GustingWind

As a support main myself, I find that Yuumi is very reliant on the positioning of your ADC. Was the intent always to be hoping that your ADC would be in the right spot when you needed them? This is especially critical to her ult, which I have definitely screwed up bc my ADC is running away instead of facing the enemy!

The Ult case can be frustrating, since there is a split second where you want to cast it and they might jerk you out of the way. That's why you can fully control it while detached as well, if you're worried about your ally's positioning, I recommend starting the ult while unattached until your ADC gets the message to follow up.

RedShirtKing

The mid-patch update to Yuumi so soon after her release may be the largest I've ever seen. What do you think caused that discrepancy between where you thought she stood in power level during PBE testing and what we saw on the ranked ladder? Do you think bumping up her numbers across the board is enough of a fix to get her into a healthy state, or are there other changes you might be considering now that the playerbase at large has gotten a hold of her?

The learning curve on the champion was longer than we were hoping/expecting. Players from the team are having success with her on live, but it seems like the skill for her don' translate as well as we were hoping. We still need more data to figure out exactly what we should be doing from here on out.

moodRubicund

Did she used to have more portal-related powers with her book while in development? There are other attach-supports in other MOBAs like Abathur from Heroes of the Storm, who have global presence as well. Portal powers would seem to work well with a global presence-skillset yet they seem totally irrelevant to Yuumi, who doesn't use portals to do anything except get back to base.

We tried a couple. Her ult was initially concepted as a portal that would summon spirit creatures, but that didn't work for a variety of reasons. She had a spell where she would set up a mini-ryze ult and teleport anyone standing on it away, but it gave way too much safety to Yuumi's attached ally. If they were ever CC'd, Yuumi could just pop them away.

Karna47

What was the worst thing to code about her? Im assuming having her jump on a champ could create so really weird interactions like Zed going into his ult.

The attach mechanic for sure. There are so many intricacies, timing issues and bugs that were created. /u/RiotLtRandolph is downright a hero for getting it all working.

OpalP

What were Yuumi’s prototype names/appearance/abilities like? Was she always a cat or did the concept start out as something different altogether?

Once we saw the concept art for a cat with a book, everyone was sold, and we changed her playtest name to Catbook. It remained that for a long time until we got the final name in. We still call her Catbook from time to time.

Trickquestionorwhat

Which ability did you guys intend to have her max first, or did you try to make it balanced enough that it depended on the player's playstyle?

Q for sure. She needs a more poke oriented style to succeed in the early game, which is why the rank ups for that are so powerful. You can max E sometimes, but I'm not sure if its every really better than Q.

Clotzy

Does it not worry Yous the yummi is completly locked to a support role , when every or champion can pull off a secondary role to some degree ,

Not really. It actually lets us have some freedom, since we don't need to worry about the additional pro power of having it be a flex pick.

ADD_ikt

Which champions do you think yuumi work well with?

I recently got smashed by Kled Yuumi. I think it's secret op. Any other secret op duos.

Divers. They love extra move speed, survivability, and catch potential.

BellyDancerUrgot

Ever gonna get that reverse yuumi skin where the book is riding the cat?

Also are rengar and yuumi friends in the kitty rengar alt verse?

I'm still holding out for BatCook.

Hextech_Avenger

In early iteration of the character, were there any ideas of granting the person you were attached to a percentage of Yuumi’s MS?

Yeah, actually. Constant MS creates issues where in lane you can chase down the enemy laners for favorable trades, so it was better as a spell that you had to pay a cost for.

Zezimaz

Hi! thanks for the AMA, did you guys consider her Q being AoE? or maybe proc something similar like lundens echo? thank you

We did! We wanted hiding behind minions to be reasonable counterplay, so we took the AoE off of it. The damage + scorch + Spell Thiefs + Aery was often enough that the poke even through minions was too much.

Chocolatebeany

At /u/RiotMaxw3ll, is there any reason for yuumi to have extremely low base mr? IMO the untargetability doesn't really warrant that given that she also has one of the the lowest health pools, and if she still needs a buff it could probably be changed to standard ranged champion mr growth.

There were a lot of instances in playtests where she would get out of situations that we really felt like she should have died in. Getting caught warding super far from her allies, for example. But with two E charges plus a large range dash to safety, she wasn't getting punished enough. It's possible we went overboard there, and that we should've hit something else.

The other thing is that a high level optimization for Yuumi is to unattach to take skill shots for your ally, and I didn't want Yuumi to just blank enemy poke, so doing this had a meaningful cost.

Scienc3_HS

What where some of the most hilarious bugs/champion models or stories you encountered while making her?

Also how did you choose the name? I like it very much and I think it's very fitting.

In order to make the attachment work, we had to overhaul how other attachments work (including things like Kayn, Lamb and Wolf, and Nunu's snowball). There was one test where Kayn ulted someone under turret, they died, and then he was stuck there. He got blasted by the turret and died, but when he respawned, he was still stuck under that turret, so he just kept respawning and died over and over, unable to move.

SilverEmpress

What was the decision-making like around what her Q would do and be like?

I think the attached version is really cool; being able to direct it like that is pretty neat. But... I really wish it had a small AoE on it, even if the AoE was only on her Q when she's not attached to anyone. I've found if you're in a situation where you have to be by yourself, pushing a wave even slightly can be very hard.

We wanted her Q to be something that Yuumi players would have to invest some focus in while attached, since they wouldn't be burdened with move commands. It would be one of our few opportunities to do a high-demand input like that.

There was an AoE on it for awhile, but we cut it for a few reasons. The most major one was because Q is a highly reliable spell, we wanted minions to be more of a point of safety for enemies. Ducking behind minions, but still taking a percentage of the damage, plus spell thief + scorch proc often led to more poke than we were comfortable with. We didn't want the only counterplay to be 'run away the whole screen and wait.'

Mechanickel

Was Yuumi too strong with allowing her passive to get reduced by landing autoattacks and/or abilities? It feels like something that should happen when playing with her and it was a bit awkward to realize that it does not happen. I feel like it makes the lane phase not too interactive because you don't want to put yourself in the open as often.

We had a few versions that reduced CD's on Yuumi for auto attacking, but I wanted there to be points in time where it wasn't a mistake for Yuumi to just be chilling on her ally. Players want to play the attach support to attach, and if you're constantly being rewarded for auto attacks, then you feel like you're missing out when your attached.

CynicaIity

When designing enchanters what are the different tools or design niches you consider?

Some people like to simplify the role down to just heals, shields, and stat buffs, so internally what are the different things you are willing to try or boundaries you can push in order to make the role more dynamic and differentiate new champs from other enchanters?

We knew we wanted to do this attach mechanic, so we started looking for things within that wheel house to differentiate Yuumi from other enchanters. The most natural path wasn't what she was providing (heals, shields, ect), but who she could provide it to. Because she follows you anywhere, completely safely, she can hop onto a diver and follow them to the backline and buff them, which is just something Janna and Soraka can't do.

DudeLikeYeah

What are some of the scrapped abilities from her kit?

So many.

I tried making her ult something that she would use to attach to enemies, the most hilarious of which was a version where she would push the target across the whole map until they hit a wall, then dash back, regardless of where they were. It often failed to do much since the targeting was hard, but when it worked, it was hilarious watching a cat tackle you across the map then Nope right out.

Her unattached Q went through a lot of iteration, at one point it was a missile that would cook for about a second, then fire off at some of the fastest speed of any missile in the game. We tried a bunch of versions where unattached Q was a separate spell that was about setting up fights and attached Q was about capitalizing on it.

u/endlesspillows had a spell I thought was super cool where she would throw out a boomerang orb like Ahri Q, but then you could cast your spells from that orb to get extra range/aoes.

Kadexe

What was the most extreme version of Yuumi's W that you tested?

The one we shipped was pretty close. We talked about if she should ever be targetable at all, and what that would mean for a champion. There were versions where she was untargetable during the travel time as well as when attached.

DotAGenius

More of a comment than a question, but I am worried that a lot of new players will main Yuumi to start and climb, then negatively impact games when they cant play her (bans, nerfs, etc.) because her playstyle is inherently different than the rest of the champion pool (for instance, not having to worry about positioning during laning phase or crutching on other people for map movement in the midgame).

We saw something similar with Mercy in Overwatch, where players who climbed with Mercy couldnt do much once she got nerfed because they had not developed "core skills" important to playing Overwatch.

It's still way too early to tell, but from what Ive seen, Yuumi could be starting a similar issue; so I guess my question is whether that is a concern and, if so, are there plans to make her more relatable to other champions while keeping her unique kit?

Thank you.

I think it's too early to tell. The way we've been playing her internally still has you doing normal support things like warding, harassing, buying active items ect, but we're still gathering data on how the community is playing her.

AForgottenSnowflake

Were there any other abilities you considered giving Yuumi, that while fitting the character just didn't fit her kit at all? I figured maybe something with portals might have been considered given Book's story.

Also, I love Yuumi a lot. I know she's getting a bit of a bad rep right now, but I do fully believe it is due to the fact that a lot of players suddenly became support mains with the new champion. So because she isn't a killing spree kind of support like Pyke was, people are saying she is weak. As a support main who plays a lot of healing champs like Nami, Soraka, and Taric, I think she is a wonderfully fun champion who can be extremely powerful in the right hands, and the right comp. ♥

We actually tried a spell where she would do a mini-ryze ult to teleport anyone in a circle around her to the targeted position. It was way too much safety granted to her ally, who if ever CC'd would just be whisked away, but it was a cool portal call out.