League of Legends: More on Yorick

As I mentioned yesterday I played Yorick a few times while he was free. I ended up discovering that he really fits my play style and pretty much has to build my favourite item. So I saved up some IP and bought him. Now the question really is how to maximize his power...

First of all, he really shoves people around in lane. His two ranged summon spells do reasonable damage and are on relatively short cooldowns. (~10 seconds at low level) They do cost a fair amount of mana which can turn into a real problem if you don't build some mana items. On top of doing reasonable damage when you summon them they do 35% of Yorick's attack damage when they attack. They don't seem to scale damagewise on any other stat. Armor penetration, attack speed, crit chance... None of it matters. All you want is straight damage. And since you can have 3 ghouls up each swinging for 35% of your AD... Yorick wants just AD.

Now if only we could find an item that gave a lot of mana and AD in one neat little package... MANAMUNE! Pretty much every guide I've seen has said to rush manamune. I love it! I can fill up my tears early (I get to buy it on my first return to base) and then power out a lot of extra ghouly damage when it upconverts. It always maxes out, too, so it's a totally solid AD item on top of giving me enough mana to function in the early to mid game.

Guides also suggest getting trinity force which seems a little sketchier to me. It does very little to any of my laning plans. It's ok in team fights I guess since it buffs my Q and gives me some more chasing potential. I almost feel like I should just build super tanky instead.


One reason I want to try out new top champions is so I can learn who counters who. Thus far I have yet to find anyone who doesn't get pushed around by Yorick. (I've taken to first picking him in ranked games hoping I'll get countered and no one has been able to do it yet.) I've always fared well with Nasus against him (Nasus has a lot of life steal and actually wants to kill his ghouls) but I want to see if from the other side. I feel like Yorick should be able to push him around if he times things properly and lands ghouls right after he uses his Q.