Bruiser yi is broken

Suicide Meme··4 votes·781 views

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6 Comments

TehNACHO2 votes

Broken is the wrong word. Overpowered? Sure, maybe. But there's nothing Bruiser Yi is necessarily doing that isn't mechanically 'breaking' the rules of the game.

Given though, it's not S4 anymore. Maybe we should celebrate that the median player in League knows not to build their carries full glass cannon like Bruiser Melee Carries or Sterak's on Marksmen. Being smart with the system Riot gave us shouldn't be treated as a wrong thing to do, methinks.

EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

Actually Yi is broken, his design is amazing but he's in no need of AD/AP and hyper synergizes with AS thus on-hits. Yi was designed too well about AA'ing targets so he only builds 2 AS items then goes full tank and outperforms what his Full damage counterpart could dream of.

Personally I feel yi might be balanceable without a rework if they remove the innate tank stats from his self-heal by making it only apply for 1 hit instead of the full duration, that in itself would fix alot of the issues.

TehNACHO1 votes

The problem with a lot of your reasons is:

  • Yi's Damage is not hybrid. Volibear's damage is Hybrid, with a 47.5-42.4-10.2 split. Jax is hybrid, with a 50.9-41.3-7.8 split. But Yi? His split is a 62.5-16.3-21.2 Physical Damage dominated setup. That is a 46.2% difference between his Physical Damage and his Magic Damage. To pretend that AP on hits is a problem on Yi makes little sense.
  • Yi's Damage is DPS. Suppose Yi's damage is closer to Volibear's or Jax's splits where the difference between their Physical and Magic Damage is less than 10%. So what? Yi's primary role in the damage triangle is that of a DPS Champion. The stats he's strong at is supposed to naturally counter Tanks. If the main complain that he can do Physical and Magic AND True damage in solid amounts is that he's hard to itemize defensively against, well that's the point. If you compare Yi to any other DPS champ, he has the same weaknesses of being susceptible to Burst and Lockdown but superior strengths against targets that itemize defense. If you're thinking that Hybrid Yi is a problem because he kills tanks too easily, well you just don't have a realistic interpretation of how the numbers of this game are supposed to interact with each other.
  • If the problem with Yi's AP interactions is really and only Meditate, then the solution is simply to nerf Meditate, not condemn the entirety of Yi's kit as broken. It can be a simple nerf such as reducing the 15% ratio down to 10%, or making the AP Ratio independent of Meditate's bonus heal the lower Yi is. Easy, simple solutions that at best only justify the "Yi is overpowered/overtuned" arguments but really doesn't have anything at all to do with him breaking the rules of the game.
  • Finally, is Bruiser Yi outperforming Glass Cannon Yi because it is unanimously better than Cannon Yi, or because you're sacrificing some of Yi's strengths to cover up a significant weakness? You have to recognize that Rageblade's delayed startup time means that Yi has less Burst potential than Crit Yi (a build variant that, if you go all out, could Crit people for over 1000 damage per auto post resistances at 2.5 AS (this was calculated in S4, I can calculate this again for S6 if you want)). You can not tell me that Yi hyper scales on Attack Speed AND THEN turn around and say that Bruiser Yi really does out damage Glass Cannon Yi due to Attack Speed and DPS's exponential nature. Maybe you can convince me that itemization right now for DPS Bruisers is OP, but you really can't argue that the idea being executed is totally broken. Hell he's not even outperforming every other Jungler in damage, he's only #12 in the list for Damage Dealt compared to all Junglers.

And finally I'd like to point out your Meditate change fixes almost none of the problems you previously mentioned except for the Meditate AP Ratio that I stretched myself to talk about (given you were complaining with his AP Interactions with his offense, not his defense). If you want to promote a more offensive build, you must lower a champion's base offense and (if necessary) raise their scaling. These changes can include:

  • Lowering Alpha Strike's base Damage. A half decent Yi player knows this should be a mostly defensive ability in application, no need to overload this ability by letting it do too much damage and have defensive application. This also slows down his clear speed which gives him a much more noticeable weakness as a Farm Jungler.
  • Reworking E as not to interact with base AD and/or nerfing Wuju's true damage for a higher AD Ratio. This greatly affects his interaction with Sterak's and helps solve the midgame power spike that Flat True Damage has on a champion who is supposed to be late game.
  • Instead of making Highlander a flat Attack Speed boost, make it a Bonus Attack Speed Multiplier (and no, it would still be difficult to make late game Yi too ridiculous since he can already cap at 2.5 attack speed today as it is). We can also reword his Total Movement Speed bonus to something more like Quinn's to make it more obvious to the population that items like Zeal upgrades get you a lot of movement speed with Highlander.
EcchiOtakuTM1 votes

AP on-hits alone isn't a problem on yi, it's the fact he only wants AS and on-hits then full tank which is the issue. He's literally at a 52% win rate which grows to 57% if experienced. Again he's a champ who doesn't care about AD/AP he just wants AS and on-hits to do anything, scalings are just icing on his cake. Current yi outperforms damage yi because of how much he synergizes with AS due to his passive double hit and ulti with sated, his Q and W are just defense abilities while his E is just another on-hit to add to the equation.

Noone cares much about yi's Q damage as you said it's just defense lowering base damage/raising ratios wouldn't encourage changing since again it's not used for damage.

Reworking E could work.

and the ulti change seems interesting.

Although I'm not sure if that's enough to fix him without a rework.

TehNACHO1 votes

But none of that says he is breaking the rules of the game. All you are reiterating is that something either in Yi or interacting with Yi is overtuned, but nothing seems entirely broken.

Also to be entirely clear, broken is AP Yi. Like, actual AP Yi. A Burst Champion that also melts Tanks breaks the rules of the game (Burst's traditional weakness to melting Tanks). If Yi was going full glass cannon and not dying, that would be broken. But Bruiser Yi sacrificing some damage for some tankiness is still playing by the rules of the game.

Since we're bringing statistics into this, I'd like to point out Yi does not actually Tank very well (rank 24 out of 46, literally just below the midpoint). And again, Being champion 12 in terms of damage dealt certainly proves he is in fact giving up something for that average defense.

Everybody who faces Yi's Q damage will care. The only ones who don't care are Yi players themselves. A nerf that makes less people complain about a champ while also not harshly affecting the Champ's player base would be great. Ultimately, the issue is just to mess with Yi's tuning above all else. Nothing in his kit is breaking the rules of the game like AP Yi used to.

Ship 0F Ducks1 votes

Current yi outperforms damage yi because of how much he synergizes with AS...

not really, its just bruiser is alot easier to play.

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