[Champion] Lux - Page 3

How to Lux

I’ve played about 300-400 games as Lux. She was the first champion I bought when starting the game and has been one of my favorites ever since. I didn’t use any guides when learning to play Lux and as such I tried many, many different builds before coming to what I believe is the optimal build, or at the very least the optimal build for how I think Lux should be played. I’ve been called a coward, I’ve been accused of kill stealing

My build generally goes something like this.

Runes:
Magic pen reds, Mana regen scaling level yellows, ap scaling blues and flat ap quints

Summoner Spells:
Flash: Lux has pretty bad escape without.
Clarity: Now before you go ‘Clarity is bad, learn to manage your mana better’ there is a reason I take it which is explained later on.

Masteries:
21/0/9 getting all the obvious stuff in offense, mana regen in utility.

Skill order:

E/Q/E/W then max in preference of R -> E -> W -> Q

Now the reasoning for maxing the shield before the snare is because I feel the added ability to trade damage effectively with the enemy in the mid game is more important than doing slightly more damage with the snare. Leveling the snare increases its mana cost, damage slightly and lowers its cool down slightly. The damage increase is negligible, the mana cost only makes Lux’s mana problems worse and the cool down is so high to begin with that if you miss your first snare you often won’t have a chance to fire off another one before you are either dead or the enemy escapes.

Items:
Boots 3 pots -> mejias -> Sorc Boots -> deathcap -> lichbane -> void staff -> deathcap/abyssal/zhonyas

So the idea behind this build is to maximize the amount of damage done by ignoring mana regen and CDR. The complete lack of mana regen is why I run clarity as a summoner spell for those times when you don’t have blue buff. I dont get any CDR (unless you count the 15% from fully stacking a mejias) because you will be hitting 34% CDR with blue buff, blue pot and masteries. If you itemize to 40% CDR without blue buff then you are wasting the most important aspect of blue buff which is the 20% CDR

Core Build
Mejias:
So this isn’t entirely set in stone, sometimes it is necessary to skip the early mejias in favour of a faster death cap if the game is playing very passively. However generally you want to get one once the mid game team fights roll around. Even if you did terribly and went 0/3/0 in lane it’s very easy to pick up assists just by casting your shield on your team mates. With proper positioning in team fights it is fairly easy to keep your stacks up as well. If you are dying in team fights as Lux then you aren’t standing far enough back. Also it’s never kill stealing, its kill securing.

Sorc Boots:
You don’t need cool down boots, Your cool downs are so high if you fail to kill someone with your initial burst the 15% from the boots won’t matter as the enemy will either not stick around waiting for round 2 or you will get ganked waiting for your spells to come off cool down. As such its better to try and do as much initial damage as possible with sorc boots.

Death Cap:
More AP = better AP.

Lich Bane:
This is the only AP item which also gives move speed and as such is necessary on Lux so that you can maintain good positioning against the enemy team i.e. running away. As for the proc it is very situational in when you can and can’t use it. In small fights involving just a few champions its very powerful but when full team fights happen there are so many stuns flying around that it becomes very difficult to safely land the auto attack without getting yourself killed. I have found that late game Lux can become a real turret destroyer since your stacking nothing but AP.

To sum up the Lich Bane, while you might not hit the proc every 2 seconds due to safety reasons when you do hit the proc it will chunk the enemy for a lot due to how much AP you have from building glass cannon and as such is worth an item slot.

Void Staff:
More AP + 40% penetration = more damage.

Situational items, build as needed:
Zhonyas hour glass:
Get this if you are getting dived a lot and/or if you are concerned about being killed by their AD.

Abyssal:
Get this if you are worried about dying to magic damage. Sometimes I get this before my death cap if I’m against certain champions like leblanc or kassadin just so that I can survive their burst

Another Death cap:
If you are winning hard enough and there is no need to build armor or magic resist than why not build an even glassier cannon?

But what about...
Death Fire Grasp
This item seems very good on paper but I’ve never really felt it worked well on Lux. You’re already hitting 34% cdr with blue buff, blue potion and masteries. The mana regen isn’t that great and 60 ap is not a lot considering the other choices available to you. The only redeeming quality is the active, which just doesn’t mesh very well with Lux. In 1v1 fights this item is excellent for any caster, but Lux isn’t a single target assassin, she is an aoe burst mage meant to safely melt the enemy team at a distance. Running in to try and hit someone with the active from this item is just asking to get stunned and killed.Since the damage is 35% of current health running into to use it once the stuns are all on cooldown is sub optimal as you will end up doing less damage. DFG seems like an item best used in the during the initiation of a team fight but Lux can't do that safely.

Arch angels/ early tear
While this item does give alot of AP you need to spend 1000 gold at the start building a tear which doesn’t give you any AP at the start. If this is what you buy on your first back you are hindering yourself in lane more then you think. While you will have the mana to throw out a few more spells than normal your doing just that much less damage. Not to mention Lux’s high cooldowns makes stacking the tear a very slow process.

Nashors tooth???
I’ve never built this on Lux and I’m not entirely sure why I’m even seeing this item seriously mentioned here as something for Lux. While the CDR is nice I’ve already outlined why it is less then optimal, on top of this it gives miniscule AP for an item slot and the attack speed largely goes to waste since your attack speed is going to be faster than the cool down on the lich bane proc regardless. Maybe it just doesn’t mesh with my play style but I can’t think of an effective play style that this does work with.

So I hope people found this helpful