A Grandmaster Vi/Jinx player sent me his replays with a message that a lot of you will recognise: he’d been bullied, he knew it, and he wanted to know what he was actually doing wrong.
This is the highest-ranked VOD review I’ve done outside my own matches, and I want to be honest up front: Yasuo/Ekko on Freestyle is the best team in the game. Nothing here turns that matchup free. But almost everything that happened to him was structural, not mechanical — and structural problems have answers.
Why this matchup feels like bullying
Here’s the cruel part. Across this set the Yasuo player dropped at least three combos. By any normal reading, that means my student got extra turns he hadn’t earned.
It still felt like being bullied, because he was losing the situations rather than the executions. When you keep ending up in bad spots, free turns don’t feel like gifts — they feel like a longer beating. That’s the tell that your problem is positional.
If you want the wider context on why this specific team was everywhere, I wrote about the Freestyle fuse dominating the top of the ladder in this breakdown. Short version: it’s usually the fuse, not just the two characters.
1. The round-start cross-up, and four ways out
Before I hit play on his replay I called what would happen: Yasuo jumps at you, crosses up, calls Ekko, then tags Yasuo back in and starts his shenanigans. It happened on round one. Then it happened again on round two.
It’s like clockwork, and that’s your opening — a habit this consistent is something you can prepare for specifically. Here’s what actually works.
Option 1: as Jinx, just back up
Backing up beats the entire mixup. If you retreat, the only thing that reaches you is Ekko — and now you get to anti-air.
Nobody has ever asked me why I start my rounds with Jinx instead of Vi. This is why. Vi cannot do this — her anti-air is genuinely bad, and if you try to contest that jump with her you lose. Jinx backs up and anti-airs both of them cleanly.
Option 2: Jinx down S2, held back
The hit stun on Jinx’s down S2 is absurd. It beats Vi’s version, it beats Yasuo’s, it beats Ekko’s — it beats everybody.
The detail people miss: you can hold this forward, neutral or back. Hold it back — crouching back — so you keep a defensive posture while it comes out.
Option 3: counter, and why it can’t be crossed up
Yasuo is unsafe when he lands. So you can simply crouch block and counter.
The elegant part: counter is a downward motion, so it doesn’t care which side he ends up on. You’ll counter regardless of whether he crossed you up — which is exactly the problem the cross-up is designed to create. It also catches his grounded option, so you’re covered either way.
Option 4: spend the meter
If you don’t want to guess at all: call Jinx, throw super, and super tag. You get invincibility frames from Vi and come out the other side into a Jinx setup.
This is the one real advantage Double Down has over Freestyle, so use it. Playing Jinx point instead? Back dash, call Vi, super — same idea, and you get a combo out of it.
What doesn’t work
- Vi’s anti-air. It’ll work once and then never again.
- Back sway. Yasuo catches back sways. Don’t.
- Jumping to block it. He crosses you up anyway.
- Pressing a button. You’ll whiff on Ekko and eat the follow-up.
And a genuine caveat: Yasuo’s stab beats several of these. If he goes for that instead of the standard jump, down S2 covers you but the counter won’t. I labbed both with recordings on loop and it is still hard. This is a strong option set, not a solved matchup.
2. The big one: you’re playing a solo game, he’s playing a tag fighter
This was the single biggest thing in the whole review, and it explains most of the pressure he ended up eating.
There’s a moment where Yasuo limit strikes, rushes in, then backs off. That’s the turn changing hands. My student went for a light. What he should have done:
- Call the Jinx missile — at that range it’s completely safe
- Charge Vi’s S1 behind it
- Tag to Jinx
Now Vi is a body on screen doing work while Jinx sets up. With that shield in front of you, you get a free trap and your projectiles out. And by the time that resolves, your Vi assist is back up — so you call the punch, follow with the missile, and you’re running the team properly.
You have to play them back and forth, constantly. If you’re only ever piloting one character, you’ve brought a solo game to a tag fight, and the pressure situations you keep ending up in are the natural consequence.
Watch the green circle
At one point his Jinx assist was available for a full three seconds and never got called. Rewinding it, I’m just saying “Jinx, Jinx, Jinx, Jinx” at the screen. He eventually calls it, but by then the window is gone.
The cooldown is shown by the green circle at the top of the screen. Learn to read it without thinking, because two rules fall straight out of it:
- Push block costs you roughly two seconds of assist availability — worth it, but know you’re spending it.
- If your assist isn’t up, back up. Don’t take neutral without it. Wait until it’s ready and then engage.
3. Cover Vi before she punches
Small habit, big consequence. When you do the Vi charged punch into Jinx, shoot a Jinx missile first.
Uncovered, that punch is one of the easiest parries in the game, which is exactly what kept happening. Cover it and the parry gets much harder — and you can anti-air the Yasuo jump that follows.
Worth knowing where you sit on the ladder here: people don’t double parry at Grandmaster. They do in Challenger. So one layer of cover is genuinely enough at this rank.
4. Knowledge check: Yasuo can super your minigun
Yasuo can super before Jinx’s minigun becomes active. Plenty of characters can do this, but Yasuo is the worst offender, and it cost my student a whole Jinx.
Lab it in thirty seconds
- Press Start → Bots → set Block Settings to Always
- Go to Reversals → After Block → Block Recovery Action
- Set it to S1 super
Now every time the bot blocks, it supers. Throw the minigun and watch it get blown up. Then go find everything else in your gameplan that loses to a reversal, because this menu answers that question for every move you have.
The adaptation that made me happy
Later in the same set, he skips the minigun entirely and goes straight into Vi. The Yasuo player was already mashing super, expecting it — so he ate a block and gave up a punish instead.
That’s a mid-set read and it’s the best thing in the review. Only note: he punished with a light when a medium — or the down-forward light sliding kick — was the better option.
5. Steal your turn back when they drop
Yasuo dropped combos repeatedly, and each one is a free turn if you’re ready for it. Most people aren’t, because they’ve mentally accepted they’re dead.
He teched forward, which was right. What should follow:
- Air medium or dive kick on the way down
- Or air down S2 — shoot a missile toward the ground while recovering
- Then call Vi and tag
Spam that recovery option. It might clip his assist. It might catch him backing off. If it doesn’t, you’ve still called Vi and tagged, and you’re back to running your team. If it does hit, confirm it — and now it’s your combo and your turn.
6. Jinx has to earn her traps — then use them properly
The moment you land a hit, you’ve earned a trap. Now play with it instead of running at people.
My favourite setup: activate the trap, launch it into the air, then empty jump. If he tries to anti-air you, he gets hit by the trap. If he jumps, he gets hit by the trap. You didn’t have to win the interaction — the trap wins it for you. You can also dive kick into it to catch them grounded, which sometimes clips Ekko too.
Pick a lane: traps as pressure, or traps as zoning. Either is fine. Doing neither and rushing in is what gets you killed.
The shimmy game against wind wall
When Yasuo wind walls, you can’t call Jinx. So what do you do in that neutral?
He played it correctly on instinct — a shimmy. Walk in, walk back, wait to see what he commits to. If he goes airborne, anti-air. If he wind walls, throw a trap. You’re counterpunching rather than initiating, which is the right posture in a one-on-one you don’t favour.
Higher-level Yasuos have stopped throwing the tornado for exactly this reason — if he does, you get a free trap and an ignite straight through it. Note that the physical part of his sword beats the trap, so it’s the projectile you’re punishing, not the swing.
Advanced version: run forward like you’re committing, then jump backwards and ignite from there. You get the reaction without taking the risk.
7. Don’t wake up with level 3
He panicked on wake-up and threw Jinx’s level 3. It got baited. He didn’t get punished for it, but he should have — and I want to be fair here, because slowed down it looks obvious and in real time it absolutely isn’t.
Two reasons to avoid it anyway:
- Even when it hits, it doesn’t kill. You get advantage, not a round. That’s rarely worth your whole meter.
- Jinx’s level 3 is directly counterable. Parry three times — two quickly, then skip a beat before the third — and inside the invincibility frames of that third parry you can dash up and grab her.
Your opponent didn’t know that. Someone will. And you still had two bars on Vi, which is a lot of better options.
8. The thing I keep saying: take the simple combo
He landed a genuinely filthy corner route — S1 charge, trap, full charge S1, OTG hammer, crumple. I had to rewind it and take notes. It was better than anything I had.
Then he dropped the finish, and lost the round he had already won.
It’s Grandmaster. Don’t go for it. You’re on Double Down — end it with the simple combo and take the kill. This is the third time I’ve landed on this conclusion from a completely different direction: I measured it with Vi’s basic versus fancy routes, then again with electrics, where the flashy combo actually did less damage than my bread and butter. Execution risk is a real cost and almost nobody prices it in.
Honest caveats
- This matchup is genuinely bad for you. Yasuo/Ekko on Freestyle is the best team in the game. These are ways to lose less, not a counter-strategy.
- This review is from the February meta. Season 2 and the Teamfight fuse have shifted things since, and balance has moved. The counterplay concepts hold; specific frame interactions may not.
- Yasuo’s stab breaks part of the round-start plan. Down S2 covers it, counter doesn’t. Lab both with recordings before you trust either.
- The player did well. There was no catastrophic error here — his opponent just knew his frame data cold and had the character advantage. The main thing separating them was dropped combos, and the Yasuo dropped more.
- Everything here is Vi/Jinx on Double Down. The principles transfer; the specific buttons don’t.
What to lab this week
- Record the round-start cross-up and loop it. Try all four answers until you know which one you trust.
- Set Block Recovery Action to S1 super and run your whole gameplan into it. Find out what’s actually unsafe.
- Ten reps of missile → charge S1 → tag. Make playing both characters the default, not a decision.
- Trap, launch, empty jump. Until it’s your automatic answer to “I got a hit, now what.”
- Watch one of your own replays with your eyes on the assist cooldown only. Count how many seconds it sits available. It’ll be worse than you think.
For the mixups that open people up once you’ve got the neutral sorted, see 7 Vi pressure tools. For what each fuse actually gives you, the fuses guide. And the character pages for Yasuo and Ekko are worth reading from the other side — knowing what they want is half of stopping it.
The short version
- The round-start jump cross-up is automatic. As Jinx, back up — it beats the whole mixup and lets you anti-air. Vi can’t do this.
- Jinx down S2 held back beats everyone’s version of that jump.
- Counter is a downward motion, so a cross-up can’t beat it. Yasuo is unsafe landing.
- Super tag is the escape you buy with meter, and Double Down’s edge over Freestyle.
- Play the tag fighter: missile, charge S1, tag. Vi shields, Jinx sets up.
- Watch the green assist circle. If it’s not up, back up.
- Cover Vi with a missile before the charged punch or it gets parried.
- Yasuo supers your minigun before it’s active. Lab it with Block Recovery Action.
- When they drop, tech forward into air down S2, then call and tag to steal the turn.
- Earn the trap, then launch it and empty jump. Don’t run in raw.
- Never wake up level 3 — it doesn’t kill, and three parries beat it.
- Take the simple combo. A dropped kill costs more than an optimal route earns.
Want your own VOD reviewed?
This whole breakdown came from someone sending me replays and asking an honest question. If you want that done properly on your own matches — where I can pause on the exact frame where the turn changed hands and show you what you had available — that’s what my one-on-one sessions are.
Free option, and I mean it: drop your VOD in the 2XKO Jungle Discord. I review them regularly and the ones that turn into videos start exactly like this one did. And if you’re Grandmaster or Challenger and you know Yasuo/Ekko tech I missed here, genuinely — come tell me. I’m still learning this matchup too.
