Abilities Breakdown

[springboard type=”youtube” id=”uuANt_OoID4″ player=”xbla001″ width=”640″ height=”360″ ] Special 1: Time Warp – Yuri’s Time Warp, as it is now, is strange. By default it’s a relatively short aura he activates that causes a slow field around him. This slows all things inside it, including projectiles, characters, solar etc. Time Warp is not easy to use (stressing that again) because Yuri has to stop moving to use it. With that in mind don’t stop to slow someone down that’s right next to you because they’ll just stay next to you for a longer period of time. The Time Warp can be modified to provide a healing bonus or a speed up bonus, either of which is arguably necessary for Time Warp to be worth much. However, if you can make it work as just a slow field we recommend taking the size expansion so enemies aren’t frozen in space right next to you.

Special 2: Mines – Yuri’s mines are incredibly powerful when upgrades and are the only thing he can activate while moving. He can place as many as he’d like but they only last for so long before blowing up on their own. Though the mines are fantastic for cleaning up droid waves for easy farm, they can also be used when being chased or when chasing (and directly on top of) someone to deal massive damage. These mines are key to playing Yuri in most scenarios, so if you want to get good with Yuri, you’ll have to practice with them.

 

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Builds

Level 11 Build

Yuri has a lot of different setups but sometimes it’s difficult to make use of only one power upgrade. For instance, his Time Warp can be made into a healing aura, but with only one healing upgrade it’s not powerful enough to really help a lot. He has a bouncing mine upgrade, but without the carpet bomb upgrade it’s even easier to dodge the mines because you can simply walk under them. He has an upgrade to his laser which pulls people in, but without the slow they’ll hardly even feel it! It’s not like these can’t be made to work without their counterparts, but it requires much Yuri practice.

As such, we’re going to avoid the, not-enough-eries of the Yuri setup, and go for what works.

Don’t take…

• Mine bounce
• Time Warp Healing
• Laser pull
• Boots

With this build we’re going to focus on absolutely not taking the Time Warp at all until we need it. Time Warp can be very useful in a support situation, but Yuri’s tools at this point in the game are better geared towards defense or offense. So…

If you’re playing offensively…

Yuri loves mines and mines… well I’m sure they love him back. Offensive Yuri is 100% about mines and only roughly 20% about lasers. Since Yuri can lay mines while he’s jetpacking, take the mines early and just be absolutely annoying with them. Lay them on platforms, in pushes, every single everywhere you can. Early game mines might not pick up kills but any you can put next to the enemy turrets always have that chance to pick up random kills of nearly-dead enemies who are running away. The goal here, regardless of mine-laying responsibilities, is to stay alive.

If your enemies keep going for you, it’s important not to keep dying trying to land mines on them. Take extra health so you can get out into the thick of it, then continue to max your damage and other mine upgrades. As the game progresses, you’ll start farming all the droids with relative ease if you leave them in the lanes. However, it’s important to take advantage of the geometry. Drop mines from high above where you can, or hide them in bushes or on platforms that your team mates use as escape routes. An offensive Yuri has to stay alive, but he has to be bold too, chase people with mines or get them to chase you; those things hurt.

If you’re playing defensively…

A defensive Yuri takes more laser abilities than mines, especially early on. Since you have to stop moving to use your laser, it’s very difficult to use the laser offensively, or at least for attacking other players. As such, to make the most of the laser, upgrade it to max as soon as possible. Start with the maximum range increase so you can hit incoming droid waves from a safe distance. Yuri doesn’t have much survivability and his laser does more damage the longer you use it, so hide behind the tower or your team mates at first. You can also float just under platforms and fire from under them to hit things on the lane above.

Laser Yuri is super annoying, so when we say defensive, we mean… annoying? During a push, the Yuri laser is super powerful once you’ve upgraded it entirely. Just because you’re defending your towers doesn’t mean you have to stay at home all cuddled up in your bed. Go out with your laser, destroy things from afar. You can pick up your Time Warp ability to speed up your droids, team mates and self.

When you’re losing…

See above. Play defensively and use the laser because it does ridiculous amounts of damage to things that are stuck in one place. If the laser isn’t working because you maxed your mines first, then stay far away from the enemies while they push (via jetpack) and drop mines from above. Whatever you do don’t waste your money on the time warp, it’s just not worth it as a major defensive major.

Our Build

Yuri is a bit of a beast with… Uhm. Yuri… is difficult. A lot of Yuri is on you, we can’t teach you all of it. If he gets hit by a knockback or stun, his jetpack turns off. Brutal, right? Leon hits, Clunk missiles, Leon tongue, Froggy dash, Lonestar bull, all these things make him plummet back to Earth. Or whatever particular planet you happen to be on at the time. He has to stop to turn on his Time Warp, he can’t jetpack and laser (probably because he combined the two, maybe not the best idea) and most of all he has a morningstar attached to his tail. This guy is tough, so remember if you first start playing him and die horribly, you’re at par for the course, just keep practicing.

That said, let’s kick some butt with Yuri. Like all our builds, we’re going for the widest, best paved and most attentively observed middle of the road as possible, something for everyone and everything. However, since literally every thing is situational with Yuri, we’re just going to explain what each row is supposed to do and allow you to meld that into each game as it happens.

Mines

 Mines are brutal, evil, painful things and you should take every advantage of that. When you go mines, you go all in, don’t go “kind of” mines or “maybe some back up” mines, make them hurt and make them scary. That said, they’re not the best choice if you keep dying. Outside of constant and instant death, going with mines is a fantastic idea for this one reason: at max level they do 78 damage each. That’s a LOT of damage, that will kill most characters in two mines depending on how they’ve built and that will stop entire teams from entering bushes. Put your mines everywhere, even if they’res nobody there. Drop a mine when you’re flying to your base, to the enemy base, to the jungle! It doesn’t matter where, put one in your own shop!

Realistically though, they’re great for chases as if you’re above the person you’ll hit with the mine (unless they’re faster than you). Even if you’re busy running away, it’s always a good idea to be laying mines. Clear droid waves with these mines to keep the money coming.

Time Warp

This thing is so finnicky, sometimes it’ll save you, kill your enemy and save the day and some times it’ll be absolutely useless and get you killed. This ability is to supplement whatever successful strategy you’ve got going on, as long as it can be helped by slowing. If that won’t work, then try helping other people! The slow field works great when people are running away because you can get in front of them, then lay mines and they can’t react fast enough. It also helps save your friends as they run away, which it should be used for whenever possible. Getting the max size and duration are quite necessary to the Time Warp being of any use, so get those first if you get this ability at all.

Laser

This build is designed to do maximum pain with the laser, clocking in at 6 damage at max level coming out way too quickly at way too far a distance. The best strategy here is farming for the first part of the game with the laser, picking up droid kills and wearing down enemies as they try to push (max all laser parts, don’t skimp on anything!) then combining it with the time warp. It takes practice, but if you can laser someone’s health down, hit the time warp to slow them down then get in  front of them and laser them some more, you’re guaranteed some fish-in-a-barrel style kills. Who doesn’t want those? Beyond that the laser does amazing damage to turrets at max level from especially far distances, sometimes outside of turret range (subject to change)!

When you’re losing…

Yuri needs money to be awesome, his early game is pretty weak because he’s so easy to kill and so many enemies have great methods of killing him. As such, you should always go money first. That being said, sometimes Yuri just has bad games, bad starts because he has no survivability. In the interest of playing it safe then, use the laser to farm from afar, poke at your enemies and keep pushes from doing too much damage to your towers. There’s no use running out to a jetpack-y grave, just farm farm farm and push back once you’ve gotten more solar! It’s that simple if only because Yuri can’t turn the tide of games, he needs a team to do it.

Variants

Freaking annoying pain in the butt

These variants more or less are just about each row since, again, Yuri is very dynamic. With this variant, take mine longevity, bouncing and carpet bombs then just fly around wherever you’d like and make the entire battlefield full of pain and sorrow for the enemy team.

Soviet health insurance

Combine the Time Warp duration with both healing upgrades to turn Yuri’s Time Warp into a super-support ability. He can’t heal quite like Voltar, but he can keep a push going, save enemies and save time by cutting down on trips to the neutral monsters.

Get over here!

More supplementary abilities, take slow, size and speed on the Time Warp and combine it with the max range, pull and slow of the laser. This brutal combination, though it takes forever to get going, ensures your team mates will never have to chase anyone anywhere ever again. Hit the warp, grab the guy, watch him die!

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