Dominic was browsing the systenet, as the noble sat down at the opposite end.
"What are you looking at?" she asked, curious.
And on his screen.
First off, press ctrl + f to skip to a section that has the information you want. Each section will be labelled as follows. Introduction, Early Game, Mid Game, Late Game, Item builds, Jungling path, runes and masteries, and additional notes.
Introduction
That's right. Not lane Yasuo, but jungle. Here's a few tips and tricks.
Early Game
Your goal early game isn't exactly to snowball. Against most matchups, your win condition isn't to get ahead of your enemy. It is to stall to late game where you're stronger than them. What I would personally recommend early game is to AFK farm your jungle and avoid skirmishes. However, obviously if there's an easy gank you should go for it. Your first powerspike will be bloodrazor, which I will elaborate on in the Item Builds. Until this item, try not to fight much unless you have red buff. Invading is also a possibility but try not to do it too often unless your laners can rotate faster than the enemy laners.
Mid Game
What I would personally consider mid-game would be when you have the following items. Tier 2 boots, bloodrazor, and a completed zeal item. Here, you aren't super strong yet, but you can definitely start looking to make plays and snowball. What I would personally recommend here is to prioritize sneaking a dragon if possible, you can easily solo dragon even with nothing but a bloodrazor and smite. This especially holds true if it's an infernal dragon. These dragons have insane gold value, scaling up to even 10k at the late game. Do not waste too much time invading unless you know for a fact that those camps are free, and prioritize farming up and ganking lanes with knock-ups or overpushed enemies. Yasuo punishes the latter really well due to challenging smite + a ton of mobility (since their minions will be at your team's tower).
Late Game
Your main objective late game is to windwall the enemy backline to cut their damage off and allow your team to fight the enemy frontline and kill them. The reason I'm saying this from a teamfight perspective is because I believe where Yasuo jungle really shines is in teamfights. With challenging smite you can duel the enemy frontline while remaining relatively healthy, so whenever the enemy squishies overstep you can easily dash through the frontline and annihilate their backline. You shouldn't be going straight for the backline unless you land a really sick tornado on them, by chance or by skill. Don't be afraid to blow ult even on only one person if it means they die. This is mainly for you to get the arpen buff to shred their frontline.
Item Builds
What I personally build on Yasuo jungle is as follows. Start with a hunters machete + refillable potion, get two daggers or a recurve bow on first back depending on my economy, then rush bloodrazor, prioritizing boots over it if I am 500 or more gold away from bloodrazor.
Next up, a zeal should be your top priority. However feel free to upgrade to tier 2 boots if you can't afford a complete zeal. I personally prefer merc threads because Yasuo doesn't have scaling MR and the tenacity is nice to have. However if they are all AD you can go for a Ninja Tabi as well.
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For the zeal, I personally get shiv all the time. Yes, god forbid, how dare I get that item!? The main reason I love that item is because it helps your jungling clear so much, but if you're looking to splitpush and duel a PD would be fine as well because you'd have a total 32% mitigation against any one champ.
Afterwards, rush IE, prioritizing the cloak of agility, since 100% crit means you'll have consistent damage and rely on RNG less, furthermore shiv will crit too. If you have 1300 gold, get a cloak and longsword instead of a BF sword. The longsword will be upgraded to a BT later on. After you finish your IE, upgrade the longsword to a vamp scepter, the reason I don't ask you to upgrade it earlier is because of 15% lifesteal to monsters from red smite, as well as bonus lifesteal from runes (I will cover these later).
After all that, you can finish BT if you're looking for the damage, but never EVER finish BT before IE, it just isn't good for your dps. However if you're behind and getting bursted a Frozen mallet or GA might be a better item first. If you're fighting an all AD or AP team, don't rush BT unless massively ahead, as items like dead man's plate and maw will prove to be much more gold efficient.
Jungling Path
Personally, this is what I do. start red, dash over wall to krugs, kill krugs then go for the raptor camp with a charged Q from krugs (kite krugs using only q and not aa-ing if necessary). Then, EQ the middle raptor and smite the big raptor, then dash out and Q all of the small ones and clean up the camp.
From here, you should be looking to take either scuttle crab. Take the one nearer to you if that lane is getting shoved in and it seems like an easy gank, or you know the enemy jungler is at the other one, in which case just back after that scuttle crab and get 2 daggers.
If you know it's probably safe, rotate to the other side of your jungle and clear wolves and blue. By now you'll be level 4 with windwall for gromp. Clear it and recall for a recurve bow. Rinse and repeat once you're up.
Runes and Masteries
I take the following. For runes, 9 attack speed reds, scaling armor yellows and scaling MR blues, as well as 1 attack speed quint and 2 lifesteal quints. The main focus of this rune page is allowing for quick clear early(hence AS reds to apply hunter's machete bonus damage more), while scaling really well into the late game.
For masteries, I go 18-12-0. Take the following. Fury, fresh blood, vampirism, bounty hunter, battering blows and fervor. For the cunning tree, Savagery, assassin, executioner and dangerous game.
Additional notes
Try to walk through mid in earlier clears(poke enemy mid if they overextend, but don't commit unless it's a guaranteed kill) to get to the other side of your jungle from scuttle crab. This way you can get free EXP from minions.
If you're confident in mechanics, don't be a beta. Go for that 1v5. But if things like that consistently don't work out, you should stop.
This concludes the end of my guide. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments and note that not every single step I take has to be followed 100%, games are never always the same as the previous, anyway.
Was a yasuo guide to jungling.
At the end of the page, Dominic saw the strange date below.
"1st April"
"What kind of people measure time in months? This thing is outdated" Dominic sighed.