Yi Sun-shin

The draft screen should feel narrow

Yi Sun-shin is still worth drafting after patch 2.1.61 (patch notes), but the patch removed one lazy habit: casting Mountain Shocker too early and expecting the ship to still matter when the fight finally starts. The shorter ship window means he is strongest when Turtle, Lord, or a side-lane collapse is already forming and your ultimate turns that setup into vision, a forced reposition, and a clean finish.

That is the first filter. Yi Sun-shin is not the hero who should walk into river first and tank the first spell. He is the hero who punishes the team that already showed its angle. Pick him when your roam or EXP can touch the fight first, when your mid can move on time, and when the enemy backline still needs real spacing to function. If your team can create one clean entry point, Yi Sun-shin converts that entry into a pick faster than most junglers.

The trap games are the ones where every melee step is taxed. Hard displacement, hidden dive, and layered control all cut into the same weakness: once Yi Sun-shin commits to glaive range, he needs a reset window or he dies there. Akai, Helcurt, and Lancelot all attack that rule from different angles, and none of them let you autopilot your second entry. If the enemy draft can force your Traceless defensively before you ever reach the real target, your team is asking Yi Sun-shin to do the wrong job.

He is best when the enemy team has to reveal themselves to take space. He is worst when they can make you reveal first. If you cannot say who starts the fight before Yi Sun-shin arrives, do not lock him.

His real identity is weapon tempo

Yi Sun-shin is not a poke marksman with a global ultimate. He is a tempo jungler whose damage comes from forcing weapon swaps on purpose.

The passive decides whether he attacks with bow or glaive based on distance, and every clean swap pays him with two enhanced basics plus movement speed. Blood Floods immediately grants Weapon Mastery. Mountain Shocker immediately grants Weapon Mastery. Each mastered pair also shaves cooldown off Traceless. That means the whole hero is one loop: create a swap, cash the two enhanced hits, move to the next range line, and create the next swap before the target gets to reset.

Once that clicks, the rest of the kit stops looking flashy and starts looking practical. Traceless is not your dramatic opener. It is the bridge that lets you cross one dangerous angle, dodge one key control, or force the next weapon state. Blood Floods is not there so you can stand still charging arrows all fight. It is there to give you the next mastery pair on demand, either from range when you are entering or in melee when you need the target gone immediately.

Mountain Shocker follows the same rule. The reveal matters. The ram matters. The cannon zone matters. But the hidden value is that the skill drops a fresh mastery trigger into the middle of a fight you already read correctly. Yi Sun-shin does not win because he owns both bow and blade. He wins because he turns every forced distance change into another burst window.

Jungle the first six minutes

1. Clear camps by crossing the range line on purpose. Start the camp from bow range, step into glaive range for the first mastered pair, then use Blood Floods or Traceless to set up the next switch before you walk out. Yi Sun-shin clears quickly only when the camp keeps feeding him new weapon states. If you stand on one side of the range line and spam basics, you are playing half a hero.
2. Treat the first Turtle as a timing check, not a duel invitation. Reach level 4 on schedule, hold Mountain Shocker for the objective window, and only invade if your mid and roam already moved first. Yi Sun-shin can finish river fights fast, but he hates being the first body anyone sees in the choke.
3. Spend Retribution on tempo, not ego. Secure the buff, crab, or camp that keeps your clear ahead and your item curve intact. A low-percentage invade that delays your next camp hurts Yi Sun-shin more than sturdier junglers, because his first real takeover window comes when items start amplifying the mastery loop.

The early game goal is simple: arrive at the first objective with a clean path, level 4 online, and enough gold to threaten the next clear cycle. If you leave your first jungle phase even, Yi Sun-shin is fine. If you leave it late on camps because you kept forcing river scraps, the whole hero starts one beat behind.

The spike you are farming toward

Yi Sun-shin's real two-item spike is War Axe plus Endless Battle, usually around the 7:30 to 9:30 mark in a clean game.

War Axe gives him exactly what his first real fights ask for: health so the first step into melee does not instantly cost the fight, cooldown reduction so Blood Floods and Traceless cycle faster, and a combat ramp that rewards staying active instead of backing out after one trade. Endless Battle is the second half of the sentence. The moment it lands, every short skill-to-basic sequence threatens true damage through Divine Justice, and Yi Sun-shin happens to be one of the best heroes in the roster at creating repeated short skill-to-basic sequences.

That is why this spike changes his mechanics, not just his numbers. Before it, he is mostly scouting, softening, and cashing out obvious picks. After it, one clean sequence becomes enough: ranged entry, mastery pair, Traceless through the angle, melee mastery pair, reset. Tanks still need time to die, but mages, marksmen, and careless supports start disappearing in one committed rhythm instead of two.

This is the part many Yi Sun-shin players misread. Blade of Despair is a bigger headline item, but the game usually turns before that. The real power handoff happens when War Axe stops him from folding on first contact and Endless Battle starts paying every correct skill weave immediately. That is the point where you stop hovering and start hunting.

Fight from the second line, not the first

The wrong reflex on Yi Sun-shin is to ram the ship through the first body you see and pretend you are the tank. That reflex throws the fight because the hero's melee damage is real, but his margin for error is not.

1. Use Mountain Shocker before the choke closes, not after your front line is already dead. The reveal is what tells your team which side of the fight is safe to enter. If you press it after the engage has already failed, you are only documenting the loss.
2. Take your first two enhanced hits from range whenever possible. Bow hits start the fight safely and force the target to spend movement before you spend yours. Glaive range is for the finish, the cornered target, or the fight where enemy peel has already been committed elsewhere.
3. Keep Traceless for the angle change that wins the duel. The brief control immunity is enough to slip one important spell or cross one wall. It is not enough to forgive a bad first entry. If you spend Traceless just to get started, you have already volunteered to die on the second turn.

The support-dependent edge case matters here. With Mathilda or Angela behind you, Yi Sun-shin can ram deeper because the second wave of the fight actually arrives with him. With pure healers, or with no real peel at all, Mountain Shocker is often better used as reveal plus zone control while you wait for the enemy control tools to show. Same hero, different threshold for commitment.

Itemization is three locked slots and real arguments

The non-negotiables are War Axe, Endless Battle, and Blade of Despair. Everything after that is a scoreboard conversation.

The boot slot. Tough Boots is the default because Traceless only covers a tiny slice of control, and Yi Sun-shin usually dies to the control he fails to dodge rather than to the damage itself. Warrior Boots is the better call only when the enemy damage profile is overwhelmingly physical and the control burden is light.

Malefic Roar is the correct buy when the enemy front line has already turned the game into an armor check. If the tank or EXP laner can stand between you and the backline long enough to waste your first mastery cycle, you buy penetration and solve that problem directly.

Blade of the Heptaseas is the snowball option when you are ahead and the game is about deleting one squishy target before the objective starts. Its Ambush passive rewards the exact kind of fog pick Yi Sun-shin loves: wait out combat, tag the carry once, force the slow, then cash in the rest of the combo before they escape.

Hunter Strike is for games where the enemy keeps slipping the first contact and the fight becomes a chase around river walls and jungle mouths. Yi Sun-shin reaches five hits quickly through skill plus mastery sequences, so the movement burst is not decorative. It changes whether the second target gets away.

Rose Gold Meteor is the anti-burst flex when double magic damage or mixed burst keeps knocking you out before the second weapon cycle. It is not a damage-max item, but the shield and emergency movement buy exactly the half-second Yi Sun-shin often needs to turn a bad first trade into a kill and a reset.

Immortality is the late-game answer when every entry is all-in around Lord or base defense. If one death decides the game, the revive is worth more than another greedy damage slot.

Mistakes that throw Yi Sun-shin games

Ramming first and reading the fight second. Mountain Shocker feels like an initiation button now, so weaker Yi Sun-shin players use it that way every fight. If the ship hits the tank or roamer first, you spent your best scouting tool just to announce yourself. Use the reveal to choose the lane of entry, then ram when the target is actually worth pinning.

Charging Blood Floods in open vision for too long. The fully held arrow looks tempting, but every extra beat spent charging in front of the enemy is a beat where assassins and mages get to aim at a predictable body. Hold shots are strongest from fog, over terrain, or before contact. Once the fight is live, the instant slash is often better because it gives the next mastery pair immediately.

Using Traceless as a greeting into counter-engage. This is the matchup mistake that ruins otherwise good Yi Sun-shin games. Against Akai, Helcurt, Lancelot, or any draft that can punish your first dash, Traceless is the button that saves the duel, not the button that starts it. Spend it too early and the enemy does not need great mechanics to beat you.

Farming the long side lane because your ultimate is global. Global reveal does not make Yi Sun-shin a safe split pusher. If the next Turtle or Lord fight is forming, he should be one rotation away, not twenty seconds away clearing an outer wave for vanity gold. His map pressure comes from arriving at the right fight with information, not from pretending to be Moskov.

Breaking the weapon cycle on neutral objectives. Lord and Turtle disappear much faster when Yi Sun-shin keeps forcing bow-to-glaive transitions. Too many players sit at one distance, auto the objective mindlessly, then wonder why the enemy jungler reaches the contest window. Keep the mastery loop alive and the objective falls before the map can collapse on you.

Small edges that win his fights