Angela is a Support in Mobile Legends, Bang Bang, released on February 6, 2018, a year before Yuumi. This is not a debate about if Yuumi is a cheap copy, but how bad of a copy Yuumi is. Angela’s abilities are as follows:
Passive: Gains movement speed when casting spells and when attached to an ally, they get the movement speed. Simpler than Yuumi’s passives and arguably less broken than all the stuff Yuumi can give an attached champion.
E: Sends out a wave in front of her that heals allies, damages enemies, and slows them. This is similar to a single wave of Yuumi’s ultimate.
Q: Point and click that deals damage to an enemy and slows them with some extra flavor. Yuumi’s Q before it got changed when attached is basically point and click.
There is no third ability like W in MLBB
Ult: Attaches herself to an ally, giving them a shield. She becomes untargetable. She can still cast her abilities. Also, abilities do not cost mana and her E cooldown is halved. It is a ability that takes channelling and only lasts for 20 seconds with a 60-second cooldown. Here, E gets upgraded so it is now more similar to what Yuumi’s ultimate can do. Also, here the ultimate is basically Yuumi’s E and W in one.
Now to the part where I explain why all this is better. First, passives: already said, all the stuff Yuumi can give an ally for free is broken; movement speed is good enough. The Best-Friend mechanic is definitely a contributor why Yuumi is boring to play, incentivising sticking only with one player. Point and click slows are not uncommon; see Nasus, Malphite, and so on. But I am happy they at least gave Yuumi a bit of a skillshot aspect later on, the only plus I will give her. The way Yuumi was able to heal allies was broken. Yuumi was a glorified potion on steroids. I envy Angela’s way of healing with E, not needing to be constantly bound to your ally like an item. They changed it to be a shield, which is better, and something Angela was already doing. I believe Yuumi’s ultimate sucks as an ultimate, and I think it works much better as a basic ability like on Angela that gets upgraded when using the ultimate.
Now to why I thought of writing this in the first place. Why is Yuumi’s W not a part of her ultimate instead of a basic ability? Her W is probably the most notorious part of why she is considered broken, and making it her ultimate would improve the situation so much. And all the buffs she gets while attached now get some justification. Also, like Angela, there should be a timer for how long she should be able to be attached to an ally, a timer that is shorter than the cooldown of her ability. Let her be an independent champion! And as a result not everything in her kit needs to be balanced around the idea that she is attached for as long as she is not dead.
But I really like attaching to an ally, then disconnecting or swapping to another ally, as well as sharing all movement actions of all champs on your team. I believe it is one of the most unique movement options in this game, and in that way, it could work great as a basic ability. But for that to work, we would need it to actually be encouraged to detach and reattach or swap allies regularly, but right now the opposite is the case. Random idea: remove Best Friend and E shield, replace it with a Friendship Mark, given by you through your W that lingers for a certain time even after detaching from them. After a Friendship Mark fades, you can reapply it by attaching to them again. If someone gets a Friendship Mark, they automatically get the E shield and all the buffs from Best Friend for the duration of the Friendship Mark. Giving someone a Friendship Mark reduces your cooldowns. Also, your time to stay attached to a single champ is limited to a few seconds. With the freed-up space, we will turn down her ult into her E. And for her new ult, we will just take Io’s from Dota 2, giving us some roaming and setting up more opportunities to jump between allies. We wouldn’t even have to change the name of the original ult, as we jump to the “Last Chapter,” which is like jumping to a spot on the map, and it also works out lore-wise as Yuumi can travel to different locations through her book. Would this be any less annoying to play against? Maybe not. Is it more fun? Definitely yes!
Context: I like playing, or I liked playing Yuumi. The style where you are not constantly attached to one carry, where you swap between different champions or play while not attached. At times I liked playing her top or mid; back when she still had heal, it was similar to Soraka top or mid. I found it fun building AP or sometimes even AD. A good memory I hold is of 3 opponents chasing down a lone split pushing Yuumi top back to tower, then going for a tower dive and failing so miserably one even got himself eliminated. But the more I played her, the more it becomes obvious that everything in her design punishes you for playing her independently, roaming isn't even a option. And it hurts knowing what Yuumi could have been : (
edit: Grammar and typos