Wind Wall is four seconds of "no" and it costs nothing but the cooldown. The confusing part was never the long list of spells it eats. It's the short list of things that walk straight through it, and that list has turrets on it.
Yasuo Mechanics
What Wind Wall Blocks
Patch 26.16
Wind Wall is four seconds of "no" and it costs nothing but the cooldown. The confusing part was never the long list of spells it eats. It's the short list of things that walk straight through it, and that list has turrets on it.
Most guides answer this with a list of spells and leave you to memorize it. That's backwards. There's one rule underneath every entry on the list, and once you have it, you can work out any matchup you haven't seen yet without looking anything up.
The Rule Underneath It
A projectile is something the game spawns and sends traveling at a speed. That's the entire test.
This is why the exception list looks so arbitrary until you know the rule, and so obvious afterward. A laser isn't a missile, it's a line the game paints. A champion flying at your face isn't a missile either, it's a unit, and units are never blocked by anything.
One more thing that catches new Yasuo players: the wall stops enemy projectiles. Your own marksman fires through it exactly as if it weren't there.
What It Eats
Most of the game. Nearly every ranged basic attack, nearly every skillshot, and a pile of ultimates that decide fights on their own. A dozen of the ones worth knowing on sight:
Notice how many of those are the enemy team's entire engage. A support who spends 25 seconds fishing for a hook and gets it deleted has done nothing for that whole window, which is where a lot of Yasuo's lane pressure quietly comes from.
What Walks Straight Through
Here's the part worth actually memorizing, because several of these look exactly like missiles while they're killing you.
Anything that moves a unit instead of firing one
Never blocked No exceptions
Dashes are units in motion. So is anything that picks up a body and throws it. There is no timing, no rank, and no positioning that changes this.
Beams, cones, and things that happen on the ground
The big group
This is where most of the surprise lives. Nothing here travels, so there's nothing for the wall to catch.
Nunu's snowball is the one with a condition attached: it ignores the wall while he's still channeling it.
Ranged attacks that were never projectiles
Auto attacks
Some ranged champions simply don't fire anything. Their attacks apply at the target, so the wall is scenery.
Three more get there conditionally, bypassing the wall only while they're standing in melee range of what they're hitting:
The empowered attacks from Shapesplitter [W], Doom 'n Gloom [Passive], More Sparkles! [Passive] and Feline Friendship [Passive] go through as well.
Turrets ignore it completely. Turret shots and the Nexus Obelisk are not projectiles, and neither are Hextech Drake's attacks or Baron's rear attack. Walling yourself off from a turret you're diving under accomplishes precisely nothing, and it's the single most common way this ability gets thrown away.
Items, runes, and the snowball
Easy to forget
Blade of the Ruined King, Titanic Hydra and Randuin's Omen all apply through it. So do Summon Aery and the rays from Glacial Augment.
And in ARAM, Mark flies through the wall like it isn't there. Yasuo players rediscover this roughly once per game.
Stopped, Not Deleted
Blocked and ignored aren't the only two outcomes, which is the part almost nobody knows. A handful of things get halted at the wall instead of destroyed by it. They land in front of it and carry on existing.
Olaf can still walk over and pick that axe back up. Orianna's ball parks itself at the wall, which strands her entire kit in the wrong place for a few seconds and is genuinely the most punishing entry here. Taliyah's wall just stops where the wind starts.
It's still a win for Yasuo every time. But "sitting in front of you" is a different situation from "gone", and the Orianna case in particular is one a good player can work around if she sees it coming.
The Three Outcomes
| Outcome | What's happening | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Destroyed | A traveling missile collides with the wall and ceases to exist. | Hooks, binds, arrows, rockets, nearly every ranged auto attack. |
| Ignores it | Nothing was ever traveling, so there's nothing to collide with. | Beams, cones, ground effects, dashes, turrets, items, runes. |
| Stopped short | The missile halts at the wall but survives and still does its job there. | Olaf's axe, Orianna's ball, Taliyah's wall, Xayah's feathers. |
Spending It Well
The wall is free, so affordability is never the question. The question is whether what you're about to eat is worth seventeen to twenty five seconds of having no answer to the next thing.
Cast range is 400, which is short. You're placing this near your own body rather than across the lane, and it then drifts forward on its own for the full four seconds. Account for the drift and it covers noticeably more ground than the spot you clicked.
Against a poke lane, spending it on chip damage is usually right, because the chip is the whole threat. Against a hook support, holding it is usually right, because one deleted hook is a free 25 seconds. And against the beam and cone champions above, the honest answer is that this isn't your tool for that matchup and you should be looking at your other three buttons instead.
The Other Three Walls
Everything above is worth more than one champion's matchups, because Yasuo isn't the only one with a wall. Three other abilities read from the exact same list of exceptions.
Learn the rule once and it pays out four times. If a spell ignores Wind Wall, it ignores all three of these too.
For more on the rest of the kit, here's our original Yasuo reveal breakdown.
FAQ
Does Wind Wall block turret shots?
No. Turret attacks and the Nexus Obelisk both ignore it completely, and so do Hextech Drake's attacks and Baron's rear attack. Walling yourself off from a turret you are diving does nothing at all.
Does Wind Wall block allied projectiles?
No. It only stops enemy projectiles, so your own marksman shoots through it as though it were not there.
Why does Lux beam through it but her root gets eaten?
Light Binding [Q] spawns a missile that travels, so the wall destroys it. Final Spark [R] is drawn as a beam rather than fired, and nothing is traveling for the wall to hit.
Does Wind Wall stop dashes?
Never. A dashing champion is a unit in motion, and units are not projectiles. Anything that throws a body rather than a missile gets through for the same reason.
How long does Wind Wall last?
Four seconds, on a cooldown of 25 seconds at rank 1 down to 17 seconds at rank 5. It costs no resource, and it drifts slowly forward for its whole duration.
Do Braum, Samira and Mel block the same things?
Yes. All four abilities read from one shared list, so anything that ignores Wind Wall ignores Unbreakable [E], Blade Whirl [W] and Rebuttal [W] too.
Ok, some of those were ridiculous. I'm fine with blocking Caitlyn's 'Ace in the Hole', but stopping a Ziggs ult mid-air is kind of overpower. I don't know the cooldown on that skill, but it certainly brings a lot of utility potencial to a team.
ReplyDeleteloled at those things gettin blocked :
ReplyDelete- bc grab, obviously light as a feather.
- nami tidal wave, 3 times larger than the wind wall.
- ziggs ult, such physics. (although this one must be a soon-to-be-fixed problem : "note that missiles with extreme arcs such as Kog-Maw ult or Ziggs ult are unblockable")
Guess who we'll never see in any kind of draft mode ever...
ReplyDeleteThe cd on that wall better be nearly like 60 sec.
According to LoL Wikia the current PBE values are COOLDOWN: 26 / 24 / 22 / 20 / 18
ReplyDeleteThese mechanics were already in play for blocking things targeting YOU, playful trickster (16 - 8 sec cd), and sanguine pool (26 - 14 sec cd). So 'imo' it took a long time for them to introduce it as an AoE.
ReplyDeletethey just turn untargetable (invulnerable) to all sources of damage except dots, that's not nearly as complex & fun as this wind wall
ReplyDeleteIt's like cheating but with riot's help
ReplyDeleteWelp that's enough league for me for the next month or so atleast until they fix this
ReplyDeleteOk ok ok ok ok wait a second, this is nothing like playful/trickster or sanguine pool, tell me since when do either of those abilities shield your whole team from a bullet time, super mega death rocket, trueshot barrage, death lotus, enchanted crystal arrow, ace-in-the-hole, tidal wave, spirit rush, pyroclasm, the culling, collateral damage, blade of the exile, unleashed power, buster shot, chain of corruption, I'm not even going to get into basic abilities
ReplyDeleteThe Talon ult didn't lose all blades. He cast it on one side of the wall, losing the ones flying towards the wall. Then he walked to the other side of the wall, and when the other blades came towards him they then hit the wall. Had he stayed on one side or the other, there would still have been blades.
ReplyDeleteworks with rumble ult too
ReplyDelete