Strengths and Weaknesses

• Excellent AoE damage with the ability to refresh cooldowns
• Snowballs heavily if fed early kills
• Great at picking up multiple kills in team fights
• One of the best tower pushers in the game
• Amazing farmer, can usually keep up with solo lanes
• A lot of map presence, can easily counter-gank or tower dive for kills

• No CC
• Susceptible to being counter-jungled
• Hard to be effective if shut-down early
• Damage can be countered if the enemy team outpace your ability power with health and magic resist

Masteries

Not much room for argument here. 21-0-9 is the way to go.

• All of the ability power related masteries in the offense tree are crucial to the build.
• Choose Butcher and Destruction as opposed to Havoc . The reasoning is that the extra 2% damage from Havoc is very lackluster, while the increased damage to minions and turrets provide much more benefits.
• In the utility tree, Summoner's Insight combined with Mastermind synergize great with the summoner spell Teleport.
• These two masteries lower the cooldown and cast time to allow you to teleport gank more frequently and less time for your opponents to react. In the sections below you will find a few video clips showing how to use teleport effectively.

Runes

• Greater Mark of Attack Speed Although only a 15% attackspeed boost, it is extremely useful during the early game to help clear the jungle faster, and never forget although you are building ability power your auto attacks still do damage.
• Greater Seal of Armor Pretty standard for all junglers, to help prevent damage taken from jungle camps.
• Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction This set is optional and can be replaced with pretty much anything, I use CDR blues just to shave a few seconds off my spells early game, but once you reach the mid game and team fights it does not matter anymore due to the effects of Highlander.
• Greater Quintessence of Ability Power Helps you get that extra kick to get the AP train rolling faster, with Master Yi's amazing scaling on both Alpha Strike and Meditate these are a must.

Items

• Start the game with Hunter's Machete, 2 Health Potion and a sight ward. Remember you will be putting a point in Meditate at level 2 so the extra health potions won't be necessary. The sight ward can be used defensively (ward entrance to your own jungle) or offensively (watch clip below).
• Go back and buy Madred's Razors and Boots as soon as you have enough gold.

• If you feel confident in your skills, get a Mejai's Soulstealer.
• For the safer route, start working on the Sheen, starting with a Sapphire Crystal, the extra mana is crucial for you to cycle through your abilities.
• Once you have finished the sheen, start working towards Zhonya's Hourglass.
• Upgrade your boots as you see fit, a rule of thumb is I will usually try to match the enemy's ADC when they have upgraded their boots.
• Next try to finish off the Lich Bane and usually games finish around that time.
  

  Late Game

• If you made it this far into the game, something went wrong. Nevertheless, your focus remains the same; destroying the softer targets (ADC, support, mages) and getting resets.
• Depending on how the enemy has itemized, consider building Rabadon's Deathcap if they have not built magic resist yet or Void Staff if they have started stacking magic resist.
• Sell your madreds anytime at this point to get enough gold to finish an item or make room for the next
• As your final item, consider getting Guardian Angel or Banshee's Veil as defensive items to ensure a small mistake won't result in game over. Consider getting Deathfire Grasp if the enemy team is allowing you to sneak into their back ranks.

Skills

• This is your primary damage spell, should be maxed first in every circumstance.
• It has a 1:1 AP ratio on it, so any AP you build is directly converted into damage.
• If you time it right, it can follow enemy through walls and ledges if they try to escape using a dash or flash.
• Excellent for farming and pushing lanes, after successful ganks help your teammates push the lane and deny the enemy farm.
• You cannot be targeted when the alpha strike animation is playing, this makes you a very difficult target to focus down if you manage to sneak into the fight and land some resets.
• Used as a gap closer but can also be used to escape nasty situations, see below.
  
  
  Escaping with Alpha Strike Video

  Escaping with Alpha Strike

  
  
  
  
• This spell is your main tool for survival and take a point at lvl 2 and should be maxed second.
• In addition to healing remember it also provides bonus armor and magic resist to help you tank through damage.
• This spell can be disrupted by crowd control so be aware of when to use it in team fights.
• Early on in the jungle if you do not get lucky with Alpha Strike procs, you can activate this spell to heal through minion damage until your Alpha Strike is off cooldown.
• You can tap meditate immediately after using to cancel its effects, this could be done in all-in situations where you need one last Lich Bane proc to finish off the enemy.
• One of the best spells in the game for tower diving and base race situations, at rank 5 meditate tower shots are like getting cotton candy thrown at you.
  
  
  
• Take one at level 4 to clear jungle creeps a little bit faster, but this spell should always be maxed last.
• It does provide a little boost to your attack damage and combined with the red buff it will help pack a punch early on in the game, especially if you hit with double strike.
• Once you get your Sheen, the purpose of this spell is just to activate the bonus damage, same principle applies to Lich Bane as well.
  
  
  
• The trademark of AP Master Yi, this is the spell that creates highlights and quadra, pentakills. Put a point in this spell whenever you can. It resets all your cooldowns on kill, and half of your base cooldown on assists.
• The speed boost and immunity from slow allows you to gank directly through lanes, as well as run away when the situation turns sour.

Jungling

Counter Ganking with Teleport Video

Counter Ganking with Teleport

• If the enemy jungler invades, do not fully commit to a fight, you will not be able to win.
• Do not panic and run away scared, try to draw his attention and give him just enough advantage to try and commit to killing you. That's when you pop the meditate, and hopefully your team mates have had the time to react and help you.
  
  Example of what to do in case of invades:
  Play Video

Team Fight

• Be very careful about committing to a fight, the chances are once you go in, you're not coming out.
• Always let someone else go in first, keep to the side until the fight has started.
• *Who you use Alpha Strike on is not as important as when and where.*
• Remember, cooldowns only refresh if Highlander is active.
• Try to save meditate for after the hard CC's have been used.
• A kill for a kill is always worth it. You want to snowball as fast as possible, plus you are likely to pick up a few random assists due to Alpha Strike

• Now the real fun begins
• At this point you should be past level 11, that means your Ultimate has a 10 second window window for you to reset
• If you don't have a good initiation on your team, you can be the one to engage
• When you feel like your team is in position, use your ultimate, and alpha strike in. Usually they will try to CC and focus you down. Make sure to remember to use hourglass!
• Once you have used your hourglass, your teammates should already have followed up and joined the fight, the chances are everyone is low at this point or someone already died.
• If nobody died, use meditate to heal up to full health and tank some damage, all the CC has probably been used up by this point.
• If you managed to get an assist, use Highlander again and continue to Alpha Strike.
• Even though you can initiate fights now, don't get too far ahead of your team mates, remember not everyone has a 40% movement speed boost.
• If you have a strong initiator on your team (Malphite, Wukong, Renekton, etc), it is still best to let them initiate while you clean up.

Summary

• This build is for people who already have some experience with this champion but want to try something different.
• If you are very new to jungling, or Master Yi, I suggest to play him AD (I will make a guide for that too).
• The playstyle and timing will require some time to learn, especially for those that are not used to playing without Flash.
• This has all the fun elements of playing AP Yi, minus the mindless farming/pushing that you would do in mid-lane.
• The mechanics are very simple, it's very reliant on the decision making of the player.
  
  If you enjoyed the guide, or have any questions, make sure to leave a comment below.