League of Legends Is Nerfing the Taric, Master Yi Combo

The infamous League of Legends strategy centered around the Master Yi and Taric duo is now under Riot Games' scope with both of the champions getting nerfed in a future update.

If you've been playing League of Legends lately in its tumultuous, anything-goes state where everyone is a bot laner and supports frequent the mid lane, you might've seen this Taric & Master Yi combo that's been wreaking havoc on games. We covered it not long ago, a strategy that involves bringing Master Yi to a team to fill his customary jungle role while putting Taric in the middle lane. Instead of farming his heart out and shoving waves like most mid laners, Taric holds onto the wave best he can to let Master Yi come in and scoop up some extra gold from the minions. Taric's defenses coupled with the middle lane being the shortest one makes it nearly impossible to kill him unless the player really messes up, and once the duo is ready to go in, they've got enough survivability and damage to get the job done and get out safely.

All this might be new to some players if they haven't seen it in their games yet, but it's not new to Riot Games. Players have been using it for a while – even SKT T1's Faker, the star mid laner of the team, played Taric in the middle lane – and Riot Games is now looking to nerf the combo. Riot Meddler took to the League of Legends boards and outlined the changes for Master Yi and Taric that are coming as well as another set of nerfs for Nunu, an AP variant of the combo who often pairs with Karthus. They're not all straight-up nerfs, but the bonus minion damage nerf for Master Yi and the increased ult cooldown on Taric are clear jabs at the combo.

• Master Yi - Removing bonus damage to minions so that he can't clear waves almost instantly. Reducing Q mana cost as well to reduce degree that hits lane/split push Yi.
• Taric - Lowering E base damage and increasing Armor ratio so his effectiveness isn't as gold independent. Also increasing ult CD which is just a bit short for its power.
• Nunu - Nerfing W AP bonus. He's got a VGU coming up moderately soon and AP boosting isn't on the revised kit. Hitting it as a result given Karthus/Nunu is the other big problem case apart from Taric/Yi.

Riot Meddler elaborated on the Taric nerfs in another comment by saying that the current plan is to increase the ultimate cooldown by 20 seconds at every rank.

A patch timeframe for when these nerfs will go live wasn't provided, but we'd expect they'd be added in Patch 8.13.