Hello and welcome to my guide to the Wujumeister himself, Master Yi. Master Yi is a fantastic jungler who has a great kit for ganking and jungle clears. I personally enjoy him because of his fantastic "no escape" style of ganking and his versatile playstyle and kit.

Pros

• Great Clear Speed
• Can Chase Down Almost Anybody with Highlander and Alpha Strike
• Has a Great Kit for Teamfighting Because of Highlander
• Can Siege Very Well
• Has a Built in Zhonya's Hourglass with Alpha Strike

Cons

• Very Squishy Early Game
• Low Mobility
• Easy to Invade
• Weak Without Attack Speed Items

Smite is the core of any jungler's summoner spell kit. You simply can't jungle without it and expect to do well.


Flash is generally your second summoner spell on Master Yi because it offers a solution to your mobility problems. However, you have two other options that are perfectly viable.


Ghost is very good in the early game because it allows you to get a great "no escape" gank because you move so quickly and get out with Ghost still active, making your ganks a lot easier early game. However, Ghost simply won't give you the reliable escape Flash will.


Teleport is surprisingly decent on Master Yi if you are willing to sacrifice all mobility. It makes it very easy to invade and map control early if you have the enemy jungle warded, and it also makes it very easy to split push. If you think your team has no hope of winning and you need to carry with split pushing or you think you can shut down the enemy jungler easily, go with Teleport.

Hunter's Machete and Pots-a-Plenty are your general starting items on Master Yi. The three Health Potions make your first clear a lot better than with a Refillable Potion, and the Hunter's Machete is pretty intuitive.

You want to rush Skirmisher's Sabre - Bloodrazor in every game, as it gives you the attack speed and damage output that Master Yi simply can't do without. Following that logic, Berserker's Greaves is almost always the best bet for your boots, unless Ninja Tabi or Mercury's Treads hard counter their team.

Titanic Hydra is a great third item because it gives you a bit of survivability while giving you lots of AD. I generally like to follow this up with either a Guinsoo's Rageblade or a Spirit Visage into either full damage or full tank.

Conversely, you can build Phantom Dancer third item into an Infinity Edge for a full glass cannon build, but I find that to be weak.

Double Strike, your passive, gives you a lot of synergy with on hit items and attack speed, two things that Master Yi loves to build.

Alpha Strike, your Q, supplies a Zhonya's Hourglass type effect that also deals a ton of damage and closes the gap. Use this for ganking early by using Flash or Ghost in combination to close a large gap quickly. In team fights, use this to reposition yourself and giving the enemy no time to react as you appear in front ofthem. You can even Flash towards a low health enemy, then Alpha Strike back towards the team fight, using one of the hits on the Alpha Strike to execute the enemy.

Meditate, your W, gives you great survivability on your clears and allows you to cheekily turn a fight in the early game by outhealing the enemy due to the 50% damage reduction it replies. However, it gets a lot worse in the late game and is only really good in between fights as a pseudo- Warmog's Armor effect.

Wuju Style, your E, gives you ridiculous damage throughout the game. It supplies you with 10% bonus AD, giving you a lot more damage late game, and you can also activate it to get bucketloads of true damage on-hit, which is amazing for beating Rammus in particular.

Highlander, your ultimate, gives a Youmuu's Ghostblade effect in that it gives movement speed and attack speed. However, it is much more powerful than Youmuu's Ghostblade because its passive causes your basic abilities to have their cooldowns reduced by 70% whenever you get a kill or assist, and because the ultimate's duration itself is extended by 7 seconds when you get a kill or assist while it is active. This makes you extremely strong in team fights because if you get one kill in the fight, it's basically over as you can just keep on snowballing because your abilities don't burn out.

The rune page I like to take has AD and Armor Pen Reds, Scaling Health Yellows, MR Blues and Attack Speed quints. Swapping to Armor Yellows is decent, but with the prevalence of armor shred builds, I prefer to have health.

Master Yi has four mastery pages he can use: 18/12/0, 18/0/12, 12/0/18, and 0/12/18. 18/12/0 gives you fabulous damage with Fervor of Battle , as well as team fight sustainability with Dangerous Game . This is a more risky, glass cannon approach that I personally don't enjoy, but can be quite strong and snowballs very hard.

18/0/12 is the mastery page that I currently use. It gives great damage and decent survivability that improves your early game and your late game.

12/0/18 is a similar idea to 18/0/12, but it puts more emphasis on Master Yi as a hybrid tank rather than as a carry with survivability. I like this mastery page for the early and late game survivability that Strength of the Ages gives, but it makes your late game much weaker than a Fervor of Battle page.

0/12/18 is basically a full utility tank page that I find to be not very enjoyable, but this is the best page for a frontline tank Master Yi.

The laning phase is Master Yi's weakest point in the game. Until he has his attack speed core, Yi struggles with dealing damage while still being extremely squishy. I usually gank very little before level 6 unless it's a free kill (i.e. an overextended Gangplank). Your clear path is generally Krugs - Red Buff - Raptors - Wolves - Gromp, which will give you the gold to get your Skirmisher's Sabre. You want to farm until you get level 6, at which point you try to get a kill with it, then keep farming until you get your Skirmisher's Sabre - Bloodrazor. Once you have that, you should be able to gank a lot more frequently and build your items up from there.

After you have two or three items, you can start to push a lane after ganking. If you can siege a turret after a successful gank, that gives your laner a big advantage as well as giving your entire team a gold advantage. If you are able to do this in bot lane, you might even be able to siege a tier 2 turret in the time it takes for the enemies to all collapse on you. If you siege top lane, try to roam down to mid lane with your top laner to get a 3-man gank on the enemy mid laner, then try to siege mid as well.

Teamfighting is where Master Yi excels. Not only does he snowball extremely well, his ultimate is perfect for teamfighting. If you have a very early game team and they have a very late game team, you can use the distraction of a team fight to try to sneak an inhibitor, as Master Yi is very good at that. If only one person tries to stop you, you can probably win the 1v1, especially if you have Phantom Dancer. If two people come for you, just focus the turret and get off as much damage as you can unless you are very fed and are confident that you can win the 2v1. Remember to focus the easier to kill target ALWAYS, even if the other enemy deals more damage, because if you focus a harder to kill target your ultimate might run out of duration before you get the kill. The only time you should ever focus the harder to kill target is if the harder to kill target is a carry, because a carry is actually a threat to you due to how much damage they deal.

TL;DR Master Yi is a late game carry who excels at team fighting and split pushing, but is very squishy early game and needs items to be good. Thanks for making it through my entire guide!