When Qin was released, several theoretical models quickly suggested that the pairing with YSG would need a Horn relatively early into a fight.
At the time, we warned about drawing strong conclusions from theory alone when dealing with brand-new mechanics we didn't fully understand yet.
Our first controlled-environment tests already pointed in another direction. With multiple enemy marches around Qin/YSG, including incoming AoE damage to trigger his mitigation mechanics, the point at which Horn started providing meaningful value came much later than initially predicted.
Battle reports later supported those results.
So question on Rage efficiency itself was answered, but one argument persisted.
What about Qin's 4th skill?
Qin can spend 40 Rage to mitigate incoming damage by 40%.
So the theory was simple: without Horn supplying enough Rage, Qin would quickly struggle to maintain this mitigation and consequently take significantly more damage.
Well... now we have a much bigger dataset.
Thanks to the amazing Combat Lab from RoK Battles, we can look at Qin/YSG across almost 5 million reports, contributed by more than 25,000 different governors, with a 98.54% confidence score.
So, what happens when we compare Qin/YSG users running (using wounded taken metric):
Horn + Ring → 35.84 TPS
Ring + Pendant → 38.49 TPS
That's a surprisingly marginal difference.
And to put that into perspective, other pairings in the same metric sit at:
Qin/ZL → 45.13 TPS
Achilles/GG → 53.34 TPS
Sun pairings → 57.03–62.95 TPS
With substantially more evidence now available, we'll repeat what our earlier statement:
Horn starts providing meaningful value relatively late into Qin/YSG's battle engagement. Most engagements are simply short enough that the difference remains marginal.
Horn + Ring or Ring + Pendant? Use whichever you prefer — and stop worrying about it.
Horn is absolutely not mandatory on Qin/YSG.
See you in the next Nerd Nugget. 🧠