League of Legends dev reveals why Yasuo & Yone have the same Q ability

Riot Games developers have explained why they intentionally chose to give the 150th League of Legends champion, Yone, an ability that was almost identical to Yasuo’s Q.

The Spirit Blossom event was Riot’s first major cross-title experience and it introduced plenty of new changes, including two new champions to the League of Legends universe.

After Lillia was released early into the Spirit Blossom event, Yasuo’s brother, Yone, returned from the afterlife to make his entrance on patch 10.16.

When Yone was first revealed, League of Legends fans immediately noticed that he had similar abilities to his brother, using his blades to channel the winds and deal damage to his opponents.

However, his Q ability or “Mortal Steel” is almost identical to Yasuo’s “Steel Tempest,” as both characters would thrust their sword forward, to gain stacks for a unique spell cast that sends enemies airborne.

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After fans questioned why the two abilities were so similar, Riot Developer EndlessPillows finally opened up on the reason behind their decision, during Riot Blaustoise’s latest ‘Dev and Data’ episode, discussing many of the decisions behind the new champ.

“We’ll start with the current Q actually, you could argue that we’ve similar abilities in League,” Blaustoise highlighted, “but this is the first time we’ve had an ability this close to another character’s ability, it was intentional.”

EndlessPillows responded, highlighting other abilities where “mechanics like that are so good they shouldn’t be on just one champion,” however, in Yone’s case he revealed that the character’s lore also played a big part when designing his skill set.

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“This was very much intentional, it started as, almost entirely, a thematic reason,” the Riot dev added, “they’re brothers, they trained at the same school, they have the same sword…of course they would know the same sort of techniques.”

Although they are quite similar, he later revealed that Yone’s abilities to control the winds were not as well-practiced as Yasuo’s, which had a knock-on effect to the style of his kit, “Yone’s not as good at the wind technique as Yasuo, he has to go with it and guide it.”

While Yone might not be as skilled as Yasuo, the rest of his kit gives him just as much outplay potential as his brother, with many impressive clips of the new character already circulating online.