Master Yi is a physical damage hyper carry. If you learn how to effectively play as him you can carry yourself up to low gold. Master Yi has a few tricks that can help him succeed in difficult situations. This guide will teach you all you need to know on how to become a carry Master Yi.

My runes are a poor example of good runes to run with Master Yi. I have 2 basic rune pages so far that sort of cover the basics in what you need in most champions. However should you make a different rune page than mine I would suggest prioritizing movement speed and attack speed. Yi is based on attack speed to deal a majority of his damage so the more attack speed you have the bettter!

My masteries that I run with Master Yi are focusing on keeping him in the jungle to farm. Master Yi can be very difficult to gank with at times since he has no form of slow, stun, root, taunt, etc. So ganking with Yi is based off of damage output before the target is able to get out of range. Because of that Master Yi is very good to farm with. If you stay in the jungle and gank only when the opportunity is prime then you will find the most success with Master Yi. Once you have fallen behind with Yi it is very difficult to get back into the game and do well. That is why my masteries focus jungle sustain and being able to farm more before having to recall.

The items I showed above are completely situational. Many people will not agree with my item choice because they will save things like ravenous hydra or phantom dancer are better because of their stats. There are a few things to note when building with Master Yi. Number one: Is the enemy team focusing and killing you before your true potential can be unleashed? If this is the case guardian angel is going to be a necessary item to buy because it will give you that second chance to come back and continue terrorizing the enemy team. Number two: Did the enemies build thornmail or are you very far ahead to the point where if you could stay in the fight for just a moment longer then you could easily ace the enemy team and win the game? This is when Yi becomes fun and where you are most likely to get a penta-kill. This item choice is when you get the bloodthirster. If you purchase bloodthirster it means you need more sustain for the fight. However in the case of Master Yi it also means that you are very very far ahead and plan on finishing the game soon. Buying bloodthirster will give you a good power spike for a short time and make you ultimately stronger however it will also make you fall off later in the game if you don't focus objectives and win once you buy it. I have acquired most of my penta-kills with the bloodthirster buy but I've also had many negative experiences when I bought bloodthirster and then proceeded to throw the entire game because the enemy team caught up and came back. And last but not least number 3: Is the enemy team just so damn tanky that no matter what you do you can't seem to kill even the squishiest of their champions? Well this rarely happens for me but on occasion I will buy last whisper. This gives insane armor shred and is very good for games with hyper tanks. Those 3 items are the only items I ever have the ultimate choice to buy in the end. I always stick with the core item build of berserker greaves, stalkers devourer, infinity edge, statikk shiv, and blade of the ruined king because in my opinion all of those items are necessary for Yi to reach his full potential. The only other item that has any choice in game for my build is the boot enchantment. My advice is if your team is behind buy homeguard so you can rush to defend faster. If your team is ahead or even buy furor because the movement speed boost from auto-attacks will be very good so you can keep up with your target.

Master Yi has very basic abilities to understand. His q is called alpha strike. Alpha strikeis a targetted ability that deals physical damage to 4 enemies, minions or monsters within a short area. Alpha strike makes Master Yi untargetable. Alpha strike will also deal critical damage to minions and monsters which is why farming with Yi is so easy. The last and most important thing to note with alpha strike is that when Master Yi auto-attacks an enemy the cooldown of alpha strike is reduced by 1 second. His w is called meditate. Meditate allows Yi to heal for a portion of his health and causes incoming damage to be reduced by a specific percentage. His e is called wuju style. Wuju style increases Yi's attack damage while also causing his auto-attacks to deal true damage. This ability is perfect for fighting tanks because the true damage will literally shred straight through them. Master Yi loses his passive while wuju style is activated. His r is called highlander. Highlander increases Yi's movement and attack speed while also making him immune to slows. While highlander is active the cooldown of Yi's other abilities can be reduced by champion kills or assists. And champion kills or assists increase the duration of highlanders effect meaning the more you kill the longer highlander will last. And finally Master Yi's passive ability is called double strike. This ability causes Master Yi to strike 2 basic attacks every few attacks. I believe every 4th or 5th basic attakc Yi will strike twice in succession.

The spells with Master Yi are quite simple. Smite is used for monsters and farming however once you acquire the stalkers blade you can use smite to slow enemy champions allowing you to catch up and secure those kills during a gank. Flash is necessary for those "OH ****" moments. Once in a while you make a mistake. It's completely understandable. Most of the time flash will be able to save your *** after you make that mistake. If you have further questions on spells feel free to contact me or comment.

Master Yi is extremely powerful. His physical damage will carry entire teams through games. The biggest things to remember are that you must know your damage. If you do not know how much damage you can cause then do not engage because Yi is extremely squishy so if you engage at a poor time you will be killed before you can cause any real damage. Also since you are a squishy and you have physical damage that is the equivalent to a marksman carry. The other team will theoretically focus the **** out of you. Engaging with Yi and using his ult to run straight in to the enemy team is fun however try to get your team to engage first so that you can assassinate the enemy carries or you can at least zone the enemy teams damage away from the fight so that your team can shred down the tanks.

Master Yi is a solid ranked pick up until low gold. He is very easy to deal with in higher ELO's so you will not see him very much/ever in professional play and he is mainly just an easy way out of bronze. If you plan on taking Yi into ranked I would suggest using him until you reach gold and then switching to a better jungler for pulling off successful ganks like Vi or possibly Elise.

There are many pro's and con's to Master Yi. I will try to list them all.
Pros:

Master Yi has insane damage output. It is unmatched by almost all other jungle carries.
Master Yi is very easy to understand and play. Most of his playstyle is just basic attacks anyways so you don't have to think much to be a Yi.
Master Yi has the option to either gank lanes and hope for a successful outcome or he can farm harder than almost any other jungler other than for example Fiddlesticks or Udyr.

Cons:

Master Yi is very squishy especially early game. If you get counter jungled there's very little you can do about it other than walk away and hope they leave or signal for a laner to come and assist you.
Master Yi can be stopped by any form of hard cc. If they stun, root, or disable you then you are pretty much dead. That's where guardian angel can come in handy.
Master Yi is easily stoppable at higher ELO's so your success will only get you so far before people will be able to effectively counter you and stop your victory rampage.

When farming in the jungle there is very little thought process involved with Master Yi. Basically all you have to do is click the big monsters and then press q as soon as it comes up. I usually save my e for if an enemy champion shows up to counter jungle me or if I need to go and gank a lane quickly because the extra damage is very necessary especially early game. Use Master Yi's w to heal from damage taken by monsters while farming and you basically can just farm in your jungle forever. Never use your ult to farm because it is very unnecessary. Save the ult for escaping and for ganking.

Teamwork is sort of a stupid word to use when talking about Master Yi. The only person worse than Yi when it comes to kill stealing is Katarina. Basically what you need to do as Master Yi when your team is grouped and ready to fight is you need to wait for your team to engage. Once they engage pop your ult and press q on the enemy carries. It will make you untargettable and you will be able to at least push the carries away from the fight. Remember if you engage on the enemy team you can be stopped by hard cc and a nonmoving Yi is a dead Yi. You thrive off of movement and speed.

There are a few things that experienced Master Yi players will know that most Yi players will not. For one if you choose to engage on the enemy team you can press w to start meditate. Now that the enemy team is focusing you your team can start attacking them. Meditate reduces incoming damage by quite a lot so the enemies may not be able to fully kill you before they've already lost the fight. Another thing to remember is the highlander does not mean you are the road runner. YOU CAN BE STOPPED. So you must use highlander intelligently so that you can reach the enemy team but they cannot stop you from chasing them. The final trick to Master Yi is his q. Alpha strike will cause you to teleport to the unit that you first strike. However if that unit dies while alpha strike deals it's damage then you will return to the position that you were originally placed before you used alpha strike. For example let's say you are holding mid but the enemy mid laner has range on you but you want to poke them down because you're a nice guy like that and you wanna help out your mid laner. Well wait for the enemy to go into the minion wave and then target an extremely low health minion. When you press q you will become untargetable and you will deal damage to the enemy minion wave and the enemy champion. However since you targeted the minion and it died while from the damage caused by the alpha strike you will return to the safe position under the tower where you originally pressed q from. Out of range of the enemy champion yet still poking them down so that they are forced to leave lane.