If you are willing to deal with your team's incredulousness in champ select Renekton eats Yorick's lunch because he can just q his ghosts off in one hit.

Skarner q spam kills minions.

Nocturne beats yorick bot because he can shield his spells, cc him, and his passive and q kill ghouls.

Nasus crushes him

Basically any melee character with some aoe, pushing power and stoutness can stuff him.

He has a very easy time against ranged because the ghouls will zone them.

Are you playing theory fighter here? Nocturne doesn't beat Yorick. I don't agree on early game Skarner either (midgame is another story). Renekton is definitely not. Renekton is actually quite bad as he relies on being in Yorick's minions for his sustain. Also, there's no way Renekton does 35% of Yorick's HP with Cull the Meek, especially without fury. If you're somehow doing that, then imho Yorick is building wrong. Especially against bottom Renekton, Atmallet is pretty much a given.

Nasus, yes, I agree. I've bottomed against decent Renektons (clearly knew what they were doing) and they did okay but Yorick is tough to kill and wins damage races against Renekton. Renekton does push really hard but, like a lot of other melee champions, he can't stay in lane against him. Yorick's harass is too good.

Melee characters don't magically get better zoning power.

I'd be interested to see Cho versus Yorick; I suspect it's lulztastic.

I've seen someone go Amumu versus Yorick and counter-push and counter-harass early game. It might have to do with him taking less physical damage from Tantrum while being able to apply MR reduction on auto-attacks, while leaving Despair on to damage Yorick when he gets within melee range.

So I ran into Yorick bot again last night, and lost by a small margin (normal/blind).

Storytime

I was originally going to run Mordekaiser, as I've been playing him up a bit, and have been tallying a vs. list in my head. It's possible I may have won with him instead but I made the right choice.

After seeing my teammates pick typical dps & assassins, I decided we needed some classic tank/initiate/cc capability, and Morde just doesn't cut it in that respect.

So I Maokai bot, and lose ground to Yorick gradually. I see that he gets dangerously low on mana, and decide to initiate on his face before he can run back to the healthpack. Unfortunately, I completely underestimate just how freakin low his spell costs are, combined with dominion mana regen buff he gets off his spam, and he edges me out by a sliver of health.

Not much of a problem overall, we have windmill, teammates recall, recover, and retake a neutralized bot.

Not long after, just decide to swap it up. They have no proper initiator/tank, their closest thing champ Garen. So I do what tank does, lock em down, teammates pew pew, and we're 4-capping most of the game for a final score of about 300-0.

I believe our Akali went down and took care of Yorick at that point. Given her own spellvamp, and AoE flurry, I think she fared reasonably well at just executing him.

Yorick Counter Items

There's nothing you can buy early to really deal with his aggravating pushing and poking.

However, his big weakness down the line in terms of itemization is understanding that

1. His pokes are magic damage
2. His ghouls are physical damage
3. Almost never builds defense penetration

Sunfire Cape, Thornmail and Odyn's Veil become reasonable counter defense items in direct confrontation, nerfing down the lifesteal and lifetime of his ghouls. His biggest option to deal with that might be Stark's Fervor and Haunting Guise.

However, this does nothing in terms of stopping him from abusing minions for sustain and life, just like revolver Morde, etc.

Yesterday I tried out malz vs a few yoricks with success, but I don't think the yoricks were playing him that well. For rxample a couple of them liked to fight me while standing on my puddle, so... yea.

I've had ok success with sivir, but could just be bad yoricks. My build with her is in flux so I don't remember how i built exactly. I think I remember abusing him a bit early game and engaging on him after a good boomerang poke (i.e. not letting him start a push/sustain war with me). Would have to play vs him more to be sure.