That’s right folks – we’re on YouTube. Each week I’ll be providing a video wrapup for the Champ of the Week along with my usual writeup. And now it’s time for shameless plugs: like the video, subscribe, feel free to drop comments. I promise I’ll be checking them.

Master Yi was an odd champion to kickoff the video spotlights, mostly because it can be so damn hard to dominate with him. If the planets don’t align just right, I end up doing pretty much what I show in the video. I get a decent number of kills but I die a lot too. I overextend. I play a little recklessly. You get the point. In a lot of ways, those mistakes are also where Yi’s magic lies. He can streak under a tower at mach 10, snag two kills, and get out. It’s rare, though, to be able to do that often.

Yi’s biggest problem right now is survivability. Meditate does give him a little boost, and really I love the way that skill is designed. It has no ridiculous passive stats like Garen’s Courage. It’s not a giant shield. It totally disables Yi while he’s doing it, but it’s an enormous bump to his survivability. It needs something, though. As I mentioned in the video, well over half the champions in the League have a way to interrupt Meditate and several of them have more than one.

Build
I take a Cloth Armor and 5 pots into the jungle, grabbing a long sword and another pot or two at my first recall. I try to stay out at that point until I have Madred’s Razor, then I’ll go for my rank one boots, finish Wriggles, then finish boots. I follow that with a Ghostblade, after which pretty much anything goes. If I’m not having survivability problems, I’ll take an IE or a Bloodthirster. If I need to stay a live a bit longer, it’s GA or Banshee’s Veil.

If I Could Change One Thing
If I could change one thing about Yi, I’d give him a CC Immunity during Meditate. I do think his healing would need to be reduced, as would the AP ratio. I don’t want to kill off AP Yi, but if he can’t be stopped in Meditate, short of bursting through the massive armor and MR buff, it can’t heal as much as it does currently. I think the change would offer him some very unique gameplay.

That does it for Master Yi. If you’re in the mood for a manic play experience, give him a shot. He’s not the most durable champion, though, so make sure your Flash is close at hand. This week’s Champ of the Week is Morgana, so be sure to check back for updates on her. I just lost my first game with her (out of four) and I’m not happy about it.

This is sort of a combination introduction and mid-week analysis post. I had so many long posts earlier this week that this just didn’t make it into the rotation. Without further ado, allow me to introduce this week’s Champ of the Week: Master Yi.

I’ve played Yi with the kind of analytical focus I use for the Champ of the Week series in the past. Back then, it was “The Great Yi Experiment,” during which I tried to assess his viability in ranked. This time around it’s a little more of the standard Champ of the Week fare, focusing on builds and strategies.

I’ll say this from my games so far – Yi really seems to do best out of the jungle. He can be decent in lane but he runs out of mana pretty quickly and prior to level six he doesn’t have any reliable methods for getting out of danger. His primary method of harassment also randomly instakills creeps, which makes it easy to end up pushed against a tower.

Yi’s jungle can be a little iffy, though. It’s very random, at least until you get a few ranks of Alpha Strike or a Wriggle’s. He can get low in the early levels, too, which is why I don’t usually play him against a Lee Sin or Nunu or any other invasive jungler. Once he gets that Wriggle’s, though, he’s easily one of the fast junglers in the game, which makes him a deadly mid-game ganker. I’ve had a lot of success piling on kills in the mid-game, which allows me to snowball to late.

Check back this weekend for the Master Yi Champ of the Week wrapup. In the meantime, leave your questions and suggestions in the comments.

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Within each recent patch cycle there have been skin releases that didn’t launch with the actual patch but became available at a later date. It looks like that trend will continue with some excellent looking skins for a few of my favorite damage dealers.

Master Yi, Shaco, and Mundo are all set to get some nice skins within our current patch cycle. The Yi is obviously an asian theme, but maybe someone can enlighten me on the specific reference (if there is one). Shaco’s getting a basic recolor. Mundo, though, is getting one of the coolest skins in the game. You may remember a thread a while back about Dr. Mundo and the various ways he ‘goes where he pleases.’ Remember Corporate Mundo? Running multinational corporation as he pleases? Yup, Corporate Mundo is on the way, and it looks like he’ll be throwing a cell phone from 1985.

No word on release date or RP cost for these, but you can bet I’ll be getting that Master Yi skin, probably once it goes on sale. It’s already my desktop background.

We’ve added a gallery function to the blog and are currently working out the kinks. Bear with me. It’s a much better way to display several images for a post, though.

I just realized that I wrote “As you can see from the screenshot I’ve been holding my own with him,” in my last post regarding Master Yi. The picture wasn’t a screenshot and instead was a picture of Chosen Master Yi. If that isn’t proof, I don’t know what is!

Anyway, I’ve updated the post, which you can find here, with screenshots for your amusement (no, I don’t want to talk about that Katarina game – thank god it was ranked 5v5 premade (not thank god for my poor teammates)).

It’s just a couple days after I first mentioned the great Yi experiment, but I’ve had the opportunity to play him in quite a few matches and I’m feeling a lot less twitchy and much more confident on the Fields of Justice. As you can see from the screenshot I’ve been holding my own with him, and he’s helped me rank up to almost hit 1500 ELO (just three…more…points!). I’m also starting to realize that Yi’s redesign has helped him a lot, and made him very sturdy, even with an AD build. You still really have to watch out for stuns, though. They will be the bane of your existence.

For a long time I thought Ghost was a Yi necessity, but I’m really coming around to Flash as a better alternative. It can help you avoid stuns, and once you have Yuomu’s, your Highlander/Yuomu combo will be as fast as most ghosted players. I’ve also stopped focusing on the Wuju buff so much because after the first rank the benefit is negligible compared to successive ranks of Meditate. For the most part that has worked well.

If you have other tips, I’d love to hear them. My build runs based on my farm. It’s almost always Madred’s Razor -> Yuomu’s unless my farm is unusually good, in which case I’ll jump straight to an Infinity. From that point I’ll go Stark’s or Last Whisper depending on my opponents’ armor stack, after which it’s just a matter of managing your incoming damage and trying to avoid stuns while working your way toward the enemy casters/carries.