Hello all and welcome to my Master Yi guide! In this brief tutorial I will be discussing some of the ways I like to play Yi and hopefully sharing with you some secrets on how to succeed at the League's most wise and powerful SwordMaster!

Since Master Yi has been removed from the AP wizard category, his position as a mid laner has largely been laughed at - even after playing him for hundreds of games in ranked I still get my teammates saying "mid yi, wtf?" in champion select. This does not mean Yi is not a viable mid laner! His kit is simple but well designed to prevent the nasty AP carries of mid lane from killing you. Use this to your advantage!

Master Yi rly broken carry champ. He good in early and beast in late. Let's started.

-Allanian

Pro's:

+ High AOE damage with thanks to Alpha Strike
+ Very difficult to catch and chase due to having highest base movement speed in the game, as well as mobility with Highlander
+ One of the few champions who deals true damage consistently
+ Untargetable with Alpha Strike can make difficult to focus down
+ Resets make him dangerous if a person dies in a team fight.
+ Red smite is really strong on him
+ Can be a bit harder to itemize due to his true damage
+ Deceptively tanky thanks to Meditate and can tank high damage abilities whilst taking so little damage due to it.
+ One of the best champions in the game for cleaning up

Cons:

- Need rly hard music to play him on mid;
- Weak to targeted crowd control;
- If abilities used incorrectly, can be left vulnerable;
- Really difficult to play at high levels;
- Has no built in cc;
- Needs something to Alpha Strike if gets caught out to escape;
- Naturally Squishy;
- Will always be focused down;
- Everybody knows what his abilities do;
- Your jungle can say: "You troll! WTF?!" and ignore you all game (ps: he just not see my garen mid xD);
- You may be flamed by enemy team for playing a "Non skill champion".

Master Yi has one of the strongest level 2's in the game.
A process I use almost every game is as follows.
Kill the 3 melee minions in the first wave and then use Alpha Strike to hit the 3 ranged minions and the enemy champion.
Then continue to hit creeps until your Alpha Strike is off cooldown and you are level 2.
Hit minions until you have Double Strike ready, then turn on Wuju Style, Alpha Strike into the enemy champion, auto attack and Ignite. If they are not yet dead, Flash and an auto attack should finish the job.

*One factor that separates good Yi's from bad Yi's is the use of Alpha Strike. It is imperative that if you are laning (or fighting) against a champion that has critical, high damage or high cc abilities (such as Chum the Waters, Javelin Toss, Charm, Explosive Cask, etc) you save your Alpha Strike to dodge the ability. Your goal should be to CAREFULLY study the enemy champion so you can anticipate when they are about to use the ability, and be ready to act when they do so. This can easily turn the fight in your favour as you can dodge their key abilities while getting some damage down with Alpha Strike.
*In the early game laning phase, there are many things you can do to harass your opponent. One of the best ways to ensure your Alpha Strike will hit your opponent is to kill all enemy minions in your lane except for THREE or LESS, then Alpha Strike onto any of them to hit your opponent.
*Using your Alpha Strike on a minion as it dies (your goal is to have the minion die from other minions or tower whilst you are completing your Alpha Strike animation - you should not be getting the last hit on the minion) enables you to return to your starting position safely.
*Save Alpha Strike for a quick escape by using it to jump to jungle camps (use your trinket ward to help you)!
*Whilst in the early game, avoid using Alpha Strike on your opponent directly as this can lead to your imminent death. It is much safer to use it on a small group of minions which may still hit the enemy champion.
*If your health is critically low, retreat to a safe distance before using Meditate. Otherwise use it while in the lane - this can often lead to your opponents engaging on you which can work to your advantage!
*Gank bottom lane wherever possible; when your lane is pushed, run down river and Highlander for easy kills.
*Farm jungle camp whenever possible - easy clear time with Alpha Strike.
*Focus on building DAMAGE rather than TANKINESS - it will help you more in the long run.
*Make sure to SMART CAST your Alpha Strike! This will save significant time and is easy to do.
*Push like you're giving birth! Towers are no match for Yi's damage - feel free - Highlander to help you push & escape.
*If you are fed, BUY Pink WARDS! Your damage will be great regardless and you can never have too much vision! This is especially useful if your top lane or jungle aren't doing so well - placing wards down can help them greatly.
*Don't hesitate to use Meditate if it will be cancelled by a spell - often it is wise to negate damage EVEN if it will interrupt the channel. Fizz's Chum the Waters and Summon: Tibbers are perfect examples of spells that Meditate will almost completely block.
* Alpha Strike makes you untargetable. Use this as a last resort to dodge Requiem or Ace in the Hole if your Meditate is not available! (it's not very reliable - Meditate is always advised)
*Although it may seem tempting to channel Meditate until it runs out, a good Jedi knows when to stop channeling and retreat. It is important to determine whether the enemy champion(s) will be able to out-damage your Meditate. Otherwise you are simply standing still in order for them to kill you. Sometimes it is better to channel Meditate for one or two ticks just to gain some additional health before cancelling it and running away.
*Before you enter a team fight, look at the champions present on an enemy team and judge which crowd control abilities are most damaging to your [Meditate. For example, if there is a Taric, wait for his Dazzle before using Meditate. The exception to this is when you are confident that you can refresh your cooldowns by killing an opponent / assisting.
*Whenever you have a ward available (especially after you upgrade your trinket) place a ward inside the enemy jungle camp - and kill the jungler, if he low.

Runes are very important when trying to use Master Yi to his fullest potential. Attack speed will be your main rune setup as it will give you the strongest clear speed, and overall has the best scaling through the whole game.

Against ap champions:

Seal of Health x9,
Glyph of Magic Resist x9,
Mark of Attack Damage x8,
Mark of Critical Chance x1 for good luck,
Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage x3.

Against ad chamions:

Greater Seal of Armor x9,
Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist x9,
Mark of Attack Damage x8,
Mark of Critical Chance x1 for good luck,
Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage x3.

Why no Attack speed ? :
Attack speed is pretty good on yi, of course.
But, the most efficient way to take good trades with Master Yi in lane, is to take short trades with some auto and your Alpha Strike, basically you won't really use your attack speed as a source of damage. If you run Attack damage runes both in Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage and Mark of Attack Damage, then your few autos and your Alpha Strike will scale with them, which makes your trades stronger.
Meditate is a strong tool to make you hit faster , so you're not really "attack speed " dependent . If you don't get what I mean, you'll understand it later in the trick sections .( Meditate Auto reset trick).

When should I run Armor penetration instead of attack damage ?
Armor penetration will make you hurt lategame but, your early will be a bit weaker.
Attack damage runes are pretty good on Yi, because they scale well with your Q & E.

18 Points in Ferocity:

- Fury : Attack speed is better over 5% additional damage on your Q, and you take trades easier.
- Feast : This one is very important to have a better sustain, and to recover from a recent trade quickly. you can abuse of it to take an advantage on your opponent.
- Vampirism : Doran blade plus 2% of lifesteal: 5%, which is pretty good at lvl 1, you'll get a good sustain with that one. Moreover your Q deals good damage on minions, Qing with 2% spellvamp will heal you for ~20hp early game which is good to know.
- Bounty Hunter : well oppressor is pretty useless on yi, who doesn't have any cc's, it's better in my opinion to get a point in Bounty Hunter, Yi usually kills at least once every body in the enemy team ,so yeah.
- Battering Blows : Pourcentage Penetration is very important to slice Tanks lategame .
- Fervor of Battle : Pretty good keystone on yi, because you're an Auto attack based champion, you're masteryipassive.png procs twice this one aswell !

12 Points in Cunning:

You have to put points in that column only for the Dangerous Game mastery ( most op mastery for yi )
- Wanderer : the move speed offered by this mastery is pretty decent, very useful if you want to roam, and makes you walking back to your lane faster .
- Secret Stash : To get once again a better sustain. good agasint poke matchups.
- Merciless : well, It's a very important mastery, because most the tricks that I will show you later are based on the damage that you deal on a low enemy.

- Dangerous Game : MOST IMPORTANT ONE, it synergies just so well with your resets: You get a kill, you heal yourself and get some mana back, your can use your spells once again (with your R passive) and go for another kill, etc.


I take Thunderlord's Decree for easy games vs squishy champs.
Keystones
Master Yi is an auto attack heavy champion, so having more AD is helpful however in lane Thunderlord's Decree is the winner. This reworked mastery is overall a nerf for Yi as it takes longer to stack, deals less damage overall due to giving AD rather than increased on hit damage, however it is still better than going any other mastery due to Battering Blows being much better than Precision and Intelligence
Thunderlord's Decree is a very burst orientated mastery as it does a lot of up front damage however falls off later on in the game when laning ends, Fervor of Battle out scales it heavily as well as Intelligence and Precision are both quite bad on Master Yi

Flash
Use this if you want to play it safe. Being able to escape bad situations or secure kills. Also enables late game, Flash Alpha Strike Wuju Style auto attack, instantly kill the adc if you build critical strike. Note: good supports WILL Exhaust you as you become targetable as they can still SPAM Exhaust on you
Ignite
If you want to snowball or you want to play aggresive take Ignite, this gives you kill pressure and can also secure those much needed resets to ace a team.
Indeed, not only as Master Yi, Ignite is a powerful tool to snowball a lane and win your game by dominance. It's the best option that you can pick if you want to climb in elo. Moreover, additionally to Ignite, Yi's early is one of the BEST of the game, this combo is just very strong because your opponent won't see you coming, and you will pick up first blood easily usually, which makes Lane yi very strong, even more if you begin with a firstblood.

LVL 1

level up your Alpha Strike to take early trades, keep in mind that you have insane damage, a good trade can make a lane won.

LVL 2
You level up your Wuju Style if ahead, your Meditate if low (low enough to not be able to touch your farm).

Why leveling up Wuju Style and then Meditate ?

You have to deal damage as a midlaner, leveling up your E will grant you additional Ad and Pure damage.
leveling up your Wmeditate.png is useless since you usually use it as "an auto reseter" (look for the Meditate auto reset trick section if you don't get what it is), it will only give you more tankiness while under "meditation", and reduce the cooldown of it.

first buy Doran's Blade+ Health Potion

vs AD if you dominate:

Long Sword x2 -> Serrated Dirk-> Duskblade of Draktharr
Statikk Shiv An alternative to Phantom Dancer. While I recommend the latter, you can still pick up this item if you so wish - all of its stats are beneficial to Master Yi.
Guardian Angel - It is very easy to get caught up in CC in a team fight and die as Yi - this will give you a second chance to fight while bringing up your poor defensive stats and this give DMG!!!.
Infinity Edge - Likely your attack damage isn't very high yet so Infinity Edge is a brilliant option here. The increased crit damage works exceptionally well with Statikk Shiv and Phantom Dancer crit % to up your damage considerably.
Phantom Dancer - Critical strike % is a great stat on Yi and it comes bundled in a nice package with attack speed here. This will allow you to deal massive damage when combined with Wuju Style - is just TOO good to pass up on Yi, providing you 12% movespeed for free when near champions as well as unitwalking. Furthermore any champion we are duelling will deal 12% less damage to us.
Berserker's Greaves - - Getting tier 2 boots as early as possible is a good idea as it will allow you to roam much more easily as well as escape nasty situations. Usually I will buy these to help my kill potential buy Mercury's Treads are a completely viable alternative. I would not recommend any other boots (except perhaps Ninja Tabi in rare circumstances.

vs AP:

if you dominate
B. F. Sword-> Infinity Edge-> Mercury's Treads-> Statikk Shiv-> Essence Reaver-> Phantom Dancer-> Guardian Angel
if enemy team have burst dmg or more cc - Lord Dominik's Regards + Maw of Malmortius + Mercurial Scimitar + Mercury's Treads + Blade of the Ruined King + Guardian Angel

vs Tanks (if the enemy team has more then 1 tank)

Blade of the Ruined King
Black Cleaver
Phantom Dancer
Berserker's Greaves

ps: Boots

Go for Berserker's Greaves most of the time;
Go for Ninja Tabi in an Ad matchup (like zed or yasuo);
Go for Mercury's Treads if you're facing a team with a lot of cc's.

Dmg items:

Go for Death's Dance Phantom Dancer Black Cleaver, if you need more survival.
If enemy team don't have Ignite you can go build full attack speed and life steal.
soon.

Well, in this season invading early isn't as productive due to buffs spawning first, so the only strength in invading is counter jungling as camp spawns take longer to spawn, or attempt to steal the enemies opposite buff e.g.
So push 2-3 waves and go warding enemy buff blue/red and take him. Be careful its very risky, but this give very very good buff for early game.

I am playing master yi from season 3.
In every season i go up to platina and stop play.
My profile on op.gg
http://euw.op.gg/summoner/userName=allanian


soon.

Allways push line and roam on another line to help your team. easy kill bot if they are squishy like sona, soraka, ashe & etc.
Buy pinks for team.

FINISH!
BONUS! Play Video Play Video Play Video vs Anivia + Ekko Play Video vs Diana Play Video vs Fizz Play Video vs Le Blanc Play Video vs Yasuo Play Video vs Zed Play Video Play Video vs Orianna Play Video vs Taliyah & Elise gank Play Video vs Cassiopeia and vs Ahri Play Video vs Malzahar Play Video Play Video vs Annie Play Video vs Syndra Play Video and etc.
BONUS: BEAR vs ZED Play Video