Gaming
Dueling and pushing are the orders of the day for League’s reworked gravekeeper.
Finally, after four years of languishing beneath the surface of the top lane, Yorick has dug his way out of the forgotten champs pile and grabbed himself a rework. His new threads may be missing his telltale lantern, but he's got a fresh kit of abilities to more than make up for it.
Through his sustained absence, you may not remember what the old gravekeeper plays like. This could be a blessing, as he's quite considerably different now, and even if you're not familiar with his history there's a lot to learn about what is now surely one of the most unique champs in League of Legends. So here's how to make the most out of our old friend's new tricks.
First off, Yorick's still a top laner, that's the easy part out of the way. No need to adapt to a new role if you were already familiar with the sort of playstyle that's expected of you up there above the Rift. However, whereas Yorick could previously subsist off of spamming his abilities to make ghouls appear to harass a lane opponent, now there's strategy to the game.
Every few minion deaths will cause a grave to appear. As long as you stick around, so do the graves, and once you have four you can cast Awakening to fill the lane with friendly undead.
The trick is to goad your opponent into thinking they have a numbers advantage early game, and then quickly turn the tides on them. You don't have much wave clear, so be careful about setting this up, but you can also use Last Rites to secure last hits while guaranteeing a grave as well.
To help you out with these lane bullying exploits, Dark Procession can lock an out of position opponent into the rage cage with your newly disinterred buddies, and painting them with Mourning Mist ensures they become the number one priority target. Thanks to the updated AI on ghouls, you'll be able to chunk away decent amounts of health for effective lane bullying.
For the early stage items, a Cutlass and Revolver will help you bring the pain, and pick up either Cloth Armor or Mantle depending on their damage output type. The end goal is at the very least to turn these into a Gunblade, Trinity Force and Spirit Visage, and you'll barely ever need to back again. This is important as you exit the laning phase and enter the Yorick laning phase.
Once you've got your ult, Eulogy of the Isles, it's time to start shoving over turrets. You can do this either with your team, on the back of successful other engagements on objectives like Dragon or ganks, or on your own.
Now that doesn't give you a free pass to AFK split-push and avoid every fight. Get the Maiden of the Mist out of the ground, pull up four of your own ghouls, and then head off to help your team do something else. This way the enemy either devotes themselves entirely to the objective your team is contesting and lets you get a free turret, or they try to stop both and you have an easy engage.
After this you can double down on the split-push, or look at being a bigger bully. The Maiden can be directed at enemy champs, too, making her a powerful teamfight ally, so if you want to go for a Malmortius, Dead Man's Plate or Titanic Hydra and start whaling on folks, that's all on you. If you've already got a good DPS, you can bulk up at Tank school with Iceborn Gauntlet (for the crowd control) and Sterak's Gage (for the damage block). But if you're not quite a monster from a good early game, don't worry about dodging fights and helping with the push.
Effective split-pushers can grab a ZZ'Rot Portal and either add it to the current army heading up one lane, or to help you in a second lane. Pulling your opponent apart with lane pressure can buy enough time for a struggling carry, too, and the more often lanes are on the enemy side of the river, the harder it is for them to sneak into the forests and punish a weak jungler, too.
There will be periods when you can't exert lane pressure if you go for the Maiden and Ghouls party all at once, so ZZ can help you spread out your pressure while cooldowns ruin your fun. And if you also grabbed that Iceborn Gauntlet, then you've got some sorely lacking wave clear, too. Even if you can't duel perfectly, there's a way for you to win. The Yorick Way.
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