Master Yi Jungle Build Guides, Runes, Items, and Abilities

Master Yi is an AD fighter jungler. He is not the best champion in the early game, but once you hit level 5 and get Highlander, he becomes a lot stronger at running down the enemies and dealing serious damage! The best jungle path for Master Yi is to do a full clear early on so you can get level 5 as soon as possible. Master Yi is not the best at ganking as he has no crowd control abilities but if your team lands some crowd control you can follow up and do a lot of damage.

1. Pros

• Easy mechanical champion
• Snowballing champion
• He is able to 1v9 games
• Great objectives control
• One of the greatest duelist in the game
• Can shred any target regarding of his tankiness
• Good countergank potential

2. Cons

• Useless champ if you fall behind
• You need to be ahead of the enemy gold curve to be really strong
• Gets countered hard by cc, burst and invisibility
• Can't setup ganks for his teammates
• Might be hard to have an impact in the early game.

1. Some tips right off the bat:

Fast reaction speed, good timing and being able to predict your enemys actions are very important skills to have when playing as Master Yi, as those allow you to use this champion to his full potential.

I don't like pure tank items on Yi because he scales extremly well with the right damage and attackspeed focused items, which then allow you insane solo plays while giving you high dueling power.

Try to finish your games on Yi as fast as possible because mistakes will be less forgiving since you can die alot faster in the later states of the game, duo to being rather squishy with my builds.

2. Advanced Kit Tips and Tricks

Passive: Double Strike:

• If possible, stack up your passive before engaging fights for more dps and to get your next double strike faster
• The 2nd attack of your passive will focus the nearest target of your character and not the nearest target of the target you hit with the first strike, you can also use this to your advantage by moving towards prioritized creeps, keep that in mind when farming for example
• Once your passive runs out it can cancel your next attack animation when it expires, which can be very annoying
• Your passive works on Jhin, Nida, Teemo and Shaco traps but not on GP barrels
• The 2nd hit of your passive can crit turrets inhibs and the nexus
• Yi's sword will glow if his passive is stacked up, if enough of those stackes are gathered Yi will get into a loop as long as you continue to attack and he'll also use his passive sooner with less total autoattacks, however if the 2nd hit of your doublestrike does not land for example if the target dies at the 1st hit that'll restart the loop

Alpha Strike (Q):

• Always auto attack your jungle camps first before Q'ing them because otherwise they will reset their HP for the first hits of your Q, this can slow your early game down alot, exceptions for this are the raptors but only if there are 4 or more of them left, the scuttle crabs aswell as dragons and rift heralds
• You can still get hit or even die in your Q when getting hit by cc over time like Leblanc Morgana or Karma chains, also by empowered autoattacks and by damage over time spells like ignite for example, Fiddle drains and Illaoi tantacles after her grab can also hit you + bard q, there are also still moments in which you die even without any of those situations happening which is known as a bug for a very long time
• You can reduce the duration of cc over time spells by timing your Q as late as possible and for chain abilities you can walk back a little very quick which decreases your hitbox location (if your enemy is running from you), to avoid the chain ability completely
• You can use your Q to poke or kill enemys, your Q will always prioritise the closest targets
• You can bait enemys by Q'ing a target which dies the moment you're still in your Q to get out of your start position
• You can also do this to poke enemys in lane from a safe distance
• When attempting to dive once an enemy is low enough to die to a Q you can also start clicking away to avoid turret shots
• You can still use your Q after (almost every) hard cc spell if you use Qss (Fun fact: even dragon knockbacks)
• You can use your Q to jump over walls, this can be useful for either escapeing or following enemys but you can also use it to safe some time when farming i mostly only use it on Raptors and Krugs camps since as saied before some camps can heal up if you start them with your Q
• If enemys use hourglas they will take no damage from your q but your ability will go on cd
• You can get assists if you Q a champ which dies before you leave your Q if the window for that is to short it won't work and your Q will be on cd tho (i guess your Q needs to bounce at least once)
• Yi's Q follow range is caped at some point, so you cant follow bigger distances, max should be something around 2000 units
• Keep in mind that your Q can lose you around 1 sec of your E's duration
• Your Q can reavel enemys in fog of war (not invisible once tho) if they are close enough
• If you Q a champ that is going invisible while you are still in your Q you can track their path
• Even with the autoattack option turned on, after using a Q on a Scuttle Crab Yi will not keep attacking it automatically because it's a neutral enemy
• If you click Q on a champ which is out of your range Yi will follow that target till he loses vision of him
• Do not worry, you cannot dodge stuff like ally buffs or heals like zilean lvl ups or soraka ults (neither turret platings i think)
• Q interaction with other untargetabilities turns out that you deal some damage but you get thrown out of your Q the moment they turn untargetable
• Spamm q on a spot that you think the enemy will show up to avoid vision advantage traps
• There is a very small window in which other champs can avoid your autoattack after you follow a flash with your Q
• Your Q duration can be shorter if the target dies sooner, you can lose turret aggro when doing this on a low HP enemy champ while having ally minions around
• When farming jungle camps you need to set them as a target by clicking them once with rightclick because if you use your Q on them before doing that Yi will stop attacking

Meditate (W):

• You can reset your autoattacks by pressing your W in time and then rightclicking the target again, the smaller the time between the different execution inputs are the faster you will start your next attack, the optimal moment for that is after your doublestrike because not only dps wise you get the most out of it but you also get your next doublestrike faster that way it can also reduce incoming dmg for that short input window
• Damage reduction on your w is halfed against turrets
• You can use your W in your base to recover faster but you should avoid that if the enemys are close to your base
• Your w has a ap scaling so items like hourglas in some situations are actually not too troll if you have ever actually thought about it
• After you channel your W long enough you build up your doublestrike passive
• While channeling your W your E and Ult run out durations will stop for that time
• There is a display bug if you use your W on Skarner portals
• If you spamm your W while you're in your Q it can get your W on CD
• If you're about to end a game you can click on a position then use your W right after and once the endscreen appears Yi will still walk to that location

Wuju Style (E)

• Get more use out of your E truedamage by waiting for your doublestrike before using it
• If you press E while you're in W you will cancel your W ability
• You can get more E'autoattacks if you use your W right before the end of the duration of your E to get another E-doublestrike, however if the window is too short it won't work since you don't win just stop time

Highlander (R):

• You cant get slowed but also not attackspeed slowed in your ult
• You cant get grounded in your Ult
• You get ability resets on kill and assists once you skill your R
• If you get multiple kills/assists they get reseted even faster(based on missing CD %)
• Your R can cancel your W
• You dont get slowed in your ult which means if the enemys have fear abilities they can send you flying far away, keep that in mind

• AA + W + AA: Use W to cancel your Auto Attack. AA then instantly W and AA.
• E + AA + AA + AA + Q + EAA: A normal fight is as simple as using E before your first AA, AA twice more and Q AA
• AA + E + AA + AA + Q + EAA + W + AA: AA and E mid-animation, AA twice more then Q. As soon as you can AA and instantly W then AA again.
• E + AA + AA + AA + W + EAA + Q + AA: Use your Q to animation cancel the double hit. E then instantly AA three times. Use W quickly after the third and AA then instantly Q and AA again.
• R + FLASH + AA + E + AA + AA + Q + EAA + W + AA: To all in with Flash, R then Flash AA. Activate E mid animation then AA 3 times before using Q. AA as soon as you come out then instantly W AA.
• R + E+ Q + AA + AA + AA + EAA + W + AA: To engage normally use R then E right before you use Q and AA four times. W instantly after first swing of the eAA lands then AA again.

In this chapter I will cover the different pathing for Master Yi and my recommandations for each game.

What options do I have?

Basically, as Master Yi, you have 3 clearing options :

1. The most staple and safe : full clear into scuttle / into gank Red > krugs > raptors > wolves > blue > gromp > scuttle > gank or reset Blue > gromp > wolves > raptors > red > krugs > scuttle > gank or reset

2. The cheesy : start red or blue then invade the enemy buff on the same side where you are. You can then take their krugs / gromp or gank a lane (or wait the enemy jungler and kill him :))

3. The ganky : the idea is to fast rush lvl 3 then gank Blue > gromp > red Red > blue > gromp

What option should I pick?

Well, most of the game, full clearing is the safest and best option as Yi is a champion that needs a lot of resources to stay in the game, meaning you must not fall behind. Farming is the safest / most reliable source of feeding and you should focus on it.

Now, you can also do the lvl 2 cheese (clear red and rush blue buff. If jungler is there, kill him, otherwise take blue + gromp and gank bot or stay in the bush and wait for him to come and kill him) to force a kill on the enemy jungler with redbuff + HOB. If it works it's insane for you because you take a lead AND make the enemy jungler fall behind. However if you fail you are the one hardly behind so do this against champion you can beat 1v1 (check matchups sheets earlier in this guide for more informations).

My best advice would be for you to always go like you want to full clear, and check your minimap during your camps / after clearing each camp to see if there is an opportunity to gank. Sometimes you wanna gank mid after clearing your whole bot/top side before moving to the other side of the map.

How do you decice if you start top or bot ?

First of all, know that you will play for the opposite side of where you decide to start. Yi is a farming champion and you will cycle your camps on spawn many times, therefore you will always end up your farming cycle in the same side, giving you the opportunity to gank this side but not the other.

For instance, if you start red top side, you will almost always end clearing botside, meaning that you will try to gank / help your botlane, but you will rarely be there for your toplaner. Therefore, your toplaner is now in the weakside of the map, because he will not have a lot of help from you.

But now we're moving to the big one million dollars question : what side should I play for ? This question is really vast and to be honest, sometimes i'm still confused about what side I should play for. It takes a lot of time and experience to know what should be the best for your game and I can't give you a rule that you can apply every game without thinking further. HOWEVER, I can tell you all the factors that make you decide for which side you are going to play.

The below list doesn't rank factors but rather give an indication of what I look to before chosing for which side/lane i'm playing for.

1. Kill potential : is the enemy you're gonna gank an easy target to kill (no escape, squishy..) + does your laner have setup for you to kill the target (cc, engage...)

2. The win condition : if you have a very clear win condition in your team, you might want to play for him and put him ahead, or play around him to make sure he doesn't fall off if it's a weak early game champion (vladimir, kassadin, kog'maw...).

3. The strenght of your mates : sometimes you wanna play for someone that isn't the best win condition in your game, but he plays very well his champ and he is not autofilled (avoid playing for autofilled lane, especially in higher elo because even if they get ahead, they will struggle converting their lead in a win because they're not used to the role). I advice you to get porofessor / blitz app so you can check your teammates before the game starts to know who's doing good or not...

4. The winning lanes : play for the lanes that are almost automatically winning / that have an easy matchups or very strong early game (renek, panth, Caitlyn + Lux in botlane, etc...) because they will stomp their lane and you have a high chance to win 2v2 or 3v3 if jungler comes.

5. To avoid enemy jungler : if the enemy jungler counters you, you might want to avoid him by pathing the other way so you make sure you don't throw the game by losing a 3v3 bot at 3:30 minutes (or losing 2v2 top...)

The listed Champs below are worth to Ban when playing Master Yi:

• Fiddlesticks His fear is Point in Click and the duration of it can get very long
• Rakan Annoying Champ, mostly cuz of his R
• Leona She has alot of CC
• Kennen AP Burst + CC + Mobility
• Anivia AP Burst + CC + Passive
• Lulu Annoying CC + R
• Pantheon AD Burst + CC + Invulnerable
• Riven AD Burst + CC + Mobility
• Gragas AP Burst + CC

My most frequent Top 3 Bans:

• When play, Jungle Role: Kha'Zix > Elise > Rek'Sai
• When playing Top Role: Pantheon > Renekton > Jax
• When playing Mid Role: Lissandra > Azir > Annie

Overall Master Yi is a really simple, easy, and great champion to play for all beginners. If you like to run down the enemy and auto attack and get some quick and easy kills then he is the go-to champion for you.

Thanks for Reading! If you want to gain more in-depth knowledge about LOL, check out many helpful articles here!

Good luck to you! – Cheng