Master Yi

Master Yi is a bet on the late game. Early, he farms his jungle in silence; late, he crosses an entire teamfight and comes out with a quadra if nobody stops him. His strength lives in two buttons: Alpha Strike, which makes him untargetable while he strikes, and Highlander, which refreshes his abilities and speeds him up on every kill, turning a single dead target into an unstoppable snowball.

If you like to wait, read enemy cooldowns and dive onto the target nobody is protecting, he's your champion. But be honest: Yi decides nothing on his own. He depends on what the other team does, and a single well-placed stun cancels your whole fight.

Alpha Strike is what makes him so frustrating to face: while he bounces from one target to the next, he can't be touched by an ability or a basic attack. Cast well, it dodges a knock-up, a slow, a key spell. Add Wuju Style buffing his damage, Meditate keeping him alive through lost situations, and Highlander relaunching him on every kill: once the machine gets going, it doesn't stop.

The flip side is brutal. Yi has no crowd-control resistance outside the Alpha Strike window. A stun, a suppression, a snare at the right moment, and he dies without landing a hit. His early is soft, he can't force an objective alone, and any opponent who saves a stun just for him neutralizes him. Yi punishes teams that forget him, not those that watch him.

Your jungle is about farm and patience. Alpha Strike hits several monsters at once and resets your passive: chain camps cleanly, without ever dropping too low, since you have no escape against a counter-jungler. Meditate is your safety kit: a short channel between camps sends you back out nearly full.

On ganks, you have no opener of your own: no jump onto a distant target, no lockdown. You come to finish what an ally has already locked in. Target a lane that has already landed control or shoved the enemy out of position, come in from the side, and cast Alpha Strike once the target can no longer run. Before that, you're wasting your time.

Yi lives and dies by his items. Until he has his first big attack piece, his ganks chip without killing and his clear stays slow. His first real awakening comes when attack speed and penetration meet: from there, every squishy he touches melts in a second.

The second breakpoint is accumulation. The longer the game runs, the wider the gap in his favor, provided he farmed without dying. Max-rank Highlander turns every kill into a springboard to the next. Your job until then is simple and thankless: stay alive, stack your jungle and the enemy's camps, and refuse any fight you aren't sure you'll walk out of.

You never enter a fight first. You wait for the enemy's crowd control to be spent on your allies, then dive the softest, least protected target, almost always the enemy backline. Highlander keeps you mobile and refreshes Alpha Strike: once the first kill drops, you bounce from target to target with no time to react.

The whole difficulty is picking the right moment. Too early, you eat the stun saved for you and die alone. Too late, your team is already down. Keep Alpha Strike to dodge the control that matters, not to engage: it's your survival button as much as your damage tool. If the enemy team plays clean around you, accept the delay and pick off the isolated targets instead of forcing a one-versus-five you'll lose.