Hello, I play mid lane Yi, I think I can give decent advice.
Passive - This plus E is your bread and butter for laning and/or breaking standoffs. Auto attack minions until your Double Strike is charged, Q to the enemy, hit E upon landing, and immediately get two strikes of Wuju Style's true damage. It's a small trick honestly, but especially when you're ahead in any way, this is how you abuse Yi's burst damage.
Q - Don't look at Alpha Strike like a damage based ability. Instead, see this ability for two parts: A strong instantaneous gap closer, and short term invincibility.
- During the early game, both parts is what makes laning Yi even close to viable. Assuming the enemy minions aren't going to beat you up, the moment the opponent fires an ability at you, Alpha Strike to them. What this does is that almost all aimed abilities will miss and targeted abilities will fizzle, so if you time it correctly, you just initiated on an opponent who literally just blew a cool down thanks to you negating it, and can't possibly fight back at full strength. Similar cases include: Abusing the opponent using their abilities to farm, dodging abilities by Alpha Striking a minion, and resetting minion aggro. Early game, the utility granted by invincibility is really something you can not afford not to use thanks to just how amazing it is for rounding out Master Yi's most notable weaknesses. This rule also extends past the early game into the mid and late game during 1v1 situations, especially if the enemy team's cool downs are worth respecting. Slightly different guidelines apply for team fighting though:
- Mid lane Yi tends to hit this awkward period where, while he's fantastic for dueling if you know how to use him, he kinda falls off in team fight damage. DO NOT try to go Cowsep and initiate a team fight around this point. Instead, focus on the gap closing potential of his Q. Wait for the enemy teams to blow their cool downs, then jump onto the best target you find. Technically speaking, you should always be focusing the enemy team's carries, but Master Yi's E does have the potential to melt tanks, so if you really can't reach the enemy back lines, don't be afraid to shut down their frontline.
- Late game Yi is, in my opinion, at least 4 damage items+BG. At that point, you should be so fast from Rank 3 Highlander+BG+Youmuu's+Phantom Dancer (or two) that the enemy back line should always be an option so long as you can flank them or do whatever you need to do to bypass the enemy frontline. THIS is the time where you can afford to pull off those fancy Master Yi mechanics in that video you just showed...usually. Alpha+AA+E can easily nuke a squishy person down and get Master Yi's reset going, meaning after your initial assault, you should have a second Alpha Strike. My tip, just Auto Attack the nearest person to you. Not even kidding, fighter, squishy, hyper tank, just start attacking whoever is closest. This will reset Alpha Strike faster, and your E (and maybe a BotRK) generally makes Master Yi not have to give a crap about how tanky his target is. The point is, especially if you initiate fights with Alpha Strike, you want it back as fast as possible. Don't waste time trying to go for the enemy team's second carry if they are farther away from you than the tank that's literally in your face, just Auto Attack and get Alpha Strike active as fast as possible. Done correctly, Alpha Strike will be back off cool down so quickly that buy the time the enemy team tries to lock you down with CC, you can immediately Alpha Strike again and negate their CC.
This should generally be your mindset: AA the closest thing to you->Alpha Strike the person who's most likely going to die the fastest the moment you see the enemy throw CC at you->AA to death->Repeat (AA the closest thing to you)
Learn to recognize enemy CC, drill the mindset I just explained above, and especially learn how to pick the person fastest to die. Yi can melt tanks easily, but sometimes you need to respect tanks. It all depends on the scenario and learning this takes time and experience.
Also, I told you not to look at Alpha Strike like a damage based ability, at least for fighting other champions, because honestly, its kinda lackluster if you are looking at it specifically for the damage it does. Master Yi has much greater DPS Auto Attacking alone instead of Alpha Striking as much as possible in between Auto Attacks, to put things into perspective. Focus on the gap closing and CC negating utility this ability has over all else.
W - If Alpha Strike is how you negate CC, Meditate is how you negate burst damage. Most of the time, you don't need to worry about DPS based damage - Master Yi's surplus of steroids makes him the superior DPSer anyway. Honestly, this next part is extremely obvious: If you see the enemy drop a spell rotation on you without CC, and you can't/don't want to Alpha Strike to dodge it, Meditate through it to negate the damage. CC will negate Meditate, so at that point, you really want to figure out how to dodge it instead of trying to Meditate through it, but Meditate's 50-70% damage reduction is incredibly unreal for negating the opponent's damage for any situation where you can't or don't want to Alpha Strike.
Interestingly, Meditate resets Master Yi's Auto Attack timer. That means that, especially against DPS based champions, if you want to get this tiny little edge on enemy champions, use this combo: AA->W->AA. After the first Auto Attack's damage registers, hit W and then immediately Auto Attack once more. Done correctly, you can essentially double strike the opponent and get a small burst onto the opponent. This is more for guaranteeing damage onto the opponent in a 1v1 tool and is kinda unreliable so I don't recommend relying on this if you aren't familiar with it, but once you get this combo down and develop a good eye for when to use it, the combo is irreplaceable for getting just a bit of burst out.
Also, and as a laning Yi I can not emphasize this enough, do not underestimate maxing this ability second. Wuju style scales terribly on levels; if you really want to make it scale, buy items. This in mind, early levels in Meditate results in an unbelievable amount of healing during the early game and makes Master Yi incredibly tanky.
E - Well, I already explained everything that makes Wuju style anywhere near interesting, what with the whole Double Strike trick, and how it makes Master Yi a deceptively good tank buster. A reiteration from earlier though; don't be afraid to attack tanks if you need to.
R - Because of how much this ability makes you faster than everybody else, I really can't emphasize how much you need to get used to being in Highlander. Literally everything in the game looks different when your mind wraps around the concept that "I am fast enough" or "I hit faster than everyone else". Once again, another concept that comes with experience, but my personal tip for you is simply trying to keep your mind calm while using this ability. It's too easy to get excited the moment you hit R, and your moves become sloppy because of this. Instead, focus on your basics: dodging CC with Alpha Strike and negating burst damage with Meditate.
, and although I know that I'm not the best with her, I'm definitely good enough to survive the rare top-lane game with her and have even started to take her jungling. Unfortunately, the nerf to her ultimate ruined her team fighting, I can handle most 1v2s and clean-ups, but any larger than that and I can't survive the fight or I have to drop out early and just resort to map-pressure by split-pushing and taking dragons. Especially so when we don't have a front-line tank to sponge their CC before I go in.
, and he seems to be a good replacement for (my beloved) Fiora. Looking at that Cowsep video had me inspired, because I never saw the mechanics behind what makes Yi such a monster before, and I want to learn Yi now. I'm not saying I'm trying to be like Cowsep (I doubt I'll ever be able to perform at that level, let alone with consistency), but I at least want to want to be capable with Yi.
