In recent years, Yuumi has likely been the champion that has caused Riot Games the most trouble in terms of balancing and adjustments. This champion once proved to be extremely powerful in the professional arena due to providing too many effects and the annoying “attach” mechanism. Riot’s solution was a complete rework of Yuumi in patch 13.5 of League of Legends.
However, after about 8 months since the rework, Yuumi still shows many “issues” in gameplay. In fact, the supposedly unbalanced aspects of this version of Yuumi have not been addressed. As a result, the League of Legends community cannot help but shake their heads in frustration and claim that Yuumi is the worst rework of the 2023 season.
Firstly, League of Legends players believe that the idea of making Yuumi an accessible champion friendly to new players is a poor concept. Champions like Garen and Soraka are designed to help new players understand the basic gameplay of League of Legends. Meanwhile, having Yuumi “attach” to allies does not help “newbies” get a better grasp of League of Legends at all.
Next, the execution of Yuumi’s rework has also been rated as a complete failure. Yuumi’s “Best Friend” mechanic now forces her to always be with the allied Marksman. In fact, the damage from Yuumi’s Q – “Prowling Projectile” even interacts with the critical strike chance of the “Best Friend”. As a result, Yuumi becomes much weaker if the teammate in the Bottom Lane is not a critical-strike Marksman. Of course, at that point, Riot can no longer put Yuumi in the hands of professional players. As noted in the article: “Riot has removed Yuumi from the professional environment with the aim of making this champion for new players or lower elo users.”
However, Yuumi continues to fail in normal ranked matches. As a result, Yuumi has become extremely weak at this point with a very low win rate. At the Gold rank and above, Yuumi only has a win rate of 47.89%, and this number drops to only 41.86% in Iron rank. This shows that even in the goal of making Yuumi friendly for new players and low ranks, Riot has also failed. The article also points out: “Yuumi is like Ivern or Singed in that she is a champion with unique skills of her own and will not help you improve anything other than mastering the skills that only Yuumi has.”
Therefore, the idea of adjusting Yuumi to be friendly to new players is a bad concept. In fact, this champion has been nerfed to the point of being too weak and unsuitable for both low-ranked players and professional players. The article also states: “Yuumi is not a champion that helps new players understand the basic systems of League of Legends. Low-ranked players cannot use Yuumi due to her very low win rate. Professional players also skip this character because Yuumi has been consistently nerfed. So what purpose is Yuumi serving?”.
In summary, due to the wrong decisions from Riot, Yuumi at this point has become an extremely weak champion after over 8 months of rework. In the upcoming 2024 season, Riot will implement significant adjustments to the overall gameplay of League of Legends. Perhaps they should also keep an eye on Yuumi and find a way to “rescue” this cat from its current “dire” state.