Is Master Yi better as a bruiser or as a melee carry?

YumaS2Astral·Jun 12, 2015·2 votes·2,508 views

When I was silver, I used to play a lot of assassin/melee ADC Master Yi. Building full damage with crit, lifesteal, armor penetration and attack speed (and one defensive item) I could two-shot squishies. The moment I was on a teamfight, I could slaughter anything that wasn't a full tank with Thornmail (and even with Thornmail, no tank could directly 1x1 me, they could just not instantly die)

However, now that I am gold, this build no longer works as well. People are now smarter and the moment I enter on a teamfight, they just CC me and I die. So I am thinking of switching my build to bruiser Yi, but is that build good? I've tested before. I can't kill squishies quickly anymore as I could, and I gain some survivability, but I am still not a tank, when using that build.

What's the best Master Yi build on your opinion? For jungle and/or for top lane.

7 Comments

JamareeJun 12, 20151 votes

He is "better" as an melee ADC, he is more consistent as a bruiser, or building some girth on him. He is better jungle because top lane he is too squishy with his W healing too little to be relevant and unless you outplay them, you lose just about every match up. Bruiser Yi gives you just enough girth to survive being focused for a tiny bit however melee ADC Yi does far more damage to the point where he can and will 1 vs 5 if you don't group up.

ZileanUltJesusOPJun 12, 20151 votes

Assassin/melee adc is better under the right circumstances. If your team has 2 tanks with good initiation it is almost impossible to stop a fed yi. For example i yi jungled a lot last season and my friend would go malphite top and a lot of times i would get leona supporting. There was nothing the enemy could do. I built full assassin. Mal would initiate on their front line while leona went in on their backline and they would pump out so much cc the other team would be too worried about getting away from it and then you come in and just obliterate their team. With a team comp like that assassin yi is incredibly hard to stop

KazaLyn ShaoJun 12, 20151 votes

Melee carries in general are bad. Yasuo is an exception with a knockup and good utility, but Yi has none of that, and his wave clear is mediocre. Bruiser Yi doesn't explode in 2 seconds flat and might actually survive a hard CC or two. Assassin Yi won't. Frozen mallet + BotRK is always a good combo. Then beef up with either 1 magic res or 1 armor item, depending on enemy comp and threat level, then build the rest with what you want.

BluePolarizerJun 12, 20151 votes

Bruiser Yi is better. It doesn't depend on the enemy team making mistakes. Yeah carry Yi can 1v5, if ahead, but not simultaneously. Bruiser Yi can 1v3 simultaneously and walk out with a triple kill.

Never get Frozen Mallet or early BF sword items. The whole point of playing Bruiser Yi is abusing the most gold efficient (not necessarily slot efficient) items for a huge midgame power spike and snowballing that into the late game.

MLDzXnRRRJun 12, 20151 votes

If they have stunbots like Nautilus or Leona both builds are useless for teamfight, better build attack speed and backdoor. Bruiser Yi can be very good, if you have great initiation or great Aoe . If they have hypercarries like Cassio, Kog etc both builds will fail in teamfights (unless you go in just to cleanup, but then the fight is 4v5), because they will kill you even if you are kind of tanky.

ErockandrollJun 12, 20151 votes

IF they Just "CC you" it could be an effect of the tank meta. But you should invest in a QSS for when you get CCed. But you shouldn't build him anything but melee ADC. Also try and bait out their Spells and use the untargetability from your Q to avoid them and attack at the same time.