1. no good yorick build involves lifesteal
2. having magic damage means you can Mpen mastery and sorc shoes for the mid game to greatly increase your harrassment and burst which works very well with a champ that needs 21 in offensive tree at minimum.
3. the ghouls did contribute at absolute bad luck minimum 20% of total AD. so with 100+ AD at lvl 7 you added 20 damage to every spell base damage and could add up to 60 (though 2 hits was more than the norm for 40 damage when you cast the spells right)
4. the cooldown wasn't that big of a deal. the strength of his ult when it didn't last long was that you could cast it on someone and it absorbs any spell targetted at that champ when the spell is being cast or a skillshot. so you could use it as a semi banshees veil as well. it still has these uses but it's better for it's intended purpose.
he was good. very hard and his job and appearances wasn't pretty but the results definitely spoke for themselves at least when i played yorick.
good meaning viable and improving chances to win by being on a team. not as much a difference as having jarvan or such but definitely improved the odds.
EDIT: I'm not Shaya i have no delusions that a champ is incredible, but yorick certainly was/is not bad and definitely should not be considered unviable. he was above average. but not in the top 15 champs.
No good Yorick build back when he sucked used lifesteal because people were too busy shoring up his lousy stats, mana costs, etc. Manamune to T force, Atmogs, etc. If he was actually decent, people could build wriggles or starks or something giving lifesteal, then Q something and go "Holy **** I don't lifesteal off Q, this sucks". Since he can't lifesteal or vamp off the ghoul AA damage either, there wasn't much draw to building lifesteal on a character that could only lifesteal with his own Auto attacks since his Q sucked **** and was bugged to not work with lifesteal.
Why build magic pen on a TANKY PHYSICALLY INCLINED DPS that has no way to boost his damage besides magic pen and AD? There's no AP ratio for you to combine with magic pen to boost your damage. Furthermore, if you HAVE to build magic pen boots to hit a target for comparable damage that a tanky DPS would hit for regardless of his boots, then you have an issue. Not to mention you're forgoing merc treads on someone who has no leap in (like most good tanky DPS) or anti CC measure. If Riot honestly wanted him to be build with magic pen, I have no doubt they would have given him AP ratios or converted ghoul damage to be magical, or gone further down the magic path. Magic damage on two medium CD spells that you can't increase with AP? And you want me to commit to magic pen boots for that, and end up weaker than other characters in my class anyways because I have no CC reduction or leap in or comparable damage? Cmon.
His ult sucked ****. Period. There's little justification or reasoning for it being good other than usually situational bull.
Name any top or high level player that ever once said "I would like a Yorick on my team instead of a WW, a Xin, a Trundle, a Irelia, a Jarvan, a Nasus, a Renekton, etc." There was NO one who thought he was good. Hell, I doubt anyone was nice enough to call him average lol. The champion when he was first out completely sucked and had:
1. Not enough free stats that other tanky DPS get
2. Not enough guaranteed damage
3. His damage is split too much (Magic damage spells that don't scale with AP, Ghouls do AD damage, lifesteal and vamp not working on them, ghouls die quickly means your damage is lower than other champs, etc)
4. Bugs were very gay against him. No lifesteal on Q whether you will admit it or not is a terrible thing and the move should NOT work that way. There's no point in having a completely worse Trundle Q. No lifesteal, no bonus AD and minus AD for opponent, watching your Q ghoul die and your movement buff be gone, etc.
5. Ghoul AI sucks. There's no sugar coating it. Have you ever Q'd a minion, seen an enemy champion off in the distance, and your ghoul decided to chase them instead of getting minions? Or watch a Ghoul sit there and do nothing while a full wave of minions is right in front of it? You don't get to control what they do, so you have to put trust in them to do anything useful. A lot of times it's hard to get that besides the health stealing ghoul since it auto locks on what you select.
The character sucked. That's it. There's no High ELO banning and picking and CPing going on with the character during that time, and it's not because of some underrating "Well we didn't know he was good" thing. It was because "Hey why play a character that has stupid pet AI, low base damage, conflicting damage sources, awkward timers tied to health on pets, medium CD's, etc when I can play Xin?" and frankly they were right.
