PBE Preview: Upcoming Master Yi Rework

There's a number of champions in the League that have an abysmal playrate as it stands. Not only do some of them just not fit in the meta, some of them are just hopelessly outdated as champions in their initial design pattern, and need a rework accordingly. Let's start with what recently popped up on the forums.

The first rework we're running into is one I've personally mentioned before: Master Yi, who is in fact the first upcoming champion to receive both a VU (Visual Update) as well as a skill overhaul. As he stands, Master Yi's kit doesn't work well with what he's supposed to do. Alpha Strike disables Master Yi's attacks, costing him damage more than delivering it, Meditate doesn't exactly work well with his DPS style build pattern, nor does it work with lack of disengage.

Then there's the newly popular AP Master Yi - thanks for that, Scarra - who's been a pain since like, forever. While Alpha Strike and Meditate do what they are supposed to do, which is deal tremendous amounts of damage, as well as keep Yi healthy on top of being a damage bait, Wuju Style is pretty much useless - granted it makes Double Strike (just as useless) hit like a truck early game -, as is the bonus Atk.Spd. he gains from Highlander.

So what's happening? Straight off the bat, AP Yi is pretty much getting destroyed. Alpha Strike is losing its AP Ratio, literally nullifying AP-based damage. On the other hand, the changes also include an additional Total AD ratio, and a forme of crit chance application. This helps AD Master Yi, because now he doesn't just lose a bunch of damage potential during Alpha Strike if he's going AD. This also means, that with a full-on AD build, Yi could technically do the same thing as AP Yi does at the moment, only with AD.

Meditate is not really getting touched here. What is happening, is that the up-to 300AR/MR is getting changed to a % Damage Reduction, because of an unintended raise in damage against Yi if you were to build stuff like Last Whisper / Void Staff and the like. Additionally, Meditating at low HP is becoming more useful, which is a nice change, as Meditating at full HP is essentially useless.

The changes coming in to Wuju Style are interesting, though. Since it was useless on AP Yi, it's only cool to look at what it does for AD Master Yi, and it does some neat things. First off, it's getting changed from a Flat AD bonus, to an additional amount of AD based on a % of your current total AD, which kinda smoothens out the early game damage spike he gets. It's a bit like Gragas and his 50AD bonus at Lv5, only on a melee ADC. Which was rough. The active is not a doubling of the AD bonus, nono. It's a true damage slap-in-the-gonads, based off of his total AD, which makes activating Wuju Style a more interesting addition to his kit, rather than just adding raw power. Not to mention it's gonna be fun to see AD Yi do the same to squishy targets as AP Yi was doing.

The change to Highlander is a good change, as far as I'm concerned. He's getting free resets on leveling the skill, which seems a bit... unfair, right? No. The cool thing, is that those resets don't work on Highlander's active, meaning that Highlander is still a one-trick wonder. Now the reset-playstyle of Yi is kept intact, but the resets on ridiculous movespeeds and Atk.Spd. don't get pushed as well.

And Double Strike... well, it's getting changed a bit to what Diana currently has. The idea of Double Strike remains the same - namely a double strike every once in a while - but the overall damage is toned down a bit, and it's on the same attack-or-lose-buff-idea as Diana's passive is, which is a neat addition. It removes the random bursts of damage from Yi's kit, like the one Scarra used to pop Reginald in the LCS recently.

So let me know what you think. I like this new rework. I dislike the destruction of AP Yi in general, as I like AP casters more than I do AD casters, but the changes do lean towards his designed playstyle, and that's kinda cool. Not to mention he's getting the AP playstyle mixed into a DPS ADC kind of kit, which is really sweet.