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Yi Got More Broken

Zero Shingetsu··4 votes·1,936 views

Spear of Shojin.

Why does Spear of Shojin exist?

Someone tell me. Please. Whose idea was this and why have they not been demoted?

With Spear of Shojin, Master Yi - who was already eating tanks for breakfast before skipping out for a brunch of Every Other Enemy - feeds attack speed into an item that boosts attack speed based on bonus attack speed, and hacks 20% off Alpha Strike's cooldown per hit, which is already losing a second per hit. Basically it allows him to Alpha Strike at will.

Why is this significant, and why does this make it obscene?

Because Alpha Strike is the one major thing preventing any hope of having balance against Yi. Yi can rip off crits worth 900-1500 every 0.4 seconds, ignoring most resistances and lifestealing all the while. The only reasonable way to shut this down is with hard CC. The problem is, you can't apply hard CC while Yi is Alpha Striking.

As it was, Alpha Strike was low risk, high reward. It wasn't all that challenging to charge in with a fully built Yi late and just Alpha Strike past most CC, or use it to "reset" a fight when it was starting to get out of your control as the Yi player. It wasn't a difficult thing to use effectively. Now? Now Yi can pretty much use it whenever the hell he wants, and heaven help you if you try to CC him with literally anyone.

Yi did not need a buff. You could debate whether or not he needed a nerf, but he sure as the sun rises in the east didn't need a buff.

5 Comments

youthere1 votes

URF has really helped highlight just how broken Alpha strike is.

It just happens instantaneously and without warning; there's no brief wind up to CC him during, there's no visual queues to let you know it's coming. I went against him in URF as Cho'gath, I thought this would be a good match up. Time and time again the tiny, damn near insignificant, delay before casting silence was enough for him to Alpha Strike and avoid it all together.

And the bigger issue, Yi is not "untargetable" during Alpha Strike, other champions become untargetable and are manageable; they still take damage, they just can't be targeted (duh). It's that he doesn't fucking exist during it. Nothing affects him for that brief moment, the only other mechanic to do this off the top of my head is Shaco's Ult.

Judsonia1 votes

{quoted}

URF has really helped highlight just how broken Alpha strike is.

It just happens instantaneously and without warning; there's no brief wind up to CC him during, there's no visual queues to let you know it's coming. I went against him in URF as Cho'gath, I thought this would be a good match up. Time and time again the tiny, damn near insignificant, delay before casting silence was enough for him to Alpha Strike and avoid it all together.

And the bigger issue, Yi is not "untargetable" during Alpha Strike, other champions become untargetable and are manageable; they still take damage, they just can't be targeted (duh). It's that he doesn't fucking exist during it. Nothing affects him for that brief moment, the only other mechanic to do this off the top of my head is Shaco's Ult.

Pal, all untargetables do that. Fizz, Kayn, Yi, Shaco, Elise, the list goes on. Dunno wth you're referring too when you say only Yi's makes him disappear, all untargetable means is that they're basically gone, but they can take dmg from dot or karthus ult, for instance. Plus, as a Cho main, I have a fun fact. Put knockup on top of you so it procs when he wakes up from alpha strike, always on top of you. This takes time learning Yi alpha strike duration and cho knockup delay, but yeah. Ik I'm pretty late tho lol. I'm looking for posts on how to build Crit/Shojin yi now that shojin was removed.

Crispy0Snake1 votes

You posted this almost word for word in "RANT" and I don't know if you saw my reply, so I'll post it here too:

He's really not the untouchable hypercarry people make him out to be. Sure I've played games where a Master Yi has gotten Pentakills and has hard carried his team, but most of the time people put him behind and he's completely useless.

Master Yi synergises with on hit damage because of his ult, E and mostly his passive. The thing is, on hit items need to be fully completed to get the on hit effects. This means he powerspikes really hard, but before he completes an item he's relatively weak even if he has the components. If he's put behind, those powerspikes don't make him relatively strong and he gets steamrolled

This is why he's never really picked in pro play or high elo, he can just be stamped out of a game or focused when he ults in. Rengar/Kha'Zix could just burst him in his own jungle, Warwick/Rek'Sai can invade and kill him even. If they take his camps it's over for that Yi. He'll never get items in time to be relevant after that.

The Spear item was made to take the Stormrazor non ultimate cd refund away from ADC's and give it to AD fighters that have an ultimate that buffs them or is used as an engage. It's also a really good item when combined with Trinity Force. So you see this on Renekton, Jax, Riven etc.

It's good on Master Yi, because it allows him to use Alpha Strike more times in a fight, so he can be hard to pin down and kill.

The thing is, when do you buy that item? You'll need your jungle item, boots, Guinsoos, then you can't build it because you need BotRK, or you'll have no lifesteal or dps. Then do you buy that or Steraks/Frozen Mallet/Wits end?

The tradeoffs of one or the other make his build so awkward if you aren't pretty far ahead

And all champions are busted when they're ahead

Zero Shingetsu1 votes

{quoted}

You posted this almost word for word in "RANT" and I don't know if you saw my reply, so I'll post it here too:

He's really not the untouchable hypercarry people make him out to be. Sure I've played games where a Master Yi has gotten Pentakills and has hard carried his team, but most of the time people put him behind and he's completely useless.

Master Yi synergises with on hit damage because of his ult, E and mostly his passive. The thing is, on hit items need to be fully completed to get the on hit effects. This means he powerspikes really hard, but before he completes an item he's relatively weak even if he has the components. If he's put behind, those powerspikes don't make him relatively strong and he gets steamrolled

This is why he's never really picked in pro play or high elo, he can just be stamped out of a game or focused when he ults in. Rengar/Kha'Zix could just burst him in his own jungle, Warwick/Rek'Sai can invade and kill him even. If they take his camps it's over for that Yi. He'll never get items in time to be relevant after that.

The Spear item was made to take the Stormrazor non ultimate cd refund away from ADC's and give it to AD fighters that have an ultimate that buffs them or is used as an engage. It's also a really good item when combined with Trinity Force. So you see this on Renekton, Jax, Riven etc.

It's good on Master Yi, because it allows him to use Alpha Strike more times in a fight, so he can be hard to pin down and kill.

The thing is, when do you buy that item? You'll need your jungle item, boots, Guinsoos, then you can't build it because you need BotRK, or you'll have no lifesteal or dps. Then do you buy that or Steraks/Frozen Mallet/Wits end?

The tradeoffs of one or the other make his build so awkward if you aren't pretty far ahead

And all champions are busted when they're ahead

Technically, I posted the more aggressively opinionated version there. This one here is more tame and open to actual discussion.

That said, I've yet to meet a Yi that has trouble farming. Even back when I still played Yi, come level 5 or so, I could walk into a vacated lane and press Q as my SOLE METHOD OF FARMING and end up near the top of the CS list. That's yet another problem with Yi. He literally has no weaknesses. Even if you say that his big problem is deciding when to buy x or y, it's really not a huge problem because he gets gold at will, and that's to say nothing of all the easy kills he can snap up mid-game for extra gold and those sweet sweet bounty bonuses.

His only weakness was to hard CC, and being able to Alpha Strike at will almost completely negates that. The only way to avoid being outplayed by any Yi with two fingers on the keyboard is to take a hit from the initial Alpha Strike, which right there is a death knell for many carries, and then you have maybe a 1.5-second window with Spear of Shojin to lock him down. If you can properly guess where he'll land. By that time he's almost surely taken a teammate down, and if the rest can't burst him by the time the stun wears off, you're all goners.

Mavëríck1 votes

wait until new wit's end hits live.

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