Riot dev Phreak defends LoL patch 13.1B Yuumi nerfs amid backlash: “She’s not much worse”

Shoutcaster turned Game Designer David ‘Phreak’ Turley released a video sharing his thoughts on Patch 13.1B in League of Legends, with an extended explanation behind his thought process and decisions whilst nerfing Yuumi.

Everyone who has played League of Legends may remember David ‘Phreak’ Turley, he was one of the earliest members of League’s team, previously casting games and hosting champion spotlights all the way back when.

Nowadays, he’s on the League of Legends balance team, making buffs, nerfs, and changes to your favorite champions. In Patch 13.1B we saw massive changes to ADCs, fighter item nerfs and the destruction of Yuumi as we know it.

With Phreak leading the charge behind the balance team, he was able to give us some thoughts in a video he released on his YouTube channel. He particularly went into detail about Yuumi, the most hated magical cat. As Yuumi arguably had the largest and most controversial changes of the patch, he explained his thought process and reasoning for them.

Phreak explained how the base stats of Yuumi were exceedingly high, so much so that she could comfortably go up against some of the strongest ADCs like Caitlyn. He then explained the difference between Yuumi’s usage in pro play as opposed to newer play, being that pro Yuumi’s know how to abuse these high base stats to allow them to win lane.

He then spoke about how he was fine with Yuumi being a noob-friendly champion whilst being weaker overall and mentioned the nerfs were more targeted towards pro play.

“I am pretty confident Yuumi should be gone from pro play. These are too much of a laning phase nerf to be playable in pro play. I am really hopeful pros go like ‘oh well we’re not playing her in pro, she’s gone’ and pro will look better as a result.”

Phreak , however, then made sure to point out that these nerfs aren’t quite as bad as they seem for the regular Yuumi. He claimed that whilst the base stat nerfs seemed quite detrimental, most regular Yuumis don’t use them, and therefore shouldn’t have too much of an impact.

He did comment that it was his intent to make the nerfs look large, as to impact Yuumi’s ban rate in normal play, whilst having her play rate drop in pro play.

“I want the nerfs to look f***huge, I want pros to stop playing it and I want you to stop banning it. And low-key, she’s not really that much worse, and that’s fine because I want you to think she’s not good anymore, that’s all I really want.”

We won’t be certain of how these changes impact Yuumi until a bit later in the patch, but Phreak is hopeful he’s taking the cat in the right direction.