Yuumi champion guide: Becoming The Magical Cat’s meow

Yuumi and her magic book have been transported onto the Rift, becoming the newest champion to join League of Legends’ ever-expanding roster. Yuumi is an enchanter support that works best when paired with a carry like champion in the bot lane. Let’s pounce on in and see what The Magical Cat has to offer.

Abilities

Passive - Bop ‘n’ Block

Riot Games

The shield strength, mana regained, and cooldown of Bop ‘n’ Block scale based on your current level, becoming stronger as you become stronger as a champion.

Q - Prowling Projectile

Prowling Projectile has six skill point slots due to being given a free point in You and Me! at level one. When attached to an allied champion, your Q controls like a more responsive Sion ultimate. It’s important to note that the empowered version of Yuumi’s Q slows which allows your Font of Life rune to activate.

W - You and Me!

Riot Games

You start with a free point in You and Me! at level one allowing you to have two abilities off spawn. All abilities can be cast while attached to an ally, meaning that you can remain untargetable for the entirety of a teamfight while still providing support to your teammates.

You can see the cooldown of You and Me! as a decaying bar above the ability icon, allowing you to know when it’s off cooldown, while still being attached. It may be important to note that active items are useable while with an ally, which could open up some interesting builds.

E - Zoomies

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Zoomies gives a quite sizeable movement speed burst when activated which can be utilized to get you or your teammate out of a sticky situation. The cooldown on heal charges gets lower based on your cooldown reduction alongside points in the ability.

R - Final Chapter

Riot Games

It’s useful to know that you shoot out one wave every 0.5 seconds, meaning it takes a minimum of 1.5 seconds to root an enemy. Try to coordinate Final Chapter with your team and decide if its better utilized as follow up engage or as a peeling tool.

Runes

For runes, I liked Summon Aery for its healing and damage hybrid working in harmony with Yuumi’s kit. Grab Manaflow Band for the regeneration, allowing you to spam your abilities more often. Absolute focus is great, since with You and Me! you should pretty much always be above 70 percent health, and you get capped on cooldown reduction from items, so there’s no need for Transcendence. End with Gathering Storm due to its synergies with You and Me!’s passive. Go for Resolve secondary grabbing Font of Life, allowing your allies to heal on anyone slowed by your Q or rooted by your R, and Revitalize for increased healing and shielding power.

Alternatively, you can run Guardian with Font of Life, Bone Plating, and Revitalize for a tankier, less damage-focused setup. Choose between Sorcery secondary here for either more mana sustain and damage with Manaflow Band and Absolute Focus or Gathering Storm, or biscuits and some additional cooldown reduction in Inspiration with Biscuit Delivery and Cosmic Insight.

Ability Sequence (W > E > Q)

Half maxing your Q early for lane presence is quite strong on Yuumi as it allows you to poke down the opponents during laning phase, but allows you to take on a more supportive role after the early game by switching to W max. You want to max W out first for its ability to give your attached ally a chunk of adaptive force based on your ability power, adding onto their AD or AP totals, giving them upwards of 1,000 gold worth of damage. Prioritize E next as you’ll want your heal strength higher and cooldown lower coming into the later stages of the game where team fights are more likely to kick off. You won’t be one of the main damage dealers towards the later stages of the game, making your Q less of a priority than the other two spells at this stage of the game.

Build

Starting Items

• Spellthief’s Edge
• 2 Health Potions
• Warding Totem

Early Items

• Frostfang
• Control ward(s)
• Sweepers lens

Core Items

• Redemption
• Ardent Censer

Situational Items

• Shurelia’s Reverie
• Athene’s Unholy Grail
• Mikael’s Crucible
• Twin Shadows
• Locket of the Iron Solari

Example full build

• Eye of the Watchers
• Ardent Censer
• Redemption
• Mikael’s Crucible
• Athene’s Unholy Grail
• Twin shadows

Your early itemization will heavily depend on how your partner is playing, and also the opposing team comp. If playing well, consider getting an Ardent Censer early to push your lead and allow your AD carry to have a bigger and better damage spike. If you’re having a tough time, or against a heavy crowd control team comp, consider rushing Mikael’s Crucible. One of the main things to remember when playing Yuumi is that if your attached teammate is CC’d, then so are you. This gives a Mikael’s purchase more worthwhile as it’s essentially a two-for-one cleanse. Redemption is a strong pickup as it increases your shield and heal strength while also allowing you to heal in an area of effect in a teamfight. The AoE heal will also grant the Ardent Censer buff to any teammate healed, which is a nice bonus.

Yuumi doesn’t have a huge reliance on boots since most of the time you’ll be relying on your teammates to get around the map, making them a somewhat wasted purchase. A strong synergy I found was to attach myself onto my jungler who had purchased Boots of Mobility. I basically got a free pair of boots and was able to roam with my jungler and gank other lanes without needing to spend that additional 900 gold.

If you looking for a fun yet viable build, I think that CDR stacking with the Transcendence rune could be the way to go for Yuumi. Transcendence converts any additional CDR over the cap into adaptive force, which will be ability power for Yuumi. This has strong synergy with You and Me!’s passive which grants anyone you are attached to a percentage of your ability power as adaptive force. I could see overcapping on CDR as the go to build on Yuumi simply due to the abundance of CDR available in the most commonly purchased items for enchanters. Try out the above example full build but replace Twin shadows’ item slot with Ionian Boots of Lucidity for cheap early cooldown reduction.

Synergies

• Twitch
• Kog’Maw
• Vayne
• Jinx
• Draven

Yuumi goes well with anyone she can enable to pop off in a fight. These champions also like having as much damage as possible with the help of You and Me!’s passive, you’ll help them out with that. Every hyper carry loves heals, shields, and peel — all of which Yuumi is great at.

Counters

• Thresh
• Blitzcrank
• Alistar
• Braum
• Fiddlesticks

These champions can easily engage on your ADC and abuse the fact that they’re basically alone in lane while you’re attached. Be careful with your attach timings versus champions with hard engage or you may find yourself in a sticky situation quickly.

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a new enchanter support to heal, shield, and peel for your team, enabling and supporting them without the risk of being focused down and picked off easily, then I’d recommend you try out Yuumi.