My goal is to create an updated, easy to understand guide on one of my favorite champions, Yorick, and how to play him in the meta game. The majority of the information in this guide has been learned through Inverted Composer and his website, League of Legends Math. I encourage everyone to go to the website if you want a more in-depth look at the character and the game in general.

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

Find the character you're up against in one of the 3 builds up top. The guide will tell you what to build against them. If you want a more in-depth look at the match-up, you can hover over the character on the 1-10 difficulty ranking. If you want a more in depth look at what to build, find the header in the Table of Contents for vs AD, AP, or AD Hybrid. The rest of the guide is general gameplay.

Enjoy!

Basically a to-do list.

• Item update very soon! (I'll be updating the items within 24 hours of posting this!)
• More match-ups? (Pretty much every non-cheese top laner is in the matchups but I'll eventually get around to adding more.)

Pros

+ Lane Bully + High DPS + High Sustain + High impact ult

Yorick is most commonly known, (or was) as a champion with a very hard to counter lane phase, and for the most part that is very true. His amount of sustain and DPS are very high in the early game, and continue to scale, only falling off in the late, late game. His ult also has the potential to be extremely powerful depending on how good your backline is. Even in the situation where your backline isn't, ulting yourself is still very powerful and lets you output even more damage.

Cons

- Melee with no gap close - No hard CC - Weak waveclear - High mana costs early

Yorick is an extremely outdated character and it shows it in his kit. He lacks hard CC and a gap close, making him a lot weaker in the meta in comparison to other picks, like Gnar and Shen, and other bruisers, like Olaf and Jarvan IV. His only AoE spell is commonly maxed last, and scales off AP, and he doesn't itemize well with items like Ravenous Hydra or Statikk Shiv, giving him fairly weak waveclear. Using a high cost spell to sustain is also fairly costly on his mana pool, especially early on.

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Unholy Covenant: Yorick takes 5% reduced damage and his basic attacks deal 5% more damage for each summon that is active. Meanwhile, Yorick's ghouls have 35% of Yorick's Attack Damage and Health.

• Try to use all your ghouls at the same time to maximize passive
• Your ult is a ghoul!
• Use ghouls to tank jungle camps

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Omen of War: Yorick's next basic attack within 10 seconds deals bonus physical damage and summons a spectral ghoul with bonus attack damage and movement speed, which also grants Yorick its bonus movement speed while active.

• Use as an auto-attack reset in trades to maximize damage
• Use on minions while chasing to get bonus movement speed
• When the ghoul is active you ignore unit collision

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Omen of Pestilence: Yorick deals magic damage to the target enemy and all enemies around them, slowing them for 1.5 seconds and summons a decaying ghoul that continuously applies half of Omen of Pestilence's slow to all enemies around it.

• Use it to check brushes, very useful in lane if the enemy uses brush to avoid the ghouls and in baron bait situations
• With good timing you can block skillshots, including Rocket Grab, Dark Binding, Sonic Wave and much more. It can't block Jinx ult though!
• Try to use it behind the enemy when they're fighting in creeps to make them take more damage by slowing and potentially creep blocking their escape

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Omen of Famine: Yorick deals magic damage to the target enemy and heals himself for 40% of the damage done and summons a ravenous ghoul that heals Yorick for 17.5% AD on each of its basic attacks, doubled to 35% AD against enemy champions.

• The spell deals magic damage, don't know if there is any use in-game, but hybrid pen runes could be useful
• You are guaranteed one auto attack from the ghoul when you use this spell
• Use in combination with your W to maximize the amount of autos, healing you and damaging the enemy more

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Omen of Death: Yorick conjures a controllable revenant of the target allied champion or himself with a portion of his target's health and attack damage at the time of cast, which lasts up to 10 seconds. If Omen of Death's target dies while the revenant is active, it sacrifices itself to reanimate them for 10 seconds at its location, healing them to full health.

• Hold R and right click to control the clone
• Try not to use it as a Zilean ult and attempt to clone someone about 5 seconds before you think they will die so you can make use of the clone's damage
• The clone can tank towers, but it is treated as a minion, so as soon as a champion hits an enemy, the tower will aggro them

Flash is the standard on 90% of characters and Yorick is part of the overwhelming majority. As a melee without a reliable gap close or escape, he definitely needs Flash. Infinite applications defensively and offensively, maybe if there was a sandbox mode we would find more. /s

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Teleport is also the standard on 100% of top laners, and again has near infinite uses. Teleport allows you to split push, do a camp at level 1, back for tear without losing creeps, get a teleport gank bot, split push late game and teleport into teamfights etc. Try not to use it to teleport back to lane so much, and really look for points in the early game where you can use it to help the team.

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Exhaust is a good replacement for Teleport if you are not confident in your use of the spell. Exhaust is particularly good against chracters with strong all-ins, like Fiora and Riven, and can also be used late game on enemy assassins and carries to help protect your back line and front line, respectively.

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Ignite is a good summoner if you choose to take Yorick mid lane. I don't feel like it's particularly good top lane, as Yorick lacks hard cc and thus kill potential, but it is good for use against low mobility mid laners like Xerath and Ziggs. Pay attention to see if the enemy mid laner is running Heal. If they are, use Ignite earlier than you would usually to negate the healing from their summoner.

• Greater Mark of Attack Damage: Standard, only other option is armor pen, but we want as much sustain as possible and Omen of Famine is magic damage.
  
• Greater Seal of Scaling Armor: Strong choice after the nerf on flat armor seals. You can take scaling health, but scaling armor is better against physical damage and standard magic damage top laners do not have enough burst.
  
• Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction: Lets us cap out on CDR with Black Cleaver and...
  
• Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction: Helps cap our CDR.
  
• Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: Standard for most AD's, the only other option is attack speed, but Yorick has very little benefits from attack speed.

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Tier 1: Take points in Savagery for extra waveclear and Unyielding for bonus defensive stats.

Tier 2: Assassin for extra damage and Tough Skin because it's broken.

Tier 3: Assassin to aid your trading in lane and Runic Armor for increased healing on Omen of Famine.

Tier 4: Dangerous Game for teamfights and close exchanges and Insight because Yorick is a melee without a gap close and is reliant on Flash.

Tier 5 and 6: Finally, put points into Precision to give Yorick penetration stats and Thunderlord's Decree for a big damage increase.

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If you think that my mastery page could be improved, please leave a comment below and explain what you would change and why. I am completely open to your opinions as it is still the preseason and am still experimenting myself.

To understand why we itemize the way we do, we're going to start with the general theory of the build. You may notice that there is a distinct lack of health in this build, and it generally focuses on building resistances and damage. You may also notice that we have 10% cooldown reduction from our runes alone.

The theory behind this is based around effective health.

Effective health is basically whatever damage you can take if you use all your spells and items. For example, Nidalee's effective health is her health + however much she can heal for. Kayle's effective health is her health + her heal + however much damage she absorbs with her ult. Your effective health with a health potion is your health + 150.

Yorick's effective health is how much damage his Omen of Famine deals, multiplied by the amount of times he casts it. To maximize the amount of healing his Omen of Famine does, we build damage and we cap out our cooldown reduction as fast as we can. We can also take resistances into effect to calculate our effective health, but to make it so I don't have to throw in a whole bunch of math, we'll just leave it at, more restances = more health.

Bought to sustain mana pool, but the amount of damage it gives with it's active and the AD based off mana is very strong.

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Reworked Black Cleaver brought new life to Yorick. He uses every single stat provided by the item, and uses both passives incredibly well. The rage passive is incredibly good for a character with no gap close and has great synergy with Omen of War. Often times you can one shot caster minions with Omen of War, and in combination with Rage, can give you almost 100+ movespeed. The Cleave passive is also very good for an auto attack reliant character, and the best thing about it is that it applies on auto attacks from all your ghouls. It's also incredibly important to the build as it caps your cooldown reduction at 40%.

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Maw of Malmortius offers protection against magic damage dealers and provides a lot of damage. It increases your effective health by quite a bit thanks to the magic damage shield and the passive that gives a good chunk of spell vamp and lifesteal. The bonus armor penetration is also very strong and has good synergy with Black Cleaver

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Dead Man's Plate gives more and health than Randuin's, around the same amount of armor and the passive gives you some more roaming potential along with damage in trades. Great for offense, defense, and utility. However, there are situations where you should go Randuin's Omen and I will talk about them below.

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Zz'Rot Portal is an incredibly under rated and under used item. Zz'Rot Portal gives the most amount of armor and magic resist combined, and gives Yorick the ability to split push late despite his relatively low waveclear. The movespeed passive is also very strong when you are pursuing or escaping through a lane as it applies to towers dead, or alive. Guide to using Zz'Rot Portal here.

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Thornmail is very powerful item for characters like Yorick. It gives him an alternative form of waveclear and a way to damage the backline, but most importantly, it gives him armor to survive teamfights for a longer period of time. But it only offers armor, and should only be picked up against heavy physical damage team comps. For math on how to kill the ADC without doing anything, click here.

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Spirit Visage is a powerful item on Yorick. This item used to be overshadowed by Maw of Malmortius, but with the season 6 changes, the tank meta and the 6.7 nerfs, Spirit Visage quickly overshadowed Maw. The health and magic resist ensures you won't get one shotted by the enemy mage and the healing passive also gives you even more effective health. The 10% CDR is vital to ensuring we hit 40%.

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Sterak's Gage is a good item if you are ahead against a balanced amount of physical and magic damage, or against a team with a lot of burst. The shield and additional attack damage help increase Yorick's effective health by large amounts and gives you a decent damage boost.

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Against AD

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Starting Items

Early Game Core

Follow Up

Last Items

Against AP

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Starting Items

Early Game Core

Follow Up

Last Items

Against AD Hybrid

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Starting Items

Early Game Core

Follow Up

Last Items

Gameplay tips taken directly from InvertedComposer's Yorick guide.

In Lane

In Team Fights

Videos/Replays

Liquid Quas v Inverted Composer (Video)

Inverted Composer's op.gg (Hit "Replay" on his Yorick games in his match history and run the file it downloads)

Thanks for reading my guide! If you have any questions you can add me on league @ "usw". If you're not on the NA server, send me a message on MobaFire or leave a comment below.

I also stream at http://www.twitch.tv/usvvv occasionally, I probably won't play Yorick unless someone requests it.

Please check out InvertedComposer's website League of Legends Math.

You can also request lessons on lol-coaching.com

Good luck and have fun!

August 17th, 2015 - Guide released

August 26th, 2015 - Changed Randuin's to Dead Man's Plate in most builds and added a section on when to build Randuin's.

November 11th, 2015 - Updated masteries for pre-season.

November 17th, 2015 - Updated starting items and itemization sections for pre-season.

April 17th and 18th, 2016 - Swapped the situations where you buy Maw and Spirit Visage, updated runes and masteries, and added 8 more match-ups.

June 25th 2016 - Fixed masteries