Yorick's abilities should probably revolve around things that have died recently

I'm thinking of a mix between Thresh's soul-collecting mechanic and Zyra's plants.

Yorick can summon ghoulies out of nowhere, but maybe he'd be easier to get right (and more interesting) if he actually had to pay attention to the things dying around him to make use of his ablities.

He's a grave-digger who doesn't dig graves. He has a shovel that he ONLY uses to auto-attack (and his Q animation). What a waste.

He should put that shovel to use and use it to, oh I don't know, bring enemy minions back to life under his control to help him push (with a limit to how many he can have of course). The minion he brings back can have different mechanics; if he brings back a melee minion, he gets increased AD for doing it; brings back a caster minion, increased AP; brings back a siege minion, increased AR and MR. That's the Thresh-like part of him.

Since Yorick can't always be around things that are dead, like when jungling or roaming, he could have an ability that lets him dig a grave and bring a netherworld ghoulie out of it from any location, a la Zyra's plants.

Yorick was supposed to be the summoning/pet champion that the community really wanted, but he doesn't really feel that way right now. He does not deliver on his theme. Reading this back to myself, it kind of turns Yorick into something of a necromancer-type, but that's what he is. Just instead of being a yawwwn mage thing, he's a much more interesting melee grave-digger.