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The dev note about the Yuumi rework was shared by Game Designer Tim “Riot Truexy” Jiang, and it was confusing to say the least.
Is Yuumi for noobs?
Truexy's dev blog about the Yuumi rework opened by describing her as “a special champion that allows new players to not only experience League of Legends quickly, but also to learn the game side-by-side with their friends.” This already goes against another dev blog they posted about the champion, which described her mastery curve being more in line with champions like Akali and Qiyana. The latter dev blog also said that Yuumi is a difficult champion to master, and even compared her to a champion like Singed and his proxy playstyle. However, this second dev blog is already 2 years old, so maybe they changed how they look at the champion internally.
If they really intended Yuumi to be the introductory champ like how Sona, Annie, and Garen are, why is she not easily obtainable for new players? Both Annie and Garen sit at 450 Blue Essence, the lowest possible price tag for champions, while Yuumi is at a whopping 6300 BE. Another way for new players to get champions is through the “tutorial” phase of the game, which happens in the first few levels of the account. Yuumi is not given to players during this phase.
The more recent dev blog released over the weekend said that Sona, Annie, and Garen all have lower skill ceilings, and are weaker in optimized and pro play. This goes directly against their older blog, but then again, the team may have changed their attitude towards Yuumi.
Yuumi Rework
The overall goal for the Yuumi rework is to make her “an easy-to-learn Enchanter” whose identity is to protect and empower her allies. They want her to land in a more stable spot in both solo-queue and pro play, while maintaining her core gameplay fantasy. Yuumi's untargetability should come at a price, and the Design team is looking at her damage and crowd control in particular for this. Another aim is to offer more forms of counterplay against the cat, whether it be making her success tied to winning lane, making her skills easier to dodge, or reducing her power on high-mobility champions.
Matt “Riot Phroxzon” Leung-Harrison, League of Legends Lead Designer, initially spoke details about the Yuumi rework a couple of weeks ago. “We think [Yuumi's frustration is] a problem and work has already started there… Yuumi has a valuable place in the game to onboard your new friends and help them learn spell usage & nuances of positioning.” He also mentioned potential changes: “We're looking at ways to increase counterplay while attached, have her power tied more to her own personal success, more incentives to not abandon her lane partner and look at her scaling profile.” This goes along with the Quick Gameplay Thoughts that he posted in early September, which said that “Yuumi’s laning phase performance should be more important to her success. Reducing her strength on fighters in favor of marksmen and reducing her coordination burden will put Yuumi in a better state long term while retaining the aspects of Yuumi that her players care about.” She also seems to share some of her frustrations with Zeri, another champion who was also the subject of many players' frustrations earlier this year. Since then, Zeri has received multiple updates and tweaks to work against some of her frustrations. Riot Phroxzon said that they “will be working on new ways to deliver the gameplay fantasy Zeri and Yuumi players have come to know and love,” which they have done so for Zeri, but the success of this is yet to be determined. Now it's Yuumi's turn in the rework machine, but she's in for a bigger change than simple nerfs or tweaks.
So why is Yuumi being reworked instead of receiving more nerfs? Simply because it hasn't worked in the past. “Since her release, we’ve made numerous small changes to maintain Yuumi’s core fantasy while limiting her presence in Pro play. A few more balance changes and a Durability Update later, Yuumi still hasn’t found a stable place in solo queue, and has remained one of the premier champions in the last two World Championships,” Riot Truexy said on the dev blog. “As a result, we think it’s time to take a larger swing at changes to hopefully land Yuumi in a better long-term spot where she’s better for her players, less prevalent in organized play, and easier to balance.” To corroborate to this statement is the stats from the just-concluded World Championship 2022 wherein Yuumi had a 95% presence (not counting Play-In Stage). She was banned 68 times and picked 8 times. She also has a 100% win rate.
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The main source of frustration for playing against Yuumi is her ability to circumvent most weaknesses that an enchanter has. She can attach and be untargetable indefinitely, and this combined with her hyperscaling identity, access to powerful engage tools, and Enchanter-level survivability is what the Design team identified as “the perfect storm for frustrating gameplay with little to no means of counterplay.”
The League of Legends design team isn't happy with Yuumi's current state and is working towards reducing the frustration factor of the champion while keeping her identity and core gameplay pattern as much as possible. They also identified some of the reasons for Yuumi's high ban rate which turns out to be 33%, the highest out of all support champions.
- Losing lane to Yuumi often feels like losing the game due to her strong scaling
- Yuumi’s power isn’t tied to her own success, so putting Yuumi behind in lane doesn’t feel impactful since she can switch partners easily
- Laning as an ADC with Yuumi isn’t fun due to her weak early game in solo play and tendency to quickly attach to someone else
- In Pro play, Yuumi lacks exploitable counterplay windows relative to her strong defensive and engage capabilities
Another reason for frustration was Yuumi's complex and unique playstyle. The fact that being targetable and unattached is a choice made it unappealing to lower skill players. “Unattaching gives enemies opportunities to interact with Yuumi, but using it as her core counterplay mechanic skewed her towards higher MMR players. The end result was a playstyle that most Yuumi players didn’t really want to engage with.”
The dev team has voiced out their own frustrations about Yuumi multiple times before, because her design makes her hard to balance across all skill levels. “In high skill play, Yuumi players have learned to optimize unattaching to trade their own health to accompany trades. Combined with frequently unattaching to trigger their shield off cooldown, Yuumi lanes simply had more health to trade versus enemies so that even hyper aggressive opponents like Draven and Lucian struggled against the cat (especially with the help of the additional Summoner Spell Yuumi can bring).” As for her power while attached to highly mobile champs, the Design team said that “Yuumi’s Q and R became highly consistent engage tools, a power that few to no other Enchanters possess.”
An aspect of Yuumi was not touched or referred to at all is the Adaptive Force that she gives when attached to an ally. For players building the AP Yuumi, which is the more popular build right now, she offers a significant amount of Ability Power or Attack Damage to her ally especially in the late game. However, Riot Truexy promised more information about the rework next year as they progress through the early stages of the Yuumi rework, so this may be mentioned then.
