Hello everyone,

This is the first guide that I will be posting on Mobafire. As you can see the champion in question is Master Yi. I will try to cover everything that is necessary, if I happen to forget something feel free to inform me, the same goes for contructive criticism. The reason I chose Master Yi is because he is my favorite AD-Carry, and when he is played right he can be one of the most devastating forces in League Of Legends.

The guide will commence with the pros and cons of Yi, just as any other champion in the game he has his strengths and weaknesses. The goal here is to exploit his strenghts, and to minimize his weak spots. Combined with this I will explain a thing or two about his abilities.

After that I will deal with the runes, the masteries, and the summoner spells. These 3 factors are key to being succesful in the game. A perfect build with the wrong masteries will be far from as effective as the build with the correct ones.

I will also cover jungling with Yi, since this is after all a jungleguide. Right after this section the Skill sequence will be explained, and after this one the item build will be dealt with.

Eventually I will try to give tips about the gameplay, which is key. And I will end this guide with a short conclusion.

Master Yi has plenty of pros that give him the edge in the battlefield. He has a massive damage output, he's a great farmer as well as a great lanepusher. He is also very effective at destroying turrets as he is at backdooring if needed. On top of that you are one of the best chasers in the game while you can also avoid being ganked because of the very same reason.

However, just like any hero he unfortunately has weaknesses. Master Yi is vulnerable to crowd control or to stuns. A second con is that Yi doesn't have the tankyness to survive a full on attack by a lot of enemies, always keep this in mind.

Controlling the different aspects of his abilities is key to being a good Master Yi, just like it is with any other champion. Yi's abilities are :



Double Strike makes Master Yi strike twice every seventh attack. This is great for early game jungling but it is even better when you double strike one of their squishies. Your damage output will obviously be doubled and they will have no idea why. Unfortunately it is quite hard to control this passive. His high attack speed however does make controlling it more or less useless.



Alpha Strike is a jump skill that can reach up to 4 targets. The base damage is not that high but it is very important for jungling because of the chance of dealing 400 bonus damage to minions while performing Alpha Strike. The skill can also be abused to jump to enemies very fast.



Meditate is a healing skill, while channel-healing Yi gains bonus magic resist and armor. The way I see it this is his "most useless" skill, even though it can save your life more than you think. It is a great skill for becoming full health again in between skirmishes, or to survive those dreadful Ignites and DOT's.



Wuju Style gives a passive attack damage bonus up to 35 at level 5. You can active this skill to double that bonus, however while Wuju Style is on cooldown the passive bonus is not there neither. This skill gives you a very high damage output early game.



Highlander is the motherload of all ultimates. It gives you an insane amount of attack and movement speed. The first one can be used to kill while the second one can be both used to chase and flee. If Yi kills someone while Highlander is activated then the cooldown instantly refreshes, making him a viable keep 'em coming-champ.

Runes are a key element of jungling and of the game in general, this is why I will elaborate on my choice of runes.

Greater Quint of Desolation Greater Mark of Desolation Greater Seal of Defense

I have chosen the armor penetration runes because of the simple fact that you hit a lot harder. Without these Yi does significantly less damage. I have not chosen attack speed runes because you don't need them, the combination of Highlander and Youmuu's Ghostblade is more than enough for that. I didn't choose health runes neither because your jungling fully depends on alpha strike and health potions.

For the glyphs and seals I have chosen the armor and magic resistance per level runes. The reasoning behind this is that these runes will eventually save your life. All those time that you just lost that fight, or that you didn't get away because of that one last hit should now be over. I didn't pick dodge or cooldown runes because personally I'm not a dodge fan, and the cooldown-factor has already been covered in the abilities section.

The selection of my masteries will also be seen as not optimal by some people, but I believe this is the best combination for Master Yi.

I chose the 21 points on offense because of 2 reasons. The first one is that you want to hit as hard as possible, the second one is that your jungling depends on your Alpha Strike - Smite - Madred's Razors passive anyway.

The 9 points in utility explain themselves. You need the experience boost to be a succesful jungler, and the prolongued buffs are also very important.

The choice of summoner spells has always been something that I could never just decide as easy as I should. Smite is self explanatory but the second spellchoice can be debated.

I have chosen Ghost because combined with Highlander because it gives you a ticket out of hell freecard, while on the other hand it also leaves no chance for enemies to escape. A second spell I sometimes play with is Cleanse, because Yi is vulnerable to stuns and crowd control.

Ignite as first spell might also be an acceptable option, even though I never use it myself. Any other summonener spells than these 4 should not even be considered.

Now comes a more interesting part : How to jungle.

Jungling is a way to give your team more general experience, because besides the fact that you have the jungle to yourself there will also be a sololaner in your team. Your team as a whole will be stronger and on top of that you have better gank options.

My way of jungling is a bit slower than the way of others. The reason for this is that my ganks at level 6 are a lot stronger if I take a bit more time.

I start off with the following items :



The first junglecamp I raid is the one from the 2 gollems. I use my Smite as fast as possible combined with an Alpha Strike and a Health Potion. After that I go towards the 4 ghosts where I Alpha Strike & Wuju Style and use a Health Potion again. This Health Potion should preferable be working already before you start attacking. If you have terrible luck with your Alpha Strike and don't one-hit a single minion then this camp could be a problem. You should however never come close to dying. The third camp I visit is the one of the wolves, again you do the Alpha Strike - Wuju Style combination with a Health Potion. After this camp, where you just became level 3, you kill the two little minions near the blue buff. An Alpha Strike and Smite combination should cut it.

Right now you go back to base where you should have enough money for :



You repeat your previous route and you return again after the wolves. Right now you should be able to get :

+ an optional though recommended

You repeat the route once more but thise time you also take the blue buff. After taking this buff you go back to base once more to get your and potentially your . You will only be able to get the Wriggle's Lantern if you have already ganked somewhere, or if you had to take over someone's lane for a while. You should have only ganked at this point if the opportunity was just explicitly present, you should not take any risks yet.
Taking over someone's lane is a nice thing for a jungle, al be it only if it's mid or the sololane, do never bother covering for the dual lane since it will not benefit you as much. After buying these, hopefully, two items you should get your red buff and start ganking.

The reasoning behind the skill sequence is quite simple. You need the earlygame Alpha Strike to be able to jungle. After that you need as many Wuju's as you can get combined with your ulti. The Meditate ability should only be levelled if there are no other options.

We have arrived at the main chapter of this guide : The item build. The earlygame item sequence with all those health potions has already been explain above in the jungle section. Therefore I will not repeat myself. I will however justify my item build.



I get the Berserker's Greaves because they have a huge attack speed bonus for a cheap price. Some people get the Mercury Threads on Yi, and even though I understand their logic I do not support it at all. Your ulti saves you from slows and your Bansheess Veil should eventually save you from the devastating stuns.



This is your jungle item. The passive makes your jungling a lot easier while on top of that it gives you extra armor, damage, and lifesteal. Do not forget the second passive, warding tactical spots for free like The Dragon or Baron Nashor or even the opposing blue buff can win you games.



The Youmuu's completes the core of your build and is also your most important item. With this item you will have 51 armor penetration which will make you destroy squishies in a matter of seconds. As if that wasn't enough the Youmuu's also has an active, it gives you a ton of attack speed for 2 to 8 seconds, combined with a signifact movement speed boost. The active should be used in every single one on one, it absolutely destroys your opponent. You will not be raping tanks, although you should be able to take them down anyway, but you will be completely destroying any non-tank in the game.



I get the Banshee's Veil because of 3 reasons. It gives you more health and mana, which is always welcome. It gives you 50 magic resist which is also very welcome. But the main reason is obviously the spellshield which activates every 45 seconds, this is a livesaver ladies and gentlemen. The Banshee's Veil is generally the best item ingame, hands down.



This is self explanatory. The Bloodthirster gives you a massive attack damage bonus while it also gives you a huge amount of lifesteal. Getting the stacks up of this item is very important, dying after you have reached the maximum number of stacks is going to give you a headache though.



I partially get the Guardian Angel because of what I just wrote above, I want to protect my stacks with help of the revive. In general however the Guardian Angel gives you some more survivability.

Eventually you could replace your Wriggle's Lantern if the game takes long enough, which it shouldn't. Depending on how the game is going you should chose from these 6 items. Get the Frozen Mallet if they keep escaping you, which should already be impossible. The extra Bloodthirster or the Ifinity Edge should be bought when they are not coming close to killing you anyway, but you however could use another damage output boost.

The 3 defensive items should be bought if you have a hard time staying alive, depending on their team composition you should buy one of these.

The most effective way to play Master Yi is as a punisher. By this I mean that you should seek out and punish the enemies that keep overextending or that simply don't get any defensive items against you, or that are simply bad.

Your eye should be on the Mini-Map at all times, map awareness is very important for any jungler. If you were able to get some early kills going then you should start roaming wherever you want to. Pushing lanes, taking down turrets, scaring people off, outzoning people, while always keeping an eye on that Mini-Map.

As Master Yi you should never take risks. Just keep farming, pushing lanes and whatever, but do it while knowing you are safe. You always have the Highlander + Ghost + Youmuu's combination to get out of there like a missile rocket but you should not have to use that.

Just look at yourself as if you were the defensive midfielder of a footballteam. You overlook the playing field, you control it, you push when you can but never if it could backfire.

The conclusion is that Master Yi is awesome if played right, and that if you are here for the TLDR-version that you should scroll back up.

Thank you for reading.