Hey guys,

I know there's a lot of... passionate discussion about Riot's upcoming AD/marksmen item changes and how they affect Yasuo. Let me start by saying this:

If the changes go through and they significantly nerf Yasuo, we will buff/make changes to Yasuo. Also before I get called out by people saying "obviously it's going to nerf Yasuo!!!" let me say two things:

(1) There are a lot of changes, and anytime we make big systemic changes we can see weird power balance shifts occur. If we buff Yasuo preemptively along with the item changes, it will be harder for us to hit it right, and we may end up not buffing him enough or over-buffing him in which case we'll need to do additional work. We'd rather wait a bit and try to get it right instead of doing the Zoe treatment where he's in every patch for the next two months.

(2) I'd imagine we'll want to address some of the building anti-synergies and "feelsbadman" things that have emerged with Yasuo's kit. I'm not saying these are going to be changed, but I'd imagine we'd look into: the 90% crit damage on his passive, the double crit passive itself (would probably be a bigger change), the armor pen on his ultimate (know this is anti-synergistic with conquerer, his keystone of choice, and will be with IE too).

Just to make it know that Riot isn't oblivious to how these changes affect yasuo, here's what I currently see as the big ones:

• Zeal (first buy) power is done
• PD (first item) is more expensive
• IE (second item) has a harder/less-synergistic build path (you can't do PD cloak for 100% crit, buying two BFs is costly and tricky for back timings, etc.)
• two item spike is more expensive, new IE damage bonus is anti-synergistic with Yas R, though Yasuo may be overkilling squishies at this point previously (old 2 item with IE if you ult/get on squishy you likely can overkill them, now you might be better vs tankier champs with the extra true damage).

Some other things worth discussing:

• Yasuo passive - is now the same as IE passive... time for a new Yasuo passive maybe...? Thoughts? Would you guys be okay with moving Yasuo away from a crit based build/crit synergy? (that would likely be the most drastic change we make to him)
• 90% crit damage - this is one I'm personally thinking we should just bump up to full damage as a potential compensation buff.
• R armor pen - how attached are you guys to this? I'm wondering that if conqueror is still best on Yasuo, and if he's still building IE (in the event we don't do some bigger changes with his crit passive) that we might want to change this to avoid the feelsbad anti-synergies with conq and IE. It does help him toplane against tanks, but maybe he won't need the help with IE conq in the future. Thoughts on this too?