A small rework to possibly balance Master Yi

Carnicore·11/15/2018, 5:00:05 PM·4 votes·1,115 views

Goal: Make Master Yi more balanced between high and low elo. Right now, he's kind of balanced but struggles to be relevant at Diamond 2 and higher. In low elo he benefits greatly from having a simple and easy kit, but this doesn't help him in high elo and it just makes him too predictable. He also has very little to offer high elo players, there are lots of more reliable champions for dealing damage and Master Yi has no utility.

Base Stats:

  • Attack range increased from 125 to 175.

  • This allows Master Yi to avoid tanking baron, and gives him a just a little more safety in fights. As a champion that relies a lot on basic attacks, it could help him greatly. This much range also would match his animations better than 125 range does.

Q - Alpha Strike:

  • Q can now be re-activated as early as 0.3 seconds to end the untargetability early.

  • This gives Yi players more control over their kit and more decisionmaking, thereby increasing his skill ceiling. You might be thinking "why would I want less untargetability?", but believe me this would be useful for outplaying enemies.

  • Mana cost increased to 60//90 from 50//70.

  • Master Yi is almost manaless after the last mana cost reduction. Raising costs makes budgeting mana an important skill again, increasing his skill floor.

  • Bonus damage to monsters removed.

  • I'm making some changes to E and I don't want Yi's clear speed to get too crazy.

W - Meditate:

  • Damage reduction now starts at 90% and decays to 20/~/50% as you channel it.

  • This rewards players for timing their Meditate to block damage, at the cost of making it more dangerous to channel for a long time.

  • Channeling Meditate now lowers your other basic abilities' cooldowns by one second for every second Meditate is channeled.

  • This makes channeling Meditate more useful in combat. Normally, Yi players don't want to Meditate because Alpha Strike's cooldown is too long if he's not constantly attacking.

E - Extrasensory:

Reworked

Passive: Master Yi deals 8/~/12% of his AD as magic damage on hit. If Master Yi reveals an enemy champion, then it becomes true damage until Master Yi has been out of combat for 4 seconds.

Active: Master Yi reveals all nearby traps, wards, and champions with true sight (800 range). Traps and wards are revealed for 4 seconds, champions are revealed for 1.5 seconds.

  • Meditating is not treated as being out of combat.

  • Cooldown is 28/~/20 seconds, mana cost is 20.

  • This spell gives Master Yi somewhat unique utility, without eating up his power budget (it doesn't force me to nerf Master Yi a whole lot to compensate)

  • This spell helps Master Yi navigate the jungle without facechecking every bush and camp. He can also, for example, use it to see behind walls and Alpha Strike to a monster for mobility.

  • Champions are only revealed for 1.5 seconds because I don't want this to be overwhelming for invisible champions to play against.

  • The true damage lasts until Master Yi is out of combat because he is a DPS champion, and therefore should be winning extended fights.

R - Highlander:

  • Highlander now pauses while Master Yi is in stasis (Stopwatch) or reviving (Guardian Angel).

  • A situational buff; these things can waste a lot of Highlander duration.

  • Duration changed from [7 seconds, plus 7 for a kill/assist] to [8 seconds, plus 5 for a kill/assist]. Duration now has a maximum of 20 seconds.

  • This makes Highlander more reliable, but the drawback is that Highlander won't be as long if you're wiping the whole enemy team (which more often happens in low elo).

3 Comments

DM For Rat Facts11/15/2018, 6:01:41 PM2 votes

The only reason he is so strong low elo is that he kills people quickly and typically team comps don't have enough cc/ game knowledge to deal with him. Like with most squishy auto attack based champions they're easily countered by high burst and CC. It's incredibly easy to play around him in pro/high elo play.

The changes you propose destroy his power farm -> late carry game plan, and as a game design decision that's completely ridiculous. It removes all of his identity and would make yi a new shyvana skin. If you want to give him more control in fights you would need to nerd his damage pretty heavily. Jungle champions don't worry about mana the way lane champions do because of the jungle item.

I'd have to see the E in game to see how it works but it seems too strong, with full build. Basically useless into 4+ items.

And last of all the R change is just another buff, the time limit maximum is almost entirely irrelevant.