Hello fellow and/or want-to-be Yorick players. This is my first guide, so if i make a mistake or you have some input please leave a comment, I will try to look and notice feedback and, if possible, add in some tips and tricks or possible alternatives, that apply to the general topic of this guide.

If you wish to oppose my ideas then please leave a comment describing why you downvoted, and also i would like to suggest making your own guide after reading the excellent (and quite comical) "Making a Guide" Guide by jhoijhoi.

Yorick is a unigue champion in that his abilities all manifest in a ghoul, or in the case of his ultimate "R" ability a ghost of the selected teammate. He is often used as a AD (attack damage) Carry (damage dealer) which is not what i use him for, but is ultimately viable as a build for him. On that note i use Yorick as a more AD semi-tank, which is halfway between a AD Carry and a Tank (damage-mitigation specialist or damage absorber).

With my build Yorick becomes more "I'm going to outlast you," than he is "I'm going to kill you first." Others will disagree with me, I am fully aware of that but for my play-style and i'm sure for many other's play-style aswell, "beefy" is better than "deadly."

Pros
Beefy
Team-player
Very good Solo-top
Excellent Harrassment from the start
Good Ultimate
Not too many deaths
Can easily turns gankers back with more health missing than the ganked Yorick

Cons
Not a WHOLE LOT of damage at any time
Not necessarily tons of kills
Not much CC (crowd control)

Yorick is regularly seen as an AD Carry champion. However i find that in that regard he lacks potential as most other AD Carries can beat him in damage output and he would be excessively squishy. In my experience a beefy Yorick is far better than an AD Carry Yorick because if you play him smart you will often get more kills from sheer overconfidence in the enemy players and enough assists with those kills to get you fed more than a carry Yorick would likely get.

Now a beefy Yorick is all well and good but keep in mind you aren't doing as much damage so pick your opponents wisely. If there is a slow tanky Amumu in mid lane and a really heavy hitting but squishy Hecarim bottom lane helping their teemo push the lane, go kill the Hecarim and Teemo rather than the Amumu as the Amumu will likely get away before you can do more than half his health in damage to him, whereas the hecarim and teemo will lose a big chunk of their health from your ghoul spam alone and dont have much CC to stop you from chasing. And though the two are relatively heavy hitters remember you are beefy as hell and its not likely either will realize how beefy you are until one is dead and the other is half health (still this is assuming you're extremely fed... DO NOT attempt alone unless you are obnoxiously fed and the two carries are fairly far behind you).

The runes above are not required by any means. I like those runes as they help with defense mostly but the marks are still giving a bit of early damage.

I do not build 9 Greater Mark of Desolation because Yoricks Abilities scale off Attack Damage, so the 9 Greater Mark of Attack Damage tend to work better.

I build 3 Greater Quintessence of Health because it helps to have more health early game so that you can stay in your lane for a longer period of time.

I build 9 Greater Seal of Armor because like most champions Yorick gains armor as he levels and therefore has a fair amount late-game to start with, so i find it is better to build for early game in this regard.

I build 9 Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist because early-game not many champs are doing heavy magic damage, so therefore it is better to build for late-game with magic resist, not to mention Yorick doesn't gain magic resist every level so he will stay at a flat 30 the whole game without adding it on actively.

In this chapter I will explain my choices for my own personal build seen above. If you wish to read my opinions about alternative items please refer to the next chapter.

In my item build i looked for a few things in-particular...

20-25% Cooldown Reduction
Additional Mana
Plenty of Armor and Magic Resist
Some Additional Health
Plenty of Movement Speed
Attack Damage
Atleast One Active Effect

Due to a recent patch Yorick now has greater mana costs on his Omen of Pestilence, so that i had to rethink my build a bit as that is my main early-game harrass ability. To this end Doran's Ring came to mind due to its mana regen, once i started to think about it I quickly decided that it would be a nice choice because Omen of Pestilence also happens to be the ability that benefits from ability power, and a little extra health sealed the deal.

For boots (a primary part of almost every build) my personal preference is Boots of Swiftness because they are the fastest when in combat and Yorick is an excellent chaser to start with so why not build on that strength?

Frozen Heart is as near a perfect item for a beefy Yorick as you can get. Armor and the enemy attack speed reduction aura help against most solo tops (as most seem to be ad damage based champs)and add to that a tremendous boost to your mana pool and 20% cooldown reduction (about the amount you need to get all your ghouls to cooldown within a second or two of them dieing) and the only thing this item really lacks is attack damage which can easily be picked up from other sources.

Trinity Force is an excellent item for mostly any AD carry or Bruiser (a new term i learned for beefy AD champs). Tthough this item doesnt have a massive amount of anything, it does have a little bit of everything aswell as some really sweet unique passives.

On the other end of the defense spectrum from armor is magic resist, and as we have none so far, lets throw some in with Maw of Malmortius. This item covers our AP defense nicely and adds a bit of damage on top of that, making it an excellent item for Yorick in general.

Infinity Edge is the heavy hitting item in this build, it gives a massive boost to Yorick's damage, but provides nothing to his defenses or sustainability. This item should be built earlier or later depending on if you find yourself getting fed or not. A good way to tell wheither your fed or not is if you come back to base at around level ten or so and you find yourself with enough gold to buy B.F. Sword after you already bought Heart of Gold and Boots then you are likely getting pretty fed and should rush an Infinity Edge early and continue on with the rest of your build afterwards.

This is currently a work in progress. I only published to show a friend the items and such. Please don't vote yet, i will continue to add more chapters over the next few months.

10/2/2012 - Many changes including Masteries, Items, and Text-edits.