Yasuo AMA Summary!

"Nope. There were iterations of Yasuo's ult that worked on any jump as well as knock up and they were incredibly frustrating to say the least :p. Tristana especially got screwed because she has such a long cast time on Rocket Jump." - SmashGizmo

Q. Will Yasuo's ult work on Nami's Aqua Prison?

"Yasuo's R will work off Nami Q. Like you said, visually, the opponent is suspended in the air by a form of crowd control." - CertainlyT

Q. Will Yasuo's ult work on targets that are leaping or targets knocked up by neutral monsters?

"Last Breath, Yasuo’s R, can be cast on any knockup or knockback applied by Yasuo himself or one of his teammates. The ability is about coordination and synergy, so it didn’t make sense to include enemy leaps (such as Tristana’s Rocket Jump) or neutral monster knock ups (such as those cast by Baron/Vilemaw). 

We actually playtested a version where Yasuo could grab enemy champions who leapt out of the air with his ult. It seemed cool on paper. In practice, I, who was playing Yasuo, spent the entire post-6 laning phase mashing the R button while RiotFan, sitting next to me playing Jax, refused to ever once use his Leap Strike. Jerk." - CertainlyT

Q. Is there going to be an increase to the speed of his E? Right now it feels rather slow and clunky for a gap closer.

"We want him to look targetable when he is using E. And his dash cooldown is about 1 sec, so if he dashes faster it is going to be so hard for the enemy to keep track of his location in the game. :)" -RiotJino

Q. Will Yasuo be a viable or even a good jungler? When you designed him did you only intend for him to be viable in the mid and potentially top lane?

"Yasuo is a great mid laner. As the safe lane, he get the farm he needs there to output serious damage and his windwall is put to best use against typical midlane opponents. Overall though, I hope he has the tools to find success in any farming position on the map.
It's up to you, the community of players, to find out where and how he can be put to good use!" - CertainlyT

Q. The Flow mechanic seems a little out of place to be honest (a resource that only gives a shield?) did you just want to give him a little survivability to get out his damage or what was the thought process behind that ability?

"Yasuo was resourceless for much of his development. We track Flow in the resource bar becuase it is open space available for use and because when Yasuo is at low Flow, he is weaker for an appreciable amount of time, just as when a champion is at low mana/energy." - CertainlyT

Q. Is Riot's intent to change all armor pen to only work on bonus armor like with Yasuo's ult, or is it just something you guys are testing?

"There's some internal debate over what direction we should move with armor pen (if at all). Obviously, you know what side of the debate I am on." - CertainlyT

Q. Who are Yasuo's main counters you think at the moment?

"Lock down mages (like Malzahar) have been nightmares to play against late game in testing. Heavy bruisers (like Renekton) have been really painful to lane against." - CertainlyT

Q. With the release of Yasuo are you hoping to break the curse of "terribad" tier that is a melee carry usually?

"I would say that 'terribad' is an overstatement of the state of our Melee Carry roster, but it's certainly true that we've struggled to find a place for that class within League of Legends. They always seem to end up falling into either assassin roles during teamfights (Master Yi, Fiora), or find themselves relegated to split pushing and forcing duels and skirmishes all game (Tryndamere).
With that in mind, Yasuo takes a very different approach to functioning as a Melee Carry. He brings much more in the form of teamfight utility (cc via Q3 and R, unique zoning potential off of wind wall) than any other attempts at creating a Melee Carry, at the cost of some raw damage output and free target selection that have historically pushed the class towards assassination patterns. The net result feels much more like a carry play pattern in practice, as Yasuo uses the windwall to create the space he needs to hit the opposing front line without dying to the opposing carries. My experiences with the character are leading me to believe that Yasuo will be the most functional Melee Carry our game has seen and as such, I'm optimistic about his ability to shake some of the stigma surrounding the Melee Carry class." - SmashGizmo

"Melee AD carries have a somewhat tarnished reputation in LoL. Much of this is undeserved: while the forums have at various times called Tryndamere and Fiora useless, they’ve also had some of the highest win rates of any champions. So there isn’t a tremendous strategic downside to the class. Rather, I feel these champions suffer from two issues that Yasuo seeks to address:
First, they bring so little utility to the table that when they have a sub-par game, they are little more than free gold for the enemy. As a result their success and failure cases are dramatic. When Fiora is ahead, she double dashes to the enemy backline, ults them, and they die. When Fiora is behind, she does the same thing, but dies when she lands. Yasuo by contrast brings substantial utility -- he’s the Ashe of melee carries -- in the form of Wind Wall and his brief but powerful knockups from Steel Tempest. So when he’s been denied farm, he has options for meaningful contribution to the team’s victory by protecting his teammates or locking down fed enemy carries, even if he can’t solo them.
Second, it isn’t clear how our existing pool of melee carries can help their teammates and their teammates can help them. For example, Tryndamere’s split push success hinges on his teammates actively avoiding his side of the map and creating consistent pressure but avoiding direct 5v4 conflict. This is non-obvious, leading to a lot of frustration on the part of the Trynd player and his allies. Master Yi depended on getting kills, and so worked well with teams that could soften their opponents, but not kill them. For each kill he got, he’d gain another massive AOE nuke on the enemy team, so anyone taking kills besides him was squandering his potential. A champion that relies on his allies not getting kills has its problems, and we’ve subsequently removed the kill/assist distinction from Highlander. Yasuo’s kit, by contrast, makes clear a few of the ways he can work with his team (e.g., “Stand behind this partial invulnerability shield!”) and his team can work with him (e.g., “Knock that grouped enemy team airborne!”). I’m hopeful that by providing some seed ideas for cooperation, the rest of his power will be more readily appreciable." - CertainlyT

Q. Riot stated in the past that a resourceless champion will have a some sort of drawback. What would Yasuo's drawback be?

"This is a concern, I agree. A lot of Yasuo's vulnerabilities are in the details -- for example, one unique element of Yasuo's dash is that if he is stunned/rooted during it, he immediately stops. Other dashes will move the champ to the end point and then stop them from moving thereafter. So while Yasuo is very mobile, landing a Dark Binding on him as he dashes around feels great.
As to drawbacks, so much of the weakness of a fragile melee sustained damage dealer is inherent in their being fragile, melee, and low burst (relative to assassins) that it is actually challenging to add additional layers of counterplay.
With Yasuo, we were able to use our recent thinking about the game as a series of phases to bring out different forms of counterplay across game time. A good example is Steel Tempest, Yasuo’s Q. The ability is a short, narrow Jarvan Q (cast time into instant damage in a line). This ability is unique in that its cast time scales downward with attack speed. So during the laning phase it is very dodgeable by an enemy that stays in motion and dances in and out of its range -- typical skillshot counterplay. By late game, it’s much harder to dodge, but the act of being in range to cast it is much riskier for Yasuo." - CertainlyT

Q. What has been put in place to counter Yasuo's snowballing too hard from his super cost-effective crit passive?

"To address the snowballing point, one reason why I like the crit steroid is that critical strike chance is a capped stat (as is the AS to CDR conversion on his Q). This means that while access to core items (Personally, I use IE+Statikk shiv) is fundamental and after that the player is more free to build defensive items than a Riven or Pantheon." - CertainlyT

Q. Can you please explain why do you continue to release manaless champions? I think that it is easy to understand that manaless champs will be always OP (or the stronger in their role) or useless after some nerfs.

"Manaless champs aren't the issue when those champs are melee. Most of the cost of being melee is...well, you're melee. Manaless tends to be a problem on ranged/mage characters (Kennen and Katarina have been hard to balance historically because of this). Other fighters without mana aren't problematic because of their lack of mana (Nasus isn't weak because he has mana), they're problematic because Fighters tend to lack gameplay weaknesses in their play pattern." - Morello

Q. Why was Yasuo's E AP ratio reduced from 1.0 to 0.6? Were players building him AP?

"AP builds were common on the PBE. They seemed to be in that odd space of being bad but still incredibly annoying." - CertainlyT

Q. It seems to me that Yasuo is a team-comp specific champion (knock-ups). Was this the plan from the beginning, and will you continue in this direction with future champs?

"All of our champions have build around possibilities. Synergy is inevitable in this genre of game, but much of it is subtle. I am skeptical that this is an area in which we need subtlety. Players should feel good about combining complementary pieces that come together to solve the puzzle of “how do we win this.” Yasuo’s synergies are overt. In discussing which champions complemented fragile, high dps melees, tanks and supports came up most often. Knocked Airborne! seemed an obvious choice since it matched Yasuo’s wind thematics and was the status effect most frequently used by those classes of champions. When Yasuo operates at the backline of a fight, Janna (Slow + AD granting shield) is probably his favorite partner. when he goes deep to the enemy backline, there’s no one he wants by his side more than Malphite (AS + MS slows)." - CertainlyT

Development

Q. How much of a pain in the [Urf] was it to code and bug fix Wind Wall?

"A pretty huge one. RiotJHa has owned the QA process for the ability. I would say it's the single biggest QA challenge we've faced from an ability perspective, on par with Yorick ult. Unlike Yorick ult, Yasuo's Wind Wall involves a lot of subjective decisionmaking for edge cases. We've had a number of arguments within the design pit about just what Wind Wall should block (for example, Lux's Prismatic Barrier, which doesn't deal damage and Diana's Pale Cascade, which orbits her -- Wind Wall blocks both BTW)." - CertainlyT

Q. Roughly how long did it take from ability creation to the point where it was fully functional after QA?

"I developed a prototype that involved indivudually tracking all missiles created on the map and testing their location every 0.03 seconds relative to the windwall. This was very taxing on the game server, sometimes fast projectiles like Caitlyn ult would sneak through, and occasionally it would kill missiles on the other side of the map for reasons I still don't understand. It did, however, allow us to test the ability prior to its final functionality being implemented.
Design playtest is always an adventure." - CertainlyT

Q. Can you describe how it ended up being programmed instead?

"As I understand it (Neal Kettler, a smart engineer made the tech). Wind Wall is, on a code level a region in space that when entered by a game object (in this case, missiles) trips a trigger that can then either destroy the missile or let it pass." - CertainlyT

Q. Where did the idea come from to have him dodge skillshots with his ability?

"In thinking about the Samurai/Swordsman archetype I tried to essentialize it down to: Dash, Parry, Strike. All of Yasuo's abilities are takes on those three simple principles." - CertainlyT

Q. Can you share any old iterations of Yasuo kit that were scrapped?

"I'm actually a poor iterater. I like to stick to my initial paper kits more than most champion designers.
Yasuo's Wind Wall used to be placable at any point within 1000 units of him (like Anivia's wall). He'd just place it in front of Miss Fortune any time she ulted.
He went through a number of Q's, including one that was "handed" -- sometimes he would strike to his left and sometimes to his right. This turns out to not work very well in LoL for two reasons, a) No one could figure out how to use the dang thing and b) with no turn time in our game, it didn't really serve a purpose other than making the player have to position their facing awkwardly before each cast." - CertainlyT

Q. Who originally came up with the concept behind Yasuo?

"Surprisingly, there isn’t just one singular point of origin for Yasuo. In true Riot fashion, the story of his development is a long one with a big cast of supporting characters. 

Initially, Joe Ziegler (manly designer of such manly champs as Talon, Viktor, and Jayce and #1 Nami fan NA) had a working prototype for a samurai which our design team thought was potentially viable. I remember that the ultimate was a giant Shen-style shadow dash that would stun everyone in the target area, and then inflict massive burst damage on all targets after a slight delay. Ridiculous. The funny thing is that, even though that kit got everyone excited about making a samurai champion, none of it survives in the final champion. 

Joe “Manwolfaxeboss” Lansford was working in QA at the time, and took a keen interest in the samurai concept. He approached me about doing some writing for the champion, and revealed that he had majored in East Asian studies and had spent some time living in Japan. He pitched some cool story ideas and the name “Yasuo.” We quickly agreed to be co-writers on the champ. This is a classic Riot story, as Joe literally walked in the door from QA, and ended up writing Yasuo’s bio, one of his teaser pieces, and a good portion of his VO script. As Joe says, there is no such thing as “just QA” at Riot. 

Meanwhile, one of our female designers at Riot was complaining about the lack of attractive shirtless male champions in League of Legends (I guess Tryndamere wasn’t hot enough for her), and gave us the mandate to come up with a concept that met her extremely specific criteria. Trevor “Trevolver Ocelot” quickly came on board to draw the initial Yasuo concepts, which exposed much of his broad chest. 

These initial concepts were much more grizzled and rough-and-tumble than the Yasuo we know today – they were firmly rooted in the down-on-his-luck ronin fantasy. We felt, however, that something was missing from the concept and quickly decided upon the idea of wind as a source of power for the character. Wind is really what gives Yasuo his special sauce, and elevates him beyond being a stock samurai; everything about Yasuo, from his abilities to his thematics to his voiceover, touches upon the idea of the wind. 

The one thing Joe Lansford and I both thought would work for the champion was the idea that he was wrongfully accused of a crime he didn’t commit. This was a classic anti-hero trope that hadn’t been done before in League of Legends, and with 117 champions in the game, we’re always looking for stories we haven’t told yet. We thought this angle would give him a bit of an edge, as we didn’t have enough room for yet another benevolent swordsman." - RiotRansom

Q. What was the inspiration for Yasuo?

"As much as we love Master Yi in all his sword-boot glory, we felt there was room in the game for a more traditional and serious Ionian swordsman. One thing that we definitely set out to capture was the tone of classic Samurai movies – these films are so oppressively fatalistic and melancholy and drenched in blood. People are killing each other, not because they want to, because they are obligated to. Only in feudal Japan! It’s such a macho code of honor type of setting, you know? We knew we had delivered on this fantasy when one of the translators responsible for publishing Yasuo’s bio wrote us a note saying it had made her cry. Joe (who wrote the bio) should be proud of that." - RiotRansom

"We took a lot of inspiration from old samurai films like Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, as well as modern ones like Samurai Fiction and Harakiri: Death of a Samurai. I’m also pretty sure that everyone on the dev team has seen Samurai Champloo once or twice. Outside of samurai stuff though, we looked a lot to the Man with No Name trilogy and even Cowboy Bebop for character references. We wanted to create a champion that delivers on being both an honorable swordsman as well as a tough guy with an attitude." - ManWolfAxeBoss

Q. How did you go about choosing voice actors? Could you go into your standard process for picking the right voice for a character?

"As Ransom mentioned in another post, we did four did different records for Yasuo's voice and had already listened to a ton of auditions before those. Hitting the perfect amount of tough guy, while still maintaining Yasuo's somewhat introspective personality without making him sound too young or old turned out to be quite a challenge. Liam O'Brien ending up knocking it out though. Really happy with the end product." - ManWolfAxeBoss

Q. How much of Yasuo is taken out of Samurai Champloo, or other animes? Were there any standout inspirations?

"I'm pretty sure that everyone on the team watched SC at some point. Cowboy Bebop was another one. I personally took the most inspiration from the old black and white film Yojimbo." - ManWolfAxeBoss

Q. Did you guys had Miyamoto Musashi in mind while designing this champ?
( http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cf/Vagabond21.jpg )

"Actually at the start of developing Yasuo, I started reading Vagabond the manga! I wanted to do it to find cool poses, but ended up reading the whole thing! LOL" - ohmikegoodness

"Eiji Yoshikawa's Musashi is one of my favorite books of all time. I'm also a big fan of the manga adaptation Vagabond. I've read the Book of Five Rings as well. Really interesting guy!" - ManWolfAxeBoss

Q. Was the goal of this hero to be a melee mid from the beginning or did it evolve down the line after seeing the viability of riven mid, and how do you feel if Yasuo ends up being a better top or jungle as opposed for his designed role in mid?

"Good question. Internally, we've always seen a lot of AD champions as mid laners (think Zed, who we have always identified as a mid laner but who most people took top lane on release). 

Yasuo's combat pattern, wave clear, and power curve are well suited to the short, safe lane so we've seen him as one since his kit came together. I'm hopeful that he'll work in mid lane because the team compositions in which he will be the most successful are those that have tanky champions (most often found top and jungle) to complement him. 

If he sees play elsewhere, that won't bother me. We actually put little emphasis internally on where a champion shouldn't be played, with the exception of champions that are frustrating and uncounterable in off positions, such as release Lulu in top lane." - CertainlyT

Q. Why did you decide to create a 'High Noon' skin for Yasuo's release?

"The inspiration for the skin is drawn from the classic spaghetti westerns directed by Sergio Leone. Think "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" starring Clint Eastwood. Leone has always admitted that his inspiration for these films were the classic samurai films of Kurosawa, such as Yojimbo and The Seven Samurai. In fact, one of the early inspirations for Yasuo was Yojimbo. So this skin is our team's way of paying homage to a very special part of the history of cinema." - RiotRansom

Q. Is Yasuo's kit tuned and made with the season 4 changes in mind, if so, how do you think new potential meta changes will decide where he is played?

"Yes - we did our balance passes for all characters in development during preseason for the 2014 Season. Smash can speak to specifics on this." - Morello

"Yasuo has been almost exclusively tested with the preseason 2014 changes since we knew he would be released after them. As for where he will lane, it's really hard to tell because a Melee carry who actually functions as a Melee Carry just isn't something we've had in our game before. We've gone through phases of thinking his primary position would be in every non-support position at different points in time, even including potentially as a bot lane Carry, and honestly, I still think he can work in any of those positions so long as: 1. His team has a heavy frontliner 2. His team has a ranged tower pusher 

In a solo queue setting, I think he'll gravitate towards the two solo lanes with some players favoring the consistent farm of the jungle to fill out Yasuo's midgame power lull before he hits Infinity Edge." - SmashGizmo 

Q. Was there any thought to making his death animation either Seppuku or the wind swirling around and sort of carrying him off in the initial concept stages?

"Yes, we considered that, ultimately we decided to not go that direction since we have a few champs that kill themselves already... We thought maybe he could turn to leaves and blow away, but that was too magical, and morgana's skin does that already. I personally wanted his death to be similar to Riven's to further implicate the two ;D" - ohmikegoodness

Q. Were you guys afraid that Wind Wall would be broken?

"I was worried about this, but I think that's actually important to do - it's a necessary risk for creating unique characters. The key was to make sure it wasn't super frequent and had big windows of downtime." - Morello

"To follow up on Morello -- there are very few things in our game more powerful than giving your allies 20 armor and MR. The effects that distort competitive play the most are those that consistently generate advantage in an uncounterable fashion. Wind Wall is counterable through timing, positioning, and champion pick and so I hope will prove to be a powerful but not broken force in competitive play." - CertainlyT

Q. What is the most difficult part about creating a champion like Yasuo?

"The most difficult part for the animation side was making his sheathing and unsheathing very smooth and seamless. We required engineering support to allow Yasuo to know whether or not he was in or out of combat, and if he was in a run or an idle. Hopefully it looks smooth, but boy, was it difficult!" - ohmikegoodness

"To me, the most difficult thing about making a champion is keeping pressure on ourselves to make sure the champ is the best he can be. In my head, I often compare the process of creating Yasuo to making a samurai sword. Like a Japanese swordsmith, we constantly reforged and refolded the steel to make the blade sharper and sharper. He is quite possibly one of the most revised characters in the history of League. There are countless drafts of his story going all the way back to August 2012 (almost a year and a half ago!) and we didn’t even settle on the final draft until the last minute. We considered a version where Yasuo didn’t kill Yone, a version where Yone knew Yasuo was innocent the whole time, even a version with no hints of Riven. We explored every branch of that story tree until we were sure we had what we wanted. We recorded four different versions of his voiceover script with a number of different actors, and consider ourselves quite fortunate to be working with fan favorite Liam O’Brien. (He did a great job of capturing the attitude of the character – I love the way he taunts Master Yi by saying, “Wuju? Never heard of it.”)" - RiotRansom

Q. What gave you the inspiration to make this champion? Are you lot the brains behind other champions too? If so, which ones?

"Some of this was simple; "how do we not have a samurai-style archetype" was one part, and we wanted to add something to differentiate with the wind power. 

This group is a part of the champion team and have worked on several champions (though I don't know if this group has all worked on the same one together, before). It takes a lot of people to make a champion!" - Morello

Q. Yasuo's ult is the first ultimate ability in the game to have a requirement, in this case the enemy being airborne. Are you happy with the way it has turned out and do you foresee any future champions having similar requirements?

"I can't speak to future releases -- generally our design team has been critical of Yasuo ult -- but I personally like the ability. 

Mainly, I think that powerful targeted CC is really frustrating to play against, since all that is required in terms of skill is putting one's mouse over the enemy. It's difficult to appreciate, for example, that your opponent expended a cooldown leaving them vulnerable in the future. By linking Yasuo's CC to landing a skill shot in the dueling case or making the quick decision to de-position himself in response to an allied CC, he has the sort of high variance in performance that I think makes for an exciting champion." - Morello

Q. What made you think of Liam O'Brien for Yasuo's voice?

"He auditioned, we heard his voice, and said to ourselves, 'Whoa. This could work!'" - RiotRansom

Q. May I ask you why there are more AD than AP champs released lately?

"We try to have a good flow of AP versus AD champions in our release cadence. Sometimes that doesn't work out. Lucian, Jinx and Yasuo all came together design-wise at the same time. We do have some mages in the works, Deathcaps4Life." - CertainlyT

Q. While the gameplay seems pretty different, were there any thematic/artistic concerns with making Yasuo distinctively different from Master Yi, seeing as until recently he was more or less League's samurai champ?

"There were many concerns with the overlap with Master Yi! Animation made concerted efforts to make sure his poses weren't close to Yi. Whenever we make new champions we try to create new idle and run poses. We had to throw away anything that looked close to a master Yi pose. However that was difficult because they are both swordsmen. I think in the end we found a good balance." - ohmikegoodness

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