How to win lane as Yasuo against Locke · Matchup data reviewed on patch 26.15
A skirmish mirror your shield and wall referee — trade strings, wall his burst half, and out-sustain the windows.
Track: Locke's Q — Ritual Nails (10–6s cooldown). The nail marks are his whole engine — without 2-3 stacks on you his blink-in barely dents; sidestep the recasts and punish the ten seconds of nothing.
Read from Yasuo's seat: which stage windows this plan plays for against Locke.
| Stage | Favoured | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Even / skill | Level 1: neither has a real edge — a pure last-hit and skillshot-dodging standoff, so Skill decides it. |
| Level 2 | Even / skill | Level 2: whoever lands their first full combo wins the trade; it's execution-dependent, hence Skill. |
| Level 3 | Even / skill | Level 3: Yasuo gets E mobility but Locke's melee sustain matches it, keeping the trade a skill check. |
| Levels 4-5 | Even / skill | Level 4: still even — Yasuo's dodging versus Locke's mark punish, decided by mechanics not the matchup. |
| Level 6 | Locke | Level 5: Locke hits his stack/mark spike as a melee bruiser and out-trades Yasuo before crit items, edging Locke. |
| First item | Even / skill | First item window: skill again — Yasuo's crit is coming but not guaranteed to be online, so execution decides. |
| Two+ items | Even / skill | Late game: a team-dependent skirmish coin flip; whoever plays the resets and burst windows cleaner wins, so Skill. |
This is a coin-flip skill matchup: Locke is a melee AD champ who throws a spread of blades and stacks a mark for bonus damage, so early trades come down to who dodges and who lands their skillshots. Yasuo's flowing shield and E mobility let him weave out of Locke's blade spread, but Locke's melee sustain and mark punish sloppy positioning. Neither champ has a clean edge levels 1-4 — it hinges on execution and last-hit discipline.
Pooled Emerald+ win rates from Yasuo's side, sampled July 2026.
The full Yasuo vs Locke report continues with the mid-game plan, the late-game and teamfight plan, every power spike to play around, and the win conditions for both sides — plus cooldown tracking and the live enemy-jungle tracker inside the app.
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No sample yet — Yasuo vs Locke has no Emerald+ win-rate data for this patch; 6 of the 7 windows are a coin flip and Locke edges the rest 1–0, so treat it as a skill matchup and play the plan below.
Mostly — 6 of the 7 windows are a coin flip and Locke edges the rest 1–0, so execution decides far more than the pick does.
Yasuo takes Lethal Tempo on the Precision tree with Triumph, Legend: Alacrity and Last Stand, and Resolve secondary (Bone Plating and Second Wind) vs Locke.
Start Doran's Blade + Health Potion and back for Executioner's Calling (≈800g) — cuts his sustain. Build BotRK / Immortal Shieldbow first, then Infinity Edge, with Mercury's Treads / Berserker's.
Playing the other side? Locke vs Yasuo guide →
All Yasuo mid lane matchups →
More Yasuo mid lane matchups: vs Katarina · vs LeBlanc · vs Lissandra · vs Lux · vs Malzahar · vs Mel
Also played in: Top Lane