season, and then got brought down further with Press The Attack nerfs last patch. Leaving him at 44-45% winrate feels quite awful for a champion that has one of the most dedicated playerbases, Not to mention the fact that he’s a champion who drops off steeply in effectiveness the farther you climb. giving him even just some power back doesn’t feel inappropriate. Referencing all of the things we nerfed on him in the past is somewhat misleading, since you’re talking about a time before runes reforged, and he was sporting a winrate over 50% of his games.
The statement of “only a few people play him” is actually quite incorrect. He’s one of the more popular champions, who also happens to dedicate the most time to mastering him. We did a really cool (in my opinion) blog on appeal vs stickiness (breadth vs depth) of champions which might be of interest to you! You can check it out here! The charts halfway down would likely be of interest in particular!
He’s a champion that stands the test of time in regards to popularity even when he’s weak. Meaning that the number of people playing Yasuo before/after preseason is probably actually roughly equal, only the version they’re playing after is far weaker. This translates to more games with a Yasuo in them likely translating to a stomp for the team with a Yasuo on them, because even when they’ve mastered the champion over hundreds of games, they’re “reward” is still losing over half their games, which bucks the trend of what you would expect from a mastery curve.
What do you think of theses changes? Let us know in the comments section!