Riot can’t fix Yuumi with a rework

Ever since she was released back in 2019, Yuumi has been dividing the League of Legends community. It’s not hard to understand the love-hate relationship the player base has with her either. Who doesn’t love a cute cat with big eyes riding a book? Well to counter that, who loves playing against a ticking time bomb? Yuumi’s flawed design has warped the game for a few years, and Riot is finally preparing a rework that would fix her. Again.

Why is Yuumi beloved?

Before we can dive deeper and discover what makes Yuumi so polarizing, we have to understand how we got here. When Riot introduced Yuumi to the game, they had one idea in mind. Make a champion that your friend who doesn’t play League can play alongside you. This sounds great in theory and is a good concept. Not only is it helping the game grow its player base, but it also makes the experience more fun. MOBA games like League and Dota have always had a certain reputation. Toxic communities, high entry level, problematic matchmaking, and so on. 

But Yuumi was designed to help ease all of that. The bot lane is the only duo lane, so it makes sense to play with your friend. Not only would the players enjoy the cute voice lines, but they can also observe how the game develops. And this approach has worked ever since, with Yuumi being one of the five most picked support agents ever since she was introduced to the game. But to accomplish this fantasy, Riot Games had to get creative and innovate. Unfortunately, what they introduced to the game with Yuumi is what ultimately breaks her. Yuumi cannot achieve her purpose without attaching to her partner and becoming untargetable. And that’s one of the main reasons almost everyone hates Yuumi.

Yuumi’s problems

Yuumi introduced a mechanic that was unique to League of Legends. But playing against something that is untargetable for an indefinite duration is frustrating. She can hit you but you can’t hit her. By design, Yuumi is a support champion, which naturally means her kit provides a lot of utility. She is also classified as an enchanter, meaning she makes other players stronger. Regardless if it’s through healing, shielding, protection, movement speed boosts, or combat stats. Outside of Janna, who is a great example of champion design, no other enchanter can check all of these boxes. Yuumi does that and can go beyond it while having little to no counterplay. 

Champion design flaws

Riot didn’t like that Yuumi was a heal bot in the true sense. Players would just sit AFK on their teammates for the entire game, spamming the E ability to heal them. So Riot started tinkering with her power budget, which we already said was one of the most extensive in the game. Yes, Janna can heal you, but not as much and as often as Yuumi. And Janna has to use her ultimate ability to do that, while Yuumi can do it every 4 seconds. Janna can also shield you, but not as freely as Yuumi.

Janna gives you combat stats while you are shielded, but Yuumi gives them as long as she is attached. And Janna can engage and protect you, but it’s not as easy as with Yuumi’s ultimate ability. Yuumi was more powerful than the best-designed champion in her class and role. And she could do all of that without ever being in danger. Unlike Janna, which you can focus on and target, you had to get through Yuumi’s carrier first. 

Yuumi Items and Spells

Because she was untargetable and getting carried around most of the time, Yuumi didnt have to buy boots. That’s 1100 gold going towards her next item. The other champions in the support role couldn’t afford to play like that. With that in mind, she also never had to use the summoner spell Flash. Unlike Dota, almost every champion in League of Legends is balanced around using Flash. But instead, Yuumi could take two combat spells, like using Ignite and Exhaust or Heal. This made fighting against a Yuumi even more problematic. She has always had a weak early game, but she always had tools to help her get through it. And those are even more exemplified when she scales into her late-game form. 

Yuumi scaling power

The nail in the coffin isn’t the fact that she can heal her target for half her health every 4 seconds. It’s not that her Q ability does so much damage. It’s not the movement speed and crowd control her ultimate ability gives that makes fighting her hard. While Yuumi is attached she gives her target a lot of combat stats. The numbers might be confusing, but when everything is calculated, she gives her target around 40% more damage. For every two damage items you have bought, if Yuumi is on you, you are as powerful as when you would have three. This is what makes Yuumi + any champion in the game unstoppable. Her core design of being carried makes her untargetable and overpowered. Without removing that feature, Yuumi can never be balanced.

Yuumi patch notes history

Riot’s way of balancing her abundance of power has been a mess from the get-go. When she was released, Yuumi was the worst champion in the game by far. The balancing team tried fixing her patch after patch for the entirety of season 9. After they finally got her above a 38% win rate, is when the real trouble started. When the usual balancing by increasing mana costs failed to stop a champion that built support items with mana regeneration, Riot did something drastic. 

With the changes to her E ability on patch 10,13, it would now cost an additional 15% of her maximum mana on top of the regular mana costs. This effectively guaranteed the death of the infinite healing bot right? Well, Riot decided to balance out this big nerf, by giving her Q ability a bit more power. It now dealt 2-8% of the target’s current health, while slowing them and doing an absurd amount of damage. Not only did she have high base damage numbers from all of the buffs she received the previous season. Her Q ability also had a 65% AP ratio at the time! Ladies and gentlmen welcome to the Garen Yuumi bot lane meta. 

Yuumi in competitive play

This combination was so dominant three years ago, that Rekkles started playing Garen. In case you are unfamiliar, he’s one of the best bot laners of all time. Yuumi, Aatrox (with reworked revive ultimate) and Irelia (another rework) dominated the competitive scene in season 9. So much so that Yuumi was the most banned champion in the entire year, with nearly 1500 bans in competitive games. She was either picked or banned in 80% of the professional matches throughout the entire year. And then Riot hammered her with nerfs for the first time. She was still decent in season 10 but made little impact. 

Moonstone Yuumi

But all hell broke loose when Riot reworked the items in preseason 11. With Moonstone being introduced, Yuumi could now heal teammates by doing damage. But she wasn’t a problem throughout the year until the World Championship rolled around. A few patches before, Riot had added a new effect to her passive ability. Yuumi could now restore 8% of her maximum mana with one auto attack. And the cooldown on her passive which enabled that auto attack and subsequent shield was lowered. And boom, Yuumi is now the most banned champion at the 2021 World Championship. A significant nerf to her E ability, and Yuumi was pretty quiet to start season 12. As were most enchanters, with engage supports dominating the meta up until the durability patch.

Yuumi since durability update

 Since then the tables have turned multiple times, but Yuumi has always been on top. The spring playoffs in all regions were marked by three champions: Zeri, Sivir, and of course Yuumi. The meta shift on top of an absurd buff Riot gave Yuumi on the same patch spelled doom for competitive integrity. Not only was Yuumi’s mana cost on her E ability lowered, but it also healed for 10% more. And that’s how we got 4 months of Zeri/ Yuumi every single game, across every region. 

Instead of nerfing her, Riot gave her multiple small buffs over those 4 months, untill they finally decided to balance her. A bigger cooldown on her E and ultimate ability should do the job, right? Well, Riot lasted just a few hours, immediately hotfix buffing Yuumi right into the meta. And it was done in the worst way possible, by giving her even more damage on her Q ability. Fast forward a few weeks later, and Yuumi was once again the most banned champion at the 2022 World Championship. Who could have guessed?

And it wasn’t just the usual Yuumi dominance. With her recent buffs, she could now build damage items like Ludens, do more damage than the mid-laners, and still heal for a crazy amount. All while being a support champion, with around half the gold when compared to the rest of her team. The monstrosity that is the cat on the book was now fully unleashed. 

Casual play

As for ranked play, this is where most of those issues started. Most of these underserved buffs Yuumi received were because she was performing poorly in ranked matches. Even now in preseason 13, she is at a 47,5% win rate while being the fourth most popular support champion. Her 33% ban rate is the highest among support champions, signaling a major issue. Most of the community doesn’t like playing against Yuumi, and those who do, aren’t enjoying success. So why is that? Well, Riot might have marketed her as a beginner-friendly champion but that’s not her design. 

Taking advantage of all the things that make her such a dominant pick in competitive play is not that easy. Especially in ranked play where communication is non-existent. And that’s how they got stuck in this loophole. Designed with complex mechanics that casual players need to learn, but balanced around numbers that pro players abuse. If her win rate isn’t dragged down by all of the botted accounts that farm experience with her, its due to the new players. Yuumi is nothing like the other 160 champions in this game, and mastering her is like a different game. For every Yuumi in a professional match, there is a Yuumi in ranked who never uses her passive ability, can’t guide her Q ability, and is abandoning her lane partner after being AFK for 15 minutes in the lane. 

Conclusion

In order for this rework to be successful Riot must stop contradicting itself. If Yuumi is meant to serve as an onboarding champion for new players, she should be simplified. No more untargetability, no more bonus combat stats, percentage of health damage on abilities, and intricate passive. Garen and Annie are great champions for beginners because of their simple kits. Yuumi doesn’t use Flash or buy boots. Nothing a new player will learn by playing Yuumi will transfer to the next champion he picks up. But removing all of these features from Yuumi would make her a completely new champion.

If Riot are intent on keeping her identity, a sacrifice must be made. She cannot continue to receive buffs and numbers adjustments because of her poor win rate. Kalista, Azir, and Ryze have learned this the hard way over the years. The moment those champions are close to viable in a ranked environment, they destroy the competitive integrity of the game at the highest level. Riot have a huge challenge on their hands, and for the sake of all League of Legends players, we hope they get it right.

Header: Riot Games