One kill was never just one kill. It reset the whole kit, and then it was your turn.
Some champions get nerfed. Old Master Yi got a full rebuild, because there was no number small enough to fix a swordsman who could not be caught, could not be worn down, and came back to full readiness the moment he cut someone down.
Formerly OP
Old Master Yi
One kill was never just one kill. It reset the whole kit, and then it was your turn.
Some champions get nerfed. Old Master Yi got a full rebuild, because there was no number small enough to fix a swordsman who could not be caught, could not be worn down, and came back to full readiness the moment he cut someone down.
You are three items into a fight you are winning. Then a green blur appears from a bush that was supposedly warded, becomes untargetable mid-swing, and starts cutting through your team one at a time. You slow him. It does nothing. You land every basic attack you can. Half of them just do not connect. He gets a kill, and suddenly his blink is back up, his heal is back up, his damage steroid is back up, and he is already dashing at whoever is left. That was Master Yi for the better part of three seasons, and it is why "just kite him" became one of the emptiest pieces of advice League ever produced.
When, And For How Long
Master Yi launched with the game's original roster in 2009 and carried this identity through Season 1, Season 2, and into the middle of Season 3 without a real interruption. Riot finally ended the era with a complete visual and gameplay overhaul in Patch V3.10, released on July 30, 2013. That is roughly four years of a single kit, easily long enough for an entire generation of players to learn to dread the Wuju Bladesman on sight.
The Old Kit
The icons below are the actual archived art from Master Yi's pre-2013 kit, not the modern versions standing in for them. The descriptions are all the old abilities.
Innate: Vanish
A passive dodge chance against incoming basic attacks, and it doubled while Meditate or Highlander was active. Stacked on top of the era's dodge-chance items, this was the whole reason a farmed, kited Yi so often just did not take the damage he was supposed to take. Half the autoattacks aimed at him simply whiffed.
Innate: Double Strike
After a set number of basic attacks, Yi's next hit landed twice. It sounds small next to everything else on this list, but it was the passive income that made every extended trade or jungle clear faster than it looked from the outside.
Q: Alpha Strike
A blink onto a target that hit everyone caught nearby with magic damage, and for its entire duration Yi was untargetable. This was not the on-hit bounce combo the ability is today. It was a burst nuke with an AP ratio, meaning a full ability power build was a completely legitimate way to play this champion, right alongside the attack damage version everyone remembers.
W: Meditate
A channel that piled on bonus armor, magic resistance, and health regeneration, topped off with a heal at the start and end of the full duration. This was not a small sustain tool, it was closer to a temporary second health bar, and it scaled beautifully with the same ability power an AP Yi was already stacking for Alpha Strike.
E: Wuju Style
A flat attack damage bonus that doubled while active. No true damage, no on-hit scaling, just a raw steroid that turned every basic attack for its duration into real, unmitigated pain. This was the backbone of the attack damage build, and it is the one piece of this kit most players from the era actually remember by name.
R: Highlander
Bonus attack speed, bonus movement speed, and full immunity to slows for the duration. The part that actually broke the game was underneath all of that: a champion kill while Highlander was active refreshed every one of Yi's basic ability cooldowns instantly, with an assist refreshing half. Alpha Strike, Meditate, and Wuju Style did not come back over time after a kill. They just came back, all at once, ready to do it again to whoever was left standing.
Why It Was OP
None of this was one broken number. It was several genuinely different problems stacked on the same champion at the same time:
You could not hit him and you could not slow him. Vanish's dodge chance, doubled during his own defensive and offensive cooldowns, meant a meaningful fraction of incoming basic attacks simply failed. Highlander's slow immunity meant that once he decided to close the distance or walk away, there was no kiting him and no running from him either. Most escape and peel tools in the game are built around slowing something down, and against this kit, that entire category of counterplay just did not work.
Two entire builds, one champion. Because Alpha Strike and Meditate both carried real ability power ratios, a full AP Yi built around Rod of Ages and Zhonya's Hourglass was a completely separate, completely viable way to play the same champion as the attack damage, Wuju Style version everyone else remembers. The enemy team had to itemize not knowing which threat they were actually facing, and whichever one they guessed wrong about, it did not matter, since Vanish and Highlander protected both builds equally.
Kills did not cost him anything. In most kits, using your cooldowns to secure a kill leaves you with nothing left for the follow-up. Old Yi's Highlander flipped that completely. The kill was the resource generator. One pick in a teamfight handed him back his blink, his heal, and his damage steroid in the same instant, and a fed Yi with all three of those things back online rarely needed a second chance to find the next kill.
The Fall
This was not a slow nerf campaign that quietly buried the play pattern over a dozen patches, the way it went for some other champions of this era. Riot went straight at the design itself and gave Master Yi a complete visual and gameplay rework in Patch V3.10, released July 30, 2013.
What Changed
Alpha Strike stopped being a magic damage nuke and became the physical, multi-target dash combo the ability still is today, closing off the AP build entirely. Meditate lost its huge flat resistance buffer and was rebuilt around healing that scales with missing health instead, a defensive tool rather than a temporary second health bar. Wuju Style traded its flat steroid for true damage scaling on hit, folding the two old builds into the single on-hit identity Yi has used ever since. Highlander kept its movement speed, attack speed, and slow immunity, but the full cooldown refresh on a kill became a passive partial cooldown reduction instead, present on every kill and assist rather than triggering an instant reset. Vanish's dodge chance quietly disappeared from the kit around the same era, following the game's own dodge chance itemization out the door.
Where He Stands Now
Modern Master Yi is still a snowball threat, just a much more honest one. He wins fights by finding one isolated target, Alpha Striking to reset the dash off a basic attack, and stacking Wuju Style's true damage into a burst window instead of an unkillable, unslowable rampage through an entire team. He is a real pick in solo queue and an occasional jungle option at higher levels, but he lives and dies by positioning now, both his and everyone else's, rather than by a kit that made positioning barely matter. The slow immunity on Highlander is the one piece of the old nightmare that genuinely survived intact, which is exactly why veteran players still groan a little when they see that ultimate pop.
Nominate The Next One
This series has already dug up old Twisted Fate, old Nidalee, old Evelynn, and old release Xin Zhao, and old Master Yi belongs right alongside them as one of the champions that made an entire era of players buy wards and dodge items just because he existed. Who else deserves the same treatment? Drop your nominations in the comments, we are always looking for the next kit that used to make the whole enemy team groan in champion select.
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