Clearing Up Misinformation About Yorick:

I've noticed a lot of misinformation about Yorick, which is understandable since he's hovered around 1% pick rate for years. Since most of you probably haven't even seen a Yorick in your last 200 games, I will help clear up some things about him.

False: Yorick was abandoned by riot and left disabled from free champion rotation because his kit is inherently broken.

True: Yorick's neglect is a combination of many factors. His original creator, Coronach, was hired by another game studio not long after Yorick's release. Almost every new release is a balance mess. Imagine if Xin Zhao's creator had left Riot, abandoning him in practically release state until Riot was forced to pseudo-delete him because no other developer was willing to quickly adopt the responsibility for maintaining post-release balancing/fixing. He also suffered from multiple bugs that the Riot staff struggled to resolve, such as the infinite deaths ult bug that resurfaced multiple times after being "fixed". On the whole, Yorick's kit is in the same style as other juggernauts. He is actually very similar to Darius, low ability range, low mobility, low cc, built-in sustain (decimate equivalent to omen of famine), stickiness requires melee range (crippling strike equivalent to omen of war), similar damage trading pattern (hemorrhage bleed equivalent to ghoul aggro). The main difference between them is that Darius has a powerful execute ult while Yorick has a unique and interesting utility ultimate. Yorick's ultimate shifts some of his power budget into supporting his team, which is a unique trait among juggernauts.

False: Yorick is a ghoul spamming earlygame bully that becomes useless after laning.

True: Yorick is actually usually quite mediocre during early laning and has a very limited mana pool prohibiting him from spamming abilities. Most scenarios force him to invest heavily in mana rather than combat stats early on. Also, his winrate by game duration curve actually shows him as a somewhat lategame champion, peaking around 40 minutes, which is due to his ult utility scaling with his team's carry champs. The only time that he was a major lane bully was during a short period after his release when he was buffed to overtuned levels (and his W used to scale with AD), but then was subsequently nerfed.

False: Yorick walks into a bar... There are no counters.

True: Yorick is actually statistically countered by many champions, particularly true earlygame bullies like Pantheon and Renekton. His lack of mobility or strong cc also makes him vulnerable to being countered by strong ganking junglers.

False: Yorick has no counterplay, is anti-fun, toxic, buzz word, buzz word, etc. etc. etc.

True: As I cleared up previously, Yorick is not a major lane bully and actually has a similar laning/trading pattern to other juggernauts. All of the most common complaints about Yorick's style can be argued against most other juggernauts, especially Darius. However, Yorick's ghouls can be killed/avoided unlike Darius's hemorrhage, which is its closest comparison. Secondly, Yorick's early mana dependence allows his opponent to become established in the lane before Yorick ramps up. Thirdly, Yorick is less snowbally than Darius or even Garen due to his lack of an execute and poor natural sticking power causing him to have low kill potential in lane (he only has 4.5 average kills per game). Also, Yorick's poking in lane can be quite easily counterbuilt by building any amount of sustain (Nasus even gets enough free sustain from his passive).

False: Yorick is a dumpstered, worthless, troll pick champion.

True: Yorick actually has a very high winrate among experienced Yorick players and is even rarely played professionally. Yorick's ult makes him fit wonderfully on teams with vulnerable hypercarries like Cassiopeia or Kog'Maw. He can provide a beefy front line to protect the carry and his ult can provide them a temporary revive in teamfights. Yorick is actually extremely flexible and can even fill a split-pusher role if he builds more heavily in damage than tanky stats since he can ult himself to use his revenant to help take down turrets. He can fill top, jungle, and less commonly support.

With the upcoming Yorick rework, I am concerned that the common misconceptions about Yorick may result in ignorant/inaccurate feedback negatively molding the route that he is pushed in. In my honest opinion, Yorick should receive a rework of similar scope to the Darius, Gangplank, Shen reworks. He is underplayed, but he does not need or deserve a complete overhaul. In particular, Yorick's ultimate is very unique and interesting. It creates a unique role for Yorick in the juggernaut class as a champion who can transition into a more supportive role for his team and can be played more flexibly than the other juggernauts. It would be a horrible shame for that aspect of Yorick to be destroyed.