Kinda been wanting to try him out, but I know you'd have to pretty much build him glass cannon to be effective and he would get crushed by bruisers. HOWEVER, if he was played perfectly, or nearly so, would it be worth it? There is usually at least one squishy on the enemy team, and blackfire torch gives you good CDR so you can spam alpha strike even if you miss your reset.

I don't imagine he's too much better than average, if at all, but he's still fun. Does anyone have AP Yi experience?

The best I have seen goes bottom lane.

He can sustain and push pretty hard, but he can also be countered easily by CC or healing reduction item/skill.

Unfortunately yeah, he works.

AP Yi works, and doesn't even require 'near perfect' play, though he isn't anywhere near as strong as he used to be.

The 4.0 AP scaling heal on meditate with the free 300 Armor/MR allowed him to tank basically any amount of damage from any champion without a hard CC readily available, which allowed him to be a very powerful control bot laner. The strategy was (and presumably still is) to sit in the bush until alpha strike was up, then alpha strike a minion when the enemy champion is also in range, killing the minions and damaging the champion, then running back into the bush. Since it's a heal, it scales on cdr and AP, instead of on cdr, AP, and Mpen, like a damaging ability would, so yi would benefit most from rushing to a deathcap (now witchcap) and 40% cdr.

Yi's major weakness as a bot laner was that if the enemy had a reliable hard CC to interrupt your meditate, or you got ganked by a champion with hard CC too often, there was no response possible, making every lane pretty binary. That was compounded with the fact that control bot is rarely better than an aggressive bot lane that manages to kill the opponent.

His ult is actually best used bot to run away from ganks. Using it, you can outrun basically anyone, with any build and any speed steroid. If you are feeling extra agressive, the cooldown reset from getting a kill while Highlander is active also resets the cooldown on Deathfire Grasp, and DFG can be cast while you are untargetable due to alpha strike, allowing chaining of kills once you hit a full, lategame build. The difficulty is that it is very hard to do that before lategame happens and you have 500+ AP, full CDR, DFG, Void Staff, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wo6gYjyZGk

If I remember correctly, Nekrogen was a pretty class example of how to AP Yi. That video should pretty much cover how it works.

Pretty much what Narf said; only I'd argue he does require near perfect play because there are instances where you'll drop off mid-game and there are match-ups that require you to know exactly when to be aggressive and when to just defensively farm near your turret. Eventually you're likely to have to just settle for stalemating the lane and doing your best to dodge ganks; since in Solo Q it's far more likely to be the person being ganked than getting the ganks.

You can play him and have a good time doing so; just keep in mind there are plenty more beastly picks in Bot Lane these days so it won't all be fun and games.

So... boots > wooglets > DFG > blackfire? That's probably all that I would realistically have time for.
Possibly more became of the 120 gold per wave but I don't bot lane ever so I really don't know

Is Nashors tooth a good idea? 70 free AD is pretty nice and would scale well with nashors tooth, but I feel like it would be a waste of a slot unless its your 5th or 6th item.

Probably start boots p-ring > haunting guise > DFG(?) > BFT > Wooglets. If you are having mana issues, work a chalice into that build somewhere. Finish with a void staff if you have time.

Don't buy Nashor's tooth, it doesn't synergize at all with AP Yi. Unlike a lot of 'hybrid' champions, Yi has *very* different playstyles depending on if you go AP or AD. With AP, you want to opportunistically Alpha Strike, and then tank any attack with meditate, autoattacking is near useless. On the same strand, lichbane also isn't very good on AP Yi.

He's very powerful though I still wouldn't build "Glass Cannon" but you can get pretty close.
On dominion you can even get away with hybrid Yi (TriForce builds are very powerful).

Just as general rules: bulk defenses > regeneration, balanced offence and defense > over specialization.
Glass carries get popped and straight tanks get mowed down (though it's not as bad for them) because the large team fights that they are best suited for rarely happen.

Oh my god is this really a thing?
EDIT2: Surely it isn't, I would have noticed something with all my Ghostblade Yi play
EDIT3: Confirmed, not a thing =(

EDIT: So I can actually contribute to the thread: AP Yi tends to do best against squishy or immobile bot lane picks, especially ones who rely on skill shots for their damage. If the worst comes to the worst, he can hold his tower safely by alpha striking waves to death without putting himself in danger later on. I disagree about Lichbane, but it does seem pretty bad on paper, so maybe I'm just wrong there. My theory is that since his damaging ability has such a long cooldown and puts him in melee range when you finally go for the all-in, you want to add as much burst to him as possible.