In less than a week, Master Yi has gone from overpowered to drastically underpowered, following numerous nerfs in League of Legends’ patch 12.5 hotfix.
The Wuju Bladesman received a rework in patch 12.5 that reduced the effectiveness of his lethality build, which was dominating solo queue.
However, the changes resulted in Master Yi reaching above 55% win rate with a different on-hit build, as his lethality build was not affected.
Since the hotfix on March 4, his win rate has fallen below 45% overall.
Nerfs to Master Yi in League of Legends patch 12.5 hotfix
Base stats
- Base health decreased from 590 to 550
Q – Alpha Strike
- Damage scaling reduced from +60% AD to +50% AD
- Bonus damage from critical strikes reduced from +50% damage to +35% damage
- On-hit damage reduced from 100%, reduced to 25% from subsequent hits to 75%, reduced to 18.75% for subsequent hits
E – Wuju Style
- True damage reduced from 30/38/46/54/62 (+35% bonus AD) to 30/37/44/51/58 (+30% bonus AD)
R – Highlander
- Cooldown reduced from 85 seconds at all ranks to 100/90/80 seconds
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Master Yi’s win rate plummets after League of Legends 12.5 patch hotfix
The Wuju Bladesman is a popular pick in low Elo as he is simple to play and specializes in picking off lone targets.
He became even more frustrating to play against with a lethality build focusing on Duskblade as the Mythic item, providing little to no counterplay due to ability haste reducing Alpha Strike’s cooldown significantly.
As such, Riot decided to do a mini rework that buffed on-hit builds and scaled down his Ability Haste on Alpha Strike.
“Master Yi’s Duskblade builds have been a bit strong recently, but more importantly are both frustrating to play against and unhealthy for gameplay,” Riot said in the patch notes.
Players instead started to itemize an on-hit build consisting of Kraken Slayer, Berserker’s Greaves, and Guinsoo’s Rageblade.
But after the patch, Riot Captain Gameplay shared on Twitter that the jungler’s win rate climbed above 55% since the buffs, and that a “significant hotfix nerf” would follow.
After the hotfix, his overall win rate has plummeted to 44.27%. In Diamond+, it’s fallen to 39.05% as of March 6, according to LoLalytics.
“We’re tuning Yi down with some stronger nerfs this time, but ensuring that we’re pulling power from across his kit so as to not dramatically impact his gameplay,” Riot said.
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