Hi summoners,

I'm Kao and I'm a 26 yo French guy that has been playing LoL since season 2. I reached diamond for the first time in season 5 but then got perma banned because I was being toxic. I then left the game for many years, only coming back time to time to play a bit, until I decided to really grind the ranked ladder in season 10.

Back story
I was a main toplaner at this time (trynda main, sometimes teemo), and got back to diamond in s10. After a pause, i came back in s11 and became a jungler main, playing almost exclusively master Yi and reaching diamond 1 100 lp. I made another pause at the beginning of this season after I made a terrible start (38% winrate after 40 games), but I went back to the game a few months ago with the firm will to finally reach the master tier that slipped through my fingers last season. After months of grind with my man Master Yi, I finally reached my personal grail and i'm willing to push even further. My goal is to become one of the best (if not THE best) Master Yi in the world.
S12 peak elo : master 299 lp.
S13 peak elo : master 634 lp (almost GM)

In real life
I'm a simple guy that loves to spend time with my girlfriend, my friends, my doggo and I love working out in the gym.
I'm also a teacher, because I always loved to transmit my knowledge to people that are willing to learn. That's also why I'm writing this guide today.

I hope you will find what you are looking for in this guide and if you have any question, you can meet me on my stream, it will be a pleasure for me to help you.

Ok guys so here i'm gonna breakdown for you the concept of Master Yi so you can understand how this champion works.
Master Yi is an hypercarry, meaning he is a scaling champion that needs to get a lot of gold in order to buy his build, especially the holy trinity of items (BOTRK, Guinsoo and Kraken) in order to get the maximum potential out of him. Also, please note that with every item Yi buys, he gets a huge powerspike.

HOWEVER, that being said, you must absolutely understand that Master Yi is what I call a "must be ahead of the gold curve champ" (yeah I didn't find a fancy name yet!). But what does it means ? Well, to put it simply, Yi will never be as strong as when he has more stuff than the ennemy team. That means that the point with Yi isn't just to farm until you get your items. The point with Yi is to get a GOLD LEAD by any price so that you are always more fed than your enemy. If the enemy team is always toe to toe with you, you won't be the hypercarry you think you will. So keep that in mind before you start doing stupid dives and give your juicy 1k gold bounty *** to kill a 0/8 janna and give them the opportunity to come back (yes, I speak from experience).

Now that you have this in mind, you must know that if you can reliably get a lead everygame and you learn how to keep it/push it further, you will literally stomp your games and climb really fast.

PROS - Easy mechanical champion - Snowballing champion - He is able to 1v9 games - Great objectives control - One of the greatest duelist in the game - Can shred any target regarding of his tankiness - Good countergank potential

CONS - Useless champ if you fall behind - You need to be ahead of the enemy gold curve to be really strong - Gets countered hard by cc, burst and invisibility - Can't setup ganks for his teammates - Might be hard to have an impact in the early game

Best main rune you can pick in precision tree. It's just too strong in duel and make you a scaling monster in teamfights. Once you get your max stacks you will cut anything into pieces. I run it more than 95% of my games right now.

Literally the only rune you can pick in this row, and it's a really cool rune. The extra gold is nice and the little healing boost might save you many times (good synergy with death dance).

Basically, if the enemy team has close to NO CC, or CC that you can't reduce, go for alacrity. Otherwise, run tenacity. Tenacity is really a life saving stat for Master Yi and it's completely worth to trade the 18% attack speed for it.

Take Coup de grace if you want to increase your chance of getting early kills on ganks or skirmishes. It will also help you finishing off your target quicker so you can get your resets and snowball. Take Last stand if you want to be stronger in teamfight because this is where it will shines the most. It's also a good rune to consider if you know the enemy team is going to deal a lot of damage and you will often be really low in fights.

Good rune on secondary tree to get. Yi doesn't really have issues killing targets so you will stack it fast and snowball hard.

Ok so the reasoning behind this rune is simple : every first kill on target will gives you extra gold. Basically it's 550 free golds if you succeed in killing everyone. 550 gold might not look like a lot, but Yi is a scaling champ that needs to reach his powerspikes. These extra golds will help you reach your first items faster and increase your ability to snowball and push your lead further.

In this chapter I will cover the different pathing for Master Yi and my recommandations for each game.


What options do I have ?

Basically, as Master Yi, you have 3 clearing options :

1) The most staple and safe : full clear into scuttle / into gank
Red > krugs > raptors > wolves > blue > gromp > scuttle > gank or reset
Blue > gromp > wolves > raptors > red > krugs > scuttle > gank or reset

2) The cheesy : start red or blue then invade the enemy buff on the same side where you are. You can then take their krugs / gromp or gank a lane (or wait the enemy jungler and kill him :))

3) The ganky : the idea is to fast rush lvl 3 then gank
Blue > gromp > red
Red > blue > gromp


What option should I pick ?

Well, most of the game, full clearing is the safest and best option as Yi is a champion that needs a lot of resources to stay in the game, meaning you must not fall behind. Farming is the safest / most reliable source of feeding and you should focus on it.

Now, you can also do the lvl 2 cheese (clear red and rush blue buff. If jungler is there, kill him, otherwise take blue + gromp and gank bot or stay in the bush and wait for him to come and kill him) to force a kill on the enemy jungler with redbuff + HOB. If it works it's insane for you because you take a lead AND make the enemy jungler fall behind. However if you fail you are the one hardly behind so do this against champion you can beat 1v1 (check matchups sheets earlier in this guide for more informations).

My best advice would be for you to always go like you want to full clear, and check your minimap during your camps / after clearing each camp to see if there is an opportunity to gank. Sometimes you wanna gank mid after clearing your whole bot/top side before moving to the other side of the map.


How do you decice if you start top or bot ?


First of all, know that you will play for the opposite side of where you decide to start. Yi is a farming champion and you will cycle your camps on spawn many times, therefore you will always end up your farming cycle in the same side, giving you the opportunity to gank this side but not the other.

For instance, if you start red top side, you will almost always end clearing botside, meaning that you will try to gank / help your botlane, but you will rarely be there for your toplaner. Therefore, your toplaner is now in the weakside of the map, because he will not have a lot of help from you.

But now we're moving to the big one million dollars question : what side should I play for ? This question is really vast and to be honest, sometimes i'm still confused about what side I should play for. It takes a lot of time and experience to know what should be the best for your game and I can't give you a rule that you can apply every game without thinking further.
HOWEVER, I can tell you all the factors that make you decide for which side you are going to play.

The below list doesn't rank factors but rather give an indication of what I look to before chosing for which side/lane i'm playing for.

1. Kill potential : is the enemy you're gonna gank an easy target to kill (no escape, squishy..) + does your laner have setup for you to kill the target (cc, engage...)

2. The win condition : if you have a very clear win condition in your team, you might want to play for him and put him ahead, or play around him to make sure he doesn't fall off if it's a weak early game champion (vladimir, kassadin, kog'maw...).

3. The strenght of your mates : sometimes you wanna play for someone that isn't the best win condition in your game, but he plays very well his champ and he is not autofilled (avoid playing for autofilled lane, especially in higher elo because even if they get ahead, they will struggle converting their lead in a win because they're not used to the role). I advice you to get porofessor / blitz app so you can check your teammates before the game starts to know who's doing good or not...

4. The winning lanes : play for the lanes that are almost automatically winning / that have an easy matchups or very strong early game (renek, panth, caitlyn+lux in botlane, etc...) because they will stomp their lane and you have a high chance to win 2v2 or 3v3 if jungler comes.

5. To avoid enemy jungler : if the enemy jungler counters you, you might want to avoid him by pathing the other way so you make sure you don't throw the game by losing a 3v3 bot at 3:30 minutes (or losing 2v2 top...)