Yone's been out for years now, and most of what people believe about him still comes from his first week.
Here's what every one of his abilities actually does, which role the kit is really built for, and the exact windows where he stops being scary.
YONE
UPDATED FOR PATCH 26.15 · AUGUST 2026Yone's been out for years now, and most of what people believe about him still comes from his first week.
Here's what every one of his abilities actually does, which role the kit is really built for, and the exact windows where he stops being scary.
This page has two halves. The first is the current explanation, with every number checked against the live game rather than remembered. The second is our original write-up from the week he launched in August 2020, kept word for word, with a note listing which parts of it the game has since moved past. Most of that first read held up. Two of the things it got half right are the two that decide how you fight him.
What Yone's kit actually does
Yone's the rare champion whose ability descriptions genuinely undersell him. Four of the five do something that isn't obvious from the tooltip, so it's worth going through them one at a time.
Way of the Hunter [Passive]
Two separate things share one passive. The first doubles his total critical strike chance from every other source, so he only needs 50% crit to sit at a permanent 100%, and every 1% he collects past that converts into half a point of bonus attack damage instead of being thrown away. His critical strikes deal reduced damage to pay for it. The second is the half nobody mentions: his basic attacks alternate between his steel sword and his azakana, and the azakana swing lands as equal parts physical and magic damage.
Mortal Steel [Q]
A 450 unit thrust that applies on-hit effects to the first thing it touches and can critically strike. Land it and he banks a stack of Gathering Storm for six seconds, up to two. At two stacks the next Mortal Steel [Q] spends them both and turns into a 450 unit dash plus a whirlwind reaching 1050 units, with everything caught by either half knocked up for three quarters of a second. Its cooldown starts at four seconds and shortens with attack speed down to roughly one and a half.
Spirit Cleave [W]
A cone 600 units deep, dealing equal parts physical and magic damage scaled off the target's maximum health, from 8% at rank one to 12% at rank five. Hitting anything shields him for a second and a half, and that shield doubles if a champion's in the cone and grows another 50% for every extra champion beyond the first. Both the cooldown and the cast time shorten with attack speed, from fourteen seconds down to about six.
Soul Unbound [E]
He dashes 300 units and abandons his body, which is placed 300 units behind where he cast rather than where he was standing. Spirit form runs five seconds, during which he passes through units and picks up 10% to 30% bonus movement speed that ramps over the first three. Everything he damages gets marked, and each mark banks 25% to 35% of what he deals to that target. On the recast, whether he presses it or the timer does it for him, he snaps back to the body and every mark detonates as true damage. He can't Recall or Teleport while he's out of his body, and the ability stays locked for the first fifteen seconds of the game.
Fate Sealed [R]
Three quarters of a second of wind-up over a box 1000 units long and 225 wide. Everyone inside is marked, knocked down and stunned for one second, and Yone blinks to 200 units past the center of the last champion he caught. Three tenths of a second later a gust sweeps the same box, deals equal parts physical and magic damage, drags every marked enemy toward the spot he blinked to at 3000 speed, then knocks them up for another three quarters of a second. It's on a 120 second cooldown at rank one and 80 at rank three.
Four facts that decide every Yone fight
Strip the kit down and four things do most of the work. Each one changes a decision you make in champion select or in the shop.
He pays nothing to cast
Not one of his abilities costs a resource. The bar under his health is Flow, and on Yone it's a countdown showing how much of Soul Unbound [E] he has left, not a pool he spends. You can't push him out of a lane on resources. Only health does it.
His damage is mixed on purpose
Every second basic attack arrives half magic, Spirit Cleave [W] is split down the middle, and so is Fate Sealed [R]. There is no single resistance that turns Yone off, which is why buying one and stopping feels so bad against him and why the shop decision is different than it is against almost any other crit champion.
The payout is true damage
Soul Unbound [E]'s marks cash out as true damage, so armor and magic resist do nothing to the payload itself. They still matter, and more than they look like they do: the mark banks a share of the damage that actually got through, so cutting the input cuts the payout. Resistances work against Yone twice over, just not at the moment you're watching.
Attack speed buys more than autos
Both Mortal Steel [Q] and Spirit Cleave [W] have cooldowns that shorten as his attack speed climbs, and Spirit Cleave [W]'s cast time shrinks with it too. That's why a Yone with a couple of items suddenly seems to be casting twice as often. He is.
Where Yone belongs, and why
The original half of this page went role by role in Yone's first week, when nobody knew yet. The reasoning below is the durable version, built on what the abilities do rather than on where he happens to be winning. For where he actually sits this patch, that's what the solo queue tier list is for.
Mid lane
This is what the kit reads like. Soul Unbound [E] is a trading tool first and a movement tool second: he steps out, throws damage into you, and the bill arrives when he steps back. Against a mid laner who has to land a skill shot to punish him, that pattern is miserable, because the thing he's dodging with is the same thing that's charging up. His mixed damage also means the standard squishy answer of one defensive item covers half the problem at best.
Top lane
Works for the same reason it works mid, plus one more: the armor stacking that flattens most attack-damage bruisers only flattens half of him. What he gives up is real, though. He has no healing anywhere in his kit, no ranged poke, and no way to shove a wave from a safe distance, so a bad matchup is bad for a long time and there's no sustain to grind back through it.
Jungle
The problem's structural. Soul Unbound [E] looks like a gap closer and behaves like a rubber band, because the recast pulls him back to his body whether he wants to go or not. That makes his only real engage Fate Sealed [R], which arrives at level six. Add the fifteen second lockout on Soul Unbound [E] at the start of the game and his early map is thinner than his clear speed suggests.
Bot lane
The 2020 read on this was right and it hasn't aged. Yone has no equivalent of his brother's Wind Wall [W], which is the single ability that made bot lane Yasuo defensible, and his empowered Mortal Steel [Q] commits him forward instead of offering a poke option. Against two ranged champions with a support who can point and click, walking at them is the whole plan and it doesn't survive contact.
Support
Fate Sealed [R] is a genuinely good support ultimate, which is why the idea keeps coming back. Everything around it argues the other way. He has no shield or heal to give anyone else, nothing to lock a target down before level six, and a kit that wants items in a role that doesn't get them. If you want to see the version of this idea that works, we collect the ones that do in Weird Pick Wednesdays.
How to play against Yone
Yone's a champion you beat with timers rather than with a counterpick. Six of them matter, and every one is a number you can count.
Count to two, then wait six
The knock-up only exists after two landed Mortal Steel [Q] hits, and those stacks fall off six seconds after the last one. If you break the chain and stay out of range for six seconds, the dangerous version of the ability goes away and he has to start again.
The E tells you where he'll be
Soul Unbound [E] doesn't return him to where he started. It returns him to his body, which was set down 300 units behind the point he cast from. That spot's decided the instant he presses it, so the return isn't a read, it's an address, and it's usually further back than people expect.
Hold him out of his body
The automatic recast is delayed whenever Yone can't act. Anything that stops him moving or casting keeps his spirit out and the marks undetonated for that much longer, and suppression is the strongest version of it because tenacity doesn't shorten it and Cleanse doesn't remove it.
The ultimate has a tell and a hangover
Fate Sealed [R] spends three quarters of a second winding up, and Yone reveals himself for that whole wind-up if a champion is anywhere near him. On the other end he's locked out of every action for just under half a second after the cast finishes. Both of those are real windows, one to leave and one to punish.
Fight with a wall behind you
If Fate Sealed [R]'s far end lands inside terrain, the pull can't drag anyone through the wall. Hugging a wall on the correct side turns his best teamfight opener into a stun and some damage instead of a repositioned team.
Block the whirlwind, not the dash
Only the whirlwind half of the empowered Mortal Steel [Q] is a projectile. A wall or a shield that eats projectiles removes it, and the dash and its knock-up come through anyway, so plan for the half you can't stop rather than assuming you stopped both.
If you want the champion-by-champion version of this rather than the mechanical one, that's what our counter series is for. The Yasuo counters guide is the closest neighbour we've written, and a fair amount of it transfers, because the two brothers lose to the same shapes even though they win differently.
What the 2020 read got right, and what it missed
The post below is preserved exactly as it was published on 7 August 2020, four days after Yone went live. Reading it back against the current game, most of it holds. These are the parts worth updating:
- Soul Unbound [E] doesn't put him back where he started. The original says he snaps back to his initial location, which is the right instinct and the wrong spot. His body is set down 300 units behind the point he cast from, so the return lands past where he was standing. If you're waiting to punish the return, that's the difference between being on top of him and being a dash away.
- The passive was described half-way. Doubled crit chance with weaker crits is the first half and it's correct. The second half, the alternating steel and azakana swings with half of the azakana's damage arriving as magic, is the one that decides what people buy against him, and it's the mechanic sitting underneath the bramble vest line further down.
- The crit maths is now checkable. He needs 50% critical strike chance for the doubling to reach 100%, and anything past 100% converts at half a point of bonus attack damage per 1% rather than going to waste.
- Fate Sealed [R] does more than mark and pull. It also knocks down and stuns for a full second before the gust arrives, and the pull drags people to the spot Yone blinked to rather than to wherever he's standing when it lands. The original's closing line, that nobody had used it well yet, dated faster than anything else on the page.
- Spirit Cleave [W] scales off maximum health. The original lists it as cone damage and a shield, which is true and undersells it. Percent maximum health damage is why he doesn't fall off against the durable champions his own damage type suggests he should struggle with.
- The strength verdict is the one part that can't be preserved. Yone's been through years of patches since that paragraph was written. Every buff and nerf he's had is listed in our patch notes history, and where he lands today is on the solo queue tier list, not here.
What the original nailed on day four: the bot lane verdict, the jungle verdict, the observation that people were treating Soul Unbound [E] as an escape, and the note that his damage type stops one defensive item from solving him. That's a good hit rate for a champion four days old.
The original 2020 first impressions
Yone Review - Initial Impressions
Yone (Yoh-Neh), Yasuo's older brother is a fascinating new champion worthy of being Yasuo's relative in lore. Packing insane amount of crowd-control and a very tricky kit, Yone is definitely fun and satisfying to play. After a champion as whimsical as Lillia, it's nice to have a badass like Yone released to avoid getting made fun of by our friends.
Check out some initial impressions below!
Skill Set
Way of the Hunter [Passive]: Gains double critical strike chance but deals less with crits
This means two crit items is enough to get to 100%, making his standard build likely the same as Yasuo's with Phantom Dancer + Infinity Edge.
Mortal Steel [Q]: Same as Yasuo, but instead of Tornado he gets a dash and a Tornado at the same time.
Somewhat interesting....a nice 2 in 1
Spirit Cleave [W]: Cone damage and a shield
Basically the same as Camille's move but faster and a pure shield instead of a specific damage type.
Soul Unbound [E]: Really long description, but basically a forced Ekko ultimate with some damage boosts.
This one's interesting and people are definitely messing up on it. Some people try and use it as an escape, but it's fairly obvious after playing against it a few times that he's just going to snap back to where he started.
Fate Sealed [R]: Stuns and marks all enemies in a line with a blink, then pulls them and knocks them up.
This looks absolutely insane but I haven't seen anyone use it terribly effectively yet.
What Roles Should Yone Play?
As with any melee champions with high utility, you'll see this champion in literally every role until players decide which role he's strongest in. Let's take a look at all his positions and see his strengths and weaknesses in each one.
Top: As a mixed damage champion, he doesn't suffer from complete damage lockout from bramble vest. His shield lets him trade freely and he does have front line initiation power with his ultimate. As a top laner he's not bad, but his damage is currently a little low to out-trade champions like Riven or Camille without landing all his utility.
Mid: Soul Unbound [E] allows Yone to trade freely and jump away from dangerous spells at will. This makes him only vulnerable to pure damage casters or ones with fast CCs. Champions that are skillshot reliant will find him to be extremely difficult to deal with.
Bot Lane: As a bot laner Yone is significantly worse than Yasuo since he doesn't have Wind Wall and his third Q forces him to dash forwards instead of giving the option to poke. His mobility is also significantly lower and I don't see him as a very good bot laner even with someone like Senna.
Support: This may actually not be too bad. He doesn't have much in the way of sustain, but a Yasuo + Yone combo could be strong in all-in strategies and his late-game utility is quite good. The only drawback is the range isn't long enough and his skills aren't fast enough to be truly unavoidable when compared to someone like Rakan or low CD like Leona, so I don't see him becoming meta as a support.
Jungle: As far as gap closers go he's not terribly effective since one of his gap closers forces him to snap back to his initial location. I've seen a lot of jungle Yone and his team fighting is still good, but I don't see him as being a primarily a meta jungler any time soon.
Overall Current Strength Level
Yone's definitely been under-tuned in order to avoid his insanely gifted kit from being too overpowered. I think that he's strong enough at this point to be effective, but does have a bit of a learning curve. He likely doesn't need buffs at this point and I'd put him in the same category as Lillia.
What are your initial thoughts on Yone?
Yone questions
Is Yone good?
He's a complete champion rather than a specialist, which is the durable answer: mixed damage, a knock-up, a shield, percent maximum health damage, a five second window of untouchable movement and one of the better teamfight ultimates in the game. What that's worth in any given patch moves around, and the page that tracks it is the solo queue tier list rather than this one. He's also one of the champions we picked out as strongest when properly mastered, which is a different question from whether he's strong today.
What role does Yone play?
Mid and top are where the kit points, for the reasons in the role section above. Jungle and support both run into the same wall: Soul Unbound [E] isn't a gap closer, so before level six he has no way to start a fight he didn't walk into.
Is Yone harder to play than Yasuo?
They're hard in different places. Yasuo's difficulty is in the moment, in what you do with Wind Wall [W] and how you chain dashes off minions. Yone's is in the commitment: Soul Unbound [E] locks in your exit point before you know what the fight will look like, and Fate Sealed [R] blinks you past the last champion in the box rather than the first, so both of his signature buttons decide your position for you. Getting either one wrong puts you somewhere you'd never have chosen.
Does Yone have anything like Yasuo's Wind Wall [W]?
No, and it's the biggest single difference between the brothers. Yasuo's Wind Wall [W] deletes a whole category of champion from a fight. Yone's Spirit Cleave [W] is a damage and shielding button instead, so he has no answer at all to sustained ranged damage other than getting to it.
Why does Yone deal magic damage when he builds critical strike?
Because of the second half of Way of the Hunter [Passive]. His basic attacks alternate between two swords, and the azakana swing splits its damage evenly between physical and magic. Spirit Cleave [W] and Fate Sealed [R] split the same way. It's the reason a full armor build feels like it barely helped, and it's deliberate rather than a quirk.
What's the Flow bar under Yone's health for?
It's a timer, not a resource. None of Yone's abilities cost anything to cast, so the bar exists purely to show how much of Soul Unbound [E]'s five seconds is left before the recast happens on its own. If you're playing against him, watch it, because it's telling you exactly when he has to come back.
How do you dodge Yone's ultimate?
You mostly don't dodge it, you position so it's not worth casting. Fate Sealed [R] hits a long thin box, so standing off the line of his likeliest angle beats reacting to it, and the pull can't move anyone through terrain if the far end of the box is inside a wall. If it does land, the punish window is the just-under-half-a-second he spends unable to act after the cast. Our list of the best ultimates in the game covers the ones worth respecting this much.
More on the brothers and their neighbours: the week everyone played Yone and Yasuo every game, the most annoying champions in LoL, the champions Riot finds hardest to balance, and the abilities you can't dodge at all. If you want to practice the weaving that makes Yone's attack speed scaling pay, start with our advanced champion mechanics page, and if any of the shorthand above lost you, the terms glossary has it. There's also a full set of Yone wallpapers and Yasuo wallpapers if you'd rather just look at them.
What's your read on Yone these days? Still think the E is an escape button? Comment below!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Feel free to comment or leave a message :)