Hou Yi - Post Nerf 3.16

Hello again Smitefire, as you may know Hou Yi received some nerfs in most recent patch. Base damage to his Ricochet was increased, at the return of less damage if you only hit a bounce shot. And Most notably, pen was removed from Mark of the Golden Crow. In this build, I will be going over his new skill sequence and build accordingly.

This is the ability you max 1st. The good news is, he will have better clear if you go for a direct shot, however if you double or triple bounce without hitting the first shot, it will be doing less damage than normal now. Think of him being a more direct hunter now compared to people going for MLG trickshots previously.


Yes this is still the ability that you max 2nd. The 20% pen was removed from it, however it still has the % damage increase per missing health. Overall, that is more important than levelling your jump, because if you choose to initiate with his Divebomb instead for damage, you just blew your escape. Level this ability second instead and save your escape, it still works well on his autos, but in a less OP way than before.

Overall, I feel like this change still makes hou strong, but more in an A+ kind of way vs S.


Max this ability Last. This is your escape, and while it does have a knockback, its just not worth levelling this over your mark.


Low damage ult that does work well for zoning, or if you can combo cc inside of it. Pick this skill up whenever its available.

Warrior boots over ninja boots for better early game clear. Ninja boots dont make too much of a difference late game, so dont worry about them.


Standard lifesteal item that works well with other attack speed.


This item is the reason I dont pick up trans on hou. Because of how Mark of the Golden Crow works, hou yi does more damage for how much the enemy health is missing. Meaning if you build attack speed, you take better advantage of that passive. If you go into jg practice and try it out, exec has a slightly better time to kill than trans does if the enemy is marked, which is good because exec is 350 gold cheaper than trans. And overall, I dont feel like hou is that mana hungry.


At this point, you will be shredding through tanks already, so doing more damage to their health isnt bad either. Again, attack speed works well with his mark, and this item capitalizes on that.


Because hou will have good attack speed from his other 3 items, this will be proccing rage passive constantly. Because hou already has % damage boost on his mark, you DONT want big crit items, you want consistent crit items instead.


At this point in the game, I tend to focus on towers, and because titans and exec dont work well together, this is the next best option. The extra pen and damage make your crits hit harder as well, but if you want more crit chance I could see a use for wind demon instead. Againt, you dont want big crit from DB or malice because they dont work well with mark, and theyre just expensive. So if you want to buy crit, buy the cheaper items instead.

Overall I feel like this is a decent balance change to hou. I never felt like he was OP before, but againt tanks, he absolutely shredded them which wasnt fair. The pen chance was well deserved, and I think this will make him fit more into an A+ tier compared to how he was earlier.