In League of Legends the magic cat Yuumi is heavily nerfed with patch 13.1b. The responsible LoL developer explains: The nerfs should look “fucking huge” to make it clear to every pro: Don’t play Yuumi anymore. At the same time, the nerfs are supposed to look worse on paper than they actually are.
Who is speaking? David “Phreak” Turley” (35) started his career as a caster for League of Legends in 2009. Since 2022, he has been a member of the design team as “Riot Phreak”.
Before his career at Riot, he was a professional “Warcraft 3” player.
Which nerf is he talking about? With the update 13.1B, the champ Yuumi is heavily nerfed. There are a total of 8 nerfs affecting her base stats, her passive ability, and the skills W and E:
- The nerfs have been considered one of the “heaviest nerfs in LoL history”.
- A user on reddit said they are taking Yuumi out of the game without removing her from the game. A reference to the desire of several pro players for Riot to just “delete Yuumi”.
- In the 2022 season, the support Yuumi was seen as a hated but extremely effective pick: Anyone playing her in the bot lane could win championships . The champion was originally intended as a “noob-friendly entry champion”.
Nerfs should look “fucking huge” to deter pros
What’s behind the nerfs? Phreak explains in a video:
- The goal of the nerf was to completely take Yuumi out of the pros’ game – that was supposed to improve things.
- The nerf was supposed to look discouraging and specifically prevent pros from ever touching Yuumi again.
- For “normal players” the nerf shouldn’t be so bad.
Phreak says: “The nerf isn’t as bad as it looks on paper.” It should only “look damn huge” so that the pros stop playing Yuumi and the normal players stop banning Yuumi in solo queue: Actually, the nerf isn’t that bad.
Yuumi’s base stats were so strong that she could even compete against the best ADCs like Caitlyn. The pros exploited the base stats to win their lanes. Normal support players didn’t benefit as much from the base stats.
For him, Yuumi was intended as a “noob-friendly” champion who is overall weaker.
With the nerf, he believes he can now achieve the set goals:
“I’m pretty sure Yuumi will now disappear from the pros’ game. The nerfs in the laning phase are too strong for her to still be playable in pro play. I really hope pros now say: ‘Well, good, we’re not playing her anymore, she’s gone’ and that the pro games will get better now.”
Will it stay like this? For a while, it will likely stay this way. Riot accepts that the champion will now also have a hard time in normal play.
In the long term, a major rework for the cat has been announced. However, there is no schedule yet for when we will see the new Yuumi.
The cat Yuumi has a special role in League of Legends due to her unique mechanic of merging with a player and becoming untargetable, which has always been extremely controversial:
LoL reworks the most disliked champion – But completely wrong, players say
