Master Yi Build Guide by DarkPercy

Intro

Hey, welcome to my Master Yi Guide(s) in which I will show you how to play both Ability Power Master Yi AND Attack Damage Master Yi. This guide is about AD Yi and the other one is about AP Yi. I hope you'll enjoy my guides :D!

MY AP YI GUIDE: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/master-yi-and-his-dark-sides-ap-128998

Intro (AD Yi)

^ Sexy Skin ^

Master Yi is a badass melee AD carry/Assassin. Killing things is what does best. He can outrun nearly anyone AND still deal amazing amounts of damage.

If you came here for the ''I'm kinda new to this game :3'' build, click here!

Pros/Cons

Master Yi's strengths:

• Has extremely high damage output
• High mobility
• Can snowball out of control easily
• One of the most efficient split pushers
• Farms well
• Pretty much the best champion to start playing the game with (easy to learn, extremely powerful at low levels/elo)

Master Yi's Weaknesses:

• Brings no utility at all for teamfights (No CC)
• Needs to be in melee range to be of any use
• Sucks in big teamfights (unless very very fed)
• Sometimes can have Mana issues (if you gave blue)
• Needs to take a lot of farm to be effective (Less farm left for your allies)

Runes

For Marks you want 9 Attack Speed Marks. They will give the best damage output for early game jungling and ganks. They also give you the best damage increase against towers.


9 Armor penetration are also a great choice. You will be a little weaker early game but a little stronger against champions late game.

Armor Seals are a must-have on junglers. They will make a huge difference.

Magic Resist per level Glyphs are a great pick because this build doesn't include much magic resistance.

Attack Speed Glyphs are the best offensive Glyphs for Master Yi if you are looking for that extra little ''#yolo'' effect. Scaling Magic Resist is safer.

After calculations I have come to the conclusion that AS Quints are just better for Master Yi. They greatly help your early game and they will make you have an easy time jungling. Armor Pen Quints are acceptable for the same reasons as Armor Penetration Marks.

Summoner Spells

Best choices:

Smite is a must-have on all junglers. With smite you will: Jungle Faster Will be able to secure your buffs/dragons/barons (make sure that YOU will kill them) Steal the enemy's buffs/dragons/barons Be able to counter-Jungle (steal the enemy jungle quickly)

Exhaust: Is great on Yi because it helps his lack of CC for ganks. It's especially good because it will also let his teammates catch the enemy. Exhaust is also very good to make sure you win most 1v1 fights. However, Flash will save your life much more often.

Flash: Why Flash is good:

• It will help you chase. If you already used your Alpha Strike and you need to get closer to finish the enemy, Flash is always there for you.
• It allows you to towerdive with ease. Simply Flash away from tower after killing an enemy under a tower.
• It helps to catch up enemies in general, 90% of the champions take flash, if they flash over the wall, you'll want too follow them too...
• It will let you escape very dangerous situations obviously. It will save your life very often.

Teleport: Some will consider this summoner spell as a part of Master Yi himself. It's amazing for split pushing. It will allow you to destroy towers when the enemy team isn't expecting it or to teleport into a teamfight right after you pushed a lane. It is also possible to get away from an enemy with this. It needs to be used very wisely (you need to wait until the enemy can't disrupt your Teleport with hard CC).

With proper warding, you can also Teleport on a ward in a lane bush to gank the lane with the element of surprise! This requires your allies to buy and correctly place the wards though. If you want to do this, you need to be looking at your lanes very often to see if a fight is going on. If you know you can Teleport in and make a difference, then do it.


''Not really'' choices:

Cleanse: Can be an epic summoner spell on Master Yi. One his greatest weaknesses is Crowd Control and this solve this problem a little bit. However, other summoner spells are more gamechanging because they will be more useful more often.

Ghost: Not necessary on Yi, he already moves fast enough. Also, Ghost will not allow you to jump over walls. If you want a summoner spell for chasing, take Exhaust or Flash....

''Just No.'' choices:

...Pretty much every other summoner spell.

Masteries

Summoner's Wrath : That's for improved Exhaust. Obviously don't take it if you didn't take Exhaust.
Fury : only 1 point is needed to get access to the next row.
Butcher : Since you will be killing jungle monsters and minions for almost the entire game, this mastery is really good. Better than +2% Attack Speed.

Deadliness : This is one of the things that help Yi deal so much damage late game.
Destruction : Very valuable mastery for a split pushing Master Yi. You will take down towers even faster! I believe it is stronger than +1% Attack Speed or +0.67% damage.

Weapon Expertise : Such a good mastery. You HAVE to get this.
Havoc : An okay mastery. It's pretty good late game but it's not amazing. Only 2 points needed to go to the next row.

Brute Force : Really good for early game jungling and ganks.
Lethality : This will make your crit significantly stronger. Very nice damage increase once you get some crit chance.

Sunder : That's also an extremely good mastery. Really good all game long. Every extra bit of damage counts.
Frenzy : I feel like this mastery isn't used at its maximum unless you are building glass cannon, but it's still worth taking even if you only have little crit chance.

Executioner : Obviously that 21th point is really powerful. It helps to kill things, which is something Master Yi likes to do a lot :P.

Summoner's Resolve : There's no reason not to get this. The extra money you get every time you use smite adds up really quickly. Very good mastery.

Durability : Is just too good to pass up. You're going to want the full 4 points in this. It helps this build's lack of defense.

Hardiness : I get this over Tough Skin and Bladed Armor because Flat Armor will not only reduce the damage you take from jungle monsters, it will reduce the damage you take from Monsters, Minions, enemy champions and even enemy towers. Also, since Master Yi kills jungle camps so fast, he will barely make use of the Bladed Armor mastery.

Safeguard : (less damage taken from towers). I take this over Veteran's Scars because of personal preference. Master Yi will get shot by towers quite often and it really hurts his low HP pool. Ganks usually end up being towerdives because of Yi's lack of CC. This mastery helps to make sure you don't get killed by the towers. Also, when backdooring towers (literally going 1v1 against a tower), this mastery becomes very powerful.
''Shouldn't I be going 21 points into defense like this other guy said?''
Yes it can work but with this build, a high-damage splitpushing build, it is not as effective as 21 points into offense.

Starting Items

Standard Items

Other Items

Black Cleaver
This item doesn't fit Master Yi. He will rarely ever get full stacks on an enemy and, even if he does, other items give him more damage. This item is much more powerful on AD casters.

Mercurial Scimitar
To get if Crowd Control (such as Suppression) is giving you a lot of trouble. Also good if the enemy has tons of magic damage and CC.
The Bloodthirster
Sell your Wriggle's Lantern for this item if your build is full and you have extra money.
Blade of the Ruined King:
Nope. Frozen Mallet or red buff already gives you a slow, Master Yi already runs fast enough, Blade of the Ruined King's passive is useless/uneffective on towers and minions, Master Yi gets more damage out of DPS items that focus more on big amounts of AS, AS and crit chance. It's still a good item don't get me wrong but if you play Yi the way I do, this item won't do much good for you.
Ravenous Hydra
I don't recommend to get this item on Master Yi most of the time because to make the best use of it you have to hit multiple enemy champions at once, and with Master Yi your goal should be to fight isolated targets so... If you go where there are many enemies you will get wrecked.
Some may argue that this item is good because it helps to push, but the extra damage really isn't necessary at all. This item is also very expensive.
Warmog's Armor
You CAN get this item INSTEAD of Frozen Mallet if you feel like you're not going to need the slow from Frozen Mallet. This item is pretty Overpowered at the moment and gives a freaking TON of survivability. I really don't recommend getting Frozen Mallet AND Warmog's Armor at the same time on Master Yi. It's way too expensive and it will make you deal no damage.
Atma's Impaler
Another possibility. I would only recommend getting this item if you got Warmog's Armor because otherwise you will not have enough Health to make this item worth its cost. Really good item if you need damage AND armor. Be careful though, Warmog's Armor + Atma's Impaler is a very expensive combo and will take a lot of time to complete, but once it's complete, it will be worth it. You should consider getting Elixir of Fortitude after finishing this item.
Statikk Shiv
This is one hell of a weird item. I feel like it has potential on Master Yi but I don't know if it's actually worth buying. You could maybe get it instead of Zephyr if you wanted more damage. The only thing that bothers me about it is that the lightning effect deals magic damage... Needs more testing but right now I feel like Zephyr is better for movespeed/defense and Phantom Dancer is better for damage.
Guardian Angel
This item can be nice to have if you want a (relatively) cheap defensive item. However, other defensive items such as Frozen Mallet and/or Zephyr can do a really good job already. Also, if you're not gonna go for one of the two items I just mentioned, you should probably aim for Warmog's Armor instead because it's pretty OP at the moment. (HP > Resistances)

Ability Sequence and Explanation

Master Yi strikes twice every 7th attack.

A free steroid right at level one. It scales with your autoattacks so it is good early and late game. This is one of the reasons why attack speed is so good on Master Yi. Other than there not much to say about this one.


Master Yi leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 (+100% of ability power) magic damage to each enemy with a 50% chance to deal 260 / 320 / 380 / 440 / 500 bonus magic damage to minions.

This ability makes Master Yi a good jungler. Only get this ability first if you are starting your jungle alone. Otherwise you can lose experience to your allies if they stand too close to you.

Max it first because it will make you jungle much much much faster than if you maxed Wuju Style first. It also gives you more front loaded damage than Wuju Style, which really is better for ganking. In terms of sustained damage, Wuju Style will give more damage than Alpha Strike after about 6 autoattacks but that's rarely going to happen before level 13.

When ganking, try not to use Alpha Strike right away, make use of your element of surprise, run up to your enemy to autoattack him. If possible, try to use Alpha Strike only after your enemy has used Flash. You will catch him again and hopefully kill him!


Master Yi channels, restoring 28 / 56 / 84 / 112 / 140 (+40% of ability power) health every second for 5 seconds for a total of 200 / 350 / 500 / 650 / 800 (+200% of ability power) health. While channeling, Master Yi gains 100 / 150 / 200 / 250 / 300 armor and magic resistance.

Yes I take this ability at level 4 because it's a good sustain ability and it is almost always useful early. Especially since it's recent buff, it's really worth taking. It can sometimes save your life. It's more valuable than +5 AD in my opinion.

Late game, if you're getting focused, make sure they've used their hard CC, then use this ability to become a tank with 400+ Armor and Magic resist. Waste the enemy's time. You can also tank towers for a while with this ability.



Passive: Increases physical damage by 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 35.

Active: Master Yi can activate this ability to double its effectiveness for 10 seconds, but this removes the passive bonus until Wuju Style becomes available again.

When you get multiple kills, the cooldown refreshes which means that you will get both the previously activated Wuju Style bonus (+70 AD), AND the passive bonus (+35 AD) from the new refreshed Wuju Style.

''Then if I activate it again, will I get 2 times +70 AD?''. The answer is: No! Actually, if you activate the new Wuju Style that you got from killing someone, you will lose the passive and gain no active since you already have the old one. That means you will LOSE 35 AD!

So, when you activate Wuju Style and get a kill with your ult activated, DO NOT activate Wuju Style again, you will lose AD!



Increases Master Yi's movement speed by 40% and Attack Speed by 40 / 60 / 80%, and he becomes immune to all slowing effects for 6 / 9 / 12 seconds. Additionally, killing a champion refreshes all of Master Yi's cooldowns. (Assists reduce half of the base cooldown amount.)

Do not be afraid to use this ultimate everytime you need it. Really, to kill a tower, kill a dragon quickly and to obviously, kill an enemy. The cooldown is very very low. Also, if you kill an enemy champion, the cooldown is instantly refreshed so... just use it.

Gameplay + Jungling (Update incoming)

I really love Stonewall008. He's a great player and a great inspiration for everyone to jungle. I think his Jungle Yi video is pretty amazing and you should watch it now:

So basically the new route for season 3 is

1. Wolves
2. Blue Golem
3. Wraiths
4. Double Golems
5. Red Buff
6. Wraiths again
7. Gank a lane or recall.


If your teammates are nice, you can ask them to help you a lot for Wolves and Blue so you won't need to use Smite to kill the blue buff. If this happens, you can go right to the red buff to kill it. After killing red, you will be level 3, high on health and ready to gank with double buffs. This works amazingly well if your laner has CC/Gapcloser (and if he has both it's a guaranteed kill).

You can also do this:

Wraiths -> Red buff (smiteless because of your nice team) -> Blue Buff -> Gank Top Lane

If you are playing on the blue team (bottom left one).




First, make sure your gank will be worth the time used. Yi is very farm reliant and cannot waste much time. Unless the enemy really has very little HP left or if your laner has tons of Crowd Control, don't gank without Red Buff. You will Alpha Strike and autoattack the enemy once or twice, then the enemy will simply run away and you will waste your time. When you gank, try to make sure you will either kill the enemy or at least make him recall so he loses experience/gold.

Second, don't gank if you are too low on HP, even if your laner is crying for a gank. It is extremely humiliating to die to an enemy that you were trying to gank and to give them double buffs. You would feel stupid. Be especially careful about this when ganking middle lane since AP champions can burst hard...

Third, try asking your teammate if they know where the enemy wards are (so you can avoid them). If you walk on an enemy ward, the enemy will just back off and you will waste your time.

When you are going to gank, PING the enemy you are going to gank (multiple times if needed!). If your ally still doesn't get that you are ganking, then simply type ''Ganking X lane'' in the chat. Make sure your laner knows you are coming. Many ganks fail everyday because they are not well planned.

If your ally is a little smart, he will bait the enemy, he will start fighting him. When the enemy has used his spells, join the fight and clean him up!

If your ally insists that you initiate the fight because of some reason, then you have no choice. Run to the enemy with your ultimate and start hitting him. He will very probably Flash away and THAT's when you are going to use Alpha Strike on him to catch up. Then try finishing him!

You should definitely move between attacks if you are able to do that.

If you know the enemy has a ward somewhere, then try to find a way to gank the lane without being seen by the Sight Ward.

There are many different ways to gank lanes:

Coming Soon :3!



You will do nearly the exact same thing that you did Early game except you jungle faster, your ganks are deadlier and you have to start controlling dragon.

Give your AP Carry the blue buff if he needs it. It's really worth it and Master Yi usually isn't too mana dependant. Don't activate Wuju Style to jungle at this point. It's a waste of mana and sometimes it will reduce your overall damage because of the cooldown.

Get a Vision Ward if you want to camp a lane/clear dragon enemy vison. It can be very helpful.

You and your team should always watch dragon to control it when it's up. Please don't underestimate Dragon's value. It gives every member 200 gold and a bunch of experience. 200x5=1000 global gold. That's a little more than 3 champion kills!

Notice how I said ''Control Dragon''? Sometimes it is best NOT to try to kill dragon because the enemy team can gank you, steal dragon and kill your team... That's not good at all... If you want dragon, make sure the enemy team is not MIA (missing in action). Ward obvious paths to dragon, make sure your team is there and most importantly, make sure Smite is up so you can finish off dragon with it without any fear of losing it.

If you can't get dragon, simply defend it and deny the enemy team dragon.




Funny video :3

Since Master Yi usually sucks in teamfights, what you want to do is push the **** out of everything that is on the map. Master Yi can easily push a lane and destroy towers really fast. What's better is that he's also great at 1v1 (if the enemy team sends someone to stop you) AND that he can run faster than a racing car (if the whole enemy team is coming to stop you from pushing).

When doing this, make sure you don't die too much. It's okay to die once or twice to kill an inhibitor or a nexus tower... but don't be a non-stop pushing bot. That's too easy to counter and not effective at all because the enemy team will become so fed they will destroy your team and anyone will beat you 1v1.

However, if Baron is up and the enemy team is not anywhere to be seen on the map, you should really stick with your team and try to contest baron.

If you see that your pushing attempts are not working at all, don't waste you and your team's time, stay with your team.



These are tough for Master Yi. He is not an initiator, he has no utility, no crowd control. All you can do is deal damage and most importantly, stay alive.

It may seem funny at first glance but staying alive is one of the only things you have to worry about. If you are low on HP... just run away or Flash away. Try not to feed.

Don't engage teamfights that you will inevitably lose. If your ally goes 1v5, just don't try to go with him to ''help him''. One death is better than two deaths.

With this build, you are an assassin. You die fast but you can kill enemies fast as well. Your goal is to deal as much damage as you can possible do. In order to do that, you must not die because... well you can't attack when you're dead.

All you can do is use Alpha Strike on an isolated enemy, activate Wuju Style, Highlander, Youmuu's Ghostblade, and right click that target. If possible, try to kill the most dangerous enemy on enemy team.

If you see that the enemy squishies are way too well protected because their support/tanks are doing their job of peeling extremely well, just try to kill another enemy. Basically, if you jump on the enemy carry just to get stunned and killed in a second, it's not good. So yeah, if the enemies carries are too well protected, most of the time the best thing to do is to kill the enemies that are trying to kill YOUR carries, while not being in the enemy carry's range. Yeah it's not easy to do at all.

In the best scenario possible, you would aim for an enemy ranged AD carry that doesn't have anyone to protect him/her. This happens a lot in low elo/low levels.

Jungling Tips

It is a great idea to note when Blue/Red buffs or Dragons/Barons will spawn back. That way you can make sure you will get it first. For example, Blue buff usually dies at 2:00. That means it will come back at around 7:00. You can ward the enemy jungle and go at the enemy blue at 7:00 to steal for example.

Here are the jungle respawn times:

Wraiths - 50 seconds
Wolves and Golems - 1 minute
Red Lizards and Blue golem - 5 minutes
Dragon - 6 minutes
Baron Nashor - 7 minutes

Another tip: When you kill Dragon or Baron, look at the current time, add 6 or 7 minutes to that time (depending on what you just killed) and type in chat. That way you can scroll up in the chat box to see when it's gonna come back. Your team will be able to get ready to get it again/ambush the enemy. :)



-Move between attacks when you gank. Here is a video about moving and attacking:

This will allow you to get more autoattacks off on enemies. Giving you sometimes 2 times more damage when ganking.... This tip is actually very very good.



-Use Alpha Strike right before someone flashes away, it will make you follow them no matter how far they go.

Relatively New Player: Master Yi

This section is for people that are not level 30 yet :D

Master Yi is a great champion to start playing the game with! He is pretty easy to play and he is overly strong when people don't know how to play against him. He deals TONS of damage and usually can easily get a LOT of kills if played correctly.


Items:

Starting items:
Boots of Speed + 3 Health Potions
+ 3

This is great early game to chase/escape from anyone. The HP pots are nice to have too.

Vampiric Scepter
This should be your first goal. The lifesteal will give you health back when you attack minions, which will help you to stay in lane longer to get higher levels and more gold :D.
Zeal
It's easy to build and it gives nice stats for early game for very little gold.

Berserker's Greaves
Very Cheap boots that will make your damage and movement speed very high early game.

Youmuu's Ghostblade
Very easy to build as well because of the cheap components. Youmuu's Ghostblade is Master Yi's favorite item because it gives him a freaking LOT of damage. Don't forget to activate the item to run and attack faster! You can press on the number on your keyboard that corresponds to Youmuu's spot in your inventory. Or you can just click on it in your inventory to activate it. If you always forget to activate this item, just skip it.
Phantom Dancer
More damage and movement speed. At this point you can just run faster than anyone very easily. Even though this item is very nice to have, it isn't always necessary to have.
Bloodthirster
Make use of all your attack speed and crit chance by getting AD and lifesteal. Upgrade your Vampiric Scepter to this and you will be able to gain all your health back simply by autoattacking a few times.
Frozen Mallet
If you've made it this far, you probably need to build some defense to make sure the enemy mages can't kill you instantly. Yi is very squishy and will get focused late game. Frozen Mallet's bonus Health will help you while still giving you some damage and an awesome passive that will make your enemies unable to go anywhere. (This helps your team to chase too)
Infinity Edge
The ultimate damage item. Very expensive but very strong. After getting this, if your enemies don't have too much Armor, you can easily do 1000 damage critical hits very often.
Last Whisper
If you didn't get Youmuu's Ghostblade or Phantom Dancer, you can get Last Whisper instead. Only get it you need it to counter an enemy's high armor. If you see many Thornmails on the enemy team, I really suggest you take Last Whisper and The Bloodthirster.
Guardian Angel
I doubt any of you will get this item, but if the enemy team doesn't have much armor and you have enough damage and you still have a spot for another item.... Well this item is freaking amazing. You will be literally unstoppable. Guardian Angel makes you very hard to kill.
Furor Boots Upgrade
Buy this upgrade for your boots for even more movement speed when your build is over.



Early game:

Start the game with these items: Boots of Speed and 3 Health Potions. You will be able to chase/escape anyone.

Don't attack your enemies if they have too many minions around them, the enemy minions will attack you and deal a lot of damage (especially early in the game!) and kill you :/. You should try to kill as many minions as possible (you only get gold if you are the one that does the last attack that kills the minion). After a few levels, you can probably jump on your enemy with Alpha Strike and kill them if they get too close. Don't forget to activate Wuju Style when you are fighting the enemy champions.

Try not to waste too much mana to kill minions because it usually is not necessary. Save your mana for when it really matters: when you fight the enemy champions.

Use your Health Potions by pressing 2 or by clicking on them in your inventory. Use them when you need to get your Health back obviously.

Don't stay in lane in you are very low on Health, go back and press B to recall to base.

Mid game: Kill all the minions you see! Try to get as much gold as you can. When you have some damage and your Vampiric Scepter, you can kill the monsters in the jungle to get even more gold and buffs that will make you stronger.

Red Lizard buff: It makes your autoattacks slow the enemy and deal extra damage over time. Very very powerful on Master Yi.

Blue Golem buff: It reduces your cooldown and makes your mana regenerate faster. That's useful too.

Don't try to kill Dragon or Baron on your own, there are good chances that you will die to the monster or that you will get killed by the enemy team if they find you low on health.

Try killing enemies in all the lanes with your spells and autoattacks. Don't forget to always activate Highlander when trying to kill an enemy champion.


Late Game: Just kill everything that you see. Have fun.



About Runes: You should not buy until you reach at least level 20. Only buy tier 3 runes.

Masteries: The most important mastery to get is Summoner's Wrath . Other than that, just try to take as much masteries that give physical damage as possible.

Summoner Spells: When you get level 12 and you become a little used to Flash, you should take it instead of Ghost.

Go have fun!

Game Scores

Feel free to send me your pics :D.

















I haven't played many games with Jungle Yi since Season 3 so, as you can see, I am lacking good end game scores for this guide :P.


I will add more and more with time, feel free to send me your game scores with this build and I will put them here :D

Ending

Thanks for reading my guide! Feel free to comment and/or ask questions in the comment section below!

I hope you enjoyed this guide and that you are ready to go dunk nooblords with Master Yi! huehuehue

MY AP YI GUIDE: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/master-yi-and-his-dark-sides-ap-128998