Unfortunately, due to the Season 11 changes, this guide is now defunct. I cannot theory-craft any ways to revitalize this build, and attempts to do so have resulted in feeding the opponent to the point where making and using this build is worthless. I will leave this guide in its current state - but not delete it in the hopes someone finds a way to resurrect it - in memoriam to the wackiest off-meta build I have seen to date. The goal of this build was to provide the player a viable way to play Yuumi in the top lane while also keeping intact the integrity of her abilities that many other off-meta builds sacrifice. You will always have your tank builds, crit/on-hit builds, AD builds, etc., but these leave you more vulnerable and the negate the reasons to properly use your abilities. When this becomes the case, you are infinitely better off playing Teemo, Quinn, or pretty much any other champion, because they are meant to hold their own in lane. Yuumi, on the other hand, is not. It is for this reason that item changes have crippled this build, because being flexible in your build pathing - in addition to having a reliable build - is critical to your success. The reasons for this will be discussed below.

The first of the issues lies in the changes to Faerie Charm. Prior to Season 11, this item cost 125 gold and provided +25% mana regeneration. In RIOT's attempt to streamline items, they simplified this so that it now cost 250 gold and provides +50 mana regeneration, in effect keeping the item's value the same while also reducing the amount of item slots consumed. For many champions, this is an excellent change. For this build, that change is monumental. Why this is so detrimental will be discussed later.

The second issue is the change to Redemption's build pathing, now requiring Kindlegem as opposed to Crystalline Bracer in addition to costing 200 gold more. What this means is that Rejuvenation Bead no longer builds into Redemption.

The third issue lies in the initial build, in which you are given 500 gold to purchase a few items. As elaborated further in this guide, you do not start with any standard items. However, with the change to Redemption's build pathing,
buying Rejuvenation Bead for early health regen is actually likely to waste gold in a build that often relies on a gold income somewhere between that of a support and a top-laner. In addition, Faerie Charm's change means that you will be left with 250 gold after purchase. Since you will want health regen of some sort, buying 5 Health Potions is wasteful of gold, but buying Refillable Potion leaves you with 100 extra gold that cannot be cleanly spent, as even purchasing a Control Ward leaves you with 25 leftover gold, which still gives your opponent an inherent advantage over you. This is the first of the two issues that have sunk this build. The second revolves around the following question: what is the best mythic to buy?

The first thing that must be considered when buying a mythic item is how it synergizes with Yuumi's abilities - or, more specifically, her E. Zoomies is a very peculiar ability in that it uses a percentage of her maximum mana per usage. In order to use this ability effectively, one must constantly micromanage their mana to ensure that other abilities can be used when they are critically needed. This means that building too much mana ends up wasting mana that could be used for other abilities. On the other hand, too much ability haste may mean that you use your mana faster than you can recover it, leaving you and your teammates extremely vulnerable. The best possible mythic item for you to build would provide lots of AP without too much mana and provide a passive AP/legendary item buff.

Of the mythic items, only two provide the AP/legendary buff, being Imperial Mandate and Everfrost. Imperial Mandate is intended to be a support item, and thus is not viable for a top build. Everfrost is meant for control mages, which is much closer to what you want to build towards. However, Everfrost also provides 600 extra mana, which, as discussed earlier, does not synergize with Yuumi well. While Imperial Mandate is therefore the better option in theory, only two of your items provide a slow or stun of any sort, and even then both are conditional, reducing the effectiveness of the item. In addition, Imperial Mandate does not provide any inherent boost to Yuumi Top, as it strictly is most valuable in teamfights and not in a solo lane, unlike Everfrost, which provides extra health. However, because Everfrost causes even faster mana depletion, it's usage makes you more vulnerable in teamfights.

Because of these issues, I am therefore declaring this guide defunct for an indefinite period of time. For future reference, the guide will be left as intact as possible for those interested at a later point in time. Comments and suggestions will continue to be monitored as of now, and I appreciate the interest shown in this guide. May your Yasuo never int, your jungler not diff, and most importantly, GLHF!

Hello! My name is StrikeX114. I am currently a Silver 4 NA Mastery 7 Yuumi main, and have grown particularly fond of playing her in the top lane. In draft alone, I have accumulated over 150 games of Yuumi Top - which is an achievement I'm not sure if I should be proud of. This build, likewise, is meant for a solo top game. Hopefully, with this guide, you can too with relative success. As for my rank, it has more to do with the fact that I have been effectively brute-forcing this build in draft in an attempt to perfect this build for ranked. In addition, I have only had the game for a total of seven months, so I am still learning some of the various systems and am therefore still considered new to the game by community standards. While competition is obviously less stiff in draft games, knowing what works and what does not work beforehand is incredibly crucial knowledge. Due to a sheer lack of data on Yuumi top matchups, it should therefore be noted that all matchups shown have been played against at some point by myself with Yuumi or assessed towards Yuumi if I have not yet actually played against said matchup with Yuumi yet. I hope that whomever reads this guide finds that it is satisfactory for their goals.

This guide is intended for players already accustomed Yuumi's abilities, and therefore will not be an in-depth guide on what each ability does - however, it provides the groundwork for how to utilize them well. Also, sorry if this isn't the most visually appealing guide. I'm currently doing the best that I can with what I know.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the Season 11 Item Shop changes, entire portions of this build may be inaccurate. Use this guide at your own discretion. Updates will be coming with more information soon.

Pros:
- You can sustain your jungler when they intervene with ganks, allowing for ganks to be successful even if they otherwise wouldn't have been.
- You gain much more experience than a traditional support, making you much more useful once you can roam due to stronger abilities
- Can turn the tide of games if used properly and if there is decent coordination within your team
- You're a long-range top laner, meaning you have a small window of time to notice an engage before it happens

Cons:
- You're Yuumi
- You're in the top lane
- You're slow
- You're squishy
- You're extremely vulnerable to hard CC
- You're susceptible to early ganks
- You're susceptible to any ganks
- You get flamed in virtually every match for something, even if it wasn't actually your fault that it happened (i.e. mid-laner feeds Akali, Yuumi's fault)
- You'll probably lose your lane
- You are extremely vulnerable to lane swaps
- Even if you're even in level with your opponent when laning phase ends, they might still be fed and are not to be trifled with
- Despite your best efforts, your opponent got 5 kills off of you in the first ten minutes, killing the game

As the evidence shows, this is not a smart thing to play. Which is exactly why you should play it. :)

As should be blatantly obvious, Yuumi Top is not your traditional top laner. Therefore, one should not treat her as a traditional top laner. Your goals are the following:

1. Stack Grasp of the Undying as many times as possible.
2. Deal as much damage to the opponent's tower as possible.
3. Prevent your opponent from roaming by locking them into constant lane combat.
4. Getting out of your laning phase as early as possible to support your teammates.
5. Gain as much experience as possible so as to be more effective than a traditional Yuumi Support once mid-game hits.
6. Buy health items to tank tower hits, allowing your team to execute tower dives while you deal damage to the tower with Demolish to bring it down faster.

In essence, you are a flex tank-support with the ability to out-level your opponents sooner than a traditional support. Quite literally, your goal is to lose your lane to win the game. If no ganks come through for either side, you will eventually lose. It then becomes a matter of which team's top lane can convert their experience lead into a snowball. So long as your opponents have not been fed too much, you should hold an overall advantage in team fights.

Your runes are your greatest friends as the game progresses, allowing you to take obscene amounts of damage before actually dying. When playing Yuumi Top, these are the runes you should always take, (almost) without exception. Some alterations may be necessary depending on your matchup.

Grasp of the Undying: Your most important rune within this build. As it is activated through minion aggression and synergizes well with your passive, the ability to stack this is crucial to your survival. Providing additional passive healing, damage, and zoning pressure, Grasp of the Undying is incredibly useful to a successful laning phase. Ideally, you should hit about 25 stacks of Grasp before the laning phase ends. Aggressively stacking Grasp of the Undying in the early game can quite literally save your life, as it provides extra health with each stack gained.

Demolish: Seeing as how you are not meant to be in the top lane under normal circumstances, you have fairly low damage output in both attack damage and attack speed without heavy investment in items. Demolish is therefore the most useful of these skills, as it allows for your ability to take plates and towers over the course of the game, where under normal circumstances you would never be able to so much as scratch them. Demolish is also useful during late game sieges, as you can utilize Demolish alongside your now sizeable health pool to both tank and take towers as your team keeps pressure off of you. Font of Life can only be utilized after you use your ultimate, and does not give you offensive pressure that Demolish otherwise provides. Shield Bash allows for more direct offensive pressure due to the increased damage you are able to inflict, but since your ultimate goal is to gain as many Grasp of the Undying stacks as possible to stay alive in lane, constantly bullying your opponent completely out of your lane is not recommended, as item power spikes from them can be partially countered by you from the Grasp stacks you have gained.

Second Wind: Since the name of the game in laning phase is constant healing, what better than a passive near-constant heal? As you are often much more likely to be in prolonged fights in the early game, the extra healing allows for even better sustain and counteraction to damage-over-time abilities such as Teemo's Toxic Shot. Although Conditioning is useful later in the game, it lacks the immediate access and usefulness that Second Wind provides, when survival is especially crucial. Bone Plating similarly does not benefit you in the same way that Second Wind can due to your own constant disengage and the lack of it being available to you at all times.

Overgrowth: Although the case can be made for the utilization of any of the three options, I have found this rune to be the most impactful. Since your goal is to have the highest amount of health possible regardless of matchup so as to survive, being able to passively gain health over time can be incredibly helpful to ensure a successful laning phase. The only alteration I would suggest maybe running is Unflinching against certain CC-heavy matchups, but even so I would not recommend it so as to ensure that you are able to tank through as many hits as possible.

Perfect Timing: Allows you to prevent or strongly discourage a towerdive gank on your lane, stall out or nullify certain ultimates, and buy your teammates time to get you out of a tough situation. You know, typical stopwatch stuff. However, being able to get one for no cost to you but time is incredibly useful, as it conserves your gold pool, allowing you to buy more items long-term and providing a small sum of gold upon its sale.

Minion Dematerializer: There are two ways in which to utilize this rune:

1. Waveclear - Seeing as how you lack a Doran's Ring or similar starter item, your waveclear is, to put it bluntly, abysmal. This can be partly remedied through the usage of the Minion Dematerializers to absorb one minion of each class, providing a small bit of extra damage against minions and ultimately slightly improving your CS capabilities.

2. Lane Priority - You will very rarely ever win your lane without jungler intervention. Therefore, getting laning priority is essential to backing early and preventing your opponent from snowballing even with a small experience lead. Since you don't have Teleport, a lack of pressure from a pushing minion wave may mean that it is quickly cleared and then converted into a plate falling, putting you at both an experience and gold disadvantage. Using Minion Dematerializer, you can vaporize three cannon minions, shifting laning priority greatly in your favor.

Offensive Stat: +10% Attack Speed - This is primarily for helping you with CS-ing early on in the game, as well as allowing you to poke your opponents without being under constant pressure that animation will be interrupted before the attack comes through. Although the extra 10% CDR option is nice, your items will likely take you to 40% CDR anyways, so long-term it isn't as useful as it otherwise would be.

Flex Stat: +6 Defense -or- +8 Magic Resist - This stat should be altered on a match-by-match basis to give you the best defense against your opponent. For example, +6 Defense is more useful against Darius than it would be against something like a Heimerdinger. You should default to the physical damage debuff, but depending on the matchup, the MR is more useful.

Defensive Stat: + Health - Seeing as how your goal is to soak as many hits as possible before dying, having a little bit more health helps. Without the extra health, there are a multitude of situations that you would be unable to otherwise survive without having obtained the extra health. (If it reads +6 Armor, this is a bug. I have repeatedly attempted to amend said bug to no avail.)

Draft, whether appreciated or not, is an incredibly crucial part of any League of Legends game. Able to single-handedly determine the likely outcome of a game before it begins, having draft awareness is often critical to your success as a Yuumi Top.

You have many counter-picks yourself in a lane known for having its entire meta revolve around counter-picking champions. Therefore, blind picking Yuumi Top is an atrocious idea, especially should you have first pick. Having a lower pick priority than your opponent is actually often a good thing, as it allows you to assess whether or not to play Yuumi Top in the first place. However, should you find yourself with first pick, offer to trade champions after champion selection to secure their spot ahead of yours, thus allowing you to secure your counter-pick.

For something as niche as Yuumi Top, one would expect that it would go well with just about any team composition, right? Wrong. Although it can find success with any team composition, it synergizes with some team comps far better than others. Although I have some synergies listed above, it is a team game, after all - and without a properly built team, the game will fall apart quickly.

Your ADC pick doesn't really matter - so long as they do their job and don't feed, you're good. The other three members of your team, however, are much more crucial to your success overall. Your dedicated support should preferably be one with fairly high mobility and abilities with CC for engage. Thresh, Nautilus, Pyke, Alistar, and Tahm Kench are examples of good, synergistic teammates. That is not to say, however, that other supports cannot work. Paired with Sona, your team has near-indefinite sustain, and paired with Morgana you can set up engages with ease.

Your jungler should preferably be an assassin-class, as you can set up CC with your ultimate to ensure kills. Kayn, Warwick, Nunu and Willump, Hecarim, and Kha'Zix are who you should generally attach to for the duration of the game, as they will help carry your team before teamfights are essential.

Lastly, to secure your victory, your mid-laner should be a high-mobility APC or secondary ADC that can single-handedly win teamfights late into the game. Syndra, Diana, Akali, Irelia, and Yone are all examples of synergistic mid-laners. Even if your team lacks one or even two of these three synergies, the presence of even one greatly increases your odds of winning.

This section is dedicated to educating you on how to effectively manage your abilities. When in the laning phase, important things to be aware of are resource management and ability cooldown timers. Failure to always have these two things in mind at all times puts you at serious risk of falling to your opponent.

When the game begins, you may question which ability is best to lock in first. The correct answer is to keep from locking in this point until it is necessary to do so. If you find that you're opponent is wary of approaching you from the start of the game, you may find it more useful to begin with Prowling Projectile to help with zoning. If your opponent has chunked you low in an early engage, spend your spell point in Zoomies first to make sure you don't accidentally int at level 1 - because if that happens, that's usually a very bad sign. From there, you will want to keep your Prowling Projectile and Zoomies relatively evenly leveled so as to ensure that your heals are appropriate for replenishing your health pool, as well as ensuring that your mana drain through Zoomies does not leave you out of mana and therefore vulnerable to attacks. Since Zoomies drains a flat amount of mana that increases with level as well as 15% of your total mana pool, overleveling this ability can put you at a serious disadvantage if you are unable to get your passive up. Your goal should be to have your Prowling Projectile completed by level 9 or 10, and Zoomies by level 13.

Speaking of your passive, Feline Friendship is essentially what allows you to survive in lane for so long and is therefore the cornerstone that allows this entire strategy to work. Providing a shield and mana refill after hitting an auto attack on an enemy champion, it allows you to take more hits from your opponents, tank minion aggression, and replenish your mana pool to allow you to cast more abilities. The extra health is incredibly useful to take a lot more punishment and survive even prolonged engagements if activated while in the fight.

Since utilizing this passive is so key to your survival, the utilization of Grasp of the Undying allows you to not only get a shield, but also heal and increase your health by small increments over time. If you have about 80% health but 95% or more of your mana left before the passive reactivates, use Zoomies and attack your opponent as soon as possible. Doing this effectively is key to your sustain, as healing after getting Feline Friendship in this scenario wastes mana that you may need for your abilities in case you get engaged in combat later. Performed successfully, you will be at near-full health, near-full mana, and have a shield as Feline Friendship and Zoomies go on their respective cooldowns.

At the start of the game, you should move to the the top river bush. To get there as fast as possible, travel through the jungle. Place your control ward at the bottom right edge of the brush to maximize your vision in the river. If your jungler is starting topside, offer to give them a leash. If they say they don't need it, place yourself in the upper right corner of the brush to maximize your own vision. With luck, you will be able to see your opponent before they see you, allowing you to scout their starting items. At this point, you sit and wait until your minion wave arrives.

If they attempt to ward the brush where you are, back away from the edge and be ready to kite away if necessary. Where you kite to is dependent on which side you are on. If you start on blue side: kite towards the river and ask for assistance from your mid laner if possible. If you start on red side: make your way towards your tower to disengage. The variation comes from the total distance and angle at which you must travel to your tower to disengage. Blue side is much more difficult to kite to because of how pinned you are to the wall when trying to disengage, potentially trapping yourself into getting damaged more.

The control ward you purchased provides multiple benefits:
A) You save your starting ward for later usage.
B) In the event your opponent decides to ward your bush before the minion wave arrives, the control ward provides a two-fold pressure:
- 1) Immediate pressure in canceling the ward they placed. In focusing your ward, you can eliminate theirs, getting rid of their vision.
- 2) With knowledge of the control ward, them failing to address it means that either they or their jungler must clear the ward, potentially rendering a future gank completely ineffective.
C) Should they focus your control ward instead of you without placing their own ward, it acts as a disengage option. If you can, attempt to get off one or two stacks of Grasp of the Undying before the disengage fully occurs, putting them at a slight health deficit when the minions arrive in comparison to you.
D) If they never attempted to ward the bush, as control wards are permanent until destroyed, you are potentially guaranteed uncontested vision in the river for multiple minutes, foiling any ganks and virtually guaranteeing your own.
E) If D) is true, then if your opponent attempts to ward the bush, their ward will be canceled. Since the prerequisite condition for this usually involves them having lane priority, it allows you to freeze and/or reverse the minion wave movement while they clear your control ward.
F) If your opponent is indecisive or lacks the ability to counter your range at level 1, you can repeatedly poke them to get your passive, potentially start stacking Grasp of the Undying, and potentially force them to use a potion early to heal themselves.

When the minions finally arrive, attempt to attack the enemy minions before they attack your own to draw their aggro and clump them together. Kite them to the top central bush in the lane to reset their aggro, making them disengage and target one of your minions instead of all three. This makes it easier for your own minions to lower their inverse's health, making it easier for you to secure CS.

When picking off minions, you need to be constantly aware of your opponent. Preferably, you should keep about 400-450 units of distance between yourself and them, as this gives you room to kite away if they engage but also allows you to hit them to activate Feline Friendship and Grasp of the Undying. Within that distance should preferably be a mix of your and their minions, making traversal directly to you more difficult.

Another thing to watch for is when your opponent refuses to disengage. If this is before about level 4, kite away but make sure to have your minions assaulting them. If they tunnel vision you and pay no heed to the minions, they may take a large amount of damage before they disengage, allowing you to pick them off before they can recover or force Flash from them, removing an engage option from their arsenal for the time being.

The experience you gain is undoubtedly your most precious resource. Therefore, I advise you to do something that generally does not work on any other champion - refuse to return to base. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, such as an incoming Rift Herald, an imminent towerdive, or having lane priority after a successful gank from your jungler. However, this can actually be detrimental to your survival.

If your opponent is able to get even a one level advantage over you, you may find yourself at the mercy of their every whim for the rest of the early game. If you are able to determine that they have returned to base to get an item, stay in lane and do not buy items yourself for now. Depending on how they left the lane, you may be able to gain multiple waves' worth of experience before they can return, as well as utilize Demolish on their tower uncontested. Upon their return, whether it be by walking back to lane or Teleport, immediately retreat to your team's side of the lane. This way, you are less likely to be pinned in the instance that their jungler tries to trap you.

In the instance that you are under the immediate threat of death due to a CC chain, high damage, or a gank, do not hesitate to use your Flash or Heal. Staying alive should be your #1 priority until laning phase ends, as feeding your opponents may be detrimental to your ability to win teamfights later.

Conversely, if you are getting a gank from your jungler and you cannot attach to them due to CC or being too far away from them to help, utilize Heal to increase their health from a distance, regardless of your own health amount. Although less effective than an attached heal, being able to support your jungler even a small amount when you would be useless otherwise may turn their fight in your team's favor.

If your jungler is providing a gank that will be uncontested by your opponents' jungler after you hit level 6, rotate towards the top of the map. When your jungler reaches the brush at the river entrance, use your Final Chapter to lock your foe in place. Once they have been successfully stunned, if your jungler realizes what you have just set up for them, they will immediately engage. Performed well, you can almost guarantee a kill or a Flash from your opponent.

Something that can single-handedly make or break your game is the first drake spawn, specifically the Ocean Drake . For those unaware of what it implies, slaying the Ocean Drake provides a permanent passive health regeneration buff to the team that slays it. If you can persuade your jungler, ask them to secure the drake at any and all costs short of inting. Should you be able to get the buff, you become incredibly difficult to wear down, allowing you to take many more hits. Should your opponent receive said buff, you and your minions will be unable to slay your opponent without a gank or botched towerdive from their end.

This section is devoted to damaging minions themselves to gain Creep Score (known as CS).

Attempting to last hit minions is a difficult thing to master in and of itself, but doing it with virtually no damage output requires you to pay more attention to their health. Expect to lose a lot of CS to your own minions, as one ranged minion hit is about 1/3 of your own damage output without any modifiers. It is annoying, and it will happen. This is merely a forewarning. The following numerical values are your unmodified attack damage for levels 1 - 13: 55, 57.23, 59.57, 62.02, 64.58, 67.25, 70.02, 72.9, 75.89, 78.99, 82.2, 85.52, 88.95. I recommend memorizing these values, or at least their rounded values, so as to know the threshold for last-hitting minions.

Likewise, knowing minion health thresholds is also important. Minions "upgrade" themselves every 90 seconds, making them more powerful. The best minion for you to CS is the Melee Minion, as it provides a greater amount of gold than a Caster Minion, and more importantly, has the Gusto passive ability. Making it so that turrets deal a set proportion of their health - 45% - to them with each tower shot. Two tower shots, then, bring them to 10% of their health. This makes it easier for you to CS them, but there remains a catch.

Since you most likely are not building attack damage, their health will eventually outscale your damage output. Due to this, the following table will elaborate on what level you must reach before certain upgrades in order to be able to last-hit them after two tower shots. For redundancy purposes, any values that would have been shared between levels have been removed.

NOTE: This does not take armor into account and is only the raw health values. The table will be (eventually) updated to account for the corrected values.

Level:	Upgrade at Which Point 10% of Melee Minion HP > Your Base AD	In-game Time:
1	5	7:30
3	6	9:00
4	7	10:30
7	9	13:30
8	10	15:00
9	11	16:30
10	12	18:00
11	13	19:30
12	14	21:00
14	16	24:00
15	17	25:30
16	18	27:00
17	19	28:30
18	20	30:00

All minion data was retrieved from:
FANDOM Wiki: Melee Minion

Yuumi Top's greatest weakness lies in the itemization of your opponent. Executioner's Calling is a relatively cheap item that inflicts Grievous Wounds on an opponent, rendering healing abilities less effective for a time. This has no effect on Feline Friendship, but it does affect Zoomies. In doing so, it greatly reduces your sustain in the laning phase and makes you incredibly vulnerable to extended trades.

It should be noted, however, that 800 gold is no small sum at the start of a game and can greatly hinder your opponent long-term by delaying how fast they are able to acquire their core items. In this manner, Executioner's Calling is to Yuumi Top what a Quicksilver Sash is to Skarner - crippling to your opponent if purchased, but also a blow to your ability to scale with your items.

The champions most likely to purchase this item are ranged opponents and melee champions with strong gap closers, such as Renekton or Camille. Conversely, champions such as Malphite or Sion would likely think twice before buying the item, as Executioner's Calling does not blend well with their later itemization whatsoever.

You'll notice that I have a lot of items listed for usage. In practice, you probably won't need most of them. This guide should help you determine what to purchase and why you should purchase them, in addition to a synopsis of the item's strengths.

NOTE: Due to Season 11's item changes, expect this section to be heavily revised in the coming months.

The Starting Items: You will have a full build start. While it can be viewed as - and is, to an extent - a joke start, everything you buy here has a purpose. As for the Control Ward, Minion Dematerializer, and Commencing Stopwatch, I have already covered their merit in earlier sections. If you skipped those sections, I strongly recommend you read the entire guide. Even though it looks like a hot mess, if I'm not making some meta joke, its probably better for you to read it before you attempt playing Yuumi Top as a legitimate choice. The Refillable Potion allows you to save money long term by replacing the need to buy Health Potions, especially should you die multiple times before you can escape your lane. The Rejuvenation Bead and Faerie Charm provide a little bit of extra sustain, and are also investment towards items you will be purchasing later in the match, making it slightly cheaper to buy said items.

Early Game Items: These are pretty much placeholders if you are able to survive in lane and CS effectively. Prioritize buying the Crystalline Bracer, or if you can't afford that yet, the Ruby Crystal, as the extra health is incredibly useful. Stinger is also shown as a matchup-specific item that can greatly aid you if and when necessary.

Must-Buy Items: The initially bought items, as well as the "Early Game Items," all go towards securing what should generally always be your first item - Redemption. Summoning a beam of light that heals you and your allies while damaging your opponents, it is a must-have for multiple reasons:
A) Unless you have decided to make a full support build (more on that later), this may be your only item that directly increases your heals and shields. Building this now guarantees some extra sustained healing for later in the game.
B) Redemption's active summons a beam of light that heals yourself and allies while also damaging enemies. This can be used in a variety of ways during the laning phase alone:

- Healing yourself and/or jungler while under threat of a towerdive/botched gank.
- Clearing a crashing minion wave from a great distance to prevent plates from being taken.
- In conjunction with your ultimate, pinning your opponent into Redemption while they are at low health will likely either secure yourself a Flash or kill.
- Aiding your mid-laner if they are in trouble. This is only possible while returning to your lane or leaving lane and travelling into the river some due to Redemption's ability radius. This should not be done lightly, as it puts you in an extremely vulnerable position.


The second fundamental item is the Spellthief's Edge. Since you won't be gaining much CS later in the game, this is a guaranteed way to make extra money that you wouldn't be able to supplement otherwise. Providing a net gain of 600 gold if completed to Shard of True Ice as well as providing more vision charges, it effectively nullifies the need to buy Control Wards later in the game when combined with an Oracle Lens. I recommend swapping your Stealth Ward to Oracle Lens shortly after getting Frostfang to maximize vision efficiency.

For 'Beginners': Instead of purchasing the other rows for now, focus on completing the first row of items first. They are your bread-and-butter items that will help teach you how to play Yuumi Top effectively with this build before you gain more confidence in your abilities. I use the term 'beginners' lightly so as to specifically refer to confidence in one's own ability. This confidence might be gained after three games or thirty - but gaining said self-confidence is wholly dependent on the individual player.

Your second item completed should be Shurelya's Battlesong, which increases your health, your healing ability, and provides an active that temporarily boosts your own speed as well as nearby allies' speed. It provides an extra boost of speed to assault your foes or flee from them depending on your situation. This item pairs especially well with junglers like Kayn and Master Yi.

After this, you should attempt to build a Warmog's Armor. If you have been stacking Grasp of the Undying and passively gained enough Overgrowth, it is entirely possible to gain more than the 3000 health threshold that Warmog's Armor has for its unique passive, of which allows you to gain more health when out of combat. Combined with Demolish, you can take turrets with ease later into the game. Once these items are complete, feel free to experiment with the other items listed in the guide.

For 'Seasoned' Players: Now that you have gained more confidence in your abilities, it is now time to explore what other options you have. You should continue to build your Redemption and Spellthief's Edge, as they remain the core of your build. Please note that the items listed below are in no particular order of importance or necessity, as they are to be determined by the player on a game-to-game basis.

AP Build: Items focused strictly on being an AP mage. Since all of your attacks scale with AP, this is a good path to at least incorporate.

Hextech Rocketbelt provides a sizeable amount of AP, CDR, and health, as well as an active that acts as a short dash in addition to firing a cone of short-range projectiles. If you are to build this, I recommend building it sooner rather than later. Effective for both evading opponents and clearing waves with ease.

Luden's Tempest provides a great amount of AP and mana as well as a sizeable amount of CDR. It has a passive that causes a small burst of damage every so often based upon your movement and number of spells cast. Most effective with other AP items, this helps boost your overall DPS and waveclear potential.

Rod of Ages is a scaling item that provides a great amount of health and mana as well as a small amount of AP. This item increases the amounts of all stats each minute after you purchased it to a maximum of ten minutes, at which point all of the initial stats are now at 166% of their initial value. This item is best used for when playing behind, whether it be your own lane or other lanes that have faltered. If your situation is dire, in an attempt to salvage your game, prioritize purchasing this before Redemption if you can recognize their lead early enough.

Spellbinder provides an excellent amount of AP as well as a good amount of movement speed. It has a unique active ability that stores both your own and nearby allies' abilities as charges to it to a maximum of 100 charges, which can be activated to provide a burst of movement speed and AP, the amount of which is determined by the number of stacks stored. Effectively an AP version of Shurelya's Battlesong, I recommend buying this if your team comp is mainly comprised of mages.

Sorcerer's Shoes provides movement speed and some magic penetration, allowing you to help shred through your opponent's MR items should they build them. Note that boots are always optional.

Flex Build: Not quite sure what you want to build for your 5th and 6th item? Choose from an assortment of beneficial - and niche - items that complement your playstyle and match scenario.

Nashor's Tooth offers an excellent amount of attack speed and a great amount of AP. This is good to help with getting your passive off more quickly in team fights and take down minions that are pushing into your base. Recommended if you have won lane but it remains a 4v5 for reasons out of your control. Due to its high cost, it should only be built when absolutely necessary.

Runaan's Hurricane provides a great amount of attack speed, crit chance, and movement speed. It has a unique passive that fires a laser at enemies every basic attack.

Frozen Heart provides an excellent of armor and mana, as well as a great amount of CDR. It has a passive that slows attack speed of all nearby enemies by 15%, making it an excellent counter to melee and high attack speed compositions. Likewise, it is ineffective against long-range opponents like mages.

Umbral Glaive provides a great amount of attack damage and a sizeable amount of CDR as well as some lethality. Its unique passive disables and provides sight of all nearby wards for a short window of time, as well as allowing you to deal a greater amount of damage to wards during the time period of ward disabling.

Mercury's Treads gives some magic resistance and movement speed, as well as reducing all incoming CC by 30%. This item is great against CC-heavy comps, but due to how almost all CC resets the timer for You and Me!, it is only truly effective when paired with health items that delay your death and allow you to return to your teammates.

Berserker's Greaves grant enhanced movement speed and a decent amount of attack speed. Best used alongside mostly completed builds towards the end of the game for the extra attack speed and evasion without having to spend a lot of gold on items.

Full Support Build: If your team needs extra healing power or your support desperately needs some backup, building a couple of extra healing items is not a bad choice. These items are largely comprised of standard Yuumi items, but will be covered here for continuity. As you are one of your team's solo-laners, focusing too much on this item tree is not recommended, as your team has a dedicated support role for a reason, and you're not it.

Athene's Unholy Grail provides some AP, CDR, and magic resistance, as well as a decent amount of mana regeneration. It has a unique passive that absorbs a certain percentage of your damage that you deal. which is then reset after you heal, as it boosts the healing amount that you provide. In addition, it provides some extra AP for your mana regeneration. This overall greatly increases the amount that Zoomies can heal your allies.

Ardent Censer provides a decent amount of AP and mana regeneration as well as some CDR. It also provides some extra movement speed for the user as well as an attack speed boost on whomever you are attached to. The extra healing power does not stack with Redemption due to the properties of unique stats.

Locket of the Iron Solari provides a decent amount of armor and a great amount of magic resistance. It has a unique active that provides a decaying shield for yourself and nearby allies for 2.5 seconds. This item is strongly recommended when facing burst compositions.

Twin Shadows gives the user a decent amount of ability power as well as some CDR and movement speed. It has a unique active that summons ghosts who pursue enemy champions, slowing them down considerably upon contact as well as revealing their location. This synergizes well with champions based on pursuit and bursting down opponents while also allowing for defensive maneuvers when needed.

Mobility Boots do exactly what their title suggests. Providing an excellent amount of mobility, they have a unique passive that greatly boosts movement speed after being out of combat for 5 seconds. This is useful for when you are isolated from your own team and need to travel the map on your own quickly.


Example Item Build:

Opponents: Top: Camille Jungler: Kayn Mid: Katarina Bot: Xayah Support: Sona

Allies: Top: Yuumi (Me) Jungler: Lillia Mid: Ahri Bot: Jinx Support: Malphite

As standard, I built Redemption and Spellthief's Edge. Noticing my team was behind in kills and were in danger of getting melted in teamfights, I pivoted from building a Rod of Ages before I had fully committed to the item and instead built a Frozen Heart. Were their team comp less melee AD focused, I would have been more likely to build a Locket of the Iron Solari. Since their team had such a glaring weakness, it needed to be exploited to halt their advance. The decrease in attack speed had an almost immediate impact in teamfights and would be influential in securing my team's victory relatively shortly thereafter.

Once laning phase ends, your true strength comes into play. Now free to roam, you are able to shore up any lane that is in desperate need of assistance and forcing lanes your way if you are in the lead. Since your mobility is now tied to your allies, it gives you the freedom to type messages in your team's chat that you otherwise would be unable to send. This is especially valuable in solo-queue, where communication is overall minimal between players in reference to macro calls.

If you have built full tank items, you will be able to engage towers with minimal consequence, enabling your teammates to execute towerdives and wear down the tower's health. So long as you have an escape route should things go awry, the ability to do this can allow your team to create pressure in areas of the map where there otherwise would have been none.

With this build, you should play with a 'first in, last out' mentality for teamfights. That means being attached to the engaging ally (first in), and either fleeing with whatever remains of your team after a bad teamfight or remaining behind at the site of the teamfight, taking hits, pushing minion waves, and stalling your opponents to get your allies refreshed (last out). Even if this means that you end up sacrificing yourself, ensuring your teammates' survival is critical to ensuring a base defense should one be necessary. As Yuumi, you are not equipped to deal with large crashing waves, while pretty much any other member of your team is.

There are a few general principals to teamfighting. You have your frontline, which soaks the majority of damage and CC. You have your Support, whose goal is to keep your teammates alive. You have your ADC, who plays from the backline and deals chip damage to oppenents. Alongside them is your APC, who may be behind your frontline or in the backline and peppers your opponents with high-damage burst attacks. The final member may be a mix of all of these, preferably with some sort of hard engage to start the teamfight.

As Yuumi Top, you don't fit cleanly into any of these roles. You are a mix of frontline, support, and APC all rolled into one, which is also heavily dependent on what items you build. However, since You and Me! resets after most CC, getting hit by any greatly decreases your usefulness.

In general, you should attach to your jungler, a high-damage mid laner, or any assassin-class in general. When a teamfight starts, activate Final Chapter to stun your enemies and lock them into place. From there, your teammates can take over and hopefully burst them down while you hop from teammate to teammate, keeping your team healthy. If you can't attach to anyone for some reason but a nearby ally's health is low, do not hesitate to utilize Heal to keep them alive. You are expendable after the teamfight begins; they are not. Play for the macro, and when necessary, sacrifice yourself for your team so they can retreat. Even if you should die repeatedly, your ultimate goal is to win the game. Never lose sight of your goal, and therefore never lose hope in your team until the game truly ends.

I hope that all of the information you could ever possibly need to play Yuumi Top effectively is in this guide. I am open to revisions, edits, and suggestions as time goes on, so constructive criticism is encouraged. Even though I have played a truly ludicrous number of Yuumi Top games, there remains the possibility of a matchup I missed, so if I did in fact miss it, please let me know!

This guide was the product of a solo project over the course of at least the last three months (and counting), and has not been peer-reviewed before publication. I apologize in advance if the guide contains any factual errors. If there are, I will amend them when I can. This guide will likely become more visually appealing over time, but as for now, I'm happy where it is. Enjoy this not completely worthless meme build!

12/20/2020: Guide declared indefinitely defunct, explanation provided at top.

11/16/2020: Guide placed in "Off-Meta" category, title changed to reflect current progress - MILESTONE: Thank you all for the 10,000 total views so far! I know it doesn't mean much to most people, but I'm deeply grateful for your interest! PLANNED: Item section rework, including item pathing viability; other planned changes are on hold due to this.

10/23/2020: Ocean Drake description clarified - MILESTONE: 150 draft games of Yuumi Top

10/21/2020: Lucian, Kalista, and Leona added to threat list, given threat ratings of "major" (4); "Laning Phase Addendum: Executioner's Calling" Chapter created; Umbral Glaive bug note removed. PLANNED: BBCode overhaul, "Pros and Cons" chapter rework

10/14/2020: Updated for 10.21 version purposes - no major changes made due to patch notes; AS Sett now listed as a separate matchup threat, with Tank Sett being classified as a "minor" (2) threat while AS Sett is classified as an "even" (3) threat; Volibear counter added in threat description; sentence about matchup validity added in the "Introduction" chapter; "Draft" chapter created; "Laning Phase Addendum: Creep Score (CS)" chapter created, removed or relocated what would have been redundant information to this chapter; Umbral Glaive bug note created

10/12/2020: Singed threat description edited for clarity; Darius counter now provided in description; minor grammar corrections

10/07/2020: Grasp of the Undying passive stack goal edited for clarity; Team Composition edit (Zilean replaced with Alistar as a preferable support); Stinger added to item list, with a corresponding description; Redemption offensive usage updated with more information while also removing redundant information; Rod of Ages item description corrected; minor grammar corrections. PLANNED: Chapter discussing draft.

10/01/2020: "Revisions, Changes, and Updates" Chapter created; Note regarding Season 11 item changes added; Fiora threat status increased

9/21/2020: Adds a few champions to the matchup list; some editing for grammar and BBCode improperly input.

9/20/2020: Guide released