Yuumi was nerfed out of viability to keep her away from pro play for a few patches, and her rework has come in to try and get her into a playable state without being a first pick/ban champion. If initial reception from the League of Legends community is anything to go off of, that hasn’t gone very well.
It’d be no understatement to call Yuumi the most problematic champion in League of Legends. Finding a way to balance her notorious ability to attach to an ally has been an absolute nightmare for the balance team.
Almost 4 years after her initial release, she was nerfed into oblivion to take her out of pro play ahead of the LEC Winter Playoffs with the promise of a rework coming soon.
That rework has arrived, and it hasn’t been received well by the player base. Though the way that she heals and shields her allies is a little different, her overall impact is largely the same. Everyone from casual players to pros is already labelling this rework a failure, and it’s pretty difficult to find people who are positive about the direction they’ve taken with her.
Yuumi rework widely regarded as a failure by LoL community
Yuumi’s full rework may have looked massive, but the reality is that the changes are pretty simple. Her E shields instead of heals, her Q is a little harder to hit now, and her ultimate has the ability to heal allies.
The biggest change was her passive. It gives Yuumi ways to heal her allies by being in-combat and landing abilities. While the change was meant to give her less sustain outside of fights, it hasn’t changed much when you’re in them.
In fact, her passive is one of the biggest pain points for players. One of the main complaints about her old kit was that it incentivized her to stay attached to one target, and her new passive directly rewards her for doing just that.
In my opinion only a couple ways to fix the cat1. Make her gain more power by jumping out of host, making good Yuumi players get a ton of value from weaving in and out of W2. Make her power on staying on the same target lower, add complexity and power in changing person often
— Erik Wessén (@Treatz) March 10, 2023
Treatz, a tenured pro support player and League of Legends analyst, has been extremely critical of the Yuumi rework. Riot wanted to do the following with her rework as explained in their developer blog:
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- Create a positive experience for first-time MOBA players
- Emphasize Yuumi’s unique ability as a powerful single-target defensive enchanter
- Support Yuumi’s long-term untargetability by creating other avenues of counterplay
- Limit Yuumi’s presence in pro play by limiting less obvious optimization outputs
According to Treatz, Riot failed at every single one of these goals. He already thinks she’ll be strong in pro play based on her power level as a champion, her kit incentivizes staying inside one target even more with her Best Friend passive and the removal of both her enhanced auto attack and W shield, and she has significantly more AoE power than before with her ultimate healing teammates now.
remind me to keep yuumi permabanned until it is (hopefully) a literally unplayable champion again
— Bwipo (@Bwipo) March 10, 2023
Bwipo had a similarly negative impression, and many players agree with him. Yuumi’s ban rate has shot up dramatically, especially at higher levels of play where people have quickly adopted this champion. Her ban rate is over 30% at the time of writing in Plat+, and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see that ban rate climb even higher as players get used to how to play her again.
The replies on a Reddit thread themed around the dev blog about the Yuumi rework wasn’t much kinder, with most players having the opinion that this rework was an outright buff for the champion.
Even the Yuumi mains are quitting their favorite champion. Those who held out while she was nerfed to the point of being non-viable seem to be cross with the rework. People who main the champion seem to miss the shield on her W being able to save teammates in clutch scenarios, and the removal of that shield has given them much less reason to swap hosts.
“Fantasy” is a term often used to developers at Riot when it comes to their goals when designing champions. The end of the developer blog about the Yuumi rework reads “[w]e hope her new set of abilities can get her to a better spot for all players while also staying true to her original enchanter fantasy that her mains have come to love.”
With her holding onto her untargetable mechanic and being just as problematic as before according to LoL players, it’s hard not to wonder if the fantasy envisioned for Yuumi is one worth fulfilling.