Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom picked up Yorick the Gravedigger to see if this ghoul-summoning champion could be destined for melee greatness.

Much of Yorick's substandard play comes from his huge reliance on his ghouls being up in order to be effective. Most of Yorick's ghouls have very low on-use effect, with War only adding a small amount of bonus damage to Yorick's next attack, Famine healing for a base 87.5 on use (at max level!), and Pestilence being a 40% slow for only 1.5 seconds. While Yorick's ghouls' persistent effects are much more useful (a huge damage buff, a nice persistent slow, a decent heal over time), each ghoul loses a whopping 20% of its total HP per second. This problem is further exacerbated by their already low health (only about 30% of Yorick's overall health) and their susceptibility to all forms of damage. Since most competitive teams bring a good amount of AoE damage to each fight, Yorick's ghouls die horrendously fast, ultimately leaving behind a shell of a champion.

Of course, some players might point to Yorick's ultimate as being a potential game-changer, but this, sadly, is not the case. Another revival spell, Zilean's Chrono Shift, is an amazing ultimate not only because it can bring any unit back to life, but also because there is an animation where the enemy team must stand around (or switch targets) while the player is being revived. Omen of Death, however, instantly brings the player back, meaning teams can simply kill the revived unit twice in an instant, not to mention the countless times when my ultimate has "revived" someone, but they don't realize it and their champion just stands in place. Add on the fact that revived units lose 10% of their total HP per second, and you will quickly see why it almost impossible for Omen of Death to be effective.

In the end, however, if you really love the idea of playing a grave digging, ghoul summoning champion, then think of pairing Yorick with a really strong DPS champion so that your revenant can be even remotely effective. Putting a team of mages alongside Yorick forces him to choose between using the revenant on himself for more damage or wasting the revenant to revive a caster teammate. Alternatively, because Yorick is decent in a 1v1 fight, with heavy map-warding, you could potentially use him to troll the jungle, looking for lone players with no support (although this is very unlikely at higher levels). Either way, I truly hope that we'll see some significant buffs for Yorick when Leona hits the League of Legends, or this may very well be the last we see of poor Yorick.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom, Senior Staff Writer