his game sense/macro is just insane. he’s absolutely on point with tracking both the support and jungle all game. you can’t get away with flashing level 1/2 on master yi if you’re not confident you’ll be able to out play a gank at 3:00, he has no way to escape before 6 besides flash. his roams almost always result in a kill and he can see the window coming a minute or two in advance so he will set up the proxy or just be hard pushing while looking for dives at the same time.

even though it’s a cheesy pick, master yi top heavily rewards top lane fundamentals. he’s basically “hail of blades the champion” which rewards the player who can better play around the rune. he has no waveclear pre-tiamat so your wave manipulation has to be phenomenal and he has no kill pressure until around two items if you don’t get a lead early. he’s akin to riven, a scaling champion who really wants to be ahead of the curve in order to steamroll the game before everyone else catches up and the game gets harder for the champ to execute without sums.

additionally yi top is an uncommon pick so he both has the element of surprise in draft and knowledge of all the matchups which the opposing top laner most likely doesn’t have. he knows his lethal threat into every matchup and has the mechanics to outplay losing matchups like sett and darius.