To Riot: Buffing the Maiden without affecting Yorick

https://i.imgur.com/333NMQc.jpg

TLDR: The Maiden is pretty useless alone and the time it takes for her to die can feel like an extended cooldown. A way to fix this problem is to change how her passive, Decay, works. Decay reduces the damage Mist Walkers and the Maiden do when far away from Yorick. If it started harsher for the Maiden, but slowly weakened for her and Mist Walkers near her, by the late game she would fulfill her fantasy of being a summonable split-pusher much better than she currently does.

Ways this could be done would to tie how strong decay is to either Ranks in the ability or to Yorick’s level. See below for examples.

The rest of the article just gives examples and explains in greater depth what I’m talking about. It just boils down to an early nerf to Maiden when she’s alone, to a buff latter on. It doesn’t affect any other part of Yorick’s play, so its really self contained and it’d be easy to see the impact if it had any. Its meant as feel good change for latter in the game, since that’s when the fantasy of the Maiden is really viable. If you got that, you probably will find the rest of the article a snooze fest. I just wanted to provide the best article I could to help communicate my point to rioters who might be listening. Thanks for reading, hope this sparks a conversation.

Main Article Yorick has a large percentage of his power tied into the Maiden, and that percentage grows as the game goes on. Eventually, when he is with the Maiden, it can feel like he summoned another champion. Which is great! It’s an amazing mechanic that has very strong windows of power and weakness. Eulogy of the Isles is up, Yorick becomes very strong. When it’s on cooldown, Yorick is vulnerable. Clear signs that let the opponent gauge how to play

Another time period exists between those points though. Yorick’s Ult doesn’t end until the Maiden dies, so it doesn’t start the cool down. The issue is that when Yorick is forced to leave the Maiden for a Baron play or to help defend a tower with his team. His ult is technically active, but he feels as weak as though its not and the Maiden loses so much power she can’t do much. Straight buffs to the Maiden’s ratios or numbers means nerfs to Yoricks kit, while improving Yorick’s abilities without the Maiden means making her even less useful, as otherwise you’d simply end up with a broken champion. Getting the two to work apart needs to come from something that can be both nerfed and buffed by itself without changing the effectiveness of when their together.

Something that does this is actually a passive on the Maiden and Mist Walkers called Decay. Decay reduces the Maidens and mist walkers damage to 66.7% and 40% respectively whenever their far away from Yorick. Decay could be start harsher for the Maiden, but slowly reduces for herself and mist walks near her. This changes her to something that scales into the late game while having zero impact on performance when with Yorick. She can then fulfill her fantasy of being a summonable split pusher and lets the player feel better about it when they have to leave her, since their still getting quite a bit out of their ult.

Example of what this could look like:

Lv 6: Decay would be set to have her deal 50% of her damage when too far away from Yorick (ghouls unchanged)

Lv11: Maiden gains: “When Yorick is not nearby, The Maiden reduces the effect of Decay by 15% for herself and nearby Mist Walkers” (now deals 65% of damage, ghouls 55%)

Lv16: Now reads “When Yorick is not nearby, The Maiden reduces the effect of Decay by 30% for herself and nearby ghouls” (now deals 80% of damage, ghouls 60%).

Example 2: Decay tied to levels Maidens Decay set to reduce her damage by 60% She gains the ability “ When Yorick is not nearby, the Maiden reduces Decay for herself and close Mist Walkers by 0 /2.5 /5 /7.5 /10 /12.5 /15 /17.5 /20 /22.5 /25 /27.5 /30 /32.5 /35 /37.5 /40 /42.5”

While the Maiden is power neutral alone by herself at rank 2, the mist walker “buff” lets her be slightly stronger than she would have been at that point in the game. At rank three she can now create serious pressure in whatever lane she is in, with or without Yorick. In the by level example Decay closely follows the per rank model, but does give the Mistwalkers slightly more damage at each point. The advantage here is that the change feels far less choppy and the reward is felt over the duration of the game rather than just whenever the ultimate is ranked up.

Obvious one change has more consequences than just to the Maiden. Yorick won’t get as much chip damage on turrets if an early maiden shoves a wave in alone. The Maiden pushing faster could mean that she dies faster later in the game as the opponent responds to the threat, starting the cooldown earlier than normal. The early weakness is expected and is part of the cost. If it did turn out that Yorick was getting the Maiden too frequently in the late game a 10-20 second increase to cooldown at max rank could readjust it to be where it was before.

So I’m asking Riot if they can make these changes. I love Yorick and the Maiden is so much fun. I love how they work together, but whenever the maiden is stuck in a lane it can feel as though she’s just a farm bot that gets killed before she can accomplish anything. While I know the changes only affect certain situations with Yorick, that are going to be bad for him no matter what the Maiden does, this would make it feel better. I’ve seen a lot of feels good changes recently so I figured I’d through my champion in the ring and see if theres any chance.

One of the highlights where this happened with the current maiden was when I had already taken top tower as Yorick, and about 75% of their tier two (cause I’m Yorick). I wound up fighting my opponent about mid way between the two, and had to summon the Maiden. I won, but then the opponents started up a fight in Mid and I had to TP. I got there and was just trying to keep my team alive. We were still dying slowly, but then it hit me that their entire team was either dead or in the mid lane with me. No was dealing with the Maiden. I couldn’t hope to win the fight without her, but I could sure stall. I wound up flashing just to get a few seconds more of life, and right as I died, I see “your team has destroyed a Turret” pop up, and I declared Yorick as my top lanner. These kind of plays are almost impossible to pull off, but their one of the promises of Yorick’s kit. I’d love to see this be able to happen more often in exchange for some early power from the Maiden. If you’ve read this far, I want to end by saying Thank You, and I hope this sparks some ideas of your own, either for Yorick or your own champion.