Im Saitamaro and Ive been playing League of Legends since Season 3 but just got lvl 30 in Preseason 5, so Ive been playing ranked since Season 5, Ive hit Master Rank for the first time in Season 9 and I also hit Grandmaster at 65% winrate this year, could have done Challenger but I stopped playing on that Account
My main is in EUW which is simply named Saitamaro and Ive hit Rank 1 global Yone on my Smurf Saitamaro Int Acc
This guide is for anyone who wants to play Yone and learn how to get good at him, its not targeted at any specific Elo, so no matter what your Rank is, if you want to learn how to play Yone, I can probably help you

If you have any questions or you're interested in champion guides and want to have access to very exclusive itembuilds and strats, you can join my Discord Server

https://discord.gg/m8CrEMzgQR

We also made our own Match ups Bot that looks like this
Im also a Metafy coach, so if you're interested in coaching, you can book me here

https://metafy.gg/@saitamaro

PRO + Outplay potential + High DPS and Burst + Versatile Builds + Rewards Micro Skill + Can Win any match up if played well + Punishes mistakes heavily

CON - Wont have frontline on Top Lane - Ult is slow and easy to dodge - Hard to Master - Doesnt scale well in high elo - Volatile laner - Relies on his E ability

The early game on Yone is a bit tricky because hes both a strong but also a weak early game champion. Specificly lvl 1 he wins into almost any top laner because of Lethal Tempo and his Q but lvl 2 he already falls off and at lvl 3 most of the times the enemy is already stronger. You will have to learn every match up in order to know when to play aggressively and when you have to be careful. What I recommend you to do, is to try poking lvl 1 with your Q, hit minions first so that you dont get minion aggro for hitting your oponnent with your Q, if they walk up to you and disrespect you for whatever reason and this happens a lot in lower elos, just straight up run them down, they do not win this ever. Lvl 2 I'd mostly poke with W but again if they disrespect you, punish them for it. Yone's biggest strenght is abusing mistakes not forcing plays. Mistakes are basicly the enemy laner wasting an important spell like Darius Q, Darius E, Renekton W, Jax E etc. if they somehow use any of these without any actual use, just aggressively trade them because you will win this but keep their cooldowns in mind. If you dont know all cooldowns by memory yet, use Porofessor, you can check your laners' cooldowns in the ingame overlay. from lvl 3 on you have your most important trading tool which is your E, I do not recommend doing stuff like stacking a tornado and then going in with E, thats what most lower elo Yones do and its objectively speaking really bad, its very predictable, easy to avoid and easy to counterplay, you should instead just either Q3 into them and use your E for something like dodging a cruicial spell ( Darius Q, Aatrox Q ) and to finish them off or you can do a trade like this: Do one Q on the wave and then E on the enemy, your next Q will give a tornado, they will less expect this than if you straight up rush on them with a tornado E. Most of the times its best to simply push the wave and look for vision / avoid the enemy jungler or even look to kill the enemy jungler if they gank, your laner might be busy with the wave so that you can 1v1 the much weaker junglers. Top laners usually are the strongest 1v1 champs in an isolated scenario, this applies to Yone too, most junglers cannot 1v1 him. I recommend to be careful from minute 2:40 on and ward the tribush at this point, most junglers do a full clear which would mean they dont gank you before 3:30 because this is when scuttler spawns and they usually full cleared their jungler but theres many junglers that gank before that which is why I recommend to be careful earlier than 3:30, just check your minimap a lot and stay in bushes or off vision, so that they do not try to gank you even if they are nearby, but always stay inside EXP range, though the EXP range is much bigger than you might expect Try to not miss any CS because you heavily scale on Yone, so you want items as quickly as possible once you have berserkers and curved bow, you are an extremely strong duelist

In the mid game you need to expand your gold and lvl lead as much as you can, try to kill your laner but dont overforce it, you have to wait for their mistakes. Even if you have a lead by now, top laners can **** you over if you disrespect them. Always respect their strenghts even if they are 0/4 Try to push the waves and turrets 24/7, track the enemy jungler to kill him on his own camps to kill him + take his camps. You can also do solo heralds if your lane is pushed in. The true dmg thingy behind herald gets refreshed based on attacks so someone with high attack speed like Yone clears it very easily and very fast. The herald gives you 300 g + a lot of EXP on top of that a guaranteed turret which can be up to 600 g on a T2 Always be on side lanes, pre minute 20 you should always be top lane and post minute 20 you should always be bot lane. You cannot be top post min 20 because if you die on top lane post minute 20 you basicly give them a guaranteed baron, so it would be best if you take top lane t2 pre minute 20 If you are playing hullbreaker you shouldnt play too much with your team and focus on splits instead but if you dont play hullbreaker you should try to move down to mid every now and then if it looks like you could help out or impact it. You can also as example clear their jungle and then path from their jungle into the mid lane to get a sneaky kill on their mid laner, can even come between t2 and t1, they barely ever expect this while backporting The mid game is all about generating a gold and EXP lead for yourself

In the late game you should be mostly splitting because of your strong side pressure + push, you can provide a lot of pressure towards the baron with a strong bot lane split. But dont overforce splits because this will just result in you getting killed and the enemy having an advantage. Its very important that you pay attention to vision during splits. Dont start splitting if your team is not on the map or if they dont actively pressure anything. Because then you will jsut get 3-5 manned for free and your team cant get anything off it. So if your wave is already more towards their side of the map but your team is not pressuring any objective or arent even on the map, just wait in a bush off vision or a bit behind the enemy vision on lane. Dont show yourself before your team pressures something. This is EXTREMELY important. You can also tell your team to force baron if 2 of them come for you bot, since that results in a 3v4 for your team while you also very likely win the 1v2 + pressure their base. This is when your mechanics will make the difference. You will have to outplay them 1v2 1v3 sometimes even 1v4 but this is also where you can make game winning 1v9 moves by killing half their team, giving your team a free nashor while also pushing their base. Regardless of that you should not ALWAYS split if you dont have hullbreaker. And even with hullbreaker you need to team up sometimes, being a good top laner is finding the balance between splits and teamfights. Your flanks can make a gigantic difference in a team fight, also Yone is really good at killing adcs which are the priority target. If you kill their adc you have almost a guaranteed won teamfight. Try to catch someone or flank when teamfighting. If you are already grouped with your team and the enemy sees you, dont be the first to engage if you have a proper engage / frontline. But you can try some E Q3 moves to catch them but be careful of their CC because they can lock you down before recasting E many times which is why you dont usually want to engage first.

Yone mid is very different to Yone top. Yone mid has barely any winning match ups so going Second Wind with Doran's Shield is almost always better on mid lane. Its important to not use your Health Potion early, Doran's Shield and Second Wind heal based off missing health, so you will heal a lot more if you actually do get poked down, only use the Health potion if you are low enough for the enemy to have kill pressure on you. You dont want to be low enough to be a free kill. Lvl 1 you should try to just last hit but if the enemy can easily bully you, its better to not walk up for the wave and let them push you in, you can bait them into auto attacking you or using their weak early game spells to waste mana on you, because your health will regenerate much faster than their mana while they also might lose the trades because of minion aggro. You dont have to trade yourself, let the minions trade for you and heal yourself back off with Doran's Shield and Second Wind. Lvl 2 you can trade back with W sometimes as it shields you + has high range but other than that you should play the same as lvl 1 rather passively Lvl 3 is where you can actually start to do some really strong trades. Remember melee champions ALWAYS win 1v1s against ranged champions if they are in melee range. Ranged champions are not designed to 1v1 in close combat so if you are in their face you can do an extended trade and you will win it because you have much more dps than them, so I recommend doing Q1 on wave E towards them ( if they dont currently have a spell like Syndra E ) Q2 on them or minions, whatever is in your range, then you can Q3 them and end the trade with autos, Q, W whatever you can do, this is gonna be almost always a won trade but if they have any spell up that might prevent you from doing this, you may bait it out with your E first and look if you can engage them afterwards with a Q3 without E again remember melee champs win into ranged champs if they are in close combat. If they have no way of getting out of your melee range, they wont win this You arent the best roamer in comparison to someone like Katarina so you shouldnt look too much for roams on Bot or Top. Its better to have constant pressure on your lane, so stay on lane as much as possible and pressure the Enemy laner into his turret, this way you always have prio for your jungler. a mid laner should help his jungler as much as possible, if you dont help them, they cannot play the game properly also Yone is really strong at 2v2s most of the times. If you can somehow push the wave in and provide prio for your jungler, thats great. You can also look to counterjungle the enemy jungler if your laner lets you push the waves for free, as example you may ward the enemy red buff and look to counterjungle the enemy jungle on it, many junglers are rather low when they get there, so they're easy to kill

On Yone mid your goal is a bit different to Yone top. You should be sidelane to generate more gold but you should not be on the opposite site of the objective, you should be on the site of the objective, so if drake is the current objective you should be bot lane, if herald is the current objective you should be top lane. Also your goal is not to split push but to crash waves. You want to crash the waves into turret and look for flanks on mid lane or jungle, to help your team. Regardless of this your goal is still to get as much gold as possible so look for solo kills, look for scuttlers, gromps, krugs, enemy junglers and whatever else could possibly get you ahead in gold and EXP. You should also look to build some vision around the lane that you are currently on and look at the minimap, you dont want to die / get caught before an objective fight or for no reason at all. Play Video Watch this Video, BZ perfectly explains how to play mid game here, he may play Zed but this applies to most AD bruiser / assassin mid laners. This is how you should play the mid game

Your main objective in the late game as Yone mid is the baron. In lower elos people dont realize how strong and important the baron is but after minute 20 your one and only goal that you should have in mind is "How do we get baron?" because it lets you close out the game and win off it. After all you win the game after the Nexus is destroyed and Baron helps you greatly at this. On Yone mid you do not want to split nearly as much as on Yone top, you want to be with your team most of the times, your top laner will probably be the Splitter. Dont force dumb fights, dont engage randomly with R or E R, be patient. Let the enemy engage you or let your frontline engage them. Maybe you can get off a huge R to win the teamfight, maybe you can oneshot the enemy back line, you just have to play smart and not like a psycho Also important to help your team clear vision around baron pit, they may get caught if they go for it alone. My favourite move on a baron is to just stack your Q3 on the baron and E Q3 the carries or jungler over the wall, its extremely easy, they never expect or respect it and you win the game off it.

GOD TIER



S Tier




A Tier



B Tier




C Tier

Play Video
You should use ur E on the lane like this to be safe after hitting the turret for platings, that way you can backport efficiently while not giving up on Platings

Play Video
Once you have a lead and you push the waves for tempo, theres no reason to stay on lane, just check the Enemy Jgl to either get their camps or kill them or even kill them + take the camps
Play Video
You should always look for free heralds. If you have a lead you can just push the wave into the turret and do the herald real quick, it doesnt take long even if you dont have many items because auto attack based champs like Yone clear the herald much faster because the true dmg eye thingy comes more often if you auto attack more often, watch the video to see an example on how to get a free herald + how it heavily snowballs your lane
Play Video You can use your Q on the wave like this to kind of "animation cancel" your R, they will much less expect it if you connect your R instantly after using Q on wave like that

Play Video Patience is key, dont overforce anything, dont try too hard to kill someone in one rotation, take your time, stay chill and you will die much less while also killing your oponnent much more often, if I wasnt so calm in the clip above, I might have died or not gotten the kill

Play Video You can "surprise" your oponnent by killing the last minion for lvl 6 into instantly skilling R to kill them by surprise like this