Yuumi is a champion that was intended to be designed for lower level players to learn how to play support, but she’s been getting the ban hammer more often in high MMR solo queue than anything else.
It’s no secret that Yuumi is the most hated champion in League of Legends. When she gets picked in pro play, crowds boo. She’s often banned and, when she does get through, can enable carries to win games without having to do much at all.
Players are already calling Yuumi’s rework a failure, yet her popularity has boomed following the rework’s release with her play rate going up by around 500% compared to before the patch. A champion getting more popular post-rework is nothing crazy, with Jax’s midscope update being a good example of how much a set of changes can push a champion’s play rate.
However, looking at Yuumi’s ban rate is where things get interesting. It has had a drastic increase across all matchmaking brackets, but the curve only goes up as you look at higher and higher skill brackets. High-level players are banning her more than anyone else. All data referenced is from LoLalytics.
Yuumi’s ban rate hits almost 900% in Diamond+
Yuumi’s pick and ban rate was extremely low for a few patches following a massive, sweeping set of nerfs to the champion to take her out of pro play until her rework was ready. With Yuumi being almost 100% pick/ban in pro play as a champion that lacked skill expression, the balance team purposely nerfed her to the point of being borderline unplayable.
Nonetheless, people still played and banned her here and there before patch 13.5 went live. Even with her win rate dipping heavily and almost hitting the 40% mark, some dedicated Yuumi mains stuck to playing the champion.
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Following the rollout of 13.5, her ban rate has risen to 45% in Diamond+, an almost 900% increase from the 5% ban rate she had for most of patch 13.4.
It’s pretty clear to see the point at which her rework hit the live servers, as her ban rate skyrocketed. However, with Yuumi’s kit being largely intended for newer players, it’s surprising to see her ban rate drop so sharply as you get to lower skill brackets.
A 45% ban rate in Diamond, symbolized by the blue line at the top, quickly drops to 33% in the plat, then 25% in gold, and it continues to trend downward from rank to rank. The same can be said of her pick rate, which is at its highest in Diamond and descends from rank to rank in a similar fashion in all ranks except Iron where, admittedly, she does get a decent amount of play from people who are newer to the game.
Regardless, her rework has hit high-level play the hardest. Pros have been predicting that Yuumi will be making her return to pro play once pros start playing on patch 13.5, and, if high MMR solo queue is any indication, that prediction is seeming more and more likely.