LoL pro Hakuho explains why Yuumi is so overpowered

Echo Fox Support Nickolas ‘Hakuho’ Surgent has explained why new League of Legends champion Yuumi is so powerful for professional players.

Yuumi the Magical Cat is the latest champion to be released for League of Legends, a literal cat who floats around on a magic book, and is designed to be played as a Support.

The distinguishing feature of Yuumi, and what makes her particularly well-suited to playing in a duo lane as a Support, is her unique Attached mechanic. Yuumi can become Attached to friendly champions, becoming untargetable by all damage except from turrets, and her abilities fire from the location of the ally champion.

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When Yuumi was first released she found little success in ranked play, debuting with the worst win-rate ever in fact, which Riot responded to with some quick buffs. At the highest level, she’s now even considered overpowered, almost universally being banned out in the professional leagues around the world.

When asked about how Riot should go about balancing the new champion, Hakuho argued that it might be impossible for the champion to be balanced for both professional play, in which teams can maximize synergies between champions, and online play in which such a team-play reliant champion might be punished.

“She’s a safe enchanter, you can never die, and you get free poke in lane,” Hakuho said, “I kind of think they have to balance it around pro play and just accept that her solo queue win rate might be garbage.”

Despite recognizing that the champion might be too powerful right now, Hakuho did say he “[has] a lot of fun with Yuumi even though she’s perma-banned.” Not all of his fellow pros share the sentiment, however, with OpTic Gaming’s William ‘Meteos’ Hartman describing her as the worst champion in League of Legends and “the embodiment of what I dislike about the game.”

Hakuho’s Echo Fox kicked off the Summer Split of the LCS with a bang in week one, pulling off an upset over LCS Spring champions and MSI finalists Team Liquid, who in Spring managed to go seven games before suffering their first loss.