Yone Mid Lane In-depth Guide

Yone's early game is generally weaker than most champions. He is easily punished and his weakness in lane stems from his low range, lack of early sustain, and engage. All of these factors leave him vulnerable to poke early and can stop him from getting to his item spikes. It is critical that Yone does not fall behind in lane too hard or he will have a hard time getting back into the game.

In tougher, ranged matchups, take Doran's Shield and Second Wind. The most important tip I would give new Yone players in the early game is to farm as best you can and play to scale rather than playing to kill your opponent. Sometimes, if you play way too aggro, you will lose too much HP, which will make the lane unplayable. If you fall behind too far in the laning phase, you will have a very hard time playing.

The optimal way to play Yone in lane is to wait for level 3, get your 3rd Q and look for an E into 3rd Q combo to get a good trade with the enemy. Yone differs greatly from Yasuo in lane phase. Yasuo can go in when he pleases due to his short E cooldown and high mobility in the minion wave. However, Yone's E cooldown is very long at early levels making his trading windows more spread out. When trading with your opponent in lane, ensure that you land every ability as missing even one 3rd Q inside of your E can make or break your lane. This is espeically true against higher mmr players who will abuse Yone while he E is on cooldown.

Yone is not the best at roaming. It's best to freeze the minion wave near your tower in the majority of lanes so you can take longer trades while your opponent tries to break your freeze. This will also make you harder to gank. You'll be closer to your tower and it will be easier for your jungler to gank since the enemy laner has to step up to your side of the lane to grab CS.

The Mid game generally starts when the first couple towers go down at about 12-15 minutes. In mid game, your job as Yone is to pick up as much gold as possible. You want to be in a sidelane since you can duel a lot of champions in long lanes. You should ALWAYS be in the sidelane of the objective you are looking to secure. If you're playing top lane, you should be in the opposite sidelane because you have Teleport. So in short, if you are the mid laner: If Dragon is up, you should be in Bot lane. If you are the top laner: If dragon is up, you should be in top lane.

Another thing thats super important in the mid game: you need expand on the lead and get even further ahead with the lead you build in the early laning phase. The best way to do this is: after you push a wave into enemy tier 2 tower, always take the enemy jungle camps, whether it be gromp, rift scuttler, krugs, etc. You will build up an extremely huge level lead and this is one of the most important things to do to win more games. You get extra experience from doing this and you also deny experience from the enemy so this is a double positive win and is why you see high elo toplaners and split pushers get such a massive level lead.

So in short, get in a sidelane and push to enemy tier 2 tower, get control wards and clear their vision in the enemy jungle, and deny as many jungle camps as you can to build a massive lead and starve the enemy team. If you do these things and already have a lead in the early game, you will find yourself winning so many more games as Yone.

When late game comes around, the main objective is to choke out even deeper vision if you are ahead, force a teamfight to get Baron Nashor, and close out the game. If you're the mid laner, you should be grouping with your team 90% of the time to secure vision and choke out the enemy vision. It depends if you are ahead or behind at this point of what to do, but basically if you are behind when it gets to this point, you just have to try your best to clear their vision and not let them take Baron Nashor and win the game off a teamfight.

While teamfighting as Yone, it is important to play patiently and not miss your E and R. It is best to stack your 3rd Q and use your ultimate to follow up and stan an important carry or when the enemy team is stacked up so you can hit a huge ult. The worst thing you can do as Yone is rush a teamfight and E -> R onto a squishy target and then have no follow-up damage for the enemy carries. At the end of the day, there a lot of ways to play a late-game teamfight as Yone. If your backline is very strong compared to theirs, play front-to-back and look for a big ulti when the enemy team groups up. However, every game state is different so make sure you're being creative in your engages.