After the release of patch 12.5, Master Yi quickly became the center of the League of Legends community as this champion became overly powerful. Riot’s adjustment to Q – Alpha Strike allowing it to trigger on-hit effects drastically increased Master Yi’s damage output. It has been commonplace in recent days for this champion to “blow away” half of an opponent’s health with items like the Blade of the Ruined King and the Death’s Dance.
As a result, Master Yi rose to become an extremely powerful jungler with the highest win rate compared to other champions in the same role. In fact, this playstyle was so strong that some players even took Master Yi mid lane, and his dominance did not diminish at all. It’s not an exaggeration to say that in the early phase of patch 12.5, Master Yi was the most dominant champion in League of Legends, even though he was previously just “average”.
Clearly, Riot Games could not stand by and watch this character become unbalanced, so they released a hotfix to nerf Master Yi. Overall, the base damage of this swordsman decreased, and even Master Yi’s interaction with on-hit effect items was heavily nerfed. This requires Master Yi to rely on his auto-attacks to deal effective damage instead of solely using Q – Alpha Strike as before.
However, this nerf from Riot seems to have been too severe as all stats from win rate to pick/ban rates for Master Yi have plummeted after the aforementioned hotfix. Even at the Diamond rank, Master Yi’s win rate has “dropped to the ground” from 54% to just 40.94% as of March 6. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Master Yi has fallen to the “super weak” category in just one night.
In reality, many high-level players had anticipated this change, as Master Yi is fundamentally a very weak champion in the current meta. In terms of early-game fighting capability, Master Yi clearly struggles to compete with champions like Jarvan IV, Lee Sin, or Xin Zhao. For team fights, champions like Zac, Volibear, Viego, and Hecarim are clearly much more beneficial than Master Yi. The character’s playstyle, which focuses on farming, is somewhat “selfish” and does not fit the early fighting meta of League of Legends.
Therefore, Master Yi is only chosen when he is too strong and possesses incredible damage early on. When this champion’s numbers are brought back to a balanced threshold, the critical weaknesses in Master Yi’s gameplay will emerge and be fully exploited. Perhaps in the near future, players should refrain from using Master Yi to climb the ranks.