With the arrival of Season 12, it is quite normal for some champions to possess outdated or overly simplistic skill sets in League of Legends. Of course, having simple abilities is beneficial as it helps new players quickly familiarize themselves with the game. However, it sometimes leads to several playstyles that are too “toxic” and cause significant discomfort for many players.
A prime example is the Crit Master Yi playstyle, which allows players to easily “clean up” kills and causes immense annoyance with the invisibility effect from Duskblade of Draktharr. Likely due to receiving too much negative feedback from players, the latest announcement from the champion development team stated that Riot Games would be giving Master Yi a slight rework. Looking at the changes below, it is clear that Riot aims to steer Master Yi towards a style focused on attack effects instead of crit.
As we have seen above, the biggest change in this rework is the Q ability – Alpha Strike, which will now apply attack effects when used. When combined with the E ability – Wuju Style, Master Yi can deal a significant amount of true damage each time he uses his skills. Additionally, this new effect synergizes incredibly well with items that provide attack effects such as Blade of the Ruined King, and Purple Daggers…
However, this rework indirectly heavily nerfs Master Yi’s crit playstyle as the interaction rate with AD has been significantly reduced. Moreover, crit items typically provide a substantial amount of cooldown reduction. Meanwhile, the new Q – Alpha Strike will experience minimal cooldown reduction if this champion has many cooldown points. In summary, both in terms of damage and benefits, the crit build clearly falls behind compared to the attack effect style.
In conclusion, this change by Riot will clarify the direction of Master Yi’s playstyle as the Q – Alpha Strike now supports the attack effect style exceptionally well. Of course, you can still build crit with Master Yi, but the effectiveness will drop significantly compared to before. We hope that these changes from Riot will help Master Yi become stronger and more suitable for modern League of Legends.