Master Yi Represents Riot's Hypocrisy

bitticlan··8 votes·1,843 views

So the developers of Riot have talked about how lack of counter play is unhealthy for the game sever times before. They have responded by nerfing and reworking several of the assassins in the game, particularly Kassadin and Kha'Zix. They have said that they nerfed Khazix because they didn't like him going into a 1v5 and coming out with a double kill, then turning invisible and walking away. They didn't like it becasue they see assassins as opportunistic. And they continually nerf Kassadin because he, "lacked counter play," which is true, but they have nerfed him so hard over the years that he is almost unplayable now. So if they want to keep the game healthy by removing lack of counter play and lack of unstoppable assassins, WHY HAVE THEY NOT TOUCHED MASTER YI!?!?!

Master Yi represents everything Riot wants to change. He has an ability that, while making him untargetable for up to a whole second, does massive amounts of damage, can critically strike every champion, and then when he inevitably kills his target, goes straight to the next champ to start all over with his untargetability. He deals such insanely high amounts of damage that he lacks any counter play because he can never be touched and the heals all of his minimal damage. There have been several videos of Master Yi's walking into a crowd of 5 alone and taking every single one of them out. AND THAT IS AFTER THEY REWORKED HIM TO AVOID THIS! He has no counter play and does the very thing that Kassadin and Kha'Zix used to do, and yet they won't touch him.

Master Yi is an unhealthy champion to the game of League of Legends. He spoils games because of his shear stupidity. Now there are a few champions that mach or exceed his damage, such as Fizz and Leblanc, but they are balanced because they can only do it to one person at a time before all of their cooldowns activate. They have windows of opportunity to attack. Master Yi's ultimate allows him to blow 2 people up at once, then gain all of him abilities back and mow down the next three with one Q. Riot has specifically talked about how they want people to be able to fight back, but Yi is so broken and overpowered that there is NO chance at winning against him. His massive attack speed boost allows him to mow down enemy towers all by himslef and then quickly dash away. SO if he isnt taking out entire teams of champions by himself, he is taking out entire lanes.

The rework to Master Yi was a good place to start, but it is time Riot admits their mistake and take several more looks at a champion who's unpopularity is now nearing Teemo's. If you don't think that other people agree with me, just take a look at some other forums or the chats in game when Yi shows up. Every time someone always says, "Oh look it is Master Yi. GG, game over." And when Yi gets a triple kill, it isn't "wow he is really good at this game," like several other champions in this game. The response is, "Well he could do that because Yi is such an easy and dumb character."

It is time to heavily nerf Master Yi now Riot, just like every other assassin in the game that you said had no counter play . Or will you continually show off your hypocrisy and allow your players' mistrust to grow?

TL;DR - Master Yi is is an unhealthy champion to the game because of his lack of counter play, and Riot has stated that they strive to eliminate lack of counter play, yet they won't touch Master Yi. They need to take his critical strikes on his Q and cool down resets on his Ult for starters.

20 Comments

Kuroi866 votes

Riot ignores Mater Yi because he's a pup stomper. If you know what you're doing, you can wreck Yi just about every time.

Featherztorm4 votes

I'll list a counter-argument to a statement you made about him being immune to counter play. And then I'll agree with you.

Master Yi is a melee, and an assassin. The point of melee's is to have either A) Allow a lot of damage output through abilities or B) Be able to sustain in a fight long enough to fend off enemies so your teammates can kill. The point of an assassin is to be able to kill quickly with everything you've got, or die trying. Yi is countered by: Stuns, Snares, Slows when he's not ulting (if it wore off), tons of armor, and anyone who puts out more dmg than him. It's your teams fault if yi gets fed.

Since that's my only counter-argument, I can now agree with you that, Yi is far too easy to be able to scale as well as he does and almost NEVER fall off. I would agree a rework is needed, and not just giving him all AD over AP, as they did in his last "rework". What makes him unique is his Alpha strike, and that ability wouldn't be a problem if, it didn't lose CD every auto attack, and if he didn't have an ult that boosted him INCREDIBLY in attack speed and movement speed, also making him immune to slows.

I really don't have much else to say, as a lot of Yi critique has been said many times before, it's just up to either; Riot to change him, or People to learn to counter-play him. That or ban him.

Sycoblast692 votes

Your A/B argument may be the crux of the problem. Riot didn't choose between high skill-based DPS or sustain. They gave him both. If we are going to call Alpha Strike his signature skill, then Highlander needs to be completely redone and vice versa. Players aren't going to always get the dumb Yi who walks into a Lux or Morgana binding. Heaven help you if you get the Yi champ who farms intelligently and summoner 4 RQ combo.

Featherztorm4 votes

His sustain comes from life-steal items, though. Every team fight we have, if there is a yi, he gets cc focused like a mother, and his only alternative is to become a split pusher. He's easy to counter, but at lower elo's he's a pain. I'm not disagreeing with you that he's a bit OP on the "Skill to kill" ratio, but I would say there are other champs that need reworking over him. Until then, we can only hope Yi gets a delete :D Haha, jk. Happy Halloween m8!

Vellich0r1 votes

the issue is probably his w, it gives him 50% damage reduction for a good long while and heals him for about as much damage as you can deal to him. that being said I usually find games against yi to be easy, and i hate having yi on my team because Yi seems to be everyones favorite trolling champ

Raptamei3 votes

Since that's my only counter-argument, I can now agree with you that, Yi is far too easy to be able to scale as well as he does and almost NEVER fall off.

That's why he was picked or banned in every game at Worlds.

Oh wait, he wasn't.

Get better and stop whining.

Featherztorm2 votes

Who's whining about anything? Simply giving my opinion on Yi. I listed what can be done to counter him, so clearly I have ZERO problems fighting against him, and my teammates surely have no problem sucking with him.

That's why he was picked or banned in every game at Worlds. How relevant is this to anything? At worlds they ban champs they know the other team EXCELS at, and more than likely, yi isn't one of those played champs.

FDru4 votes

Yi struggles against teams that are tanky with lots of CC. He rolls over teams that don't have enough or the right kinds of CC to deal with him. Basically the same as Katarina.

Some people might call this balance. But really it's bad design. When a champ is either uncapable of doing anything or completely shitstomping the other team that's just broken. It leads to players frustrated over losing to a champ they couldn't do anything about (happens all the time in blind pick), but then told the champ is weak/easy to beat by players who just happen to play in the perfect kinds of comps to deal with them. And even if you have a good counter comp you still need to make a concerted effort to focus them.

ThatWerido3 votes

I really don't see how you can't just pick someone with CC to counter Yi. Someone like Braum, Alistar, Sion would work great, and some mages like Syndra and Xerath also can help lock down Yi and have the team focus him down.

NoMonku2 votes

It is because these people don't want to take champions with lockdown CC that Yi is able to roam free through the lands. They don't like him because his actual counterplay involves things THEY don't seem to want to actually do. Yi is strong if he is allowed to farm. Yi is strong if you don't bring any hard CC, ANY reset champion is INCREDIBLY strong if you don't bring hard CC, so you're basically just setting yourself up to lose by doing this.

Xengre2 votes

Master Yi can be heavily countered by Exhaust, Thornmail, CC (yes all champs can but some more then others, his Q may last for half a second to a second but after that shut him down). He has to be constantly auto attacking in order to deal most of his damage, and the popular Flare jungle setup as well as bruiser Yi don't see hardly any benefit from crit nor do these routes make use of his Q AD scaling. Glass canon AD Yi has entirely different set of issues and is very manageable as well.

Kass (never OP, imo, just safe) and Kha (the level of free dmg he had was annoying for how safe he was) were a problem because they had fairly high assassin level damage while having decent semi-spammable CC and very potent mobility/safety (dmg reduction, invisibility, dashes/blinks, resets, low cd mobility) and could constantly enter/exit fights as CDs came up. Kha, in particular, had no real reason to go for Q when his W did really solid dmg, healed, was AoE, and wave cleared/farmed so well.

Wehrmacht Bunny1 votes

Master Yi can be heavily countered by Exhaust

Except he's immune to slows.

Duke Anax1 votes

Which doesn't matter, he won't be running away, or if he does he won't be a problem anyway.

Xengre1 votes

Master Yi can be heavily countered by Exhaust

Except he's immune to slows.

Used to kill his ASPD despite his ult bypassing MS slows, but now he ignores the ASPD debuff. It still cuts his dmg by 40%, however. Armor + CC + Exhaust can let you easily deal with him unless he is extraordinarily fed and the other things I mentioned still apply.

emy jackson2 votes

Master Yi isn't a unbalanced champion in anyway. Tanks don't counter master Yi, CC and damage does. You have to CC him and focus him in team fights or out damage him if you can't do those then he wins. The problem is most players don't understand that and they try to counter Master Yi by buying a item 3075 or item 3143. Master Yi does have counterplay no matter how good you are on Master Yi if everyone on your team has a stun,knock back/knock up or burst spells you can counter Master Yi. In SoloQ its hard to get all players on a team to do this because most players choose a champion they like playing over a champion that wins them the game. The problem isn't Master Yi its players critical thinking and willing to adapt.

Crimson5pheonix1 votes

Git Gud Scrub

bitticlan1 votes

I have read some of the comments and am a bit surprised a discussion is evolving XP. So a lot of you are mentioning that tanky champions and CC counter Master Yi. But have you forgotten about his massive true damage? It ignores all armor, so the only way to counter that is to stack health, but if you are stacking health then you are lacking damage, which means you can't fight 1v1 because he will destroy you with his true damage.

As for the CC, his untargetability can avoid snares and stuns if they are skillshots. But snares and stuns are a good way to slow him down. In my experiences, Yi was so overpowered that once a player was able to stun him they would run away to save their life XP.

KEEP DISCUSSING!!!! I like reading the comments, even if they are negative!!!

Kuroi862 votes

Bonus True damage: 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 (+10 / 12.5 / 15 / 17.5 / 20% AD)

Mk, theoretical build. Yi with Hydra, IE, Shiv, PD, zerks and GA. With scaling AD runes and full in on the offensive mastery tree. His AD would reach 347.39 This would equal out to 30 (+74.88) 104 true damage per strike. When you're pushing four thousand health, a hundred true damage isn't that much. No, what hurts, is crits. ;)

What people are missing, is that they are trying to take down a late game Yi. Truthfully, he should never hit his late game. He's a hyper carry, his late game is supposed to be monstrous! Do you realize how weak Yi is early game? Why let him sit in lane or in the jungle and farm all game? For crying out loud, ward his jungle and get yourself fed off of his weak little butt!

Duke Anax1 votes

The thing is YI simply can't 100-0 you, he needs some time for it and that gives you an opportunity to counter. Also he is rather squishy, so it is entirely possible to kill him before he kils you.

The mistake most player make with Yi is trying to run, isntead of trying to kill, but you can't run from a Yi, you can kill him however.

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