Riot Tries to Nerf LoL Character; Falls Short

Patch 12.13 has undoubtedly messed up League of Legends. Riot clearly didn't know what it was getting into by buffing Master Yi. The character boasts an exceptionally high victory percentage after the update, and the developers are trying to rebalance him.

What's up with Master Yi?

The character's buffs introduced in patch 12.13 were not liked by the community.

The point is that at lower ranks Master Yi is one of the best (and mechanically simplest) champions, and buffs will only give him an extra "kick".

So Riot's idea of bringing the champion back into the good graces of higher ranked players was okay, only the execution is much worse.

Statistics

In numbers Master Yi looks quite impressive. Not only the hero's pick rate has increased, but also the percentage of victories, the number of games played with the character, as well as his ban rate.

Source: League of Legends Analytics

Master Yi wins about 52% of all games after the patch. As for the number of matches played, on the day the update was released, their number reached 127,000, most of which (unluckily for Riot Games) were played in Gold (34,000), Silver (43,000) and Bronze (25,000).

Master Yi's ban rate, on the other hand, is now at a total of nearly 34% and has increased in all ranks. Although the most noticeable change is above Diamond, where the champion is excluded six times more often (via LoLalytics).

Riot is trying to alleviate the situation

Less than a day after the release of patch 12.13, another patch for champions that have been buffed has been released. R cooldown, basic life, as well as Gwen's health regeneration have been reduced. In addition, the damage from Sivir's Q has been reduced, and the mana cost of W and cooldown of the special skill have been increased.

As for Master Yi, on the other hand. Well, here Riot approaches the subject rather gently.

1. Basic attack damage has been reduced from 66 points to 65 points.
2. Increasing attack damage gor reduced from 3 pts. to 2.5 pts.
3. Q - cooldown from 18/17.5/17/16.5/16 sec. was extended to 20/19.5/19/18.5/18 sec.
4. W - damage reduction 60/62.5/65/67.5/70%, increased to 90% for the first 0.5 sec. changed to 45/47.5/50/52.5/55%, increased to 90% for the first 0.5 sec.

As you can easily guess, players are not surprised that Riot is trying to fix the character. Most will continue to ban Master Yi from their games anyway, as the fix is simply not enough. It will be interesting to see if Riot addresses the misguided changes in the next patch.