These days, alongside the excitement of T1 fans celebrating their first title of 2024 with the Esports World Cup 2024 championship, many League of Legends viewers are feeling quite annoyed. The reason is that in recent days, players around the world are starting to use the “national champion” Yasuo more frequently in ranked matches. Specifically, from Gold rank and above, Yasuo has risen one rank to 4th place in the most picked champions list, boasting an impressive win rate of over 50%.
Recently, Viper, a player from Hanwha Life Esports, also expressed his frustration in ranked matches: “Did you guys watch the match the other day? Did you see that game? Corki – Yasuo? Why pick that? You’re not Faker, are you? Oh my…”. The reason for Viper’s lament was seeing a teammate lock in Yasuo for the Mid Lane position. Not only Viper, but in many other ranked environments, Yasuo is making a comeback, and of course, the Vietnamese rank is no exception.
The reason for this is believed to stem from Faker’s choice of Yasuo in the recent EWC 2024 final. At that time, many people thought about game 5 of the match. However, in reality, Faker played the “national champion” quite well, and his teammates performed steadily to finish the match as dominantly as possible, bringing the EWC 2024 championship to T1. The presence of Yasuo in Faker’s hands, coupled with a victory, has quickly turned this champion into the number one choice within the gaming community. However, it seems many players forget that they are not Faker and their teammates are not the members of T1.
With Faker’s allure, combined with T1’s recent championship, players and even pro gamers will likely have to endure “auto-locking Yasuo” in many upcoming ranked matches. Or they could opt for the solution of quickly banning this champion to avoid cases of players wanting to “cosplay Faker” but not having the skills.