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Riot Games is ready to release their 144th champion of League of Legends, ‘Yuumi: the magical cat’. With the official trailer revealed last week, a shortened preview of this cat’s abilities has also been announced. As most fans anticipated, the second new champion of 2019 seems to be a shield / heal focused support.

First, let’s see what Riot Games has revealed on Yuumi’s skillsets so far.

Passive - Bop ‘n’ Block

Every so often, Yuumi’s next attack against an opponent restores mana and grants her a shield. If Yuumi is Attached, the shield protects her ally. The shield protects Yuumi or her ally until it’s broken.

Q - Prowling Projectile

Yuumi fires a missile that deals magic damage to the first enemy hit. If the missile is in flight long enough, it deals bonus damage and slows enemies.

While Attached, Yuumi fires a missile from her ally’s position and can direct the missile’s flight path with her mouse.

W - You and Me!

Passive: While Attached, Yuumi and her ally gain a percent of each other’s AD or AP converted to Adaptive Force.

Active: Yuumi starts with a point in her W. She dashes to an ally champion and attaches to them. While Attached, she follows her partner’s movement and is untargetable by everything except tower damage. Yuumi’s abilities fire from her ally’s location, and she can’t attack enemies. She can Unattach after a cooldown or Attach to another teammate with no cooldown.

E - Zoomies

Yuumi heals and gains a burst of movement speed. If Attached, her ally is targeted by the spell instead. This spell has two charges.

R -Final Chapter

Yuumi opens Book, launching waves of magic damage that root enemies after multiple hits. While using her ult, Yuumi can move, attach to ally champions, and heal.

Although it is not sure how much damage she can deal or how much shield/heal she can cast, one thing is certain; she will probably be used as an AP based healer/shielder. So a good build for her might be using Summon Aery as Keystone and building those heal/shield focused items such as Athene’s Unholy Grail or Ardent Censor.

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According to an in-game gameplay VOD, her Q and W skill has quite a decent skill range. However, her Q is a non-target skill that has to be used with your mouse cursor similar to Sion’s ultimate. Her Q skill is the only CC skill during the early laning phase so if she can’t land it, it will be difficult to give any kind of help for your junglers or laners during ganks. Yuumi’s ultimate which looks quite similar to Sona's, can root the enemy down but it only happens when the wave hits 3 times.

Also, if she uses her W to attach to her teammate - which will most likely be the team’s marksman during the bottom laning phase - she can’t use her basic attack and becomes untargetable. So this may possibly leave your team’s ADC to go 1 vs 2 for a short amount of time which will make it highly vulnerable against heavy-CC support champs.

Yes, at this point, it might be a bit too early to give out any kind of assumptions. Nevertheless, her W and E seems to be a big asset to carry roles. Especially with the help of Ardent Censor, your team's AD champions will be able to frequently receive fair amount of attack speed buffs.  Also, Yuumi's W passive grants adaptive damage when attached so regardless of which champ she attaches on, her presence itself will be a huge support during mid to late game teamfights. 

The 144th champion, Yuumi will be available for everyone in the live server on the 14th during the 9.10 patch. For those who have to simply try it out first, check out the Public Beta Environment(PBE) server on the 30th. 

Image source: Riot Games