Honor of Kings, just like almost any other MOBA, has a role that places a single player on each team as a roamer who mainly levels up through the so-called jungle. Sima Yi is a hero that falls under this category, and if you want to learn how to be a jungler, he is a great introductory choice for the role. In this guide, we’ll teach you everything you need to know in order to get started with him!
Complete Sima Yi Guide
As we’ve already mentioned, Sima Yi is typically played in the jungle. To be more specific, he is a mage type assassin that specializes in burst damage. This means that your ideal ganks are fast and painful, but before we get into more tips, let’s take a look at his skills.
Sima Yi’s Skills
Passive Skill – Quiet Whispers
- Quiet Whispers passively grants Sima Yi vision over any enemy hero that uses a skill within a certain range. He will also restore 5 energy whenever the effect is activated.
- Sima Yi starts with a max energy of 80. Whenever he gets a kill or assist, he will gain an additional 10 max energy, capping out at 200. This effect also works on monster kills.
- Whenever Sima Yi casts an ability, he will gain the Shadow Fang effect for four seconds.
- Shadow Fang – Temporarily gains extra movement speed and changes his basic attack to a melee strike that deals bonus magical damage. The first attack will make him dash behind his target.
Skill 1 – Shadow Stings
- Upon casting Shadow Stings, Sima Yi will gain temporary immunity to crowd control.
- This ability summons a spirit that you can move around for two seconds, and it deals magic damage to any enemy that it touches. It deals an extra 200 damage to lane creeps or monsters.
- At the end of the spirit’s duration or when Sima Yi executes a basic attack, he will teleport to the spirit’s location and slow nearby enemies.
Skill 2 – Barren Lands
- Barren Lands causes Sima Yi to let out a burst of energy that will silence all enemies within range as well as deal a significant amount of magic damage to them.
- If Sima Yi stays within the Barren Lands zone for two seconds, he will regain 25 energy.
- Bonus Passive Effect: Whenever Sima Yi is hit with magic damage, he will regenerate health over time equal to 50% of what was dealt. This is effect is active as soon as he learns the ability and does not require casting it.
Skill 3 – Death Descends
- Upon casting Death Descends, you will take a step back and dash to the target location after a brief windup.
- This ability deals massive damage on impact to anything within the target location. Enemies along the path will also take half of this damage.
A Few Tips
Tip #1. Focus On Building Up Energy
Because Sima Yi starts out with a very limited energy reserve, focus on clearing the jungle early on to gain some quick levels. Start with the red buff since you don’t benefit from mana regen that the blue one gives.
Take Barren Lands as your first ability, as this will help you clear jungle camps quickly. Don’t forget to stay in the zone for a couple of seconds to get some of your energy back. Proper energy management is important, and the sooner you learn how to maintain a high reserve is essential.
Tip #2. Take Advantage of Your Passive Ability
Whenever you are rotating or simply navigating your way around the jungle (or invading the enemy’s side), don’t shy away from casting an ability solely to activate Quiet Whispers’ Shadow Fang effect.
This will grant you a huge movement speed bonus, and you can also use the dash to go through walls if there is a monster or enemy hero behind it that your enhanced basic attack can reach. This is perfect for invading the enemy jungle or simply ganking somebody.
On the topic of ganks, always wait for the enemy laners to overextend. Since Sima Yi does not have crowd control, you’ll want people to be far away from their towers before you go in or else they’ll simply walk away for free.
Tip #3. Initiate With Your Silence
Finally, don’t forget to cast Barren Lands immediately after diving in with your first skill or ultimate. The area of effect silence can be a huge game changer during a teamfight, assuming your damage doesn’t already burst them down to nothing.
On the flip side, you can also try using it when escaping so that you can activate your Shadow Fang passive effect while also preventing a follow up stun or slow ability due to the silence.
Equipment
- Runeblade
- Boots of the Arcane
- Savant’s Wrath
- Insatiable Tome
- Void Staff
- Staves of Sorcery
There aren’t really many alternatives to consider for Sima Yi. What you can change up, though, is the order of how you buy his equipment. This will be largely dependent on your needs.
For example, if you require more movement speed early on, Staves of Sorcery should be your priority after the boots. Savant’s Wrath can come as your very last item if you are already doing a lot of burst damage, as the utility or extra survivability from the other stuff might be more valuable.
Arcana
- Nightmare 10x
- Avarice 3x
- Hunt 7x
- Mind’s Eye 10x
For more aggressive playstyles, switch out Nightmare for Omen instead. This will make your basic attacks feel more consistent and smoother. Consider removing Avarice and just going for Hunt 10x instead to maximize the bonus movement speed.
In Conclusion
Sima Yi is a high risk assassin that requires a bit of setting up by his teammates because of his lack of any form of hard crowd control. Outside of the team factor, all you need to do is practice landing Death Descends by learning to predict how your opponents move.
If you are liking the mage playstyle, consider checking out our complete guide to Zhou Yu in Honor of Kings. He is a mid lane hero, so learning how to play him will help you branch out to other roles while still utilizing the same damage type.
