Yorick Guide League of Legends

This is a guide for Yorick, the Gravedigger in League of Legends. Yorick is the newest League of Legends Champion, released at the culmination of Season One and the Season One Championship. Yorick is tanky melee champion that has some really unique shoveling abilities (LOL). This guide will show you everything you need to know to play Yorick like a pro including a build and item guide, runes, masteries, summoner spells, and basic and advanced tactics for laning, 1v1s and team fights.

This guide written by JuiceItUp, currently around #100 on the Solo Queue Ladder (Rating 2000 )

Note: Yorick is extremely underpowered since his release and should NOT be picked EVER in ranked games (if you want to win). Expect to get flamed if you pick Yorick in a ranked game. He's very weak, his minions die so quickly, he does very little damage, and even with Manamune he still goes OOM incredibly fast.

Here's a list of Yorick's abilities as seen at E3. Of course, these are subject to change and his ultimate is still being configured.

Omen of War: Yorick's next attack will deal bonus physical damage and summon a Spectral Ghoul that deals additional damage and moves faster than Yorick's other ghouls. While the Spectral Ghoul is alive, Yorick moves faster as well.

Omen of Pestilence: Yorick summons a Decaying Ghoul that arrives with a violent explosion, dealing damage and slowing nearby enemies. While the Decaying Ghoul remains alive, nearby enemies continue to be slowed.

Omen of Famine: Yorick steals life from his target and summons a Ravenous Ghoul that heals Yorick for the damage it deals.

Omen of Death (Ultimate): Yorick conjures a revenant in the image of one of his allies. If his ally dies while its revenant is alive, the revenant sacrifices itself to reanimate them and give them time to enact vengeance.

Unholy Covenant (Passive): Yorick's attacks deal more damage for each summon that is active. Meanwhile, Yorick's ghouls deal some percent of Yorick's Attack Damage and have some percent of his total health.

Yorick's Items are Pretty standard for a tanky melee AD (Attack Damage) champion. Remember that all of Yorick's abilities scale with Attack Damage, and his minions scale with his own HP, so focus on items that increase AD and HP.

Start with:

Boots and 3 health pots or Doran's Shield

Phage > Trinity Force

Bloodthirster or Infinity Edge

Catalyst > Banshee's Veil

Giant's Belt > Sunfire Cape

Heart of Gold > Randuin's Omen

NOTE: Yorick has serious mana issues currently, so you might want to get a Philosopher's Stone or some other MP5 item as he runs out of mana very very quickly.

Check out Phreak's Champion Spotlight for Yorick the Gravedigger.

Yorick Runes: Standard Tanky Melee Runes

Reds: Armor Penetration

Yellows: Dodge, Scaling Health Per Level

Blues: CDR, Magic Resistance, or MP5 per level

Quintessences: Flat Health, Armor Penetration, or Movement Speed

Yorick Masteries: Standard Tanky Melee Masteries

9/21/0 is the best for tankiness and the magic penetration, however 21/0/9 is good for more burst and 0/21/9 is good for the tankiness and exp/regen bonus. Few people play Yorick with 9/0/21 for the extra MP5 and CDR, although it's viable if your items are right and may be a good option as Yorick needs mana regen badly.

Yorick is a very weak laner and can easily be overpowered by a ranged carry, ap carry or even a melee laner like Jarvan, Lee Sin or WW or Udyr.

Yorick's best role is as a jungler. He's a decent jungler.

Start at with Cloth and 5 health pots, get Wriggler's Lantern as soon as possible and you should be fine. You can start with blue, which is the best option due to his mana issues, but you will need a leash and a few hits from your allies to help you take it down.

If you're going to jungle, you should get standard jungle runes with at least 20% increased attack speed. Otherwise, his jungling is so slow that you'll be left behind unless you get some early kills.

Note that Omen of War only works on an attack (it's a proc like Poppy's Q or Garen's Q) and so you can only summon the ghoul and get the speed boost if you're close enough to actually hit someone. If you CAN hit someone, it's almost impossible to get away from Yorick, especially with Omen of War and Omen of Pestilence. Omen of Pestilence has a small AOE area, so you can use it to slow them enough to hit them with Omen of War, and the chase is on!

Yorick is a very strong chaser/jungle ganker and he is very strong in 1v1 situations.

Yorick really shines though in team fights with his Ultimate, the revenant. This ult is like Morde's Ghost + Zilean's Chronoshift all in one! It's very powerful, but you obviously have to use it at the right time, and use it on your carries who will deal more damage and the revenant will scale with their AD or AP.

Yorick Summoner Spells:

If jungling:

Smite/Ghost

Flash/Smite

Otherwise, Yorick should get the standard tanky summoner spells such as:

Flash/Exhaust

Flash/Ignite

Ghost/Exhaust

Ghost/Ignite

Other decent combinations include:

Ghost/Flash

Flash/CV

Ghost/CV

Is Yorick OP?

Check out the sweet new graphics for the Yorick Champion Art Spotlight for League of Legends.

Check out the preview of Yorick and the other new champions at E3.

Got any cool tips for playing Yorick? Share them here!