Yuumi 2023 Rework Changed Abilities Revealed

Yuumi has been one of the most polarizing champions League of Legends has ever seen. Despite performing horribly upon release, the Cat drew a lot of interest. Apart from the adorable voice lines and beginner-friendly gameplay, many people saw her true potential. It’s 2023 and this Yuumi rework is the first time Riot Games have tried to fix her core flaws.

How does Riot Games balance Yuumi?

Before becoming one of the most popular champions in the game, Yuumi struggled to hit the 40% win rate mark. A lot of adjustments to her numbers and she started making progress. Players eventually realized the power she held, and she started showing up in competitive play. She has been a problem for the balance team ever since. Her popularity made it hard to remove ‌problematic features without changing her identity. Up until this point, all she got were minor tweaks. Riot finally had enough after she came out firing in competitive play in 2023 and completely murdered the champion. We did an entire article covering Yuumi’s issues up until this point, but now it’s time for a new chapter in her book.

Riot Phroxzon vision for Yuumi

Nobody could argue that Yuumi had an unhealthy design. But Riot couldn’t just remove her from the game. When push came to shove, they murdered her completely and installed these goals for the upcoming rework.

• Yuumi should be a great beginner champion for a new friend while also offering a great duo experience
•  Reduce frustration for the enemy and reduce her power in Pro Play (where she is optimized) while still making her viable in average play
• Yuumi should remain an easy champion to learn, but hard to master 
• Offer and retain mastery of the champion without making it abusable in Pro play
• Incentivise sitting on her lane partner with drawbacks for swapping allies to sit on later in the game

For the sake of readability, I will ignore the “Best Friend” mechanic until the end of the analysis. This feature in her passive ability changes how her abilities interact with the 3 other teammates who are not your “Best Friend”. So it’s best to take a look at her new abilities separately and then explain this mechanic on top of them.

Yuumi 2023 rework ability changes

Old Passive: Bop ‘N’ Block

Yuumi’s passive was a mana-restoring enhanced auto-attack which gave her a shield that she was able to grant her ally by attaching.

New Passive: Feline Friendship

Yuumi’s Attacks and Abilities that hit an enemy champion now trigger a heal that can be given to an ally if she attaches. Attaching is also necessary to start gaining Friendship which we will cover later on.

Her new passive ability called Feline Friendship allows Yuumi to heal while attached. This is similar to her previous iteration but it’s now linked to hitting abilities or attacks when a heal is needed. This change alone allows for much more counterplay, removing her from the heal bot playstyle. The heal amount itself has been lowered a lot which means Yuumi is “forced” to detach to heal her ally if she does not have her Q or Ult up. 

She only has two abilities to damage enemies and the heal itself can only be triggered every 20-10 seconds. On first impression, this change is reminiscent of how Rakan’s Q ability functions. Only time will tell if this is the correct approach but it does seem like a step in the right direction.

This also opens up the can of worms that is the Yuumi Mastery curve. Active Yuumi’s will be rewarded for consistently making use of this passive, giving a constant stream of healing to her ally. The bad Yuumi players that just sit on your and press a button every time they have mana will now be punished severely. The jokes about watching Netflix were often true, but now the abuse will be much lower.  Bad Yuumi players will still automatically utilize this passive by hitting abilities but at a much lower rate unless they actively play around Feline Friendship’s cooldown.

Yuumi Reworked Q ability breakdown

Old Q ability: Prowling Projectile

Yuumi fired a skill shot missile that damaged the first target hit. It empowers after 1 second after which it will deal bonus damage and slow the target. While attached, the missile can be controlled with the cursor.

New Q ability: Prowling Projectile

Yuumi fires a targetable missile that can be controlled for a short duration until it becomes empowered, after which it is no longer targetable but quickly accelerates forward in a straight line. The empowered missile deals extra damage and slows the target by a big amount (20% to 55%).

Her new Q ability functions nearly the same, except it’s much harder to hit. You are no longer able to weave it in between minions during the laning phase. The turn radius has been drastically reduced and you should now use the first part of your Q ability to guide or aim it before it becomes an accelerated missile.

This change also builds on her mastery curve, as it adds a new mechanic that players must practice.  With her Q being harder to hit now, being good at aiming her Q before it accelerates becomes a new skill ceiling. Those Yuumi players that take the time to practice it, will make much better use of her passive ability. Those hoping for a free win coasting through ranked will soon realize their team lost because they were useless. 

Yuumi Reworked W ability breakdown

Old W ability: You and Me!

Yuumi grants her ally and herself Adaptive Force. While attached she becomes untargetable except for tower damage.

New W ability: You and Me!

Yuumi will no longer grant Adaptive Force. Instead, sitting on someone grants her the  “Best Friend” benefits and stacks “Friendship” with her ally. When she jumps on an ally she will become untargetable except for tower damage. 

Despite this being a hard nerf, it removes some of her toxic traits. AP champions with Yuumi used to gain up to 30% more damage. Bruisers became unkillable raid bosses and ADCs were somewhere in between. This version of her W ability forces her to play with her bot lane friend while balancing her new passive. Hard CC will still put her W ability on a 5-second cooldown, so positioning while detached is still something to look out for.

While you no longer have the incentive to detach due to not gaining mana from the passive, a good Yuumi player  will still detach to use the passive heal with an auto attack. You still gain 50 extra range for your passive auto attack. This change was introduced a few months ago when she suffered several nerfs.

Yuumi Reworked E ability breakdown

Old E ability: Zoomies

Yuumi grants a heal and a boost of movement speed and attack speed either to herself or her attached ally.

New E ability: Zoomies

Yuumi no longer heals, but instead grants a shield that provides attack speed. While the shield lasts, she also grants movement speed. If attached, the ally receives the buff and also restores mana to them.

This is the only ability that does not have a “Best Friend” bonus. While the Shield is not as strong as the heal used to be, her Mana costs have been drastically reduced and the ability cost no longer scales with max mana. Something new that has been added to her kit comes in the form of her granting ally mana (20-36) which gets increased by up to 100% based on missing mana. Granting Mana is something we have only ever seen in “old” Soraka, which was removed when she got reworked. It will be interesting to see how this works out in-game. Riot has been trying to push ADC’s away from Presence of Mind and into using Overheal since patch 13,4.

The mastery curve here is increased because the difference between a shield and a heal is that the shield only adds value while it is active. Good Yuumi players will be rewarded by timing their shield correctly so that it blocks damage. Beginner Yuumi players might “waste” the ability by using it without negating damage, essentially wasting the mana. Also keep in mind, restoring mana at the right time to allow your ally another ability cast might become a solid tactic.

2023 Yuumi Reworked Ultimate ability breakdown

Old Ultimate ability R: Final Chapter

Yuumi channels seven waves of damage that root anyone hit by three or more waves

New Ultimate ability R: Final Chapter

Yuumi channels five  waves of damage that slow enemies, stacking per wave hit (max 50% slow). Ally champions are healed by the waves and excess healing becomes a shield. While attached, Yuumi can steer the direction of the waves around.

This change essentially removes any hard crowd control from Yuumi’s kit. She is now the only Support champion with no form of hard CC. Her ultimate ability having different effects on allies and enemies adds a new dimension to her gameplay. Meaning she no longer wants to be at the very front of the fight (sitting on the tank) but rather remain in the backline and hit both her teammates in front of her and the enemies with the ability.

Being able to maneuver the direction of the ult is also a HUGE quality of life change as it was hard to communicate with teammates and get them to line up your ult for them. The skill expression here remains the timing and direction when using your ultimate ability. It can still be used as an engage tool but it will provide more value in broader team fights.

Best Friend Mechanic on Reworked Yuumi passive ability

Now that we have gone over her basic abilities let’s talk about her new passive calledFeline Friendship. When you are attached to an ally you start building Friendship with them. Every ally has its own Friendship Score. The champion with the highest Friendship score is her “Best Friend”. Her “Best Friend” benefits from unique bonuses from her abilities. To increase the Friendship score, the ally you are sitting on needs to kill minions or champions. This basically locks the ADC into being your “Best Friend” for the majority of the game since you will be farming with them for the majority of the game. It’s good to know that securing a few kills with another ally if your ADC disconnects, will reverse the Best Friend status in their favor. 

Yuumi Best Friend Bonuses on abilities

Q: Slow is always empowered when sitting on Best Friend. Hitting an enemy champion grants her ally on-hit damage for 5 seconds which is increased based on the ally’s critical strike chance. [Yet another incentive for the ADC to be the “Best Friend”]

W: While on her Best Friend, she gains 10-20% Heal and Shield Power and also allows her ally’s attacks to restore health on-hit.

R: The Best Friend gets a bigger Heal and also receives an Armor and MR increase for the duration.

This mechanic allows Riot to balance Yuumi around her ADC, rather than her being able to grant all of her power to any ally. Her best “Best Friend” should always be the ADC, given that it has a critical strike chance scaling. Luckily though, this mechanic has a “fail safe” so that, unlike Kalista’s bind, if your ADC goes AFK during the game, you are still able to become “Best Friends” with someone else. 

Final Thoughts on 2023 Yuumi rework

All in all, it looks like Riot has done a good job with this rework. It keeps her core mechanic in place and gameplay fantasy alive, while also staying true to their own goals of creating a very easy-to-play champion for people who want to bring new friends to the game. While doing this, Riot has still managed to add a form of skill expression to her kit. This should help maximize her efficiency and will allow Yuumi players to differentiate from “true” beginner players on the champion.

All of this seems to be achieved without creating a scenario where full mastery of her enables her to be abusable in pro play. Her kit now has clear weaknesses that can be exploited with counterplay. Skill expression can be more visible and there are clear benefits to not ditching her laning partner. The only issue here is that she provides so much utility that if her numbers aren’t adequate, she will become a terror once again. But for now, patch 13,5 brings us a new Yuumi on the Rift and only time will tell if Riot made the right call.