The new Yorick is a tanky split pusher with a not so brilliant team-fight, but has 2 v 1 potential. He's classed as a fighter but behaves more like a juggernaut. With his ult, he can push lanes while taking other objectives. He benefits most from sticking to his lane, overrunning it with ghouls and drawing attention to his lane to take pressure off his teammates. This makes him stressful to play, but he opens the gate to let his team to group and co-ordinate. Long story short: push like a **********er, 1v3 everyone, hope no one ships him with the maiden of mist.

OK, so when I created this guide it was less of a "THIS OP PLAY IT" but more of a devil's advocate on how to build Yorick, advocating Sterak's gage's power on Juggernauts that's rarely taken advantage of. Then I kinda... completely forgot about this guide. Several months later I came back to Mobafire to draft some guides and well tits. This guide had over 30k views.

In that time I'd played a fair amount more of Yorick, as well as getting a better understanding of minion wave management and lane mechanics. During this time I began to try rush Tri-force on Yorick with Sterak's after. Personally, I think that since it's less of a top lane carry meta with more tanks and the like running about, Yorick can reach tri-force very safely. I still maintain Sterak's is a core item on him, but honestly the CDR is too good to turn my nose up at.

Turns out I'm a dumb *** and BC is procced by his ghouls, when I wrote the guide I mixed it up a bit with Frozen Mallet because I am dumb dumb. I recommend this item wholehearted against champions such as Malphite and Poppy, but I still recommend buying a sheen first unless it's clear they're rushing armour before bami's in which case consider buying phage first to keep up with them as you proc the Maiden's magic damage

Late game, yup, probably. Early game, no. Early game the Sheen proc is more valuable and Tiamat can be a bit of a pain if you're trying to set up graves. By no means a bad item, but a little more niche. Perhaps against champions with stronger push. Later on split pushing is significantly more difficult, so being able to one shot a wave with a TH proc is very valuable indeed. Note, please do not buy Tiamat against Nasus. You need to hit level 4-5 against him and freeze. Tiamat makes freezing significantly harder since every last hit pushes back a bit.

Because it's gud. Let's say you're having a good game and can buy both Sterak's and Tri force at level 11. You have 100 base AD. Triforce would convert this into an extra 200 damage on a Q auto. With Sterak's, you're getting an extra 25 damage from your base auto, 50 damage extra on the sheen proc, and 10 damage from your Q scaling plus 8 AD onto your minions along with 400 health. It might not be gold efficient as a defensive item, but as an offensive item it's not bad. Also I think this item is more effective on champs that prefer to split push since if you're fighting 2 champions as opposed to 5, your shield might be worth **** especially if they **** up and someone wastes an ult on the shield.

You know that quiet guy back in school who wouldn't say a word to anyone, then on the last day delivers a burn so smacktastic it broke all the thermometers in a 12 mile radius? That's Yorick.
You spend the early game digging graves, taking names, making tombstones for the names and then delivering moving eulogies for said names, because you dunked their ***es. You take few trades, only slipping the odd Q auto onto your lane opponent if they go in for a minion while Grasp is up. Once you have 3-4 graves, you summon the death midgets and Throw an E out. That's the standard trading combination. You don't necessarily have to save the graves until a trade, you can do it if you simply want to push the lane and have more of an aggressive stance against a weaker laner. Yorick's pushing power early is insane, so be sure to ward constantly and get dem minions under turret.
However, what makes Yorick truly scary is actually his most common starting item. Corrupting potion. Your ghouls proc said potion, thus if the enemy laner has wasted their wave clear, say a Riven wasted her abilities to spaghetti your wave, you can do a silly amount of damage. If you get this off at level 2 and keep the burn up the whole trade, that's an extra 60 damage.
Level 6, your in depends on one ability. W. If they have an auto reset or dash, they need to be either low before your all in or you need extra CC from your jungler. One use to consider against champions with dashes is to place it behind them so they have to move around it.

Mid game you should think about pushing for realsies with your ult. Your focus should be shoving people out of lane, or looking to TP if your teammates get a kill or two in lane but need someone to push. Obviously look to TP anyway for them sweet sweet TP ganks, but only do it if you can take a turret afterwards. Otherwise, by the time you traipse back to lane you'll have lost a lot of experience and CS for very little reward. If you take the top lane outer turret, don't be afraid to roam if you think you can't 1 v 2 or 3, even with your undead homies. Did I use that word right? 'Homies'? But I digest. Normally after top turret you should group with the mid laner and Jungler and move to take the tier 1 mid turret.

It's aight. If you've been staying in lane a lot you should be the first to hit level 16 with probably around 3000 health. Your maiden, in turn, should have 4000-ish health. Put two and two together you've got a split pushing monster that should be able to beat pretty much any sustained fighter. ADC's like Vayne will out DPS you, but the good news is that if they're fighting you, they're not in a team-fight. Also if your bot lane did their job well and crushed lane, you can sometimes two shot squishier champs at later levels.. PLEASE NOTE! YOU ARE A SPLIT PUSHING CHAMP, BUT THAT DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD IGNORE IMPORTANT TEAMFIGHTS. DON'T JOIN IF YOU CAN TAKE AN INHIB TURRET OR TWO, BUT UNLESS YOU CAN GET SOMETHING REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT, DON'T IGNORE YOUR TEAM. SORRY FOR CAPS LOCK I CAN'T STOP PLEASE SEND HELP.

Please note I'm not an expert on gold efficiency or item builds, but I do often consider this kind of stuff in game. Seriously, if you play tanks at least dabble in optimisation. This is a breakdown on why Triforce is both a must-buy but also has a ****ty side people should keep in mind.

Here's the skinny. You're 'losing' over a quarter of the gold you sinking into this item. You see, one of the reasons Triforce is amazing on Jax and Irelia is less about the CDR but the attack speed. 40% AS is a significant amount. Shame that Yorick don't give two ***** about attack speed.

Before editing, there was a paragraph basically saying that the AS speed buff on Triforce a while back wasn't worth much to Yorick since it doesn't affect his damage that much. This is because said damage mainly comes from Sheen procs and bonus damage from attacking the Maiden's target, which in turn can only be procced every 2 seconds.

40% AS is worth 1000 gold. Most champions that buy Trinity force such as Jax and Irelia do so well with it because they can take advantage of every stat and passive effect. Irelia's W benefits greatly from the AS and Jax... is Jax. Thus Yorick can be considered to be at a 1000 gold disadvantage, whilst gaining some of it back via his abnormally high base AD. This is one of the reasons I highly recommend Sterak's as a second item since it amplifies this advantage even further (60 extra damage).
However, this also means his damage relies on his CDR, since Q is your main form of activating this damage due to W and E being valuable to set up plays and should be used carefully. Thus compared to other options, Trinity Force is probably the best first item on him despite some element of gold inefficiency.

A comment that has since disappeared to me brought up Iceborn gauntlet, which I thank them for since it's an item that deserves to be talked about.
Iceborn gauntlet is basically an earlier power spike for duelists with late game utility but at the trade off of less damage mid game. Personally, I think the spike is too early since your Base AD takes a while to ramp up. Level 1 your base AD is very average and continues to be for a fair while. I can also see it falling off when your kit is at its strongest. Most champions that build this as a first or second item retain its utility to provide extra CC in a teamfight or to grind down opponents. You don't really have much of a teamfight since you don't have a large amount of CC compared to a normal tank, thus you won't see its benefits. However, I do see a niche use for it.
I feel that in a match up against very tanky top laners who can't really kill you, but are too tanky to kill alone. In this case it's a viable item when combined with your ult. By slowing them consistently proc your Ultimate's %HP damage, you can grind them down. One problem with this though is that most tanks I can envision this being viable against IE Malphite or Nautilus do magic damage, wasting the armour you've bought. Personally I prefer farming patiently to get Tri force and black cleaver, either one first though Sheen, BC, Triforce is probably most effective. It's a little more gank friendly and still provides teamfight potential.
Tl;dr not great but has its uses. Not bad for grinding tanks down but your damage will take a big hit ~100 per sheen proc mid game.

First, be smart with your W. You don't have to get someone in the middle of it to be effective. If you're running to tower, run close to the inner wall and place it where you're standing. Unless they're on top of you, they'll have to go around, use at least two dashes, or auto it twice buying you a second at low levels. If you're in the jungle, you can use it to block passageways and even **** up people's auto pathing. It's not as impactful as an Anivia wall, but hot damn can it get the job done.

Second, only let your maiden loose to push a lane solo if you're doing something that's important, or gives the maiden time to take a tower while you distract them.

Third, soloing Rift Herald probably isn't a good idea if you don't have a vision ward to clear pit/ the top laner is a live. It's more viable with the 7.9 update herald due to the potential reward, but still do it with caution.

Fourth, your little people (see, totally pc) can apply life steal and corrupting potion's burn damage. Life steal is less useful but might be fun to try, but if you take corrupting potion you can heal up and apply the effect without having to trade.

Recently I did a little testing with manamune on Yorick and personally, I feel that if a few conditions are satisfied, it's a very good purchase on Yorick.
1. Going equal or better against another laner that doesn't scale well into the late game.
2. In a highsustain lane where you can farm safely under tower with a good understanding of wave mechanics
3. Another tank to be more of a frontline come late game.
4. Plan to be pushing like a mofo until 30 mins or so.
5. Most importantly, ARE YOU ABLE TO DELAY SHEEN COMFORTABLY?

At around level 14 you should have roughly 800 mana. Assuming Manamune is stacked, this gives you an extra 1000, totalling it to 1800. This is gives 36 mana based AD, totalling it to 61 AD. Not staggering, but this is an item you can scale up very quickly with little issue if the conditions listed above are met. It's an odd item. It's both kinda snowbally since if you're winning lane even with an inefficient Manamune, things are only going to get harder for the other laner, whilst if you're losing it's a good insurance policy. Still rush Trinity, but if you're confident enough to pick up a tear you have my blessing.

This update has adjusted Sterak's gage to be way more of an offensive item on Yorick. I still recommend it as a second/third item, but please note overall the shield will be a bit less unless you're building a very 'meaty' build IE BC, Sterak's, Titanic etc. Speaking of which, the priority of BC will most likely jump up a bit in the advent of the adaptive helm and the resistance based meta we'll be entering. AH will reduce the damage from your Q significantly so if you're against some nutter who rushes it try to adjust your build to take some reliance off it.
However, that ain't the big news. Remember how when Yorick was reworked people made a big deal about soloing rift herald but no one gave a ****? Now is the time to give a ****.
Right now all champions can solo the herald due to how slow its attack pattern is. This is a wee bit OP since after getting a solo kill, if the enemy jungler is bot then it can be taken easy peasy to guarantee top turret first. This is either a bug or OP so Riot will most likely change this regardless. You know who don't give a ****? Yorick. This is a dream change to herald for him. Getting a solo kill or forcing them to back at half health while ulti is still up should now guarantee top lane turret for you. Happy pokemon training.

ZZ'rot is a strong item on champions such as singed, push Nasus or Shen. The former 2 can clear waves easily and rely on it to deal the majority of damage to the turrets whilst the champion proxy farms. Shen can uses this item well due to his insane map presence and can set it up at low risk to his team.
I won't say this is a weak item on Yorick, it really isn't. He can take turrets very quickly in the right circumstances with it. However, building it early detracts from his duelling power and his kit naturally lets him push. Each match you have to ask yourself, is it worth buying this for extra push or could the gold be spent better to win more effectively. If their team is all AD, is it worth wasting almost 1000 gold on magic resist?
It's all up to you but remember, it's only semi core. Yorick can function without it.

In previous versions I had sunfire cape as a follow up item. Even in its previous incarnation I should not have recommended it. The damage and survivability you get for its cost just isn't that good for Yorick's kit. Even a small amount of AD goes a long way on Yorick. Early to mid game (when sunfire is most worth buying as an offensive option) you're sacrificing a lot of damage for the more defensive item when compared to Triforce, Sterak's or even Titanic. You're making it way harder for yourself to push the other laner out to buy time for your maiden, especially now its champion damage got nerfed. Honestly now its a bit ****.
As for Gargoyle, it's an item designed for High cc champs to gain almost invulnerability at the cost of your base damage. Yorick does not have boatloads of CC. Even if you were never going to use the active (basically wasting gold) there's way better options. ZZ'rot gives a similar stat line but way more friendly to his kit and more uses. Gargoyle might have a place once I've tested to see if the damage reduction affects the maiden/ghouls, but I strongly suspect it will.

Here's the tl;dr. Play safe in lane, build yourself up then surprise the **** out of people when they underestimate what your little bastards can do. Put so much pressure on top that you take their jungler and possibly mid laner out of the equation so your team can recover or take objectives. Make it so that you can't be ignored because if their 0/4/0 Riven leaves top, you're going to take a turret. Only when you destroy their inhibitor will they realise:

They should not have forgotten Yorick Mori.