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Possible new Skillset for Yi - not just a melee ADC anymore!

TEEMOcalypse·10/18/2014, 5:34:52 PM·2 votes·1,877 views

Alright, this whole thing is just my thoughts and observations, so i broke up the post into sections to keep it organized.

INITIATING AND ESCAPING Yi only seems to function as a second ADC: go in, do some damage get out. But unlike Marksmen, he lacks the range to stay (relatively) safe. His Q is is engagement tool, but by mid game it kills every minion it hits, destroying any reliable escape routes. Flash has a long cooldown, so he cant rely on it to get in and out like he needs. His q only has a short CD if he can stick around and auto attack. If he's trying to escape, clearly autos aren't going to be a good idea.

FIGHTING Yi is pretty much a duelist (more than Fiora, i should say. She just gets dropped into the battlefield like a Nuke and ends fights) This means that he needs to stay in and do damage - but there's a problem with that. If you build him tanky, you lose a lot of your damage, if not all of it. If you build him Damage, he has around 2000 health and little to no resistance, causing him to get blown up instantly. When it comes to Tank Yi, he doesn't do enough damage, and he provides no crowd control to a fight. he's like a Super Minion at that point, only good for pushing until someone turns their attention to him Since everyone builds him damage, he gets focused first. When your entire presence in a fight consists of 1 Q that barely gets through the 3 Thornmails, the fight is pretty much a 4v5.

TEAMWORK When people play yi, they do their utmost to steal as many kills as possible from the start to roll as much as possible BECAUSE all he can do is commit to a fight; he has to bring someone down quickly, otherwise he does nothing to help. this brings his team down every time. Either he succeeds and puts his own team behind, or fails and cant even cleanup after skirmishes. either way, all he can do by mid to late game is clean up or split push, and any competent player will do what they can to foil his endeavors. if he cant fight, and he cant clean up, and he cant split push, what is he going to do?

SUMMARY (TL:DR) He provides no CC, he is easy to stop, and he is useless late game.

I decided to come up with a possible new kit. obviously, its not perfect and needs insight from other players. The point of this kit is to turn him into a champion that actually gets seen at higher levels because he can provide something in a late game teamfight

NEW KIT

Passive: Wuju Style Increases BONUS AD by a small percentage

Q: Alpha Strike Active: Yi dashes a moderate distance towards the cursor. Upon hitting an enemy Champion or reaching the end of his range, he sweeps the ground in front of him, dealing damage and knocking up everyone he hits for 0.25 seconds (basically an interruption, like Vi's Vault Breaker or Quinn's Vault) Passive: Once every few attacks Yi will Double Strike, dealing reduced damage on the second strike

[His trademark initiation is still able to hit multiple people, and it actually can be used to stop channels and give him a moment to attack someone, OR he can use it to escape over walls. Has a moderately low cooldown, but is not shortened by auto attacks. He can still use this multiple times in a fight, but he wont be interrupting you every 5 seconds either]

W: Meditate I felt Meditate is a fine move, it keeps him in the jungle and brings him back after fights, so i left it alone

E: Will of the Warrior Passive: Grants bonus Armor and Magic Resist Active: Grants yi damage resistance for a short duration (Like Alistar's Ult, but much shorter with no bonus AD)

[This grants yi the much needed resilience to enable him to fight people. He doesn't have to stack a whole bunch of resistances to stick around, but this also isn't meant to last a whole fight, just take a big hit like a Lux Ult or something. Functions like Garen's W now that i think about it]

R: Highlander Grants a Movement Speed Buff that increases the longer Yi doesnt take damage (doesnt go down when he does damage) For every 100 damage Yi takes, the buff decreases by (lets say) 20% Yi also gains bonus Tenacity and Attack Range, and all slows are much less effective on him (like 75% - a big number, but not a total disregard for slows) This ability gains additional time upon earning kills and assists

[Yi is a champion who clearly excels when he can catch his prey, just like any other assassin. This change to his ult rewards you for dodging skillshots, as well as allowing him to get to his opponents from a large distance - he IS "The Green Blur" after all!]

This kit keeps his core concepts and gives him function in a fight. Now when Katarina jumps in and ults, yi can help out his team by denying her an easy pentakill. he retains his high mobility and assassin-scale damage to keep him melting the squishies, and still retains his split-pushing abilities.

This idea is a rough draft, so id like to hear what everyone thinks about where im going with this. I hate the fact that yi is the ONLY champion in my roster i straight up don't use due to is lack of teamwork ability. I feel like he was a waste of IP, and i want him to be a champion i can take into ranked and not hear a groan of embarrassment (no, i have never been that guy who takes him into ranked)

9 Comments

GrandMa5TR10/21/2014, 5:41:41 AM3 votes

At this point fixing Yi would Ruin Yi. this is because yi's whole identity at this point is this super crazy player we can't decide if he is UP or OP. He resembles a MvC character in style being so over the top. He is all all about cheesy tactics like split pushing, counter jungling, super farming, crazy looking builds, insta killing the enemy unless he is touched by cc, being the 2nd best duelist, going dunk master mode, melee glass canon, representing the melee carries, soloing Baron, etc. Just play Fiora or Xin if you wan't a more normal version of YI.

Clickbane10/19/2014, 2:18:46 PM1 votes

Im glad that someone is finally saying something about this. Almost every game I either have to tell yi to stop feeding {because as you said ,he can really only engage}, or tell him to stop taking my kills. I think this is a great solution for this problem.

Short story from a while ago: Yi called bot. Then Yi started feeding top. To fill for this, I {Hecarim} attempted to play adc.

We didn't even have time to surrender.

Don't get me wrong, I don't usually stereotype players based on their champion, but instalocking Yi is pretty common until lvl 15.

I hope this discussion gets Riot's attention!

kitcat30010/22/2014, 3:52:38 AM1 votes

Having two sources of damage reduction (If you left it on his heal still) might be to much. Plus his new "E" is almost an exact copy to one of Garen's abilities.

Garen COURAGE

PASSIVE: Garen's bonus armor and magic resistance are increased by 20%. ACTIVE: Garen gains a defensive shield for a few seconds, reducing incoming damage by 30% and granting 30% crowd control reduction for the duration.

sixxofsixx10/26/2014, 5:16:31 PM1 votes

To start, I really like what you've done here. The new kit makes a lot of sense and keeps his identity. I only feel like slight tweaks are necessary to make it work and feel true to at least what I feel is Yi's core identity.

Moving Wuju Style to Yi's passive seems like a no brainer. I feel like the new passive should turn the bonus AD into true damage. It might be slightly broken, but I associate wuju style with true damage. That could very well be just me though. You could make the bonus AD turn into true damage upon activation of Highlander, which would balance the mechanic.

The new Alpha Strike is great, definitely boosts his jungle potential by actually giving him a useful ganking tool. Honestly I don't see any problems with it, giving him so much mobility on a low cooldown might be a problem but I doubt it will be. Make the cooldown moderately high early and then scale down to a medium-low level later on, and it'll work fine. If this scales with Yi's level and not Alpha Strike's level then it should work well, although I'm not sure how much it would matter. The problem is, when combined with his E, a low cooldown escape will make his early tower diving needlessly strong.

I agree that Meditate is fine, doesn't need changes.

As with his new E, Will of the Warrior, I don't see the need for him to have extra passive armor and mr. It seems like an unnecessary addition. Also if you're implementing it in a way similar to Garen, where the passive would amplify bonus resistances, then he would need to build resistances for the passive to be effective. This would open up different build paths, but I feel like it works far better on a tank like Garen, who typically builds full tank and can make full use of the passive. If it just offers flat resistances, than I would argue that his base armor and mr would need to be slightly lowered. It seems slightly awkward to me. The active component is wonderful, especially in tandem with his new ult. It really gives him the ability to really shred through the enemy team when combined with Highlander while being able to tank damage. I'm not sure if it should also reset like his ult, it seems logical but also unnecessary. The only possible problem here is with tower diving, because with flat damage resistance he won't really take much damage from towers. This depends on the numbers though. If the numbers are too high early on, Yi becomes a tower diving machine the moment he hits six due to the tenacity. Just don't make the numbers too high and it works in a healthy and intelligent manner.

I love the HIghlander changes, and I feel like they'll work as you put them. As I said, I feel like you should turn the bonus AD from his passive into true damage upon activation of Highlander, but that's more a personal thing than a necessary addition.

TL;DR: I love the changes. Turn bonus AD on passive into true damage upon activation of Highlander. Make the cooldown of Alpha Strike scale down as Yi levels. Keep Meditate unchanged. Remove the passive on Will of the Warrior and don't make the flat damage resistance numbers too high, at least not early on. New Highlander is wonderful keep as is with the proposed passive change. I think you did a wonderful job, I hope you can get a red to comment because you really deserve it.

I'm really nitpicking with these changes, and I feel like you're new kit makes a lot of sense and has the potential to work really well. I look forward to your response.

WereScrib10/30/2014, 5:22:04 PM1 votes

I hate to say this, because you've put thought into this. But you've robbed Yi of his identity. The fact is Melee "ADC" is a dead idea that simply doesn't exist anymore. The reason for this is the reason for a Marksman on a team is not in fact carrying, its consistent DPS and the ability to slay the opposition's frontline.

Yi's identity is the ability to pick off targets and exploit bad positioning. He's almost an identical champion to Evelynn in playstyle. (The difference is Evelynn is unable to ever 1v1 anyone on fair terms but makes up for it with the power of her passive, Eve is also sustained DPS and tends to built tanky these days, Yi tends to build bursty, but their 'function' is almost identical and they're destroyed by the same things.)

Your kit is basically going back to the dark ages of Champion design and trying to make a viable melee carry. "Tankiness! Healing! Damage consistency! Burst! Mobility! Escapes! CC!" Basically, what I'm saying is: Your kit is trying to turn Yi into Irelia. Because Irelia can do everything, she's very much undertuned in every aspect. If you did go through with this kit you would soon find that Yi would be balanced to a level where his Meditate wouldn't heal very much. His Alpha Strike would have burst about on par with, say... Well, you pointed it out actually. Vi's Q.

The problem is once you start putting in reliable CC of any kind and tankiness into a kit, you've got yourself a bruiser. If Yi needs to 'stay' in a fight, he's a bruiser.

He's not sustained DPS. He's melee and his kit is oriented towards bursting one squishy down and moving to the next.

Even your starting point seems flawed. Yi does not function at all like a second ADC. He functions as a roaming snowball assassin. Moreover, his Q is not an initiation tool. Its his burst, reset and safety tool. Its primary purpose should be to dodge things that can stop you, to make you invincible as you blow something up. Yi is already the fastest champion in the game--he doesn't need help getting to someone who's made themself available as a target. (out of position).

He's also actually not that great of a duelist. Champions that can outduel him include...well. Just about every GOOD duelist in the game. Basically, he's good at 1v1ing champions that aren't that good at dueling other champions. He can't really duel a Trundle, Skarner, Shyvana, Elise, Warwick, Udyr, Mundo or Darius. (In fact, his need to get into melee makes most of those champions power skyrocket) Though due to his very reliable, dodgy engage and extreme speed he has no real problem dealing with ranged squishy champions. (I.E. Master Yi isn't that good at dealing with AD Teemo, but he destroys AP Teemo)

What Yi functions as, and what he is good at is picks. He uses his extreme mobility to move about the enemy team, stay near the fringes of fights--and only engage when he's safe to engage.

Yi doesn't want to get caught. He wants a kill. He shouldn't engage if he sees the enemy teams Amumu is about and hasn't used their ult--if that Morgana is there with a Dark Binding and ult ready for him. he wants to wait for their CC, their dodges to be down--so he can dash in, do damage, and run out. One Amumu ult means a dead Yi. One good CC and he's toast. He should never get near that Alistar, he shouldn't even be played if there's a Maokai or Vi anywhere in sight.

Questions to ask yourself. "Can I kill this champion at little risk to me?". "Can I do this safely?" "Can I survive this?" "What do they have right now that would ruin this for me?"

Burst mages WILL make you disappear, supports WILL CC you into oblivion, tanks WILL make you unable to move and bruisers WILL outduel you and that Marksman WILL outscale you. So don't let them.