Yuumi should be more traditional

TL;DR: Yuumi wastes a lot of potential and is probably going to be insanely boring because she can't freely move around her carry and can't reliably take damage.

I'll try to be optimistic with my expectations of Yuumi since I haven't played her yet and don't intend to buy her when she comes out, but on the face of it, she looks like the most boring champion ever introduced into League. For those who haven't checked her out yet, Yuumi is to be League's resident "Tether to the Carry" support, like Mercy from Overwatch or Io from Dota 2. In theory she'd be like Kalista, but as a support. The catch is that, unlike those more "traditional" examples, Yuumi's is less like tethering and more like binding, as she can't be attacked while attached to a carry (barring towers I believe) and she can't move. Immediately that's a complete red flag for me, as those are the two reasons why these supports are fun.

How you move as a tether support is almost 100% percent of what makes tether supports fun. Having to avoid incoming damage while staying in the perimeter of whoever you're supporting and potentially even dealing your own damage depending on which tether support you're playing specifically is what keeps these characters tricky and fun. Yuumi almost entirely removes this element leaving us with the boring part: watching while someone else does all the damage not really doing anything other than hope that the healing and damage you're adding are enough to counteract the damage they're receiving.

I wouldn't be so upset if not for the fact that 1: Tether supports often define the metas of the games that they appear in, meaning that Yuumi could become a staple part of the support meta the same way that supports like Thresh have, forcing support players to learn her and play her to stay competitive, and 2: The fact that there's no reason why Yuumi had to be this way, as well as the wasted potential of not ever getting a more traditional tether support in League. There's nothing about League's mechanics that forces this type of character to be done this way, and we know this because Kalista did this same character concept almost perfectly, but as a carry.

There's only three reasons I can think of for why Yuumi was made this way. 1: Riot thought that tether supports break their games (as they have broken many games in which they appear by being so powerful, like Kalista tends to do when she's strong) so they tried to do a spin on tether supports and somehow catastrophically missed the mark by removing all the fun stuff instead of all the broken stuff. I like to have faith in Riot, so I'll assume that wasn't what they were trying to do. 2: They thought that it would be too close to what Kalista does, which I sort of agree with, but if imitating Kalista is off the table the correct thing to do is not make this kind of character at all and make something else instead. Besides, the fact that Yuumi can bounce between all her allies instead of only tethering to the carry inherently changes the character dynamic, making her unique in the scope of League. And 3: they wanted an excuse to add in controlling the trajectory of a projectile. To be clear, the missile is really really cool. Coupled with dismounting to gain mana from auto attacks, it's what could make laning as Yuumi sort of fun. However, just like the tether, sticking with what's proven in the gaming industry is more fun. In this case, the fact that Yuumi is invincible while controlling the projectile is a complete misunderstanding of why this type of attack is interesting, as having to get to a safe place to attack with a very powerful very difficult to dodge projectile is why makes its dynamic interesting. If it wasn't for the minions, this would be the most toxic laning ability in the game because there's just no punish for using it besides losing a moderate amount of mana.

Bottom line, if Yuumi ends up the way she looks like she's going to end up, then I can safely say that tons of potential are going down the drain. League could have easily been host to the best designed tether support ever put into a video game. In a game like League where "dodging" is actually a thing, unlike Dota or shooter games with lots of hitscan or lock-on abilities, having a character whose dynamic is playing a giant game of bullet hell sounds like a ton of fun. The fact that, with only a few small tweaks, Yuumi could have been exactly that is genuinely disappointing.

Edit: I forgot to remove the huzzy video. I guess you could click on that if you haven't seen Yuumi in game yet.