A Small analysis of the Master Yi rework with nRated from Team EG

Master Yi, one of the oldest champions in the league has been reworked, graphically as well as contentwise a couple of days ago. Besides the fact, that he is better looking now, he also gained more popularity. This may be caused by reworking him as it usually also increases his pickrate. In this particular case, the pickrate increased from 20-23% to an unbelievable 99% at the first day. It is unsure yet whether he will remain in the pick-charts for a long time, but this will be looked upon next time. However according to LoLKing.com, since 30th July the winrate on the EU-West server has continually increased.

In fact, the winrate increased by 5% from 48% to 53%. Actually nobody will be annoyed by a skill-based lane-opponent, who has a good Waveclear, a strong Harrass and an unbridled Sustain, since the new Master Yi only has an AP-Ratio of 0.3 on his W-Spell.

The less life he has the stronger his meditation gets. Also the damage caused by towers will not be decreased on such a high level.

According to Morello a problem with Master Yi was based on the Alphastrike (Q) and the way it lowered the damage per minute since normal attacks were causing more damage over time. Additionally, the time of the animation of the first strike was lowered compared to the old one, the new Q-Spell now has an AD-Scale.

The E-Spell, which usually causes bonus damage and true damage if activated, now has an AD-Scale.

His ulti, Highlander, which grants attack speed and sprint speed has now changed as well. Instead of resetting all cool-downs after a kill, it only resets them for a certain time and prolongs the duration of effectiveness, if a kill was scored.

If these changes were over the top, that remains to be seen. However it’s definitly sure to say that Master Yi, if played on attack-damage, has a right to exist – now more than ever before. Now he fills the niche of the close-combat-carry since he and the Tryndamere are the only close-combatants, who are the most effictive if they were to be played on the speed of attacks and critical hits. If he will be picked on the competitive side in the future, remains to be seen as well.

How does a pro-gamer think of the rework, that has been done to Master Yi? We asked Christoph ’nRated‘ Seitz, the sub-support-player and analyst at Evil Geniuses:

Ich kann noch nicht ganz sagen, wo der Platz für Yi sein wird, da er zwar enormen Schaden austeilen kann, aber keinerlei CC besitzt. Evtl. ein splitpush carry, wie z.B. Zed, aber generell ist er, nun da der q mit ad bzw crit skaliert, ein ad caster hypercarry, der sehr stark snowballen kann. Wie das nun genau im Competitive-Bereich aussieht ist fragwürdig. Fakt ist, er hat ein starkes Kit und kann gespielt werden. Es wird bestimmt wen geben, der ihn auch in LCS auspackt.

I can’t tell where Yi has his spot. He can do a lot of damage on one side, but he doesn’t have any kind of CC on the other side. Maybe a splitpush carry like Zed for example, but since the q scales with ad and crit, he is an ad caster hypercarry in general, who can strongly snowball. How this will look like on the competitive side is fairly questionable. In fact, he has a strong kit and he can be played. There surely will be someone, who will bring him to the LCS.

» Translated from the German version of the article: Analyse des Master Yi-Reworks

Translated by: Jogi