Some Proposed Yuumi Changes from a Retired Abathur Main

Hi all, I played Abathur a lot in the days when HotS was newer and I was really happy when Riot announced a champion that could be comparable to him.

Except she's really underwhelming atm.

So I want to talk about some changes that I think would be beneficial to Yuumi by making her more interactive and placing emphasis on what makes her unique.

Thematically, I think that as a cat Yuumi should be jumping everywhere, chasing things that look tasty, and sometimes running back to her owner for a cat nap and moral support. Imo Riot did a good job with certain features of her kit that support this theme (such as jumping around while ulting), but I don't think there's enough emphasis, especially in the laning phase. When a champion has a unique feature, their playstyle should revolve around it, and that is where their strengths should come from.

Yuumi's Unique Strengths:

• Untargetability when anchored
• Ability to jump from target to target with no CD
• Can cast while anchored - Q controllable
• Has heals, shielding, and movement speed within basic abilities
• Extra AP/AD when anchored
• Ability to skillshot block before anchoring to ally for safety
• Built in mana regen function

A lot of these features encourage players to stay anchored for the most part, which is not interactive at all and creates some problems.

Yuumi's Weaknesses:

• No control over own champion when attached
• Lack of presence due to no hard CC
• Anchoring function makes her ADC the sole focus of any type of damage in laning
• Slow is single target
• Root is delayed and built into ult

The fact that bot lane is reduced to one health bar when Yuumi is attached is an incredibly huge weakness, especially with how high damage is nowadays. That extra AP/AD doesn't matter if you're dead. This part of her kit indicates that she should have some more peel, but it is incredibly easy to jump on her and her anchor with no chance of them getting away. The fact that she has no hard CC means that she may have more poke, but it's a disappointing single target.

I think that her heal is actually pretty decent, but Yuumi needs more presence in lane. The following suggestions aim to give her a bit more effective poke and sustain while discouraging people from afk anchoring. They keep her weak to all-ins, which should be her proper counter.

Proposed Changes (her kit numbers should most likely be altered as well if any of these go through):

• Addition to passive: With the exception of "You and Me!", every time Yuumi uses an ability on a champion, the cooldown of her passive is reduced by X seconds.

This makes her passive more readily accessible so that people will be hopping off more to attack.

• Q change: If Yuumi is not anchored, Prowling Projectile will deal its damage and slow in a small AoE, reducing the cooldown of her passive by X*(number of enemy champions hit).

Why not an AoE while Yuumi is anchored?

I feel that players should be able to make a choice between choosing a single target spell that can go in any direction or a small aoe in a straight line. It's easy enough to hit prowling projectile while she's anchored and this change allows an unattached Yuumi to also poke people standing in minions. It can also make it easier for her to follow up with her on hit passive.

• W QoL Buff: The AP/AD buff should activate as soon as the hitboxes of Yuumi and her ally touch. There is currently an odd delay and the buff happens a split second after she's attached.

• Ult Change: Stun for .5 sec instead of rooting.

Allows interruption of enemy champions when used at the right time, but does not allow for a free getaway if Yuumi and her adc get caught out too hard.

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I'm not sure what Riot is planning to do with Yuumi at this point, but I hope they take some of these suggestions into consideration.

Thanks for reading!