Thoughts on Yi revert
Yi's current state is really quite sad. Here's his win rate : http://champion.gg/statistics/#/019082093275574752350. In a meta where jungle farming is basically extinct (Catch up xp, lower gold values, longer respawn timers), it really seems like riot has just swept Yi under the rug. I completely understand that a lot of people don't want to see Yi because he can be very annoying to play against, but c'mon, is this the way to deal with champions that a majority of people don't like?.. Seems pretty biased to me, everyone deserves to play a champ they enjoy. After Rengar was gutted Yi is the only champ I enjoy after playing this game for 5 years now.
Here are a few points i'd like to make about Yi, mainly how the reasoning why riot nerfed Yi are no longer justifiable:
Patch 6.8 : "While much of Master Yi’s strength comes from his synergy with two powerful items (Guinsoo’s Rageblade + Sated Devourer), his lack of downtime has always been a frustration. We’re tuning Yeezy’s all-in window to reward using Highlander at the right time, rather than ‘whenever."
R - Highlander COOLDOWN 75 seconds ⇒ 85 seconds DURATION 10 seconds ⇒ 7 seconds EXTENSION ON KILL OR ASSIST 4 seconds ⇒ 7 seconds
With sated devourer removed from the game shouldn't this change be simply reverted?
Patch 6.6 : " Usually, when a fed Master Yi dominates an entire team it’s a rare occurrence that comes from careful risk management on a really fragile champion. These days, however, Yeezy’s build of choice is almost fully defensive, abusing on-hit synergies to get most of the damage with far less danger to himself. We’re changing up the way Yi scales so that he can still reasonably achieve the same damage thresholds, but he’s gotta give up some safety and reliability to get it."
E - Wuju Style BASE DAMAGE 10/15/20/25/30 ⇒ 12/19/26/33/40 RATIO 0.1/0.125/0.15/0.175/0.2 total attack damage ⇒ 0.25 bonus attack damage at all ranks
This is just another reiteration of how this change should be simply reverted too, or slightly changed at least. With yi's old itemization no longer in the game (sated) and since guinsoo's is literally a shell of what it once was, this nerf should be readdressed as well.
Final thoughts
Does riot just honestly not care about Yi anymore or are they trying to find someway to fix him? Is he just going to get a huge overhaul like Rengar, come out massively strong, then receive nerf after nerf until his only viable build is a mediocre damage bruiser build? In my opinion, if he was released as an assassin, he should remain as such.