Suggestions to make Yi more viable

Yi kinda feels garbage atm for several reasons :

• everyone has high burst
• his ult's cooldown is still way too long after nerfs and initial duration too short, forcing him even more to farm before being relevant.
• short games
• runes But the most concerning part for me is that he doesn't shine lategame when he should. It's a thing to have a garbage kit early/midgame but if he doesn't scale that well (except in braindead 1v1's if you're facing bronze 5's who want to duel you without their team for some reason) it is problematic.

1. My first suggestion would have to do with changing Yi's base armor. Yi always had a ridiculously low base armor for a melee @ lvl 18 and most of the playerbase took armor/lvl which made so much sense as he doesnt' really need armor earlygame and he desperately needs it lategame. For reference, right now his base armor @ 18 is 84 Similar melee carries/bruisers got : Aatrox 97.6 Yasuo 87.8 (despite being changed to have more scaling HP than armor gain in the runes reforged) Jax 87 (intentionally low to compensate his ult) Xin Zhao 94.5 Trynd 85.7 Irelia 97.8 Fiora 92.5 And when we take juggernaughts Darius 107 Garen 87 (+30 courage)

That might not seem concerning, but it's to the point some ADC's have more base armor than him. Caitlyn 91.5 Sivir 86 Ezreal 90.5

**I suggest to nerf his early game armor from 33 to 28 and buff it lategame to around 92 (from 84). That will definitely not be as good as old armor/lvl runes were sadly but it will help out a little in lategame. **

2. Revert of unnecessary situational buffs

Meditate amplifying ult duration and charging double strike are extremely situational changes that kind of charge Yi with random power that is just not intuitive. Because you don't meditate to prolong your ult, you meditate to tank out a huge chunk of damage, to auto-reset ; but using it to amplify ult duration is just good in so little cases (Vlad temporizing your ult with pool+zhonyas for instance) that it doesn't feel logical. Remove that. That is useless and takes power budget for nothing.

3. Ult buffs

If you remember the nerfs, they hit Yi pretty hard. Yi's already a heavy farm reliant champion and extremely ult reliant champion. Increasing Yi's ult cooldown and nerfing the base duration hit him directly in his pure viability, he just can't fight in many scenarios.

First off , base duration back to 10s. Then revert unnecessary buff of amplified ult on kill or assist : +7s -> +4s It is very much a revert, but honestly that change fucked Yi really hard. Then cooldown 85s -> 75s Yi's are forced to build CDR which is a worthless stat on Yi, just to have a viable CD on his ult, and have a bit of pressure on the map.

4. (OPTIONAL) Viability change on Q

As you all know, Yi's Q CD is extremely long yet gets reduced insanely fast with attack speed. This creates kind of a feast or famine scenario where : Yi is in melee and can auto someone : feels like alpha strike's CD is pretty short. Yi gets kited and can't auto : alpha CD takes forever. That's a limitation of his kit and something you can play around so I think that can be good so that's why I say this is optional : Suggestion would be to buff the CD, and nerf the CD reduction per auto base CD : 18/17/16/15/14 -> 13/12/11/10/9 CD reduction per auto : 1 second -> 0.5 seconds

5. (OPTIONAL) Crit scaling on his E

Yi's E is very powerful, yet it has weak synergy with a crit build and it's limiting his potential as a crit carry (if he chooses that buildpath). Allowing his E to have (reduced) crit : E on-hit can critically strike for 150% damage instead of 200% for instance, could bring a little punch to crit Yi without breaking him in any case. It could also make it feel less awkward to get PD in an on-hit build.

6. (OPTIONAL) Ult giving passive stats to counter kiteability It is well known that Yi is good during ult, yet feels like an old man on a wheeling chair when he has no ult. The suggestion here would be to give 20/35/50% slow resist and 5/7.5/10 % movespeed as a passive on Yi's ult (effective when he is not in Highlander); and make so during ult he gets the same movespeed and 100% slow resist as LIVE (basically, this passive is disabled when Highlander is on). These are strong changes and help Yi a lot when his ult is down. Also is very interesting as it makes Yi more mobile on the map to have a better pressure. They might be too dangerous, so it's really an idea to test, not to take as a granted good change (could be too strong of a buff). With that it might not be necessary to revert his ult CD and duration (cf point 3)