How to Counter Master Yi

How to Play Against Master Yi (6 Tips)

Master Yi is one of the most popular and best low ELO Junglers in League of Legends.

With tons of kill pressure and his insane ability to solo carry, it’s important that you learn how to play against him so he is unable to take over the map.

Setting Master Yi behind is a sure-fire way of ensuring he has very little impact in the later parts of the game.

Even though the season has only just started, Master Yi has shown a dominating performance at all ranks and at all levels of play and you’ll probably find yourself against him sooner rather than later.

Here are some stats recent stats from his champion page, below you can see his win rate, pick rate, and ban rate.

How to counter Master Yi

1. Ward your lane to counter ganks
2. Back when low on health
3. Track him in his jungle
4. Focus him in team fights
5. Invest in Grevious Wounds
6. Stack up on CC

1) Ward your lane to counter ganks

One of the most impactful ways of preventing ganks and countering any Jungler is by knowing when they’re about to gank your lane.

You can do this by tracking the enemy Jungler (which we will talk about shortly) and by warding your lane and keeping a constant eye on the minimap.

Vision is incredibly important in League of Legends. If you do not have good vision, the enemy can easily run amuck.

Master Yi is somebody who can easily abuse enemies who do not place vision to counter him. In particular, if you’re a player who is constantly pushing the minion wave.

Warding as Red Top laner (playing even). In this image, we can see where a top laner may want to ward during the laning phase to reduce his gank ability. Please note that the wards in the river will stop ganks while the wards elsewhere may not.

Having vision in river bushes and around your lane is going to make it harder for Master Yi to gank you. If you’re pushing, vision can give you enough time to back away or move to safety so Master Yi cannot take you down.

However, you do need to make sure that you keep a constant eye on the minimap at all times. If you do not check the map often, then there is no point warding. Here’s a separate guide on how to improve your map awareness in League of Legends.

General warding tips:

• Buy an early Control Ward and place it somewhere on the map to give your team vision.
• Make sure you never have 2 Trinket stacks during the laning phase.
• Purchase and replace Control Wards as the game develops.

If you want to learn more warding tips and tricks and find more examples of where you should ward to counter any Jungler, check out our in-depth warding guide.

2) Back when low on health

A common mistake a lot of players make in League of Legends is overextending and overstaying their welcome.

Whenever you’re low, make sure you recall if you do not know where Master Yi is.

Master Yi will often take a detour and gank lanes that are on low health as it will usually result in a kill for him.

As he has no CC tools, he will be looking for opportunities to kill targets that are very easy to gank- and being on low health is as easy as they come.

Master Yi will prioritize ganks on enemy champion that are easier to kill rather than trying to force a gank on a lane with minimal kill pressure.

If you’re on low health and unsure of where Master Yi is, just recall. Giving him an additional 300 gold (plus any bounty) could be the first step he needs to start the avalanche.

This information rains true against every Jungler in the game.

3) Track him in his jungle

Tracking the enemy Jungler is a great way of setting them behind in the early game. By knowing where they are at any given moment, your team shouldn’t die to ganks as you should see the enemy coming.

You can also see the enemy’s health: which can allow you to either invade and try to kill the Master Yi or steal away his camps.

Furthermore, tracking a Master Yi and knowing that he is on one side of the map such as the top side could allow you to take the Dragon uncontested or gank the bottom lane knowing that he is unable to make an impact.

There are many ways you can track a Master Yi or any Jungler in particular. You can start tracking them at level 1 by seeing which of his allies gets to lane first.

Once the minions in the side lanes have reached each other, look at the minimap- is the enemy top or bottom laner already in lane? If not, who arrives earlier?

The person who arrives early probably didn’t leash for the enemy Jungler, so it is safe to assume that the enemy started on the opposite side of the map.

However, this isn’t a fool-proof method as some players “fake leash” which is where they stand out of vision and show themselves at roughly the same time as their allies in the other side lane.

You should also try to know what jungle route Master Yi will take in the early game. Here’s a guide by Fz Frost on how to play as Master Yi, it has a section on jungle routes.

If you give it a watch, you could use this information to counter him.

There are many other things you can do to track the enemy Jungler which include:

• Shooting the Scryer’s Bloom into the enemy’s jungle.
• Securing the Scuttle Crabs whenever possible.
• Placing vision inside their jungle.

Warding the enemy jungle as the red team.

Placing vision inside the enemies jungle and around their jungle entrances is a valuable technique to track the enemy Jungler as you’ll see them as they move around their jungle.

Good places to place wards are in high traffic areas or on the main routes from 1 camp to the next. If you want to learn more general warding techniques, check out our in-depth warding guide.

If you want to learn some other tips to track the enemy Jungler, give our how to track the enemy Jungler guide a read.

4) Focus him in team fights

In team fights, Master Yi will try to dish out as much damage as he can to whoever he can. In most situations, he will use his Q to get onto the enemy backline and try to take down the carries.

As this strat is incredibly common, your best bet is to focus him down as soon as he uses his Q aggressively. If your whole team focuses him down at the start of the fight, he will be unable to deal damage to your team and survive the fight.

Try your hardest to play around his Q: using CC/skill shots once he has left the animation and using interrupts and CC to prevent him from moving or going deeper on to your carries.

If you can take him down at the start of the fight, his team will struggle to clean up the fight.

If 4 or 5 of your allies focus Master Yi, he will die quickly. If one person focuses him, he will not die fast. If Master Yi is ahead, try to focus him first at all times.

5) Invest in Grevious Wounds

Master Yi will have a lot of sustain in team fights thanks to the items he buys and his W. Purchasing items that reduce healing such as Executioner’s Calling or Morellonomicon will reduce his ability to heal in team fights.

If you do not buy any items that will reduce his healing, he will be really difficult to kill, so make sure you buy these items at your earliest convenience. Do not buy this item once Master Yi becomes a problem- buy it early so he doesn’t become the problem.

If you have Ignite, make sure you Ignite him as soon as he engages as Ignite also applies Grevious Wounds and will reduce his sustain.

6) Stack up on CC

Champions with CC are good against Master Yi as it will make it hard for him to reposition and kill everyone in a team fight. If you can lock him down, he will be unable to use his Q and bop and weave in team fights.

Any CC is good against Master Yi. Taunt, sleep, blind, airborne and silence are all actions to prevent him from dealing tons of damage in team fights. Picking champions with any of these tools should make team fights a lot easier.

His Q however, is a great dodging tool, especially against skill shots. A good option would be to pick champions with point and click or easy to land CC such as Jax (E), Maokai (W), Leona (Q), or Nautilus (Passive).

These champions have easy to land CC which almost guarantees you to lock him down briefly.

If your champion doesn’t have point and click CC, try to wait for Master Yi to come out of his Q animation before using your skill shots to reduce his chances of dodging the immobilization.

Conclusion

Master Yi can be hard to deal with once he gets ahead. However, there are plenty of things you can do to prevent him from becoming unstoppable. Make sure you use the tips we’ve presented in this guide to make dealing with Master Yi that bit more bearable.

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