Yuumi’s nerfs are not at all as big as they might seem? What does Phreak say about them?
After the recent leak of League of Legends source code via a studio attack, things are slowly getting back to normal. Although the developers were forced to postpone some of the fixes planned for patch 13.2 to update 13.3, a sizable list of changes can be found in 13.1B, which will replace 13.2.
Among other things, Yuumi’s nerfs have appeared on it, which at first glance can look really bad. Riot Phreak explains why they were necessary and explains what Yuumi was capable of before the nerfs.
Phreak on Yuumi
Riot Phreak pays considerable attention to communicating with League of Legends fans, detailing each update and explaining the context of selected fixes. Patch 13.1B features changes provided for 13 heroes, among others, and Yuumi is among them.
The developers decided to reduce her base stats, the shield granted from the passive skill, lower the stats provided to the bearer and remove the scaling of movement speed on E.
The magical cat’s last nerfs reduced a lot of her power in solo queue, but still kept her at an uncomfortable level in Pro. With her current presence and upcoming ADC changes, we’re going to be taking the last nerfs a bit further as we continue to rework her. We’re limiting Yuumi’s ability to effectively trade with her basic attacks and health pool, which has been a big factor in her Pro dominance.
- Base Stats
- Attack Range: 500 ⇒ 425
- Base Attack Damage: 55 ⇒ 49
- Base Health: 550 ⇒ 500
- Base Health Regeneration: 7 ⇒ 5
- Bop ‘n’ Block (P)
- Attack Range: When Bop ‘n’ Block is ready Yuumi will gain 25 bonus range for that attack only.
- Shield Strength: 60-380 (based on level) ⇒ 45-300 (based on level)
- You and Me! (W)
- Adaptive Force: 12-20 (+12-20% of bonus) ⇒ 12-20 (+6-10% of bonus)
- Zoomies (E)
- Movement Speed: 20% (+2% per 100 AP) ⇒ 20% (Note: AP ratio was removed)
The developers announced that they wanted to make it more difficult for the heroine to conduct exchanges with opponents, which is the main reason for her strength in the LoL professional scene, where Yuumi in her current state according to Rioter’s statement should not appear. Taking into account the heroine’s upcoming update, the developers took the liberty of issuing a sizable nerf, without necessarily worrying that she would suffer in the ranked queue.
I am pretty confident Yuumi should be gone from pro play. These are too much of a laning phase nerf to be playable in pro play. I am really hopeful pros go like ‘oh well we’re not playing her in pro, she’s gone’ and pro will look better as a result.
I want the nerfs to look f***huge, I want pros to stop playing it and I want you to stop banning it. And low-key, she’s not really that much worse, and that’s fine because I want you to think she’s not good anymore, that’s all I really want.
Phreak explained that the only thing the team wanted to achieve was to eliminate Yuumi from pro play with changes that, at the same time, wouldn’t reflect as much on the heroine’s regular players, since they mostly don’t use her potential for exchanges.
He also said that the stats the heroine possessed easily allowed her to win damage exchanges with Draven at the initial levels and that duels with Caitlyn did not necessarily end as obviously as one would expect.
At this point, it is difficult to say how the changes will affect the character’s stats. Riot most likely realizes that despite the fact that the changes were aimed at the professional scene, the character will also suffer somewhat in ordinary gameplay. However, the developers took the correction that Yuumi will soon receive an already significantly changed skill set.