Impending Yorick Rework

With the impending Yorick Rework on the actual schedule again, I thought it would be a good opportunity to open a discussion about what is currently not working and why.

As a Yorick main with several hundred games in ranked this past season I feel like there is a certain amount of potential that is being overlooked with him at present. Many of the assumed limitations and preconceived weaknesses that have he is supposedly plagued with are not really present at all. His reliance on a mana item can easily be solved by running flat mana glyphs and mana regen mastery, and tempering your skill usage to when you will actually get the most benefit from every aspect of the skills rather than just spamming them. His teamfight weakness is really true of every bruiser or juggernaut but mostly can be resolved by running Boots of Swiftness with Furor enchant, unless they are running heavy CC in which case buy a QSS to remove the CC and go kill their backline while your revenant of the ADC helps with the frontline. Also, since the changes to AoE damage to player controlled pets his ghouls tend to last long enough in teamfights even with waveclear teams to provide the extra damage they get from an auto or two.

So, what's not working? His passive cuts into his power budget by quite a bit because it's really quite strong for all ins. As a juggernaut or bruiser type he really doesn't want to use all his skills and just rush them, that's more of a fighter with mobility or Assassin type of maneuver, someone with a gap closer who wants to burst down and then get out. He wants to trade at length with multiple casts and utilization of his skills to their best benefit. His ghouls auto killing themselves slowly adds to them being able to be cleared out by AoE still, reducing their potential damage in teamfights, though they do last long enough to auto once, it'd be better if they could get 2 attacks off. So my opinion is that the passive should be moved into the power budget for his Ultimate, making it a steroid for him, similar in function to how Nasus uses his, and a new passive added that allows his skills to interact with his ghouls, with each one up making the others have some other added bonus effect or increasing their duration and durability based on how effectively they are utilized. His E, Omen of Famine, currently feels a bit too strong in that it is ranged, a ranged poke/heal seems too strong, they could benefit from making this a frontal cone skill and turning his Q into a ranged ghoul that speeds him up or pulls him to it. Lastly his Cooldowns are a touch too close in the early game, making the pressure of laning against him slightly oppressive if played well in coordination with proper auto attacks, especially with Thunderlord's Decree or Grasp of the Undying in the game.

In short, passive power budget into Ultimate, new passive that alters the utility of his skills when other ghouls are up, and maybe follow up skills to offset longer cooldowns on base skills. Giving him more options but rewarding him for playing more conservatively or be able to get in when needed.

I personally feel that he really needs a way to get to his target short of buying boots, a limited function gap closer that only ever takes him towards and enemy and not be used to run away seems really important.

So what does everyone else really think? Perhaps we can go into further detail on why each skill is strong or weak, what the kit feels like as a whole, and whether it can be improved or changed to make it feel more consistent and smarter as a whole.