Assault and Battery: Fixed a bug where, if Vi's Banshee's Veil is popped at same moment Vi casts Assault and Battery, Assault and Battery would cause Vi to be locked into her charging animation.
V3.13:
Champions that are immune to crowd control during their ultimate abilities will no longer completely discard the effects. If the duration of the crowd control is sufficiently long enough (sic), the champion will suffer the effects once their ultimate has completed. This affects Jarvan IV, Nocturne, Vi, Malphite and Hecarim. This is with the exception of airborne-type crowd control effects, which will continue to be discarded.
V3.08:
Blast Shield: Fixed a bug where Blast Shield's cooldown at higher levels was 1 second longer than intended.
Vault Breaker: Fixed a bug where casting Vault Breaker while targeting an enemy would cause Vi to stop moving.
V3.06:
Vault Breaker: Fixed a bug that caused Vault Breaker to become uncastable after activation.
Excessive Force: Can no longer be cast while charging Vault Breaker.
V3.03:
Base Attack Damage reduced to 54 from 58.
Vault Breaker: Vault Breaker now goes on a 3 second cooldown and refunds 50% of the Mana cost when interrupted instead of fully refreshing the cooldown and refunding 100% of the Mana cost.
Denting Blows: damage reduced to 4/5.5/7/8.5/10% of maximum Health from 6/7/8/9/10%.
V3.02:
Assault and Battery: Fixed a bug where the crowd control component of Assault and Battery was ignoring spell shields.
V3.01:
Updated Recommended Items
Vault Breaker:
Fixed a bug where Vault Breaker's area of effect was inconsistent at the end area of the dash
Fixed a bug where Improved Recall was refunding Vault Breaker's cooldown and mana cost
Excessive Force: Fixed a bug where Excessive Force could fire multiple times if used on an invulnerable target or while blinded
V1.0.0.154:
Vault Breaker:
Fixed a bug where Vault Breaker would sometimes not refund mana or cooldown when interrupted.
Fixed a bug where interrupting Vault Breaker would sometimes render Vi unable to cast spells.
Fixed a bug where Vault Breaker's stun duration was sometimes shorter than intended.
Fixed a bug where Vi would sometimes stop attacking after hitting a champion with Vault Breaker.
Excessive Force: Increased the responsiveness of Vi's attacks after using Excessive Force.
Assault and Battery:
Fixed a bug where targets could cast spells after being knocked into the air.
Fixed a bug where characters with stealth could cause Assault and Battery to miss.
Fixed a bug where damage was not applied to targets immune to disable effects.
V1.0.0.153: Added
Blast Shield: Vi charges a shield over time. The shield can be activated by hitting an enemy with an ability.
Vault Breaker: Vi charges her gauntlets and unleashes a vault shattering punch, carrying her forward. Enemy champions that Vi collides with stop her movement and are knocked back.
Denting Blows: Vi's punches break her opponent's armor, dealing bonus damage and granting her attack speed.
Excessive Force: Vi's next attack blasts through her target, dealing damage to enemies behind it.
Assault and Battery: Vi runs down an enemy, knocking aside anyone in the way. When she reaches her target she knocks it into the air, jumps after it, and slams it back into the ground.
02/28/2014 - Updated with patches 3.13 and 3.14 and for season 4 in general. Jungle section entirely revamped. Some general information added. Credits updated.
06/22/2013 - Updated with patch 3.08, edited formatting for better readability, updated tips, runes and items builds (especially for the jungle section).
03/02/2013 - Updated with patch 3.03, added information on Machete and Boots items in the jungling section along with a Route sub-section, updated the items sections with the BotRK rework.
02/18/2013 - Added version n°, links to wiki and login intro. Detailed the working of Vault Breaker and Assault and Battery. Added generic tips about comboing and animation cancelling abilities. Additional reasoning on maxing Q first, and screenshots of wall/ward-jumping. Added reasoning and build variations to when going tanky jungle against heavy AP/magical comps.
Creditsand end of the post so you get to scroll less
Important Note: this guide is still incomplete, so don't hesitate to mention stuff you feel is missing or incorrect and I'll add it to the guide. The laning part in particular is voluntarily vague because there's no practical experience to back it up, and any information would be appreciated. Consider the guide a constant work in progress.
Understanding Vi
Vi is a bruiser adept at picking off isolated champions, initiating teamfights and diving the backline rather than peeling and tanking. She has great mid-range mobility through Vault Breaker and her ult, Assault and Battery, but no way to stick to her target nor to attack from range. While the frontloaded nature of her damage makes her good at bursting people down in the early-midgame, her Denting Blows ability allows her to remain a dps threat throughout the whole game. League of Legends wiki Vi page Vi's theme song and login animation (credits in the description) + Show Spoiler [Lyrics] +
She's such a misfit, always ready to brawl.
It's like her business, roughing up your friends is the law. There is no difference if you believe you're strong: She's a bulldozer making sure you're flat on the ground
She's like a boomerang, who never gives up, She flies in circles till she hits you and you're biting the dust. So just remember this when she's chasing you down Face first, you'll be thrown onto the Proving Grounds. She'll knock you out.
Have you ever really wanted to be a total rebel flippin' tables on the enemy? Did you ever try to further improve how fast you punch people through the roof? Oh! Was there ever any certain time when you thought brute force and style combined? Well, I guess now's time to shine. Cause finally, she's here, here comes Vi.
And as a matter of fact, the best bet one has is to quickly react To the first attack that's aiming for the bones Cause she'll never pull back and just risk it. (x2)
Have you ever really wanted to be a total rebel flippin' tables on the enemy? Did you ever try to further improve how fast you punch people through the roof? Oh! Was there ever any certain time when you thought brute force and style combined? Well, I guess now's time to shine. Cause finally! She's here! Here comes Vi!
Passive: Blast Shield - When Vi's activated abilities damage an enemy, she gains a shield equal to 10% of her maximum health for 3 seconds. Blast shield has a 18 (level 1) / 13 (level 7) / 8 (level 12) second cooldown. + Show Spoiler +
A good teamfighting passive, reminiscent of Malphite's. It's not as handy during laning because it's not up as often early, nor during sieges because you have no way to trigger it without hitting something in melee range, but its timer isn't reset by taking hits, giving you the opportunity to trigger it multiple times in the same fight, adding a layer of tankiness that can surprise your opponents. Note that its cooldown isn't affected by CDR and that, being %HP based, it scales equally from HP and resists. Also note that it only triggers when you inflict damage, not when you cast a spell.
Q: Vault Breaker - On first cast, slows your movement speed by 15% while increasing damage and dash range over 1.25 seconds. On second cast, Vi dashes forward, dealing physical damage and applying Denting Blows to all enemies hit. Vi stops upon colliding with an enemy champion, knocking it back. Vault Breaker deals 75% damage to minions and monsters. It will cancel and be put on cooldown after a few seconds if you don't use the second cast; it will refund 50% of the mana cost and be put on a 3 seconds cooldown if you get interrupted (root, stun, silence, etc.) before the second cast. Cooldown: 18 / 15.5 / 13 / 10.5 / 8 Cost: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 mana Minimum Physical Damage: 50 / 80 / 110 / 140 / 170 (+70% bonus AD) Maximum Physical Damage: 100 / 160 / 220 / 280 / 340 (+140% bonus AD) Dash Range: 250 - 725 (the damage also extends in a ~200 range AoE in front of Vi) + Show Spoiler +
Your "Bionic Aaaarm~" mobility skill, allowing you to dash through walls, interrupt channels, and generally move around. It's also a pretty good nuke if you manage to hit a fully charged one, and a great clearing tool, both in the jungle and when used to annihilate a wave. The dash distance increase during the charge, meaning you will not pass through walls if you don't charge Vault Breaker long enough. A fully charged Vault Breaker has a 725 dash range, giving you a bit more leeway than other dashes such as Shen's, Graves', or even Ezreal's Arcane Shift or Kassadin's Riftwalk. Casting it works similarly to Varus' Q, Percing Arrow, as you hit the key once to start charging, then you either left-click the ground or hit the key again to dash toward the cursor. When smartcasting, hit the key and hold it pressed to charge, then release it to dash toward the cursor. An arrow will point out where you will be dashing to while you're charging. The CD reduction and damage scaling per level is great. Also note that you can start charging, flash then release, or charge, release then flash. It covers a surprising amount of ground and can catch people unaware (especially across walls).
W: Denting Blows - Passive: Every 3rd attack on the same target deals additional physical damage equal to a percentage of the target's maximum health, reduces the target's armor by 20%, and grants Vi bonus attack speed for 4 seconds. Denting Blows deals a maximum of 300 damage against minions and monsters. Bonus Physical Damage: 4 / 5.5 / 7 / 8.5 / 10% of target's max health (+1% per 35 bonus AD) Attack Speed Bonus: 30 / 35 / 40 / 45 / 50% + Show Spoiler +
A strong-scaling skill which ensures Vi will always able to deal sustained damage no matter what she builds and who she hits. It shouldn't be seen as a deterrent to build AS, as the faster you attack, the faster you can get that first proc and its benefits. It also allows Vi to kill buffs and dragon pretty quickly and makes her dangerous when trading as the threat of reduced armour and dps increase compliments her frontloaded burst well.
E: Excessive Force - Causes Vi's next basic attack to gain 50 range (to 175) and deal bonus physical damage to the target and enemies behind it. Vi periodically charges a new punch and can hold up to 2 charges at once. Range/Cone length: 600 Cooldown: 1, Charge Reload Time: 14 / 12.5 / 11 / 9.5 / 8 seconds Cost: 60 mana + 1 charge Total Physical Damage: 5 / 20 / 35 / 50 / 65 (+115% AD) (+70% AP) + Show Spoiler +
"Falcooon... Punch!" Vi's "tamest" ability. It resets the autoattack timer so use it to trigger Denting Blows faster, you can also use the additional range to reach a target trying to run from you. The cone and AoE are pretty wide and big so it would be a waste not to position to make use of it, be it in teamfight or as a tool to farm waves (in conjunction with Q). Note that Excessive Force does not apply on-hit effects (including Denting Blows stacks) on secondary targets. It does however apply damage-based effects like Black Cleaver's or Spirit of the Lizard Elder's.
R: Assault and Battery - Vi targets an enemy champion and chases it down, knocking it up for 1.25 seconds, dealing physical damage. While charging, Vi is immune to crowd control and will knock aside enemies in her way, dealing 75% damage to them. Range: 700 Cooldown: 130 / 105 / 80 Cost: 100 / 125 / 150 mana Physical Damage: 200 / 325 / 450 (+140% bonus AD) Physical Damage to Secondary Targets: 150 / 262.5 / 375 (+105% bonus AD) + Show Spoiler +
"Hey, Jayce! "Power Slam!" ", also "Get dunked!" This ability is similar to Malphite's (again) in that it changes you into an unstoppable ball of cc that charges through the enemy team. However, you target a champion rather than a zone, so while you're unavoidable a good flash can make you end up way out of position if you use it badly (and a bad flash can transform you into a bowling ball as your target puts his whole team in the way). The "laser pointer" also puts a big target on you as the enemy team knows you'll be in the middle of them soon after, at the same time as telling your team the fight's going to start, and who's going to be "available" to focus. Another important point is that you won't reach your target if it recalls or teleports while you're charging, but in almost every other case you will reach them no matter what, including passing through walls. Don't ult an Ezreal with his back to a wall just to see him Arcane Shift to safety and isolate both of you from your own team, you don't want to get baited into a 1v5 this way. So while it's a good initiation tool, you have to be aware of your positioning and how much damage you can withstand before you decide on how to use it. You can also just use it to finish off a fugitive because it looks cool.
Pros:
Great farmer/pusher
Big burst early with only a few items
Great transition into a dps-oriented style late game
Her ult is a big laser pointer telling "HIT HIM!" to your team, straight-forward and pub play-friendly
She can both Falcon Punch and dunk fools.
Cons:
Defenseless against poke/ranged harass, particularly in sieges
No tools to farm or harass from a distance: once you're in, you're fully committed
With slightly below average base stats, she's farm-dependent for her tankiness
With a low mana pool at early levels and a big reliance on Vault Breaker, extended skirmishes can be awkward for her
Playstyle/tips: This section is generic, refer to Jungling/Laning for more situational stuff. + Show Spoiler +
Vault Breaker, like Nautilus' Dredge Line and Sejuani's Artic Assault is either bugged or suffering from a weird hitbox. If an enemy is standing right behind you, they'll be considered hit and your dash will be canceled. Pay attention to this before you try to escape with it.
Assault and Battery is bugged: there are a few frames right before she starts lifting her target where displacement effects work on her, despite the ability stating it makes Vi immune to cc. This means you can get knocked back during your ult and be unable to follow up. Similarly, sometimes your target will be able to flash right after you start the lifting motion, despite being theorically suppressed. Both of these don't happen often, but at least you're now warned.
When hitting a champion, Vault Breaker slightly knocks him back. It isn't much, but it can move an enemy out of an ally's skillshot or interrupt a charge/dash when peeling for your AD. Because Assault and Battery lands you right behind your target, you can also use that knock-back to push it toward your team.
Your "basic" complete combo is Q/R -> auto -> reset with E -> auto -> reset with 2nd E -> R/Q. It lets you close in on a target from range, chain all of your abilities smoothly, and trigger Denting Blows twice, finishing with another dash to catch targets Flashing/dashing away. Starting with your ultimate is more reliable but commits a longer cooldown.
Denting Blows hits hard, always try to get that 3rd hit off. Remember that Q doesn't need to be full charged to apply a stack, and when your target tries to run that Excessive Force extends your autoattack range.
On the other hand, being able to trigger your passive several times adds up to a lot of additional health in extended fights, so it's important to manage your cooldowns so that you don't sit on an available shield and little HP because every spell is on cooldown.
Vault Breaker and Excessive Force have short albeit non-negligible wind-downs. You can chase and get hits in better by animation cancelling those: as soon as the damage is done, issue a move command toward/ahead of your target, depending on the situation, then right-click them to attack again.
Like Maokai's Twisted Advance, your ultimate Assault and Battery will follow your target through Flash. Keep this in mind when initiating on an enemy, especially if you're building squishy.
Once you have some damage and levels in Q or E, you can easily farm a whole wave or bunch of minions by charging your Q through all of them then turning round and using E on the tail minion to hit them all.
Jungling Vi
There are two main approaches to jungling Vi: the tanky one, and the damage one. The tanky one plays for the dps on Denting Blows and being able to initiate more reliably, with a smoother powercurve, while the damage one focuses on burst, crushing people in early skirmishes and snowballing the game, with a steeper transition into the lategame.
ArPen marks, armour seals, MR/level glyphs, AD quints is the default/standard set. You can swap out glyphs (CDR, flat MR, some kind of mix) and somewhat quintessences (using AD marks with MS or Lifesteal quints for example) depending on preferences. However, your focus will usually be on early ganks/skirmishes and bursting people down, so ArPen/AD provides you with higher champion-damage at the expense of a bit of jungling speed.
Vi used to be especially versatile, but the nerfs to offensive tree's earlier tiers and the monsters made tougher means that in season 4 her clear speed takes a heavy hit if she doesn't run 21 offense. Obviously these points aren't set in stone, although 21-9-0 is advised. Expose Weakness works both for your own damage and your allies', making it a good choice as a ganking jungler too.
Smite is obvious since you're jungling, and I favour Flash. While you have a wall-jumping ability in Vault Breaker (and Assault and Battery in some way), Flash gives you added safety, and also allows you to cover an terrifying amount of ground when combined with Vault Breaker (either during the charge or the dash), and even possibly with Assault and Battery (be mindful not to initiate that way however as your team won't be able to follow you!).
W at level 1, one point in each ability by level 3, then R > Q > W > E
At level 1 W is the best clearing skill no matter how much help you get, however it doesn't trigger your passive nor provides much help in level 1 fights. In the latter case Q gives you cc and some burst, however it's by far the worst ability to start with so you should ask for significant help on your starting buff if you end up taking it.
Q clears faster and is more mana-efficient as long as you use it fully charged on each camp, it provides the most burst for your ganks, and the CD reduction is key to your mobility and impact over the map. W should be maxed second because it provides more damage on champions per level than E by the time you reach level 8 (no matter how many charges of E you use), and it's always better on large monsters like dragon and buffs.
You can start either blue or red buff, however assuming a standard setup (offlaner top, duo lane bot) you will probably want to start in the bottom side of your jungle so you're near top to gank it early on. Most junglers do it so it will let you ward it for your laner or countergank if needed (Vi is rather fast as long as you get decent help on your first buff), and because of your kit you're likely going to focus on midlane later on, not to mention the opportunity to take the dragon after a successful bot gank. On the other hand if you're seen top it may gift said dragon to the enemy team, because of this you want to ideally put your offlaner ahead during the early game, when it's less risky for you to be there. Avoid level 2 ganks: Vi can do it, but she gets much more (in terms of burst and clearing) from having her 3 basic abilities leveled, and you'd be better off jungling somebody like Pantheon, Jarvan IV, Xin Zhao or Lee Sin if this is your plan anyway.
The way Vi's kit works, she's better at skirmishes and picking people off than straight-up teamfighting, so it's important for her to have presence and to put pressure on the map in the early game. While she clears the jungle fast, she's not as effective as a Shyvana farming items then coming out of the jungle and crushing teamfights, and your itemisation should reflect this.
Vi has good base damage and average ratios on her burst abilities (Q and R), and decent base damage with a good ratio on her dps ability (W). What this means is that while she burst hard early on, Vi isn't an assassin (also she doesn't have any escape): even when building glass cannon, her damage will fall off at some point (around level 11-13, E being a 1-point wonder), so while you want to build as much damage as possible early on to make your ganks and picks more potent, you have to transition to a tankier build afterwards.
In teamfights, your job'll often be to initiate, and lock down a target for your team to eliminate. After that, you'll often be in the middle of the enemy team, so you need to be tanky enough to survive retaliation. You can try to zone squishies with your damage or peel for your carries with Denting Blows' armour reduction. Managing Q's and your passive's cooldowns is important to let you switch targets, stay alive/bait, intercept people with the knock-back or quickly burst them with a quick Q-autoattack-E combo. You will deal less damage than your carries even on your initiation so you'll be more dps-oriented.
Of course you need to take your team into account too: if your offlaner is Shen or Shyvana, you'll probably have to build more damage than if your solo laners were LeBlanc+Kha'Zix. Similarly, it's easier to delay defensive itemisation against Tristana than Jinx.
The early-midgame is where you'll have the most wiggle room for your itemisation, depending on if you want to build tanky right away, if you're snowballing or behind, etc.
Standard. With the stronger monsters in season 4's jungle you're going to need these potions anyway. Starting Doran's Blade requires you to use Lifesteal quintessences to make up for your lack of potions. This is a fighting start: you want to play aggressively and capitalise during your early ganks or by dueling the enemy jungler. If you plan on playing passively or just playing it safe, stick to Machete.
You shouldn't ever want to upgrade Machete to Madred's: despite technically autoattacking a lot, most of Vi's damage comes from her charged Q, W, and E AoE, which don't apply Madred's passive. Spirit Stone also provides way better sustain through its Butcher passive. Your long term objective should thus be either Spirit of the Ancient Golem or Spirit of the Elder Lizard.
You want Spirit Stone first since the Butcher passive will do more for you than long swords in terms of damage and the health/mana sustain is big, especially for Vi who burns a lot spamming Q at each camp, while early boots let you stick to enemy champions since your only other tool is a gap closer.
Spirit of the Elder Lizard should be your standard buy: unless you fall really behind you can afford to buy damage at this point and your role will be to kill things, not tank them. Between your ult, Q, and your allies' damage you're likely to take little yourself during a successful gank. If the teams' composition or the state of the game requires it, however, Spirit of the Ancient Golem is perfectly viable. You'll be able to dive more easily and you still get CDR.
And remember: wards win games! Even with the trinkets, vision is still limited, so being able to monitor the enemy jungler, the drake, or buffs, you can set up ambushes and counterganks, which Vi excels at.
Mobis used to be the boots of choice for a number of Vi players, but with the 4.3 patch they've been changed so that while cheaper, their in-combat MS bonus is now 25 (like boots 1) instead of 45 (like any other boots 2). Vi already has trouble sticking to her targets, now buying Mobis is paying a lot juste to be able to more easily get in range than basic boots. I personally heavily dislike it and would rather rely on positioning to reach my targets, and have more defenses and in-combat mobility. If you think you can make the faster roaming worth it, though, more power to you.
Tabi tend to be my boots of choice because they're cheaper, provide tankiness during tower dives, and since the SV nerfs and Banshee coming back as the jungler's premium MR item I can usually withstand the magic burst when initiating, thus making armour more interesting to reduce the sustained damage coming up. On top of that, since Assault and Battery makes Vi immune to cc (on paper) and she's usually initiating, Tenacity isn't always needed.
But sometimes it is, though. Mercs are the most expensive boots and half of it is the tenacity itself, so if you don't need the MS right now but have to deal with a fed magic damage champion you'll usually sit on a NMM or Negatron cloak over completing mercs. If you're facing a team with more pick potential than yours, or if your fights last long/require chasing/disengaging, Tenacity's value is increased.
When to upgrade boots? It depends. You obviously want Mobis asap, and they'll often be purchased right after your Spirit item. Mercs and Tabi, on the other hand, are way more situational, especially Mercs. It's often worth it to buy at least a big component of your next item (or the item itself if it's mid-range like Hexdrinker) because they'll be more cost-effective in raw stats and your Q and R should ensure that the additional MS isn't your priority as long as you only gank and ambush over full-blown teamfights.
Black Cleaver: it's actually not a very good item early on, because as mentioned Vi's damage is frontloaded burst. By the time you'll have stacked it, your target should be dead or pretty low, making little use of the gold dumped into its passive. It's a very good damage item for Vi, but early on it doesn't bring much that a way cheaper Brutaliser doesn't. If you're set on it, though, you can complete it now then switch to defenses. Combined with Denting Blows it'll let you chew through tanky opponents (for example a Sunfire Renekton).
Triforce: not my fed item of choice either. Triforce is very powerful and well-rounded, Spellblade improving your burst and dps, Rage + the %MS granting you some much needed stickiness to enemies. Going for solo kills becomes a possibility, and your high damage output wrecks people in fights. However, Triforce won't scale as well (nor help the rest of your team as much) as Black Cleaver in the late game, and its cost means that unless you're so ahead you could build anything and win, the window between you completing Triforce and your opponents completing the own big ticket item won't be that large. You'll have to leverage your dominating item timing or give the enemy an opportunity to catch up. On top of that, you're still pretty squishy for someone who just spent 3700 gold.
Iceborn Gauntlet: a combo of burst, stickiness and tankyness. You actually pay a lot for the mana and AP, and HP is generally better than resistances, especially on your first defensive item, making this choice rarely optimal and unpopular. Sometimes, especially in extended fights, it's just what you need, though: CDR and mana to let you use Q more often to catch up to people or burst them, Spellblade for burst+stickiness (and letting your team catch up if they're dispersed), and more defenses than BC or Triforce.
Brutaliser and/or Hexdrinker then stick to your usual gameplan: my personal favourite. Brutaliser gives you AD, CDR and ArPen, everything you could wish more in the early game: burst harder, get your ultimate back up sooner for more ganks, and hit generally harder... for very cheap. It'll help your damage stay relevant for most of the game, and later on its Black Cleaver upgrade provides nice team utility while improving your damage once your dps becomes more important than your burst. Depending on the enemy [fed] champions and how fed you are, buying a Hexdrinker on top/instead of the Brutaliser can give you strong magic defenses for cheap, while still providing as much AD as the Brutaliser. It won't scale too well, but since you're fed, your goal is to snowball and make that irrelevant, right? That, or you just want to survive the enemy Ziggs even more fed than you... Focusing on cheap, cost-effective items before moving on to defensive itemisation is also less "all-in" than other choices, in that if the enemy team stages a comeback you won't be late on your tankiness, letting you brawl in teamfights without fear of getting exploded.
Brutaliser is obviously optional and depends on how offensive you want to play. I'd advise giving it a try and switching to a more defensive style if it doesn't work out for you (note that your damage output if going Golem spirit and skipping Brutaliser will fall off quite early).
Your first defensive purchases should include HP since it's cheaper than resistances and protects against all 3 types of damage, hence Belt or Cowl depending on what you're up against. Make sure to tailor your build ot the situation: if you're building Cowl and already plan on getting Mercs, you're going to be very low on armour so Warden's Mail'll have to be boought before Belt (or even before completing Banshee).
These two items provide a good mix of HP, resistances and utility, while having an incremental build path that helps complete them even on a low income. Being a diver, Vi makes a good Randuin's user since she should be able to hit several people with the active everytime she ults in. It can also be used defensively since she lacks an escape.
Spirit Visage can be bought in place of Banshee's Veil. However, with the CDR nerf it's generally not worth, especially since you shouldn't really build lifesteal on jungle Vi to use its passive.
Hexdrinker/Malmortius is an early-game oriented MR buy, either to protect yourself from magic damage if ahead and likely to be focused in fights, or to survive a fed enemy magic damage source. If you find yourself needing MR in the mid or late game, Negatron-based items will generally be better because they'll be more slot-effective. In the same way, if you need damage other items will be more effective. Well-rounded items are better in the early game, while specialised (but more slot-effective) items are stronger later on.
Black Cleaver, already mentioned earlier provides utility to the team through its passive, once your burst has fallen off, but also some survivability for you and helps not waste your Brutaliser slot. Since your role is less pure damage and more initiation/zoning as the game goes on, BC is a good one-off damage item in your overall tanky build.
Last Whisper is another damage item along with Black Cleaver, but more selfish since it's ArPen and not armour reduction. Unless your team composition lets you get away with 2 offensive items, you'll likely build it instead of BC, in which case you're relying on yourself to deal damage rather than your team. if their overall damage output is low and you need to pick up the slack it can be a good idea to add another threat to your team. BC's still the better choice most of the time.
Thornmail is a good choice to compliment your damage and help you live longer against autoattacking or heavily physical teams. Since you're diving, people will be forced to deal with you and thornmail punishes them for it. It can also help you duel autoattacking carries when your burst isn't enough anymore, or add damage to bruisers like Renekton who in the late game can't rely solely on their spells anymore.
Locket is a situational purchase against double AP team, providing your team with the aura and a shield. Because of the way it works and per-level stat gains, you want it early rather than buying it as your 5th or 6th item (on top of that it has a cheap build-up but requires several slots). It can help round up your CDR and provide team utility if your carries need more survivability later on, though.
Didn't make the cut: - Blade of the Ruined King. Sure, it synergises well with Denting Blows, but it requires you to stick to your target and autoattack, something Vi isn't good at by herself (after her initiation, she's rather easily kited), and it's expensive with an awkward build-up for junglers. Even if you end up fed, banking on raw AD (for burst) is better early on considering Vi's kit. She doesn't benefit that much from lifesteal since most of her damage comes from Q and W anyway. - Sunfire Cape. You don't need it to push, it's not that slot-effective later on, and you don't care about a dps aura early when you're all about burst. Randuin's is superior in every way. - Tiamat/Ravenous Hydra: expensive raw AD when you're coming from the jungle. Their active doesn't trigger Denting Blows so it doesn't help your damage that much either. - Ghostblade is a nice ball of stats and could arguably help you stick to your target, but once again there are stronger burst-oriented itemisation early on and it's not that slot-effective later.
Vi has extremely safe and fast jungle clears, thanks to her passive and AoE letting her flatten camps without losing HP: you can move fast across the jungle charging Q to jump walls and cluster monsters, then autoE the big one AoE them down. Only her mana limits her, which is less of a problem with blue buff then spirit stone.
When ganking, red buff is pretty important to you as it lets you walk up behind people, auto them then use a charged Q (or ult, post-6) to catch up if they flash or dash away. Good positioning, avoiding wards or having your laner bait the fight is thus pretty important. Avoid opening a gank with Q or R as much as you can (though R is more reliable). Ganking ranged champions, especially mid lane is harder because you can't really get behind them and if you charge Q while chasing they'll often just reach their tower. In those cases, and particularly if your laner has burst and/or cc, you can charge Q in the brush/while coming for behind and try to initiate with it. The knock-back allows for easy cc follow-up, and both burst combined should be enough to drop most squishies from full. You can come and gank people from behind a bit like Alistar, especially mid, your passive will absorb the tower shot and the knock-back will hopefully carry you out of range. It's also very easy to burn a flash just by walking into mid, charging Q, and releasing it at the enemy laner. Make sure to abuse the timing window you created. Obviously, champions like Talon, Katarina, Kassadin, Syndra, etc. are especially difficult to gank (even post-6 you can ult but your laner may not be able to follow from that distance if they blink).
You can easily counterjungle by fighting most junglers, however be wary of your Q being on cooldown or bodyblocked (see general tips) as you're still squishy with your passive down early on, and it has a long cooldown. A "weakness" of her strong clears is that she can easily kill all little monsters with incidental AoE, so while she can easily steal a full camp, it ironically takes longer to let a little monster behind to waste the enemy jungler's exp and time.
The build in this guide focuses on early CDR and maxing Q. Once you have SotEL+Kindlegem/Locket or SotAG+Brutalizer, you have a sub-10s non-targeted dash/knock-back (level 7+) thanks to 20% CDR. At this point you should look for an opportunity to make plays every time your ult is up, which should be every 100s to every minute (depending on level and if you have blue buff or not). Your post-6 ganks are almost as strong as Malphite's or Warwick's, play as such. With Vi's potential for long range initiations and tower-diving (ult -> Q to knock-back into your allies, and the passive to survive), and Denting Blows' %HP damage shredding the dragon, it's a good idea to focus your early presence on your solo lanes to put them ahead, then focus on bot everytime your ult is up and/or dragon is available.
Later, when initiating teamfights, remember to assess threats and positioning before you choose which target to ult, and when to go in (keeping track of flashes is harder but useful). Sometimes it can be more important to use it to protect a fed ally from a diver than to initiate on an opponent. Vi's kit is more suited to early/mid game skirmishes and pick-offs, but she's versatile enough that you shouldn't let yourself be constricted.
Once you're level 9, Q is maxed with a 5-6s cooldown depending on CDR. Don't hesitate to use positioning, your passive and Locket shield to walk away after initiating, wait for Q to come back up, and cut off an escape route, intercept a threat on your backline or simply punch a face in with a QautoE combo. Vi is no Kassadin or Jayce, but as long as you manage your Qs well enough (be wary or ranged roots and stuns that can interrupt the charge and put the spell on cooldown, time your casts right) you can rely on them and your passive to cover for your teammates (Q a chaser for the knock-back, run away and Q to safety 5s later).
Wall-jumping: One of the benefits of maxing Q is a shorter cooldown that allows you to use it to dash over a wall and have it ready to gank in the next 10 seconds. You can avoid riverside bush/tribrush wards, wards at your wraiths/in the J brush, or escape the enemy collapsing on you near their buff by dashing over the dragon's or baron's pit (depending on your side), but the length of Vault Breaker's charge allows some other nifty tricks. + Show Spoiler +
Vault Breaker's max range is barely 45 less range Jarvan's EQ combo, allowing you to move between the river bush and near top's (blue side) or bot's (purple side) tribrush without being seen by wards in the river. You can use this when purple side to gank their pushing bottom lane, or to flank the purple bot tower unsuspected if they warded the drake, but not the river bush.
If you don't like wasting time, you can save a seconds and look cool by charging Vault Breaker outside of the wolf camp, and dash through the wall while hitting the wolves at the same time.
When chasing somebody all the way to blue top's/purple's bot inner tower, you can cross the large wall between the alley and the tower with a fully charged Vault Breaker. It's doable with other abilities (like Flash) but it can be hard to pull off, while Vault Breaker has the range to do it 100% reliably.
Note that the picture shows where you land when touching the wall and charging fully, so you'll still probably need Flash or your ult to catch your almost dead prey, as you're likely to be the one tanking the tower when you do this.
Laning Vi
Disclaimer: this section was never really relevant, and hasn't been updated anyway. It is left as is for reference, but if you lane Vi you'd do better to tell us about it so we can fill this section.
In lane, Vi will get to farm more, so she doesn't have to choose between damage and tankiness as much, and her item timing will be less critical to her, especially early on. This allows her to be played as a tanky diver, relying on Denting Blows more because she'll have more levels than a jungling Vi, and more gold to be able to afford those items that make Denting Blows such an awesome dps tool.
Marks: AD (recommended), ArPen Seals: Armour (recommended), scaling HP. Glyphs: scaling MR (recommended), flat MR, CDR (if you value it) Quints: AD (recommended), ArPen*, MS * only if you have ArPen marks too: AD marks+ArPen quints is better than the other way round
21-9-0 (move the point from Destruction in the offensive tree wherever your want, and adapt the tier2 defensive tree points to your lane opponent) is the best, and most common, choice. 9-21-0* and 16-13-1* (including its variations) are of course viable too. * The tree is bugged, move the points from Relentless into Unyielding. Of course adapt the 2nd tier to your lane opponent. You can drop a point of Alacrity for Summoner's Wrath when you go for 9 in offense.
Summoner spells: Escape: (see the Jungling section for reasoning on Flash over Ghost) Others: /// + Show Spoiler +
Heal and Barrier can be useful for baits on top of her passive, and to make her deceptively dangerous even at low health, but I don't believe they are better than Ignite or Exhaust. Ignite gives you better kill potential, and is always useful against sustain champs in teamfights. Exhaust, especially with the mastery to reduce the target's armour, makes it easier for you to land your Q and more importantly more attacks (and thus more Denting Blows procs) while chasing. It's also better to reduce an opponent's damage output during teamfights later in the game, especially as said fights will get more and more drawn-out and rely on your dps rather than your burst.
E(WQ)(QW)E into R>E>Q>W Maxing Q first is a waste, as you need to charge it to make this choice worth, and such a big tell will allow your opponent to get out of range or dodge it most of the time. This is even truer mid where you don't have bushes to conceal the charge. On the other hand, maxing E allows you to harass and trade more often, and to push easily without having to burn your mobility spell for it. The cooldown is more important than the damage here. You still want Q maxed early-ish for the CDR so you max it second, but don't hesitate to put more than one point in W early on to compensate for its low level 1 value. You can also experiment with only putting 3-4 points in E before switching to Q and W, to benefit from the reduced reload time while getting to level your mobility and dps spells earlier (especially as they gain a lot per level).
x3 The once-standard opening. Unless there are match-ups where you absolutely need the movespeed, you should avoid it.
x3x2 The super-safe, full consumables opening. This is mostly a surviving opening, where you want to farm as much as possible and abuse those potions to never be forced out of lane. You dump a lot of gold into temporary power, so the pressure is on you to outsustain/outscale/outfarm your opponent to make up for it. It also allows to combat the harass from lane bullies like Elise.
x5 (or
x3 (wait at fountain for the 3rd) A safer opening giving a bunch of armour against early aggressors and some sustain. You should look at being the aggressor in lane as Vi, though, so planning to play on the defensive can be a bad thing. A super-aggressive opening that makes use or your good trading power to threaten the opponent. You can only sustain when hitting stuff though, so against ranged harassers it can be a very tough opener (unless you manage to catch them and force an unfavourable trade or straight-up all-in to push them out of lane).
x2 Less sustain at first, but more bang for your buck once you've backed once or twice, since you'll end up selling it. It also provides you with mana sustain, even though Vi's costs aren't too prohibitive.
Long Sword is part of the recipes for The Brutalizer, Phage, Vampiric Scepter, Bilgewater Cutlass, Last Whisper, Zephyr and potentially Hexdrinker (though you should avoid getting it if you can on Vi). Because of this, even having 2 Long Sword in your inventory doesn't tie you to any build in particular and gives you a lot of room to adapt and react to your opponent or the flow of the game.
Boots2 should be Ninja Tabi or Mercury Treads, depending on enemy cc. Since Wit's is part of your core, Ninja Tabi let you round up your resistances nicely (unless you're up against something like Vlad or Elise obviously). Here, we have Boots2 + Phage to stick to our opponent while Wit's End powers Denting Blows to demolish him, while we are pretty tanky ourselves.
Now that you've got resistances, round it up with some more HP, and team utility. You've got sticking power, enough tankiness to initiate, your dps is still there and you have peeling capabilities through the sure slow from Mallet and the shield from Locket. You still remain a diver at heart, though. You can also opt for Aegis before Locket, making you very resilient and giving some additional MR in case you went for Tabi.
If you're getting fed, turning Phage into Trinity Force instead of Mallet sacrifices a bit of sticking power in exchange for a lot more damage and some mobility too, making you a much bigger threat. Randuin's is by far the best armour item you can get on Vi, so it's another way to make you unkillable why adding utility for the team and making profit out of your diving style. Complete Bulwark when you have the gold for it and as team compositions calls for it, as Aegis+Wit's should be enough MR for your own needs. Finally, The Black Cleaver is always a great damage item on Vi.
If you get stupidly fed The Bloodthirster is still the best dunking tool midgame, but you have to get really ahead for this as it'll leave you squishy. If you didn't build Mercs, Zephyr is a great source of Tenacity and offensive stats, including welcome %MS to help you run around and CDR to Q more often. It lacks any defensive stats apart from that Tenacity and costs 2850 gold, so as usual make sure you can survive well enough before investing in such an item. If you don't feel like building too much offense, Blade of the Ruined King synergises particularly well with Denting Blows for massive %HP damage while still providing some AD. If you plan on building Randuin's for HP, BotRK can replace Frozen Mallet as the active provides you with sticking power (later on Randuin's active and passive will too), and lifesteal scales well with the resistances and your shield. Maybe try it against laners stacking HP, like Olaf, Shen, Xin or tank Katarina?
With its rework, Blade of the Ruined King has become the ultimate item for Vi: Denting Blows synergises with AS, AD and ArPen, the former two being granted by BotRK. It in turns synergises with AS and ArPen, both of which are provided once Denting Blows triggers on a target (in the form of reduction for the armour part). Combined with another penetration item, like Black Cleaver (utility/team utility item through its passive, HP and CDR) or Last Whisper (damage/personal strength item), Vi gets enough offensive power to cut through both armour and health stacking and rely on the full raw potential of Denting Blows. This lets her build fully tanky after this core of 2 items, possibly peppering it with some hybrid items like Wit's End or Zephyr if the game allows it. However, dumping 5.1k to 5.8k gold into a fully offensive core will result in a very different midgame from the usual tanky build, making you particularly more vulnerable to burst. Play it accordingly.
As Vault Breaker has very obvious tells and is a skillshot, you don't have the initiating ability of other divers like Jax, Irelia or Xin when faced against ranged champions. As such, Vladimir/Kennen/Nidalee/Jayce should give you trouble, though in Kennen's case if you manage to farm well you'll be able to outpush him later on and roam. You can't trigger your passive without hitting something, so ranged harassers like Pantheon will give you trouble early on, as will bullies like Garen (you have to prime Excessive Force before he silences you to trigger Blast Shield, so you miss the auto-reset). Your lack of sustain should also give you trouble against the likes of Warwick and Udyr.
(Those are mostly valid for top as I don't have any experience as mid lane Vi.)
Though you can harass by using Excessive Force on a minion to hit the laner with the cone, be wary of triggering Blast Shield this way, as it'll leave you open to harass yourself.
Use the threat of triggering Denting Blows on your opponent! If you get a stack off them with a chance autoattack or E, they shouldn't be able to stay near you under threat of a quick auto->E, and once debuffed it's even more dangerous for them to stay in range. Think Kennen managing his W stacks to zone melee opponents from last hitting in his glory days.
Your ult isn't always the best way to start ganks. instead, if you can hold on it until your opponent flashes you can then ult him/her and use the suppression time to allow your laner to catch up too. Expending your shield "uselessly" to bait a bad trade for you can be a way to start a gank.
Your ult is an excellent ganking/diving tool, don't be hesitant to nuke a wave down with E then roam to mid or invade the enemy with your jungler. Although no Darius, Vi is very strong in 2v2s.
Like Wukong or Xin Zhao, you have absolutely no tool to farm from afar, as even Excessive Force needs a target in melee range to hit farther. If you fall behind to the point that your opponent can zone you, you'll have a ton of trouble getting any farm. When having trouble in lane, be particularly cautious about not letting the lane snowball against you.
Montegomery (Seuss here) for coming up with the excellent early Stinger into Zephyr idea, even though it fell off since. SmashGizmo (Mogwai here) for leading me in the ways of the ballsy divers. He specialises in champions like Xin, Jarvan, Wukong, Vi top lane (check out his champion threads for playstyle input) and as a Rioter he amongst other things wrote the updated recommended items (so pay attention to that shit). Incidentally, he happened to give me input for top lane Vi on his stream. Xj9 made Vi popular through his stream and came up with a jungle damage/carry build that has been heavily copied since in pub play. Teutonica (Slayer91) and Scipeaus (Scip) whose input was used to update the item build for season 4.
Hoooly sweet mother of all that is hammy, is a guide a whole truckload of work. Not so much the content as the formatting. This is obviously an incomplete work in progress, and there are glaring deficiencies with the laning part, be it starting items, match-ups or laning tips that I have certainly missed.
I'm counting on you to point out where I'm spouting bullshit, but also what I should have written instead, so that we can make this a better resource for anyone willing to learn or get better at Vi.
Vi is my 100% favourite champion. I've played her non stop in the jungle since release, before all the bug fixes and everything. I love everything about this hero, and she's SUPER strong. I feel she's similar to Irelia in game strength, as in she isn't "bad" early on, but definitely is lacking compared to her late game presence.
EDIT:
On February 17 2013 01:46 Complete wrote: Uh, everybody maxes R>E>Q>W in the jungle afaik
edit: oh you said or max e, nvm(ish).
Super heavy gankers actually prefer to max Q for the cooldown. Maxing E gives you a very small amount of damage increase, (like ridiculously small) that's primarily maxed for the cooldown too. You generally don't see a lot of difference clearing camps regardless of what you max.
Maybe there's a skill path undiscovered somewhere, where you dip into both Q and E to get the cooldowns shorter side by side? Who knows.
On February 17 2013 01:53 LOLItsRyann wrote: I feel she's similar to Irelia in game strength, as in she isn't "bad" early on, but definitely is lacking compared to her late game presence.
I dunno, Vi isn't a bully early on because she can't catch you and destroy you (she doesn't have Panth's harass, Xin's stickiness or Darius obnoxious trading+anti-escapes), but if you let her get to you she'll put on a lot of damage. What's holding her back during early jungling is the lack of ability to stick long enough to output her damage for me, which is why she's very dangerous to invade because then you're the one coming to her. Once she has a phage or a brutalizer she either has the damage to burst you before you can escape, or the stickiness to apply her damage anyway.
Her late game has me following the PBE changes on BotRK petty closely, since it's currently an item granting AD and scaling off ArPen and AS, while Denting Blows grants AS and a form or ArPen, while scaling off AD (and AS). The current AD+AS+on-hit flat healing BotRK available on PBE makes me very interested if something of the sort comes out.
Would you mind elaborating why? I went fishing for what I wrote when I tested stuff after Vi's release, found that: + Show Spoiler +
Quick math, assuming we have at least one E charge per camp (should be the minimum, with the time between camps and shortish cd) and we engage it by Qing in, which means max Q damage:
So leveling Q grants you 60 more damage, reduced to 45 on minions. Leveling E grants you 15 damage. Let's assume you land two punches per camp, then the difference goes from 30 to 15 damage (per skill level after the first), but Q still does more.
Lv 2 Q, lv 1 E: 125-130 base damage, 120-180 mana Lv 3 Q, lv 1 E: 170-175 base damage, 130-190 mana Lv 1 Q, lv 2 E: 95-115 base damage, 110-170 mana Lv 1 Q, lv 3 E: 110-145 base damage, 110-170 mana
Maxing Q costs a bit more mana, but you do more damage and lower the cooldown on your mobility spell. When maxing E, if you E a camp thrice you'll do as much/more damage, but then it means you have to clear in more than your ammo recharging time, and your mana cost goes to 230 per camp. You also probably won't have 2 charges up by next camp, so you can't even do it reliably, but on the other hand the wraith will get cleared with a single E as soon as you have both Q and E (level 3).
I prefer to max Q because going from 18 to 13s cd (at levels 5-6) is huge, and can allow to cast it twice during any fight, skirmish or gank that lasts a bit of time (even more likely after I get to level 7, around which I pick up Stinger for an additional 10% CDR). With a 14s reload time at level 1, I'll get another E, while maxing E first, I'll get another one in 11s, so in the time frame where maxing Q makes a difference (around 10-15s) maxing E or not doesn't change anything for me (only base damage, and even there Q first wins). Having a shorter cooldown on Q also makes you lose less time when you use it to bypass wards, before you're ready to go again. That's important so you don't waste time if the ganking opportunity disappear while you're waiting on your Q to get up again.
Then, as I build tankier, having a lower cooldown on Q (7s to 14s at level 9, even with a Stinger it's half of yours! though yours still lines up with Blast Shield's internal cd, I'll give you that) means that I get more freedom to move in and out of the fight, reengage, and generally adapt to the situation. On top of that, building tanky and focusing on triggering Denting Blows for my damage means that having an additional auto reset every 7s rather than 12.5s isn't critical compared to the amount of additional AS and damage I get from leveling W (building tankier means that I get more out of the base % compared to the scaling than somebody building more AD-heavy).
Another post, completed with tests I didn't run at the time: + Show Spoiler +
Ran some tests in the jungle with Vi.
21-9-0 machete+5 pots Wolves->Blue->Wraiths->Wolves->Red->Wraiths->Golems All camps started with a charged Q once I skilled it. WQE tests regularly end up with less HP than WEQ while being as fast, so I cut them out.
AS/MS WEQ, E max: 4:09, 580 HP no pots WEQ, Q max: 4:09, 590 HP no pots
AD/MS was discontinued due to losing a ton of HP compared to other setups.
Added: AS/AD WEQ, E max: 4:06, 560 HP no pots WEQ, Q max: 4:05, 580 HP no pots (I took additional damage from messing up the golems)
AD/AD WEQ, E max: 4:09, 690 HP no pots WEQ, Q max: 4:09, 630 HP no pots (I took a bit more damage at wraiths because of positioning, should be 20-30 HP higher)
Trying AD/AD with E first, for kicks: EWQ, E max: 4:05, 600 HP no pots EWQ, Q max: 4:09, 610 HP no pots
An AD/AD setup clears slightly faster because of the additional damage on Q and both Es, however as the monsters' health increase and E becomes less available (namely blue buff finishes) W becomes a bigger part of your damage on the camps (except for wraiths) and triggering it faster clears faster. Also most of the additional damage is taken on wolves, and a bit on red (double E + bladed armour kills the small lizards with an AD/AD setup, while they live to hit you with an AS/AD), so I expect a leash to remove most of the differential. (Random note: with blue buff, level 1 E has the same reload time as a "raw" level 3 E which you'd get by level 5.) With a likely W base damage nerf coming, without touching its scaling or E at all, I'll run some other tests, but before that I'll run ArPen/AD (it's not optimal though for clearing) or AD/AD during games to see the difference, and edit the OP accordingly.
I've always maxed W in the jungle, the synergy with madreds is super good and it means you're less reliant on blue/regen runes and masteries. It means you mostly use your E in ganks for the AA reset to get more W procs so you have to play a bit differently, but I think it works far better. E max is better for lane IMO.
I found Vi an amazing and exciting champ. I first tried to lane her, but due to how clunky her Q is/was being body blocked for running or interupts I found her kind of iffy in lane. However in jungle, shes now my #1. Previously a jungle main of lee sin(I really think they nerfed him in the wrong ways), but shes easily my favorite now. I suggest ad/arp runes/items. I dont feel most fights go on long enough with her to make the best use of attack speed.
I build her mach/5. Into the spirit stone and boots. Then either rush Spirit of the Ancient Golem or Ninja tabi, always the other one next. Next up is a bruta. Thats what I would consider core. Then it depends really more what my team needs and what the enemy team has. While she doesn't need the help with jungling speed (shes so fast!) I feel these 3 items are all extremely money effecient, and create a great start.
While a frozen mallet or some other slow is great with her, I've found building her more tanky with cdr and damage instead of worry about the slow is a better use of the gold. She already has some of the best team fighting for a bruiser in the game. Few brusiers can do the damage she can while being as tanky. Obviously this leaves an apparent weakness but I haven't found it so horrible so far. I would say shes very akin to Jax.
I find maxing cdr and building tanky is the best goal to have for mid to late game. Hardest part for me would knowing to protect my carries or dive theirs. Cause unlike most champs I feel like she can do either very well.
I run 21/9/0 and ad/armor/mr scaling/arp I find that I upgrade my machete to spirit stone I rarely have mana problems.
I think what makes her so amazing to me is the fact she can farm like crazy or gank just as well. I find myself nearly matching CS of average laners(Gold). I feel like shes more than just a gank machine lee sin, or farming jungler, but a perfect mixture of both.
For what it's worth, running ArPen marks and AD quints gives you 25% less AD but 55% more ArPen than running AD marks and ArPen quints, which seem to be your setup if I read your post well. Switching them up would grant you more stats.
something that might be worth putting in the skill descriptions: vi's vault breaker operates exactly like varus's q in that both function as 2-click abilities in normal cast, but have a hold-down time if you're using smartcast. I haven't tried smartcast with range indicator.
Think your lane matchups are a bit weird, The only thing that should really give you troubles are early level lane bullies/all-ins like Garen/Darius/Jax/Riven, especially if they start red pot. Most of the other matchups you mentioned having trouble with aren't very hard at all, except Vlad maybe (haven't faced one yet so not sure).
Vi's jungling is definitely infinitely better though.
Yeah, as I said I really lack experience about her match-ups and relative strengths in lane so I just typed that out of my experience with similar champs top. It's probably too "cautious" but I would rather have that than suggest bad match-ups to people by being overconfident. If you have information to add to that section, don't hesitate to detail it!
The starting items part can certainly be refined too, some of them are probably hyper-situational (full-consumables), or not frequent/adapted to her playstyle (cloth, flask) and if you look at it it's pretty obvious what I wrote was closer to a generic placeholder than to specific Vi advice.
On February 18 2013 04:58 zulu_nation8 wrote: e resets your autos
If we only take E for the auto reset (the biggest part of which is applying Denting Blows faster, which Q can do too), then it again comes down to CDR. Unless you are caught unaware in your jungle, the river, or while counterjungling (and using your Es to try and burst the camp/buff down), you should always have at least one charge of E when you encounter a foe, and potentially a second one. In those cases I agree that having a shorter reload time grants you a better immediate retaliating capability.
While the reload time is longer at level 1, when you plan to do a big camp or to gank soon then you should be able to manage your E charges so that you'll have 2 by the time you reach the camp/lane—if you can't, then I'd consider maxing E a crutch rather than the best course of action. In those cases, Q will have a 15.5 -> 8s cd, while E has a 12.5 -> 8s reload time. Those are pretty damn close and except for the cases where you can walk up to your target, auto->E him, have him blow Flash/an escape and only then use Q, both skills should get back up around the same time. Q can apply Denting Blows too, reaching farther, though it probably does less damage if not charged. However, having a second Q cast also allows to move around the fight, be it to switch targets or to run away if the gank goes fubar. It also gives more safety when counterjungling/avoiding wards by jumping walls, and it is also definitely better damage if you can charge it.
Another point to argue in the skill order is maxing W over E, though: I'll freely admit that around level 13-14 where fights start to last longer and scatter around I can feel constricted by the longer cd on E after I already used Q to catch up to a fugitive/knock-back a diver/etc. and I need to burst people down. On the other hand I'm not sure that I'd get people that low to begin with if I maxed E and my 2-3 first procs of Denting Blows dealt only half as much damage, so it's possibly a bias.
PS: I just edited the guide, adding some random stuff and most notably pictures for wall jumping/ward bypassing, and detailing the reasoning for maxing Q first in the jungle + alternatives to the tanky jungle core build when most of the enemy composition does magic damage. The jump spots should actually be fairly known but in case the pictures aren't clear enough, or too small, don't hesitate to notify me.
Why are you guys building Tabis on here? By the time you have them, you should already take zero damage from camps due to your passive and regen of the spirit stone. Considering boots, i tested boots3 lately, because the passive made me more mobile while charging my Q. Seemed alright. Dunno whether it's worth though.
I mean, yeah, if they have an all physical-damage team, sure, Tabis, but that's an if, right?
On February 20 2013 02:27 Broetchenholer wrote: Why are you guys building Tabis on here? By the time you have them, you should already take zero damage from camps due to your passive and regen of the spirit stone. Considering boots, i tested boots3 lately, because the passive made me more mobile while charging my Q. Seemed alright. Dunno whether it's worth though.
I mean, yeah, if they have an all physical-damage team, sure, Tabis, but that's an if, right?
I think it's a "most commonly this is the right call" type thing. Like how all top builds through most of last year had Mercs as the default.
As for me, it's a habit from playing a lot of s2 Mundo: as he had built-in tenacity from his W, you could just rush Tabi and not lose on tenacity while most other champs where on boots1 (or even bootless for the supports). The additional MS, on top of 0-21-9 masteries and MS quints allowed me to stick to people ridiculously well when ganking, but also to flee when things go wrong. Add to that that Mundo cleared fast as hell and you had a "fast in, fast out" jungler with a lot of presence.
Now with boots often not bought until later (tops even tend to skip them until they can buy the boots2 in one sitting in my experience) we're looking at a 45 MS base differential where we had 20 in s2. Vi relying a lot on being able to keep up with people and punching them, rushing boots2 so fast allows her to deal more damage to laners surviving her initial burst during ganks, while adding mobility for counter-jungling on top of Vault Breaker.
Tabi used to cost 350 less gold than Mercs in s2, which is a lot so early in the game. In s3 it's only 200 gold less but it's still non-negligible. Add to that that building Stinger doesn't get us "stuck" since we don't risk wasting Zephyr's tenacity, and finally, that Tabi's passive also works on minions, reducing greatly the damage incurred during early ganks, especially top and bot (and mid when it's an AD champ). The armour compounds on this and also works during towerdives.
Finally, about the spirit stone I'm not fond of the item because Vi doesn't need it to instaclear the jungle (machete is enough until later, when golems and buffs actually take more than Q -> auto -> E and a few additional autos to die). I'll admit that sometimes I get carried away and find myself a bit short on mana, and I'd certainly back less if I had it, but it's still 400 gold dumped in non-combat stats. When I just complete Tabi I'm ready to go 1 on 1 against most junglers even in their own jungle, especially if they started Spirit Stone. I checked the wiki and noticed that selling Stone makes you lose 140 gold, compared to the 180 you lose after selling Machete. Maybe I'll give it a chance later (esp. around the first dragon attempt or when I pass over the blue buff, after completing Phage) but as an opening item I really dislike the lack of combat stats, and "wasting" Butcher's improvement since Vi doesn't need it.
TL;DR: Tabi is cheaper movespeed, has an amazing passive for early ganks and dives (esp. against physical laners), makes me stronger 1v1 than junglers going Spirit Stone or sometimes Madred's, and I plan to get Tenacity from another source later on. It lacks the mp5 though and isn't as good when attempting early drakes.
But yeah against heavy magic damage or double AP comps I tend to skip Stinger and replace it with mercs+wit's (I just buy NMM+Recurve so I don't delay Phage too much, and I combine them later for some more MR).
I love me some early defensive stats. I'll include it next time I get to edit the guide, didn't even think about them tbh (though I read the bit about reducing Q slow in the wiki but dismissed it—is it really that impactful on hitting Qs charged in enemy view?).
I am currently building machete+5 into spiritstone + boots1, followed by a brutalizer and swifties afterwards. I feel like that allows me to hit like a truck shortly before laning is over, to maximise ganks before teamfighting starts. After that, i start building Warmogs, so that i do have the hp to survive the teamfights that will come next. Your core of Tabis + Stinger + Phage is a bit more expensive, you get more dueling power, but you lose burst. And i would say that you need more of the latter. With the amout of escapes on popular laners these days, it's kind of hard to stay on the target and if the opponent can just jump away, the slow wil not do that much. I really like the swifties, they make it impossible for opponents to run away IF you have your Q up. With Mercs, people would often outrun me while i charge the Q. Does not happen anymore.
What do you guys think if Vi maxes R>W>Q>E first instead of R>E>Q>W?
My train of thought is since my playstyle of Vi's probably gonna get Warmog's first, W becomes stronger than E early on. Although the long cooldown time on a level 1 E might be a problem.
EDIT: Alternatively what do you guys think about maxing W first then levelling both Q and E at the same time?
On February 20 2013 18:29 Broetchenholer wrote: I am currently building machete+5 into spiritstone + boots1, followed by a brutalizer and swifties afterwards. I feel like that allows me to hit like a truck shortly before laning is over, to maximise ganks before teamfighting starts. After that, i start building Warmogs, so that i do have the hp to survive the teamfights that will come next. Your core of Tabis + Stinger + Phage is a bit more expensive, you get more dueling power, but you lose burst. And i would say that you need more of the latter. With the amout of escapes on popular laners these days, it's kind of hard to stay on the target and if the opponent can just jump away, the slow wil not do that much. I really like the swifties, they make it impossible for opponents to run away IF you have your Q up. With Mercs, people would often outrun me while i charge the Q. Does not happen anymore.
Why not Madred's over Spirit stone? Vi doesn't really need the health and mana regen. I think Madred's armour + faster clearing time benefits her better.
vi's abilities are what destroys camps, can't see how madreds would make her clear faster, the regen will give you more hp and mana to gank or farm, and both the ad and tank spirit stone upgrades are solid items on her.
On March 01 2013 15:22 chalice wrote: vi's abilities are what destroys camps, can't see how madreds would make her clear faster, the regen will give you more hp and mana to gank or farm, and both the ad and tank spirit stone upgrades are solid items on her.
Essentially because the jungle now is more single target focused, so Madred's will cut down the farming time of the large monster in each camp. She really isn't mana tight and I'd rather buy 2 potions to make up for the health regen loss from Spirit stone. Also, if I grab Madred's at level 4 it means I'll have 25 extra armour for me to gank lanes/survive a counter gank.
Her w, is a madreds. And it is very nice not to have a random proc to deal with, when giving blue to mid etc. The mana regenration will allow you to e without care. I've used both and would say the spirit stone was greatly better. And it turns into 2 items that suit her strongly, as opposed the just madred or wriggles.
On March 01 2013 14:59 divinesage wrote: I don't like the Vi jungle nerfs.
What do you guys think if Vi maxes R>W>Q>E first instead of R>E>Q>W?
My train of thought is since my playstyle of Vi's probably gonna get Warmog's first, W becomes stronger than E early on. Although the long cooldown time on a level 1 E might be a problem.
EDIT: Alternatively what do you guys think about maxing W first then levelling both Q and E at the same time?
I always went Q>W>E.
Mallet/max Q makes you near impossible to slip away from even without your ult. I think I read somebody say that charged Q, while maxing it, ends up dealing more damage than max E when starting a camp.
I don't mind the changes. I mean, obviously it's a nerf, to her burst in general, but I like that they didn't randomly reduced her later damage potential and she deserves it anyway.
W is well-targeted imo, as it reduces the early burst potential of a "damage Vi" maxing Q and E first and building AD, and her ability to rush early drakes with minimal help, while not impacting her later game or players gunning for dps who max W faster. I'm just a bit annoyed that she actually won't kill little monsters with 3 hits anymore, makes keeping W up harder and a solitary clear longer to take off at level 1. She should especially take more damage on red buff, even after a smiteless leash on blue.
Overall a charged Q and E's AoE damage is enough to destroy most of a camp's health, so combined with her W %damage and AS buff she didn't need anything more than machete (and even then, mostly early) to tear through the jungle. I'd only want madred's or wriggle's to rush drakes (and now you'll certainly need it), while a spirit stone allows you to be more liberal in your mana usage (especially if you max E) while paving the way for a good tanky item and a good damage item. BotRK is definitely a viable option on lane Vi now, the synergy with W is huge.
EU LCS is going on atm so I'm "busy", but once it's done (say 9-10 hours from now) I'll update the OP and add that little section about boots and machete items we talked about last time. (And I'll have to actually play her some to update the descriptions. I hope she's not going to keep being permabanned, dudes all ban her letting Xin open. >>)
Edit: 'k ESL sucks so I'm running customs to test her first clear. Before:
AS/AD WEQ, E max: 4:06, 560 HP no pots WEQ, Q max: 4:05, 580 HP no pots
Q max gave me 4:18 and... 430 HP. I actually didn't take that much more damage from red, but Wolves and Blue are definitely a lot slower (I could come back to wolves after wraiths 5s in advance pre-patch, now they actually respawn before I get there).
AD/AD WEQ, E max: 4:09, 690 HP no pots WEQ, Q max: 4:09, 630 HP no pots (I took a bit more damage at wraiths because of positioning, should be 20-30 HP higher)
4:18, 470 HP, I dropped pretty low and burnt my potions even faster.
I really don't build madreds anymore, because i don't like wriggles. As long as you don't have a champ that only aas the jungle, i value the mana reg higher for mostly anything. And Vi has (had?) such a fast clearing speed when using abilities, that i never even considered it on her. That said, i am really bad at itemisation and i might just be wrong.
I tend to leave her with just madred's, she doesn't really need lantern. I'd prefer that extra money go directly to health. That being said I see her becoming more of a tanky jungler now, max W last and go full health?
On March 02 2013 01:02 divinesage wrote: I tend to leave her with just madred's, she doesn't really need lantern. I'd prefer that extra money go directly to health. That being said I see her becoming more of a tanky jungler now, max W last and go full health?
I think them nerfing early levels of W only gives more incentive to max it second.
Updated the thread. I wasn't sure how to put BotRK in a laning Vi build as the current one seems solid but doesn't get too much room to put the BotRK in a typical timing.
More thoughts about skill order : - W's damage increase between level 1 and level 5 goes from 66% to 150%, making it much more desirable to level up. The more levels you put into it, the closer you are to its pre-nerf power, so the less desirable it is to keep leveling it up. - Q is still desirable for clearing speed and mobility, as it gains damage and cd reduction, which more than halves its level 1 cd. - E is used almost solely for the auto reset (and sniping), so the cd reductionis the significant part, and it's weaker than Q here while not benefiting as much damage-wise.
Q and W gain much, much more from being leveled, so a Q>W>E or Q > 3 points in W > E > finish W skill order seems way better in the jungle. In lane you still need some reduction on E because you can't harass/trade with Q or force W procs easily, so... 3-4 levels in E > Q > W > finish E or something along those lines?
If some of you lane Vi don't hesitate to drop experiences, impressions or just straight up knowledge about match-ups, playstyle and builds, as this part is still as speculative as ever.
On March 03 2013 07:20 Alaric wrote: Updated the thread. I wasn't sure how to put BotRK in a laning Vi build as the current one seems solid but doesn't get too much room to put the BotRK in a typical timing.
More thoughts about skill order : - W's damage increase between level 1 and level 5 goes from 66% to 150%, making it much more desirable to level up. The more levels you put into it, the closer you are to its pre-nerf power, so the less desirable it is to keep leveling it up. - Q is still desirable for clearing speed and mobility, as it gains damage and cd reduction, which more than halves its level 1 cd. - E is used almost solely for the auto reset (and sniping), so the cd reductionis the significant part, and it's weaker than Q here while not benefiting as much damage-wise.
Q and W gain much, much more from being leveled, so a Q>W>E or Q > 3 points in W > E > finish W skill order seems way better in the jungle. In lane you still need some reduction on E because you can't harass/trade with Q or force W procs easily, so... 3-4 levels in E > Q > W > finish E or something along those lines?
If some of you lane Vi don't hesitate to drop experiences, impressions or just straight up knowledge about match-ups, playstyle and builds, as this part is still as speculative as ever.
I have been experimenting with lane vi since she came out. And from what I deduced so far - is that in certain matchups you will have to max Q while in others, E. Like vs Renekton I liked E first better. Against Kayle/Akali I like Q better (but keep in mind that in maxing Q first - if you miss a Q, you gonna lose the trade hard). But if you wanna play safer - E is still the best imo. And rushing botrk is a viable option but, I would advise against it - as during that phase you are better off getting Arpen or something. But I will try it out a bit more and see how it goes.
Oh and Keep in mind that Vi isn't nearly as strong in lane as she is in da jangle. So be prepared to be defensive if you lose an exchange - and if you are in an unwinnable lane you will just have to wait till 6 and make sure to land max range Q to initiate.
BotRK is so silly for soloing drake wtf. And the damage, both dps and burst, when ganking is... yeah, wtf. I'll play some more games trying a spirit stone + boots -> BotRK -> randuin's build, but if it's viable then it'll probably become the best damage and tanky jungle build until BotRK gets fixed. Randuin's gives HP to survive burst along with your shield, active and passive to stick to targets despite not having a phage-item, and if you slap a Tabi on top of it you'll laugh off the efforts of people rushing BotRK themselves hoping to crush you.
So what are people building these days? I went on a long honeymoon with J4 and now that I'm back to my jungle mistress I feel out of place. The phage>Stinger>FM core feels super clunky. =[
People don't build her 'cause she's permabanned. Apart from that, I see the bruta/Lizard spirit core much more often.
I tried rushing BotRK, before and after the hotfix, but it feels like it doesn't give as much burst as the usual damage core, while the increase in dps compared to the tanky core isn't good enough to offset how squishy it leaves you, especially after the hotfix and how much gold you are from building survivability in the midgame. I went back to the tanky core and didn't feel it was clunky, but maybe that's because it clicks much better with my playstyle.
On March 06 2013 08:27 Alaric wrote: People don't build her 'cause she's permabanned. Apart from that, I see the bruta/Lizard spirit core much more often.
I tried rushing BotRK, before and after the hotfix, but it feels like it doesn't give as much burst as the usual damage core, while the increase in dps compared to the tanky core isn't good enough to offset how squishy it leaves you, especially after the hotfix and how much gold you are from building survivability in the midgame. I went back to the tanky core and didn't feel it was clunky, but maybe that's because it clicks much better with my playstyle.
At my little section of silver, she's rarely banned. I can never decide when to get boots2, often get stuck with ruby/sword, or in that horrible gap between stinger and giant's belt that takes forever.
I personally complete Tabi before Phage, my first back is usually Tabi+ either Ruby or Sword though I'm playing around with inserting a Spirit Stone more or less early in the build (and I'll admit it, it makes spamming so much easier, I wouldn't have thought from only 7 mp5). I really feel a surge of power when buying Stinger after Phage (if I manage to get a kill or a drake soon after I complete Phage I can usually get the Stinger in one go), but there's usually a time where I'll feel more or less squishy, depending on how early I've managed to reach Stinger (the earlier, then the earlier I should get Belt too and thus the amount of time I'll be waiting on it while enemy solo lanes may reach their peak levels/complete a big item will be shorter). I guess you could say it's momentum-dependant. I have skipped Stinger entirely in games where I would desperately need more tankiness earlier (most notably games against double AP because of the burst potential and you can't really rush Tabi and call it a day) and I assume I would run into similar situations if I was to fall behind early in the jungle (never happened so far).
On the other hand (I'm silver I in ranked and get 1-2 Gold players, rest Silver or not playing ranked, in my normal draft teams on average, fwiw regarding bans), I'm still at a pretty low level, and the laning phase definitely tends to last longer than in high level or competitive games. I'm more used to it and my style came to revolve around that average length out of habit, but faster-paced, more aggressive games could reveal timing issues in such a core build that I haven't been faced with. I was thinking Monte (who was the one to come up with the Stinger idea) could give input on it from a different perspective, but apparently he's in Silver I too (no idea how Silver I compares between EUW and NA though), I thought it was higher than that.
On March 28 2013 06:29 IamPryda wrote: If you wanted to go more gank happy would u get phage in place of giants belt to stick better?
If you wanted to be more ganky i would get the fast bruta, phage is in a pretty inefficient spot right now, the bruta damage will make for much scarier ganks. Hoping for a 25% proc in a gank is really chancy when often you only get 2-3 autos and if you land all that they should be dead and the 30% slow is irrelevant. Use that ad scaling and just get the bruta, speeds jungle and makes her more mobile with the cdr as well.
On March 28 2013 06:29 IamPryda wrote: If you wanted to go more gank happy would u get phage in place of giants belt to stick better?
With the S3 nerfs to Phage, it puts you in a place where you're behind on stats for even cost, not all that tanky, not all that burst, and hoping for a proc. Phage is all around meh meh meh right now.
Been getting Locket over Phage these days. 10% CDR on Kindlegem early on is pretty useful in many situations. Also, a Long Sword + Kindlegem is cheaper than a Phage so you can throw in 2 wards and a potion as well.
On March 29 2013 04:00 divinesage wrote: Been getting Locket over Phage these days. 10% CDR on Kindlegem early on is pretty useful in many situations. Also, a Long Sword + Kindlegem is cheaper than a Phage so you can throw in 2 wards and a potion as well.
What's your average end game items look like with locket? Is zephyr/ locket a good combo
2 hits (pretty easy if you hit a Q, you'll get a hit -> E follow-up) is around 43% chances to proc phage. It's still kinda low, and you can use red buff too and plan around ganking more heavily while it's up. I haven't played Vi for awhile, I wonder how Zephyr goes now, it's smoother to build, but it's not like it's an item that you whould want to rush early on anyway, as Tenacity is the only defensive stat it sports, and the damage is better as dps than as burst, and when building Vi for dps you should aim at getting tanky first I believe.
On March 29 2013 04:00 divinesage wrote: Been getting Locket over Phage these days. 10% CDR on Kindlegem early on is pretty useful in many situations. Also, a Long Sword + Kindlegem is cheaper than a Phage so you can throw in 2 wards and a potion as well.
What's your average end game items look like with locket? Is zephyr/ locket a good combo
I think Zephyr seems a little too expensive for its utility on Vi, getting BotRK is more cost efficient. That being said I like to end up tanky late game so its usually Warmogs, Lizard/Golem, Locket, Cleaver, Bulwark/Randuins. It's gonna be near impossible to end up with those items anyway.
I think if you'd like to go more aggressive you can switch out the Bulwark/Randuins for a Tri Force or BotRK.
Ending up with a Giant's Belt, Locket, Lizard and Brutalizer usually gives you the utility needed for most games, my games usually end around this point.
I have been going ninja boots with vi vs some ad compositions and find That zephyr is pretty good place to get that tenacity while being a pretty good item overall.
The build I've been really enjoying so far (jungle) has been Spirit stone -> boots -> bruta -> Spirit of the Golem -> Whatever tanking items I need(aegis usually) or finish BC
I used to toy with getting tankier before grabbing the bruta (or even no damage items at all) but I find early on, the burst damage just a brutalizer provides usually lets you pose enough of a threat in ganks that fighting you is not an option. I go golem spirit because you really need some tankiness after the brutalizer and I usually end up with a kindle gem anyway. The tenacity it provides also lets you go ninja tabi which I feel scales much better defensively (compared to mercs) into the mid/late game. An alternate choice is mobility boots but I rarely get them as they don't feel quite as powerful as on other junglers.
The other build I've been trying out has been Spirit stone -> boots -> Lizard Spirit -> Some combo of Locket/Randuins/mercs This one is pretty similar to the first since you end up with spiritstone/boots/2xlongsword and it's basically a choice between brutalizer and lizard as your damage item. Lizard hits a bit harder imo but you're forced into mercs for the tenacity. I guess it's not really a problem if you don't value tenacity but I find even with your ult getting you through the initial cluster of CC, the moment you dive onto an important target you just get cc'd down. I've considered getting Zephyr afterwards but going Lizard spirit+ Zephyr leaves you too flimsy to really live long enough to wreak havoc. Plus, I personally feel that attack speed and movement speed are both cost inefficient stats on Vi compared to flat damage and defensive stats.
I generally find that Tenacity is pretty overrated, especially on junglers that have really good burst but their sustain in teamfights is quite suspect (in Vi's case, it is because of her inability to stick to targets well). When you compare Brutalizer vs. Lizard Elder, Lizard gives you 20 more AD and the true dmg passive, while brutalizer gives you 10 more armor pen, which is a clear (although not a very large) advantage to Lizard.
The thing is, if you choose to build Brutalizer+Ancient Golem, you will be stronger than Lizard Elder+Locket for the 550 gold* that Ancient Golem is finished and Locket is not, but you will be weaker for the 1300 gold until Ancient Golem is finished. We have discussed whether Locket or Golem is better in the general discussion, and while in this case Locket is more of an investment**, the increased offensive strength (and farming speed) from Lizard and the questionable utility of Tenacity given your already suspect sustained damage in larger fights still makes Locket the better choice.
Zephyr is clearly a terrible choice, it just makes no sense I agree. As a follow-up to Lizard Elder+Locket I usually go Bulwark and Randuins, if the enemy has excessive amount of magic dmg I might go Hexdrinker or just Negatron Cloak (if the enemy team has that much magic damage, your team will hopefully get double Bulwark in time). After combination of these items Brutalizer->Black Cleaver is my offensive item of choice, it will put you at just about 40% CDR, which is nice.
*using gold as a measurement of time here **note that the extra 550 gold you pay is spent on extra armor at just about Chain Vest cost efficiency
On May 26 2013 23:59 Scip wrote: I generally find that Tenacity is pretty overrated, especially on junglers that have really good burst but their sustain in teamfights is quite suspect (in Vi's case, it is because of her inability to stick to targets well). When you compare Brutalizer vs. Lizard Elder, Lizard gives you 20 more AD and the true dmg passive, while brutalizer gives you 10 more armor pen, which is a clear (although not a very large) advantage to Lizard.
The thing is, if you choose to build Brutalizer+Ancient Golem, you will be stronger than Lizard Elder+Locket for the 550 gold* that Ancient Golem is finished and Locket is not, but you will be weaker for the 1300 gold until Ancient Golem is finished. We have discussed whether Locket or Golem is better in the general discussion, and while in this case Locket is more of an investment**, the increased offensive strength (and farming speed) from Lizard and the questionable utility of Tenacity given your already suspect sustained damage in larger fights still makes Locket the better choice.
Zephyr is clearly a terrible choice, it just makes no sense I agree. As a follow-up to Lizard Elder+Locket I usually go Bulwark and Randuins, if the enemy has excessive amount of magic dmg I might go Hexdrinker or just Negatron Cloak (if the enemy team has that much magic damage, your team will hopefully get double Bulwark in time). After combination of these items Brutalizer->Black Cleaver is my offensive item of choice, it will put you at just about 40% CDR, which is nice.
*using gold as a measurement of time here **note that the extra 550 gold you pay is spent on extra armor at just about Chain Vest cost efficiency
Yea you're right, Lizard Elder+Locket seems a lot stronger than Bruta+Golem. One thing to keep in mind though is that Lizard Elder is a dead end Item while Brutalizer can be upgraded to BC which I feel could really help out in the later stages of the game. Also, the value of Locket decreases if your support ends up getting it since you can't stack the actives for 8 seconds.
Also, any particular reason for 21/9/0? I run 19/10/1 because I feel the crit masteries are completely useless and instead put a point each into summoner's resolve and summoner's insight for smite/flash respectively.
As for 21/9/0, I just take 2% attack speed in order to be able to get the Executioner mastery, that+the attack speed is worth more than 3.5 armor (I use ghost). As for Locket getting less useful as your teammates get one too, that is kinda true, but at lvl 13 that is still 90hp aura for all of your teammates (aura that doesn't need to be sustained; you can be the first person to die and it's fine). While it is true that Brutalizer+Golem is more slot efficient, that shouldn't be a concern, since your most likely next 2 items (Bulwark+Randuins) are extremely expensive and it is quite rare that you get to finish both of them before the game is over.
On May 27 2013 12:18 Scip wrote: As for 21/9/0, I just take 2% attack speed in order to be able to get the Executioner mastery, that+the attack speed is worth more than 3.5 armor (I use ghost). As for Locket getting less useful as your teammates get one too, that is kinda true, but at lvl 13 that is still 90hp aura for all of your teammates (aura that doesn't need to be sustained; you can be the first person to die and it's fine). While it is true that Brutalizer+Golem is more slot efficient, that shouldn't be a concern, since your most likely next 2 items (Bulwark+Randuins) are extremely expensive and it is quite rare that you get to finish both of them before the game is over.
75% of the time I build the same way as Scip, with 21/9 Locket/Lizard but I always feel sad when I compare to how broken it was on Vi prenerf and when locket/lizard were really broken.
Otherwise I go full tank 9/21 Golems -> tabi -> aegis/bulwark -> randuins when people picking after me make it clear that I'm going to be the only initiation. The playstyle then is more tricky as you usually have to go back to peel for the adc after disrupting the enemy with Vault breaker and ulti as you can't really kill squishy as well as the other build. I'm still always amazed at how tanky she is in this version, the passive shield is pretty sick when you have a basillion hp/armor and the armor shred is always nice when you're playing bodyguards for your carry. I don't ever build phage/mallet on her, but it's an item I rarely get anyways unless I'm fed to the point getting that or something else won't really matter.
I still feel Vi is strong and I like her versatility but she is definitely weaker early game so I tend to farm more than I used to pre-nerf. I also avoid counter jungling if it means there is a high probability I have to fight the enemy jungler (she really was broken when you could straight up kill those leesins). Clearing your own jungle and assisting lanes is pretty efficient until 6 thanks to Vi's ability to move through the jungle, unfortunately she isn't that mobile that you can fight and escape from their jungle until she gets Q level'd up.
As for skill order I'm still unsure of how to skill her. If the earlygame is peaceful I put 3 points in W then max Q. Otherwise I straight up go Q->E->W.
Here, I just rewrote a bunch of the guide, cleaning up infos (there was some false tips, notably regarding E's interaction with Denting Blows), totally revamping the jungling items and playstyle sections, and generally slapping a bunch of spoiler tags everywhere so your eyes don't bleed as much when you read it.
I didn't rewrite the laning part though because I still haven't played her there and it's already taken quite long, so I don't feel like using even more time for what would only be speculation from a Silver scrub. As such, the laning part of the guide is more obsolete than ever and still inaccurate and tentative at best. Which means that if you've got something to say about it, go ahead, I'll be more than happy to put some real content in there.
There are two main approaches to jungling Vi: the tanky one, and the damage one. The tanky one plays for the dps on Denting Blows and being able to initiate, with a smoother powercurve, while the damage one focuses on burst, crushing people in early skirmishes and snowballing the game, with a steeper transition into the lategame.
AD makes you lose a bit less HP than AS if you don't get decent help at your first camps, but otherwise the difference in clearing isn't significant. I prefer AS as my builds rely on W for my damage.
Seals: Armour (recommended), scaling HP. Glyphs: scaling MR (recommended), flat MR, CDR (if you value it) Quints: AD (recommended, fastest and more damage on ganks), MS Make sure to have at least AD Marks and/or Quints, as they are essential to maintaining high HP during her clears (no AS Marks + MS Quints).
Masteries: I personally use 9-21-0 (you can swap out points in Relentless to max out Hardiness and take Defender too), but you can also run 21-9-0 (you can swap Sorcery out but CDR never hurts Vi), 21-0-9 and even 9-0-21 (Expanded Mind, Biscuiteer and Explorer can be swapped for Greed/Wealth, you can trade Alacrity for Sorcery if you want the early 10% CDR too) or mixed stuff if you so wishes. Vi's kit is that good for jungling.
Summoner spells: Smite is obvious since you're jungling, and I favour Flash. While you have a wall-jumping ability in Vault Breaker (and Assault and Battery in some way), Flash gives you added safety, and also allows you to cover an terrifying amount of ground when combined with Vault Breaker (either during the charge or the dash), and even possibly with Assault and Battery (be mindful not to initiate that way however as your team won't be able to follow you!).
Skill order: Start with either W or E, W should give you a faster clear, however if you get enough help from your team E lets you trigger your passive, taking even less damage (especially true if your starting buff is the harder hitting Red one). WEQ into R>Q>W>E or R>E>Q>W + Show Spoiler [Reasoning] +
You want to level Q quickly because the CDR on it is so good, and important for your mobility. Q first clears for less mana (if you charge Q for every camp, E first needs one more E to deal as much damage), sports better chasing/diving power by virtue of allowing you a second Q during ganks, and makes your invades/attempts at bypassing wards* safer by virtue of having it back up for escaping sooner. E first makes you more flexible for ganking, invading and skirmishing, as you're more likely to have 2 charges, and thus your full burst, available at all times. I don't really like it as i believe with proper planning you can always have 2 charges when you need them even when maxing Q.
When building tanky, maxing W second enhances your damage despite you skimping on AD. If you feel that the 14s base reload time is too long by the time fights start drawing out (around level 13-14 where you finish maxing W), don't hesitate to try R>Q>E>W instead and stick with what compliments your style most. I prefer to max W early however, because of how good it is for your dps and the 150% base damage increase between levels 1 and 5. * Refer to the Wall-jumping section.
Routes: Any, really. You will need more help to keep decent HP if you start Wraiths or Golems followed by Red Buff, but her kit and base stats are strong enough to make Vi very flexible.
Items: Start with Machete + 5 Health potions, you can take less pots for a ward (easier if you took Wealth in masteries) but you'll need a big leash if you want to retain full health during your whole clear. What to do with your Machete?+ Show Spoiler +
For clearing purposes, Vi doesn't need to upgrade Machete at all. Thanks to her high ability damage and dps from Denting Blows she doesn't get much mileage out of Madred's Razor or Wriggle's Lantern apart from sheer objective control: unless you plan on invading enemy buffs or taking an early dragon, you shouldn't need them at all. While not providing any combat stats to abuse her early strength, Spirit Stone provides you with welcome mana regeneration, letting you spam your abilities more often to clear more easily. Considering how fast she can burn through her pool this can support a more aggressive playstyle thanks to the added casts. What's more, it can be upgraded into a tanky item as well as a damage one, depending on your goals.
Even when building damage, Vi is a melee bruiser and as such needs tankiness, so despite the benefits to Denting Blows you shouldn't look at Berserker's Greaves, but rather Ninja Tabi and Mercury Treads depending on the enemy line-up and game flow (Tabi are cheaper and reduce monster and minion damage so they can allow a more aggressive and gank-heavy start before lanes get Boots2). If you want/need mobility, Swiftness Boots cost as much as Boots of Mobility, while providing better in-combat MS and reducing slows, one of Vi's banes. This slow reduction applies on the 15% slow from Vault Breaker, giving Swiftness Vi 364 MS while charging, compared to 336 using Boots2. Considering her high base MS, BoM will put her above the soft MS cap when out-of-combat, before any other MS buffs.
Starting Ninja Tabi allows you to take reduced damage from jungle monsters which, combined with your passive and your clear speed, lets you breeze through the jungle at full health. The (super early) movespeed then allows you to stick to your targets easily for more Denting Blows procs, a goal on which Phage compounds with its Icy passive. Stinger is a very cheap source of AS that also happens to give you CDR, when you complete it you'll notice both a great improvement in your already stellar clear speed and even stronger duelling power. It gives a nice power spike early on and can be upgraded to Zephyr later (which if why we can rush Tabi even if the enemy team has cc).
Combined with a Q first skill order this build makes you tanky (your passive+phage grant you a HP buffer against magical damage dealers) while giving you great mobility to move around, bully the enemy jungler and gank and punish stragglers. However it focuses on physical EHP, making it possibly insufficient against double AP comps or magically oriented junglers like Maokai or Amumu. In such cases, a core can be Phage + 2x Null Magic Mantle + Recurve Bow. It gives much more MR to synergise with Blast Shield and the HP from Phage against magic damage, and AS without skewing the transitions too much (since we're poised to build Wit's End earlier against such a composition anyway). Skipping Stinger also delays a possible Zephyr even further, making turning the second NMM into Mercury Treads another possibility for Tenacity.
I let it at Boots of Speed so both cores have roughly the same price, it's going to be Mercury Treads most of the time to deal with cc, but you can refer to the Boots section higher up for other possibilities. Mobis/Swifties go well with a E first skill order, compensating for the longer Q cooldown that forces you to save it, and giving you mobility to brawl around every time you have your 2 charges to expend in somebody's face. The Brutalizer is a very cost-efficient ArPen+AD+CDR item in a neat cheap package, and improves your burst against while synergising well with Denting Blows' armour reduction for the follow-up dps. It makes Vi's ganks even more potent, so make sure to hit those Qs! Spirit of the Lizard Elder is another dream item for Vi as far as damage is concerned: not only does Butcher cover all your needs in terms of dragon/buff jacking power and the 50 AD adds nice damage to Q and W, but your whole kit applies Incinerate to all targets hit: wanna farm a wave? E it, bam, additional true damage to every minion! During teamfights this incidental damage will add up, especially if you max E first as you'll have charges coming up mid-fight to spread some AoE true damage love around. The mp5 from Spirit Stone also makes it easier for you to breeze through the jungle by spamming E.
Note that this core will give you 20% CDR without even trying, by buying primarily damage items. This will greatly improve your mobility through Q (especially if you didn't level it first) while making it more easier to get a 3rd E in skirmishes and ganks.
Complete Mallet asap as the combination of Icy and 400+ additional HP takes care of both your sticking problems and tankiness. Let your Vault Breaker and Denting Blows base damage take care of the killing for you along with that Stinger/Recurve Bow, and just focus on being able to punch people longer. People should be rightfully afraid of maxed Denting Blows procs during the midgame where they can't kill you fast enough. When playing tanky, you are able to initiate with Assault and Battery in their backline and survive. You'll also probably have to stay there for awhile (too many people in the way for you to Q back to your own carries) so additional tankiness can't be bad.
I tend to prefer Randuin's to Locket because with your passive you have enough HP now to withstand magical burst, and Randuin's passive takes care of the enemy autoattackers. Plus, you'll be in the middle of the enemy team, so you'll be more likely to hit 5-foes Randuin's than 5-teammates Lockets. Don't overlook Locket of the Iron Solari nevertheless, as it has crazy-good gold efficiency, CDR to help your mobility and reload E faster, so if you want to hit an earlier timing or fell behind it is an excellent way to use your gold. Plus, shields on shields. Against a heavily magical damage-oriented comp, you may prefer Locket, especially if you built Mercs and skipped Stinger as it's a much cheaper than Randuin's for a bit of armour+HP and a shield. These teams usually hit their peak during the midgame, as such hitting an earlier timing with a cheaper item can allow you to combat that, while the active from Randuin's is less of an asset (most AP champs being ranged or riddled with mobility spells to bypass the slow). You will, however, rely significantly more on HP than armour during the lategame unless you manage to farm a lot, which can hamper your ability to dive once the enemy AD carry completes his items.
You want to be able to tank stuff now that you've had your fun blowing up squishies for 10 minutes until they decided to group up. Warmogs is pretty good for that, giving a good layer on HP, some more for your shield, and a bit of regen that could always help you during these few seconds you spend on the edges of the fight waiting for your cooldowns to come back up. You're still pretty light on resistances, though.
The Black Cleaver is a good way to make your transition toward the lategame, as it gives you some HP and a nice passive to apply in AoE (think Lizard Spirit) so once you can't blow up people anymore, you'll still help the rest of your team, and particularly your AD carry, finish them off. Plus between that and Denting Blows, it's really hard to protect oneself from your %HP damage and if somebody on your team has a Last Whisper then you can turn the beefiest of tanks into a squishy for them. A more "selfish" alternative, Blade of the Ruined King also allows you to transition toward the lategame through lifesteal for tankyness and the %currentHP damage to allow you to take on targets that you can't burst down [anymore]. The active gives you burst, healing and the excellent stickiness of a %MS theft. It also sports the best single-item synergy with Denting Blows (see the "Laning Vi" item section for more details). In short, BC is more oriented toward burst (both inflicting it and surviving it) into team utility and dealing with armour stacking, while BotRK is better for long-term sustain (both healing and dps), personal strength (duelling) and dealing with health stacking.
Zephyr is an excellent purchase, granting 20 AD, 10% AS, 10% MS and Tenacity for only 1600 gold... but there is a distinct lack of defensive stats in here. So while you should work on it as soon as you can reasonably afford, this means you have first to make sure you can survive initiating. Wit's End is another great AS source, while giving you MR to bolster your tankiness. Zephyr+Wit's+AS marks+level 5 Denting Blows+Alacrity mastery is a whopping 1.95 AS at level 18, ready to drop %HP damage on people at an alarming rate, so while it is a lot of gold from your core build, once you feel that you're tanky enough for your teamcomp go for it. You can opt for more tankiness through Warmog's Armour, or if fighting magical %HP shredding champions like Elise, Evelyn or some Liandry user get a Bulwark. It's never wrong to have, and if your top or support isn't building it then be the team player.
Finally, while this build relies on AS for personal gains and duelling power don't forget that you have friendly damage dealers too, so another way to take one for the team if you're already tanky enough is to build The Black Cleaver so by virtue of staying alive you and your Denting Blows help your team fight tanks stacking resistances. It's a good peeling item. If, however, you don't need to peel that much or the enemy team is low on armour for a BC to bring much to yours, BotRK is the ultimate item to make you a juggernaut, scaling lifesteal with your resistances and passive's shield, shredding some more HP through its passive and giving you yet another way to catch/stick to someone/escape with its active.
Since you're already conduced to spacing out your Es with the way the auto-attack reset and your passive work, a Sheen can do wonders for both your burst and your dps. On top of that both Icy from Triforce and Spellblade from Gauntlet increase your sticking power. Triforce is the full-on offensive option, with Zeal increasing your mobility and dps and Phage giving you AD, while Gauntlet is the more defensive option, giving armour to scale with the HP from Warmog's, and some CDR to increase your mobility and keep E available to trigger your passive. Maw of Malmortius is a more damage/burst oriented version of Wit's as your MR item, as it gives AD rather than AS, and less MR but a magic damage shield to survive those big bursts that can be aimed at you when you dive a squishy. The Bloodthirster is the ultimate source of damage, allowing you to 100-0 most champs in the midgame even without your ult, and adding almost 3% of targets' max HP damage to Denting Blows by itself. This is the stuff that allows you to instantly close out games; it is however a pricey purchase, so don't buy this unless you get ridiculously fed early on (it should then replace Spirit of the Lizard Elder, starting with say BF Sword instead of Pickaxe). Guardian Angel can be very good for "this one teamfight" that you have coming at you, and you really want to dive and kill that enemy carry, but all his team is protecting him... oh well, one only lives once. The resistances compliment the HP from Warmog's better than buying even more HP, and the passive can let you go deep for your target, die and then come back to clean house, something Vi's pretty good at, especially with your passive to make it harder to burst you down as you revive.
Vi has extremely safe and fast jungle clears, if a bit mana-hungry if you spam spells on every camp—seeing as it makes you pretty much instaclear them, abuse the regen from blue buff to the fullest whenever you have it. You can use Q to start camps from across a wall, further enhancing your mobility. Since Q tends to bunch up minions and monsters towards the end point, it's useful for setting up your Es, especially wraiths (you can make it a lot easier to hit the whole camp by entering through the wall behind the big wraith, then using E on him).
When invading, try not to use Q if you can, so you retain your wall-jumping ability without having to burn Flash if you get noticed. Also remember that a minimal charge Q won't get you through walls, and that you can be interrupted while you're charging it.
Hitting Vault Breaker is a vital part of ganking as Vi, because of the cc aspect (the bump), the Denting Blows stack applied, and the burst damage. You don't want to start charging too soon because you may have to cancel it before the opportunity presents itself, or use it to gap closer without actually reaching your opponent. Initiating with Vault Breaker is risky because despite the surprise factor you're still pretty slow and thus avoidable. Having a laner with cc, even a slow, to set you up is a plus, letting you walk up to the opponent, start hitting them, and using Vault Breaker to catch up once they flash or use an escape move (it pushes minions away so they won't block you like they would Amumu's or Lee Sin's Q). For the same reasons avoid initiating with Assault and Battery if you can: being able to use it after the opponent flashes so you catch up and buy time for your laner with the suppression is a big plus too. Vi's front-loaded burst is large but don't blow all your E charges mindlessly as triggering Denting Blows one more time has even more impact.
When counter-ganking or getting counterganked, hitting both opponents with your ult, Q or E is very important as it raises your chances of success in case you need to switch targets, and it's easier to do in a 2v2 than during a full-on teamfight. You can play around your passive's timer if the fight drags out.
Wall-jumping: One of the benefits of maxing Q is a shorter cooldown that allows you to use it to dash over a wall and have it ready to gank in the next 10 seconds. You can avoid riverside bush/tribrush wards, wards at your wraiths/in the J brush, or escape the enemy collapsing on you near their buff by dashing over the dragon's or baron's pit (depending on your side), but the length of Vault Breaker's charge allows some other nifty tricks. + Show Spoiler +
Vault Breaker's max range is barely 45 less range Jarvan's EQ combo, allowing you to move between the river bush and near top's (blue side) or bot's (purple side) tribrush without being seen by wards in the river. You can use this when purple side to gank their pushing bottom lane, or to flank the purple bot tower unsuspected if they warded the drake, but not the river bush.
If you don't like wasting time, you can save a seconds and look cool by charging Vault Breaker outside of the wolf camp, and dash through the wall while hitting the wolves at the same time.
When chasing somebody all the way to blue top's/purple's bot inner tower, you can cross the large wall between the alley and the tower with a fully charged Vault Breaker. It's doable with other abilities (like Flash) but it can be hard to pull off, while Vault Breaker has the range to do it 100% reliably.
Note that the picture shows where you land when touching the wall and charging fully, so you'll still probably need Flash or your ult to catch your almost dead prey, as you're likely to be the one tanking the tower when you do this.
(Edit: and it turns out I more-or-less included what Scip said in the earlier posts, without re-reading any of them before starting. I'll take that as a "your analysis/experience from Silver wasn't so shit" good omen.)
Thoughts on AS marks and ArPen quints? Got the idea from what TOO generally runs on Nocturne. AS triggers W more often and the quints max out pen for the jungle/provide some of the early burst she lost(?) Bit lazy to run the math atm.
AS/ArPen: 3:50, around 680 HP left, no pots AS/AD: 3:45, around 780 HP left, no pots
So AD slightly faster (and more HP because it kills the little mobs faster due to the ArPen wasted, you have 13 instead of 5). ArPen can still be interesting if it deals significantly more damage to champs, which it should start by level 3-4 by virtue of base damage (level 1 charged Q on a level 1 champ with armour seals (~24 armour), AD outperforms post-mitigation by less than 2 HP).
So what with the dorans starts in jungle, what do you think about vi? I just don't feel like it's worth it because I want more cd for my q as fast as possible, plus atspd is better for overall dueling, thoughts?
I wouldn't start it on Vi. I like spirit stone items on her, and I think she'd be too low after a doran's start to gank as effectively as others who do it. Her ganks tend to come down to surprising people by landing a fully charged Q, rather than the need for slightly more damage, as she tends to have enough damage anyway (Charged Q + auto + E + W passive pop -> all happens in impact, for 2 red burns. Pretty high for level 3!)
On July 30 2013 23:07 Wetty wrote: I wouldn't start it on Vi. I like spirit stone items on her, and I think she'd be too low after a doran's start to gank as effectively as others who do it. Her ganks tend to come down to surprising people by landing a fully charged Q, rather than the need for slightly more damage, as she tends to have enough damage anyway (Charged Q + auto + E + W passive pop -> all happens in impact, for 2 red burns. Pretty high for level 3!)
The intention is to get smiteless on buff1 and then have buff2 being the only camp you hit before ganking. Between the high damage and shield, she doesn't get too low from buff2.
On September 04 2013 19:12 Alaric wrote: Yeah, Anivia has retarded base damage like that.
On September 04 2013 11:42 Slusher wrote: So back to the game, I think Vi with the new Triforce is incredibly powerful, but it's really hard to lane top with her unless you get an early gank or the other person just lets you farm for free. however playing Vi mid is pretty easy to farm vs non assassin mids, and she's really good at ganking side lanes when ult is available.
I need to explore it a bit more but I'm comfortable recommending people give it a try and see what they think.
Don't hesitate to report your findings in the Vi thread, since the "laning" part is still a parody of content, what with me only jungling her and all. But it'll let people discuss it, skill order, runes, etc. (I need to update the jungling itemisation too, haven't touched it since Locket removal but I'm still testing stuff and I'm not too comfortable with things such as damage-heavy builds.) Btw, ArPen marks and AD quints gives you more stats than AD marks and ArPen quints.
Vi was jungled by SKT as part of pick comps several times in OGN finals, including the blind pick game (it's been long enough that i figure the spoiler is okay). the build was cookie cutter jungler - ancient golem -> mobis -> locket.
i would not consider Vi mid optimal, as she performs best paired with a bursty mid that can follow her ult dives (SKT ran her with Ahri and Zed in the finals). she cannot 100-0 alone with reasonable gold, even with solo lane farm and a triforce, and Vi is underwhelming if she is unable to take a target out of the fight after her ult and burst rotation. this can be mitigated by putting the burst and dive on other champions, say Graves and Jarvan, but she is still best off in the jungle
Oh she's definitely better as a jungler than as a laner, and she's better at roaming mid and farming/dueling top (since you shouldn't ever hit Q against a ranged opponent in a lane without bushes), however just because she isn't as good doesn't mean she can't be played there, so might as well compile informations for people who want to run her in lane.
As for the jungle build, thing is soloQ and competitive are different environment, and the "cookie-cutter" build can simply be mentioned while giving other paths more detailed information. SoloQ is a bunch about snowballing too and Vi isn't the kind of jungler who can snowball easily off of golem->locket (esp. as Aegis is pretty expensive, needing the full 1950 gold before it reaps any benefit).
You are underestimating how good the new Triforce is, with the nature of how he E works you can get 3-4 "on demand" sheen hits off in a fight, or easily just 2 in a 1v1 which is all you will need. You tie that in with how much map pressure she can put on from mid and it's really strong.
Like I said in the original post I'm not really sure how strong yet, it probly isn't top tier and I mean like, why go through all the trouble of making one on Vi when you can just send Jax top and be one of the strongest champions in the game when triforce is finished. But it does seem to have a lot of potential to me, like I said the nature of E charges allows you to cast sheen hits close to on demand when combined with her other skills in a team fight. When you say "she needs a burst mage to do the damage for her" I just don't think you realise how much damage Triforce first Vi can put out, you are tunneling too hard on what you've seen on streams.
I'm still tuning it I'll report back if I change my mind and decide it sucks.
i been having the same problem im having on hec where i want to get spirit of lizard but golem so good. gettting stone->boots->kindlegem->spirit of lizard->brute->sv->bc what chu think?
On September 08 2013 03:29 ComaDose wrote: i been having the same problem im having on hec where i want to get spirit of lizard but golem so good. gettting stone->boots->kindlegem->spirit of lizard->brute->sv->bc what chu think?
stone and lizard on the same hero is pretty questionable, bordering the "very bad" area.
On September 08 2013 03:29 ComaDose wrote: i been having the same problem im having on hec where i want to get spirit of lizard but golem so good. gettting stone->boots->kindlegem->spirit of lizard->brute->sv->bc what chu think?
stone and lizard on the same hero is pretty questionable, bordering the "very bad" area.
actually having inbult %armour pen favours getting other stats since armour pen is a % damage increase on your total damage if you dont have a lot of AD its better to get more AD then get more %armourpen. Especially since Vi is a burst hero you often get your main burst from Q R and W, most of your damage occurs before BC stacks. So its not a prioity item but its not bad for sure.
in practice its a trade off for more defensive stats vs more % armourpen because its 1663 for BC upgraade and 1350 for hexdrinker and 1200 for phage, and 1600 gives you giants +2 cloths.
i get like elder lizard or spirit of the ancient golem and then shit like hexdrinker/brutalizer/ninja tabi/randuins maybe a spirit visage vs heavy ap teams. or a warmogs if i went lizard instead of randuins maybe
Yeah, really not a fan of BC, at least not until later in the game when fights drag out and shredding tanks even more makes your carries' lives easier if you need to peel.
I haven't played her enough yet to compare Golem and Lizard, I still think I'd prefer Lizard, at least in soloQ, because you're burst-oriented so having some early damage plays into that (especially considering how strong you are during skirmishes), and you want to be able to smash people yourself without being overly reliant on your laners to do the damage.
Atm I'm rushing Lizard -> boots1, then either Cowl or Warden's Mail depending on who's threatening on the enemy team, with boots2 somewhere between "right after Lizard" and "right between Cowl/Warden's and the other" depending on needs. I usually end up building Tabi and Cowl first, as it gives some HP compared to Warden's which, being full armour, would leave me pretty squishy against magic burst. Most of the time I finish SV before Randuin's because at this stage both are basically HP anyway, the build-up for SV is much smoother and getting 20% more CDR for my Q in teamfights (and ult, 48-63s cd ult is such a boon when the comps lead to long fights, you can easily pick somebody off before everyone has respawned or simply before their ults are back up and noone's looking to teamfight) is a nice side bonus.
Most games are decided (or at least one team has a big enough advantage to be considered favourite) before Lizard/Boots2/Randuin's/SV, which in itself is a pretty nice (and expensive) core coming out of the jungle, so I haven't given much thought to follow-up items. GA's nice for suicide initiations esp. if their late game damage potential is high, Locket is another armour/MR item and if you're short on slots (I always keep one for wards) it's completed faster than a GA. BC/LW are pretty good at increasing your damage, BC being tankier and helping your team too. Or you can just build something like BotRK or Hydra if you want sustain (BotRK better for chasing and dps, Hydra's active doesn't apply a W stack anyway).
On September 26 2013 10:40 ShaLLoW[baY] wrote: new triforce on vi wrecks everything (well, it wrecks on everyone who builds it but vi burst combo hits so hard)
I did it on an ARAM once. Not even malphite could step up to me.
In addition, where do you fit it in? I could see picking up phage post boots/golem, but I can't think of a god time to finish it until after tanking up.
I wasn't that wrong when I said she wasn't that good before because Lux mid, Zyra support, Kayle anywhere were in every game... But now that the meta is more mixed and have less hard CC every game, a farmed Vi can destroy a champ one by one. Q and E have 8seconds cooldown each without CDR so she can get her 10% health shield every 2 seconds lategame if she is not CCed.
Edit: As stated by the poster below me, I'm wrong!
On October 02 2013 01:40 Iblis wrote: I wasn't wrong when I said she wasn't that good before because Lux mid, Zyra support, Kayle anywhere were in every game... But now that the meta is more mixed and have less hard CC every game, a farmed Vi can destroy a champ one by one. Q and E have 8seconds cooldown each without CDR so she can get her 10% health shield every 2 seconds lategame if she is not CCed.
While triforce is rather nice, I do agree that it's very difficult to ever have the farm to get it while still remaining tanky. My go to damage item when I'm rolling is always pickaxe. It adds a solid oomph to your combo and is cheaper than any alternative like brutalizer.
On October 05 2013 01:09 ArchAngelSC wrote: You can easily get triforce by 15 mins jungling Vi
Yeah... GL with that.
Normal TF timing in lane is about 18-22 minutes iirc. So to get it by 15 in the jungle you have to outfarm all lanes. Its possible true, but only if you get massively fed or does heavy lane tax. Whats more is that in order for you to get TF, you have to forego any tanky items, so you WILL get blown up if you make a bad engagement.
its not as hard as you think, junglers tend to get lots of kills early back when everyone started boots in s2 I used to get trinity force on jungle taric at around 14-17 mins. was pretty beast, shoulda tried it in ranked more LOL
On October 05 2013 01:09 ArchAngelSC wrote: You can easily get triforce by 15 mins jungling Vi
Yeah... GL with that.
Normal TF timing in lane is about 18-22 minutes iirc. So to get it by 15 in the jungle you have to outfarm all lanes. Its possible true, but only if you get massively fed or does heavy lane tax. Whats more is that in order for you to get TF, you have to forego any tanky items, so you WILL get blown up if you make a bad engagement.
So don't make any bad engagements. Simple really.
And I never lane tax. People in plat are so moody about their cs and go afk if you take even just a few.
Don't be that soloQ hero who builds straight damage Vi. I'd even go so far as to say don't even build Triforce. If you build damage and haven't snowballed every lane by twenty minutes, your damage falls off at the same exact time you need to be tanky in teamfights and you become pretty useless.
In my experience so far the optimal build has been Golem/Lizard --> if Golem, then Brutalizer, if Lizard then straight into --> Sunfire --> SV --> Randuins, with boots built somewhere in there. A *little* damage early helps a lot with your clear and getting kills in ganks, but remember that people expect their jungle to be tanky, and you need to do so to ult their back line and cause havoc.
Though I suppose this doesn't pertain to S4 in particular....
On January 30 2014 17:46 drkcid wrote: The Iceborn Gauntlet worth it? Is Better Sunfire? I thought that Armor + 10% CDR+ slowdown passive is awesome for ganking.
Sunfire/randuins is almost exclusively better. Giants belt+armor item in general allows you to just ult somebody and not give a shit if they flashed underneath a turret so long as your laner is there to help finish them off. Also raw HP is better for surviving midgame where incoming damage is likely to be more mixed.
I like to go the elder lizard jungle item, giant belt, bruta if i can get away with it, then build banshee and omens. i dont like the sunfire cape much, i rather go real tank items or more AD.
VIs burst is stupid early on, you can duel almost anyone if you hit the first Q. Always farm that new jungle camp, gives most gold and xp and is free for Vi, you probably even regen mana and hp from it. keep in mind that your ult also damages and pushes people that are between you and the target. You can use flash while charging Q, so you can lanegank with that and hit your Q and follow with ult, there is nothing they can do about that.
SotEL -> Black Cleaver -> Randuin's -> Banshee's -> Guardian Angel -> sell SotEL for Triforce is a pretty solid Vi build. I think the absolute most important thing to do as Vi is to gank on ult cooldown. The worst thing you can do is take your second round of buffs, get to 6, back, and then gank. You absolutely must ult-gank as soon as you can, and as often as you can, before laning phase ends.
Vi's armor shredding means she is best paired with AD: Renekton, Yasuo, and Jax are great choices. And Vi/Thresh is sort of the new Ashe/Zyra. When I duo Vi/Thresh, Vi ganks top and mid until 5; backs, takes a buff, and then lantern -> q -> ults the ADC. Depending on how it goes, Vi can just gank bot on ult cooldown to really snowball your ADC.
Her biggest counter is Kayle. More subtly, she is countered by strong disengage that keeps your team at bay while you ult. She also is very poor at peeling for your ADC, so you need someone else on the team that is capable of doing that.
On January 31 2014 00:10 GrandInquisitor wrote: SotEL -> Black Cleaver -> Randuin's -> Banshee's -> Guardian Angel -> sell SotEL for Triforce is a pretty solid Vi build. I think the absolute most important thing to do as Vi is to gank on ult cooldown. The worst thing you can do is take your second round of buffs, get to 6, back, and then gank. You absolutely must ult-gank as soon as you can, and as often as you can, before laning phase ends.
Vi's armor shredding means she is best paired with AD: Renekton, Yasuo, and Jax are great choices. And Vi/Thresh is sort of the new Ashe/Zyra. When I duo Vi/Thresh, Vi ganks top and mid until 5; backs, takes a buff, and then lantern -> q -> ults the ADC. Depending on how it goes, Vi can just gank bot on ult cooldown to really snowball your ADC.
Her biggest counter is Kayle. More subtly, she is countered by strong disengage that keeps your team at bay while you ult. She also is very poor at peeling for your ADC, so you need someone else on the team that is capable of doing that.
i only just picked up vi this season, so i'm not the most qualified to speak here, but i'm largely in agreement with the views in this post. in particular, ganking on ult cd is crucial, and black cleaver is a very strong second item on her thanks to her innate shred and attackspeed steroid on w.
i think that lizard is superior to golem, and her second completed item should be another damage item, as she can then threaten fast solo kills on anyone but top laners. vi serves better in quick, decisive fights and picks than extended engages, so it's ideal to buy early damage (in soloq) to extend the window where she can threaten fast kills. cleaver is of course the standard item for reasons mentioned above, but trinity force and bortk are viable options - trinity force improves her burst for solo kills and should be considered when there is limited followup physical damage on her team, and bortk is the least viable of the three due to cleaver being just as good at shredding tanks, but there are times when the lifesteal and active are useful. most of this trifecta will serve perfectly well in all situations, but this is just my take on what's optimal
i dislike sunfire on vi due to it not being as useful as randuin's as a third item, making randuin's (the standard buy), spirit visage, banshee's, and guardian angel the competitors for the slot. while randuin's is usually the way to go, there will be a good amount of variance between games on what is best. the mr/armor choices are fairly self explanatory, and guardian angel should be considered if vi is fed and poses the biggest midgame damage threat on her team.
i'm not sure i follow on how kayle is vi's biggest counter - i would say that gragas is the strongest mid against her, as he excels in the strong disengage that i agree stymies vi
as for the more defensive lizard/golem+maybe brut into tank builds suggested, i think that they're absolutely viable, but that playstyle is more reliant on the team to coordinate follow up damage and is generally not as advisable as packing enough of a punch to kill people solo. vi has the tools to get out of a fight after ulting and using denting blows on her target in most early/mid game situations, and it's only when the carries start to get big and teamfights get longer that she really starts to want tankiness
here are two of my vigames for reference on the playstyle i describe
Kayle counters Vi for the same reason that Kayle counters Zed: telegraphed single-target burst damage. "Telegraphed" is the key -- there's no need to guess when the damage is being applied (it's very hard to block Annie's burst with Intervention), because you have advance notice of when the burst damage is going to be applied. Moreover, Vi "self-suppresses" herself during her ult, rather like Malzahar; she can't cancel her ult once Intervention is cast.
Vi is especially good at ganking bot relative to other junglers because of how she interacts with the supports: she's very difficult for their enemy support to peel off, and she makes it easy for her own support to land his CC. Plus armor shred is good for your ADC.
i think the lockdown aspect of vi's ult is as important (more important, as the game drags on) as the damage, and vi can just elect to drop the rest of her rotation on somebody else or just wait until intervention drops - while this often means that her target will just get away, trading ults usually isn't such a bad thing. zed gets absolutely rocked by kayle because his ult is 100% damage, and while kayle ult is definitely very strong against vi i don't think it's as bad as something that prevents her team from following up. i agree that intervention shuts vi down in certain situations (notably the early/mid game where vi's burst is important to her success), but there are ways to minimize the severity of the counter (such as a tankier build or simply holding the combo as mentioned above), and hard disengage is problematic for vi throughout the game
On January 30 2014 14:04 InfSunday wrote: Don't be that soloQ hero who builds straight damage Vi. I'd even go so far as to say don't even build Triforce. If you build damage and haven't snowballed every lane by twenty minutes, your damage falls off at the same exact time you need to be tanky in teamfights and you become pretty useless.
In my experience so far the optimal build has been Golem/Lizard --> if Golem, then Brutalizer, if Lizard then straight into --> Sunfire --> SV --> Randuins, with boots built somewhere in there. A *little* damage early helps a lot with your clear and getting kills in ganks, but remember that people expect their jungle to be tanky, and you need to do so to ult their back line and cause havoc.
Though I suppose this doesn't pertain to S4 in particular....
4-0 (yeah, huge sample size!) so far with Vi this season (plat 2 atm) but I always do this. Golem > Brut > Randuins usually all the time. I actually haven't tried Lizard yet this season though just because for me I feel I'd rather get the tanky stats with Golem since all her base damages are so high anyway. Usually Boots 1 + spirit stone on my first back. Although, build orders change all the time as well, one of my games I got 2 kills early so I stayed on my machete and just got a bruta as first item at like the 4:30min mark and started snowballing even harder. Now that I think about it, that would have been a great game to try out the SotEL.
On January 30 2014 14:04 InfSunday wrote: Don't be that soloQ hero who builds straight damage Vi. I'd even go so far as to say don't even build Triforce. If you build damage and haven't snowballed every lane by twenty minutes, your damage falls off at the same exact time you need to be tanky in teamfights and you become pretty useless.
In my experience so far the optimal build has been Golem/Lizard --> if Golem, then Brutalizer, if Lizard then straight into --> Sunfire --> SV --> Randuins, with boots built somewhere in there. A *little* damage early helps a lot with your clear and getting kills in ganks, but remember that people expect their jungle to be tanky, and you need to do so to ult their back line and cause havoc.
Though I suppose this doesn't pertain to S4 in particular....
4-0 (yeah, huge sample size!) so far with Vi this season (plat 2 atm) but I always do this. Golem > Brut > Randuins usually all the time. I actually haven't tried Lizard yet this season though just because for me I feel I'd rather get the tanky stats with Golem since all her base damages are so high anyway. Usually Boots 1 + spirit stone on my first back. Although, build orders change all the time as well, one of my games I got 2 kills early so I stayed on my machete and just got a bruta as first item at like the 4:30min mark and started snowballing even harder. Now that I think about it, that would have been a great game to try out the SotEL.
What boots are you picking up with your standard build? Mobis? Also for those starting SotEL what boots do you get, I would guess mercs because I think you really need that tenacity that you don't get from SotAG.
On another note, since the CDR nerds to SV I feel banshees is now much better than SV since it can block people stopping your Q charge (and you don't benefit much from SV passive anyways). I must say though, I miss max CDR Vi, you were just so friggin' mobile with 5 second cool down Qs.
On January 31 2014 01:49 Kyrie wrote: i think the lockdown aspect of vi's ult is as important (more important, as the game drags on) as the damage, and vi can just elect to drop the rest of her rotation on somebody else or just wait until intervention drops - while this often means that her target will just get away, trading ults usually isn't such a bad thing.
Your ult's cd is much longer than hers though, especially pre-16. And while your post is true wrt Vi herself, the fact that her ult is used to isolate a target/make picks and burst the target during the cc, Intervention protects them from that and they can try and get to safety, so she's still good against that, but not because of the burst/damage of Vi herself.
What boots are you picking up with your standard build? Mobis? Also for those starting SotEL what boots do you get, I would guess mercs because I think you really need that tenacity that you don't get from SotAG.
On another note, since the CDR nerds to SV I feel banshees is now much better than SV since it can block people stopping your Q charge (and you don't benefit much from SV passive anyways). I must say though, I miss max CDR Vi, you were just so friggin' mobile with 5 second cool down Qs.
Yeah, usually Mobis. Tabis if it's a 5 man AD team. Sometimes even Tabis if it's a 4 man AD team where one of the AD is getting fed.
I'm just in silver 3, but i've been going lizard->botrk->tank. Is that an overly-squishy build?
What about, say, golem->mallet->botrk->tank?
Also, generally my first back before second round of buffs is spirit stone+vamp and boots if I have the money. I get the vamp so I can solo drag after first ult-gank, would it be better to just finish the lizard/golem? I haven't tried soloing drag without the vamp scepter because between the two I hardly lose any hp, but I'm not sure if it's worth not finishing the jungle item for a few more minutes :S
If your goal is to initiate (especially if you have to teamfight, less the case in ganks and individual picks) then it's to squishy. Basically, if you're likely to die faster or at the same time than the target you're ulting you're probably doing it wrong.
I don't think BotRK's that good an item on jungle Vi because her goal is to catch people and set targets up for burst, BotRK's passive is nice in the mid-late game if you have to duke it out with other bruisers, but it lacks burst (unless you use the active) to kill people during your cc and after cutlass you're sitting on a 1800 gold gap where you don't have much for show. Triforce or Gauntlet (or an early brutaliser to become a BC after tank items) are better for burst, Gauntlet is also prob better than Mallet if you want sticking power. Hexdrinker, Cowl, a casual Belt are good for early tankiness if you don't want the golem spirit.
If you want to solo drake after the first ult-gank then you're probably mid or bot, in that case if your ult nets you a kill you shouldn't have to solo the drake. With the new spirit stone passive you also don't need the vamp for jungling and it gives you less damage than 2x short sword or Lizard Spirit. Basically, you're making a gambit that you can solo drake shortly after you buy vamp to make it worth. If your team can help you (and thus you don't need the vamp) or you don't have the opportunity to solo it, it's delaying your spirit item for a marginal gain so I'd avoid it.
I don't know how well Vi can solo the drake with the new spirit stone (and maybe kindlegem or short swords) but it should be easy to test out in a custom game and see if the lifestal makes any meaningful difference.
As to what skill to start first: W clears faster than E, but E triggers your passive and keeps you at higher health. Assuming you are getting a leash and smiting, E's extra health is better than the minimally faster clear.
When I'm playing Vi I mostly go for Lizard > Brutalizer > Sunfire > w/e is needed but brutalizer/sunfire are core items on my Vi. If it comes to skills I always max R > Q > E > W
Randuins much better tank item than sunfire imo. I go lizard->brut->randuins. Lets you ult in and then randuins active. You pay a lot for the sunfire damage which you dont really need since you do huge damage anyways and dont need the sunfire to clear camps or waves thanks to all your aoe.
Did some math a bit back (after the initial nerfs) and it turns out that for a Q-auto-E combo, maxing W beats maxing E starting from 1k HP. Seeing how you put your 2nd point in one of these spells at level 8 and that even Ashe is likely over the threshold by that point (1027 HP at level 8, give her a dblade and she's over it at level 7), you get a stronger burst (and better dps overall on champions, buff/big monsters and dragon/baron) by going R>Q>W>E. I can see ammo management being a bit more annoying now that the CDR from both blue buff and SV has been hit tho.
I used to run R>Q>W>E, but now I like to go R>Q>W=E, maxing them simultaneously. I usually put the more points into W (i.e. both are lvl 1 you upgrade W to lvl 2 then E to lvl 2 then W to lvl 3 so on and so forth). Don't know if this is ideal but I like it, I have been doing this a lot for other champs too that have two nice 3rd & 4th priority skills like Lucian I go R>Q>W=E also.
I´m wondering if anyone has tryed AP build on Vi just for fun. Is it possible to have enought AP to use you E and to do a ton of damage? It could be hilarious to use Q and R to CC and then E.
Ok, lets deal with this in order: No, you shouldnt get vamp scepter before lizard/double longsword for lizard. As mentioned above, I dont think you should need it to solo dragon at lvl7 and you really probably shouldnt be soloing it anyways. I think Botrk is overly squishy, I almost always go Lizard Elder - tank, you really want that Randuins active and Banshees asap, in teamfights youll do more dmg anyway if you can afford to not worry about your own hp. I am suspect of the Golem - FM idea, it has no resistances until about 5k gold lol, that seems pretty late, not sure if the math checks out tho.
For the first skill, I guess it can depends on how good a leash youre getting. If you get a good leash but without dmg on small lizards, E will be better, otherwise W will be better.
Dont see any logic behind the Elder Lizard, Bruta, Sunfire build. Sunfire is the best when you are alone in a lane or maybe if you have Rammus level problems of clearing the jungle. But Vi's 1v1 is honestly rather pathetic so you probably won't get much me-time in lane and you obviously have no problems clearing. Again, Randuins active might even allow you to deal more dmg in a teamfight, at the very least be a lot more useful.
Maxing W 2nd is standard on Vi, I don't think anybody maxes E second
I don't see how maxing 2 skills simultaneously ever makes sense apart from being mildly aesthetically pleasing. Mind to explain your reasons? :3
I still always do the whole Golem > Brut > Randuins/Veil depending on enemy team. Squeeze in Tabis as well when I feel I need them. Usually after Golem, but sometimes I wait til after Brut before getting t2 boots. I also use to always max E second but for the past few months, especially with all the health stacking/tanks, I've been going W second.
Still have yet to try out the Lizard build on her, I guess I just always like the extra health / tenacity on golem. Plus since I like going Bruta 2nd item I guess I would just feel too squishy going lizard / bruta.
You don't need to be tanky at first. You're an AD assassin; you don't have an escape, but you shouldn't need an escape because for the first half of the game at least, your goal is to kill them before they kill you. And Lizard/BC or Lizard/TF Vi is really really good at doing that.
Guide finally updated for s4. In brief, jungle part revamped with masteries, items, and some other minor stuff. I've added some little remarks ont he playstyle and added people in the credits. Regarding the dead picture links, I won't update them: you can see which item it is through the link URL if you hover the pictures with your mouse anyway.
There are two main approaches to jungling Vi: the tanky one, and the damage one. The tanky one plays for the dps on Denting Blows and being able to initiate more reliably, with a smoother powercurve, while the damage one focuses on burst, crushing people in early skirmishes and snowballing the game, with a steeper transition into the lategame.
Fast clear: AS/armour/MR/AD Vi tears through the jungle by herself, but AS marks allow you to murder buffs/drake alot faster, especially at early levels, and gives you some more dps overall. I personally favour this one.
Strong burst/ganking: ArPen/armour/MR/AD Higher burst damage in ganks, at the expense of standing dps and a bit of jungle speed. It comes down to preference.
Mobility: AD/armour/MR/MS I don't recommend it, as your clear and damage will suffer from it. Better rely on your positioning/swifties/slows (red buff, mallet, etc.) to reach and stick to targets. It is usable though.
You can swap out flat MR, scaling MR and CDR for your Glyphs depending on playstyle and preference. Vi benefits a lot from CDR on her Q, especially once small skirmishes/jungle fights start.
Because Vi's kit excels at clearing the jungle and keeping a high HP pool, you can get away with a bunch of masteries set-ups, most notably: - 9-21-0 (you can swap out points in Relentless to max out Hardiness and take Defender too) - 21-9-0 (you can swap Sorcery out but CDR never hurts Vi) - 21-0-9 - or even 9-0-21 (Expanded Mind, Biscuiteer and Explorer can be swapped for Greed/Wealth, you can trade Alacrity for Sorcery if you want the early 10% CDR too).
Vi is a great initiator but not a great tank, so I recommend 21-9-0 to emphasise your strong ganks and early dueling power, taking an early lead is your best bet at surviving later initiations.
Smite is obvious since you're jungling, and I favour Flash. While you have a wall-jumping ability in Vault Breaker (and Assault and Battery in some way), Flash gives you added safety, and also allows you to cover an terrifying amount of ground when combined with Vault Breaker (either during the charge or the dash), and even possibly with Assault and Battery (be mindful not to initiate that way however as your team won't be able to follow you!).
At level 1 W is the best clearing skill no matter how much help you get, but it doesn't trigger your passive nor gives you burst so you may favour E if a level 1 fight erupts, nay Q if you need the cc/escape. Q is significantly slower (and thus makes you take much more damage on your first camp) however. Q clears faster and is more mana-efficient is you charge it fully on each camp, and the reduced CDR is a boon for your mobility, be it chasing or running (or ganking warded sidelanes, see the wall-jumping section). Maxing W or E second is a matter of preference, I favour W since my builds get CDR and it helps me kill tankier champs, buffs and the drake faster. Maxing E ensures that you'll have both charges available most fights.
Any, really. You will need more help to keep decent HP if you start Wraiths or Golems followed by Red Buff, but her kit and base stats are strong enough to make Vi very flexible. Note that you can gank as soon as level 2, but that waiting for level 3 gives you stronger (and easier) burst due to having E's auto resets, and without the risk of losing your remaining buff.
Standard. You can get a 3rd pot with a ward start if you wait a bit for 5 gold without losing on a camp since they all spawn at 1:55, it's risky however if you fear an invade (and undoable if you plan one yourself). You'll also need a bigger leash (especially if you start red buff) to remain high HP for the whole clear as you have less potions.
You shouldn't ever want to upgrade Machete to Madred's: despite technically autoattacking a lot, most of Vi's damage comes from her charged Q, W, and E AoE, which don't apply Madred's passive. Moreover, Spirit Stone provides welcome mana regeneration for your spamming pleasure (and ability to gank afterwards). Your long term objective should thus be either Spirit of the Ancient Golem or Spirit of the Elder Lizard.
Your first recall should be Spirit Stone (mainly for the mana regen) + boots (easier positioning/ganking) + long sword(s) if you have the money, with whatever wards/potions you feel you may need.
The idea is to make use of Vi's good base damage and mobility to exert map pressure and get kills early, especially once you're level 6. The follow-up depends on needs:
Upgrade to SotEL: 1300 gold, 35 AD, 10% CDR, 10% monster damage, Incinerate passive. Incinerate increases your dps, and combined with the 10% monster damage greatly speeds up drake attempts. You have a cost-efficient item completed, damage taken care of and can move on to getting tankier. You can also combine it with The Brutalizer for even more damage and CDR but it will significantly delay your tankiness unless you're ahead.
Buy The Brutalizer: 1337 gold, 25 AD, 10% CDR, 10 ArPen. Better burst, especially on low-armour targets. Most importantly, opens up SotAG for additional HP and Tenacity (for example against mostly physical teams where you'd take Tabi over Mercs). This will however delay the rest of your build.
Kindlegem can be built into SotAG or Locket later.
Jungle item has been addressed earlier; after this, you should focus on finishing Boots2 and Locket. Locket is another excellent low-budget item, the shield helping you survive dives and initiations on top of your passive, while giving precious CDR to improve your mobility (see the "Playstyle" section); the "ideal" combination in most games would be to build SotEL and Mercs: there aren't many MR items that Vi is comfortable with so the 25 given by mercs can't be wasted, and the Tenacity allows you to build SotEL to take care of your damage needs. Stay flexible still.
Randuin's is an excellent "diver" item and the highest slot-efficiency for physical EHP in the game. The HP pool and your passive also help protect you against magic burst seeing how your ult paints a target on you. Bulwark, contrary to Locket, isn't suited to divers who may die from focus fire (and thus lose the aura), which Vi typically is compared to more utility-heavy or tanky initiators (like Malphite or Jarvan IV). It also doesn't give CDR or offensive stats and its price delays items granting them. For those reasons I dislike building it, however it is a significant source of MR and a vital team item, especially against double AP. If noone else is building it (or is even less suited, like Zyra or Fiddle support), be the team player. (Note: nothing stops you from buying both, but for a mid/late game timing you likely won't have the gold required.)
Mallet is a semi-offensive option letting you stick to targets better than Randuin's, and stronger against magic damage, but without the active or armour. BC is a natural follow-up to The Brutalizer, granting you additional AD and some HP, and letting you debuff the whole enemy team's armour with E and R. You can also use it more defensively, combined with Denting Blows' armour reduction to negate any armour stackers from zoning your AD carry. It usually shouldn't be a priority buy though.
Wit's end can give you a MR buffer against heavy magic damage teams, however most of the price comes from the AS and passives and sitting on a NMM gives you as much MR until you start autoattacking for stacks, making it more about slot-efficiency—being melee, you most likely won't have time to stack it before the enemy unleashes his burst. Hexdrinker/Maw is a stronger option against magic burst and gives you some of your own through additional AD, while Wit's is more geared toward dps.
Zephyr is a good if expensive option for Tenacity later in the game, granting MS, CDR, AS and AD, all stats that Vi likes. However, despite the cost-efficiency, the lack of defensive stats and spread (a bit of each, not much of any) make it awkward to build until you're tankier. A true luxury item.
Warmog's may be a good defensive choice if your only goal is to survive diving and taking most of the enemy team's burst, while GA similarly discourages the enemy team to focus you as the initiatior. However, given their price Randuin's and Bulwark are likely more efficient options. If you really need more tankiness later on, you can pile these items up and challenge the enemy to punish your ult initiations.
Vi has extremely safe and fast jungle clears, thanks to her passive and AoE letting her flatten camps without losing HP: you can move fast across the jungle charging Q to jump walls and cluster monsters, then autoE the big one AoE them down. Only her mana limits her, which is less of a problem with blue buff then spirit stone.
When ganking, red buff is pretty important to you as it lets you walk up behind people, auto them then use a charged Q (or ult, post-6) to catch up if they flash or dash away. Good positioning, avoiding wards or having your laner bait the fight is thus pretty important. Avoid opening a gank with Q or R as much as you can (though R is more reliable). Ganking ranged champions, especially mid lane is harder because you can't really get behind them and if you charge Q while chasing they'll often just reach their tower. In those cases, and particularly if your laner has burst and/or cc, you can charge Q in the brush/while coming for behind and try to initiate with it. The knock-back allows for easy cc follow-up, and both burst combined should be enough to drop most squishies from full. You can come and gank people from behind a bit like Alistar, especially mid, your passive will absorb the tower shot and the knock-back will hopefully carry you out of range. It's also very easy to burn a flash just by walking into mid, charging Q, and releasing it at the enemy laner. Make sure to abuse the timing window you created. Obviously, champions like Talon, Katarina, Kassadin, Syndra, etc. are especially difficult to gank (even post-6 you can ult but your laner may not be able to follow from that distance if they blink).
You can easily counterjungle by fighting most junglers, however be wary of your Q being on cooldown or bodyblocked (see general tips) as you're still squishy with your passive down early on, and it has a long cooldown. A "weakness" of her strong clears is that she can easily kill all little monsters with incidental AoE, so while she can easily steal a full camp, it ironically takes longer to let a little monster behind to waste the enemy jungler's exp and time.
The build in this guide focuses on early CDR and maxing Q. Once you have SotEL+Kindlegem/Locket or SotAG+Brutalizer, you have a sub-10s non-targeted dash/knock-back (level 7+) thanks to 20% CDR. At this point you should look for an opportunity to make plays every time your ult is up, which should be every 100s to every minute (depending on level and if you have blue buff or not). Your post-6 ganks are almost as strong as Malphite's or Warwick's, play as such. With Vi's potential for long range initiations and tower-diving (ult -> Q to knock-back into your allies, and the passive to survive), and Denting Blows' %HP damage shredding the dragon, it's a good idea to focus your early presence on your solo lanes to put them ahead, then focus on bot everytime your ult is up and/or dragon is available.
Later, when initiating teamfights, remember to assess threats and positioning before you choose which target to ult, and when to go in (keeping track of flashes is harder but useful). Sometimes it can be more important to use it to protect a fed ally from a diver than to initiate on an opponent. Vi's kit is more suited to early/mid game skirmishes and pick-offs, but she's versatile enough that you shouldn't let yourself be constricted.
Once you're level 9, Q is maxed with a 5-6s cooldown depending on CDR. Don't hesitate to use positioning, your passive and Locket shield to walk away after initiating, wait for Q to come back up, and cut off an escape route, intercept a threat on your backline or simply punch a face in with a QautoE combo. Vi is no Kassadin or Jayce, but as long as you manage your Qs well enough (be wary or ranged roots and stuns that can interrupt the charge and put the spell on cooldown, time your casts right) you can rely on them and your passive to cover for your teammates (Q a chaser for the knock-back, run away and Q to safety 5s later).
Wall-jumping: One of the benefits of maxing Q is a shorter cooldown that allows you to use it to dash over a wall and have it ready to gank in the next 10 seconds. You can avoid riverside bush/tribrush wards, wards at your wraiths/in the J brush, or escape the enemy collapsing on you near their buff by dashing over the dragon's or baron's pit (depending on your side), but the length of Vault Breaker's charge allows some other nifty tricks. + Show Spoiler +
Vault Breaker's max range is barely 45 less range Jarvan's EQ combo, allowing you to move between the river bush and near top's (blue side) or bot's (purple side) tribrush without being seen by wards in the river. You can use this when purple side to gank their pushing bottom lane, or to flank the purple bot tower unsuspected if they warded the drake, but not the river bush.
If you don't like wasting time, you can save a seconds and look cool by charging Vault Breaker outside of the wolf camp, and dash through the wall while hitting the wolves at the same time.
When chasing somebody all the way to blue top's/purple's bot inner tower, you can cross the large wall between the alley and the tower with a fully charged Vault Breaker. It's doable with other abilities (like Flash) but it can be hard to pull off, while Vault Breaker has the range to do it 100% reliably.
Note that the picture shows where you land when touching the wall and charging fully, so you'll still probably need Flash or your ult to catch your almost dead prey, as you're likely to be the one tanking the tower when you do this.
^ W second is always better than E second in terms of damage. They'll have enough HP at level 8 that the additional 1.5% max health outperforms the +15 damage from E (and if you burn both E charges you'll usually trigger W 2+ times so it doesn't matter). Also Vi is not an assassin, she doesn't have the scaling to be an assassin. Her Q has really high base damage so you can play her as such for some time in the early game (and if you snowball) but you won't 100-0 people and your damage will fall off in the midgale.
I go lizard, triforce, tanky in soloQ. It's been working so good I haven't even considered if something else could be better. I usually put a frozen heart in there somewhere for CDR. Never build any life steal at all and have had 0 issues with sustain.
The most epic game I was trolled in champ select to trade with a guy. Who didn't own VI and since I was waiting for the trade icon to light up. I got in game with support runes, masteries(0 13 17) & ignite. Went 25 3 XY and carried the shit out of that game anyway. Got fb with flash ignite btw =)
Ps. You need to play her with the neon skin for maximum damage ^^ If you use the acab skin I hope you lose ;-)
On March 01 2014 09:38 Alaric wrote: Also Vi is not an assassin, she doesn't have the scaling to be an assassin. Her Q has really high base damage so you can play her as such for some time in the early game (and if you snowball) but you won't 100-0 people and your damage will fall off in the midgale.
...Vi doesn't have scaling? Her ratios are even better than Wukong's, except that she has extreme single-target cc on top of that. The whole point of playing Vi is her damage, and if you don't build Lizard -> BC first you're wasting her AD assassin potential. Only in teamfights do you start to need tanky items, and as Vi you want to delay teamfighting as long as possible.
As you can imagine I strongly disagree with your characterization of BC in the initial post. I think it is the absolute best damage item on Vi. You stack BC extremely quickly and it synergizes very well with W, both by doubling the armor shred and also amplifying your %max health damage.
You'll find that against most junglers you'll want to start teamfights sooner rather than later (vs. Elise, Lee, Fiddle, Pantheon, Elise, maybe Wukong).
On February 28 2014 18:30 Scip wrote: Ok, lets deal with this in order: No, you shouldnt get vamp scepter before lizard/double longsword for lizard. As mentioned above, I dont think you should need it to solo dragon at lvl7 and you really probably shouldnt be soloing it anyways. I think Botrk is overly squishy, I almost always go Lizard Elder - tank, you really want that Randuins active and Banshees asap, in teamfights youll do more dmg anyway if you can afford to not worry about your own hp. I am suspect of the Golem - FM idea, it has no resistances until about 5k gold lol, that seems pretty late, not sure if the math checks out tho.
For the first skill, I guess it can depends on how good a leash youre getting. If you get a good leash but without dmg on small lizards, E will be better, otherwise W will be better.
Dont see any logic behind the Elder Lizard, Bruta, Sunfire build. Sunfire is the best when you are alone in a lane or maybe if you have Rammus level problems of clearing the jungle. But Vi's 1v1 is honestly rather pathetic so you probably won't get much me-time in lane and you obviously have no problems clearing. Again, Randuins active might even allow you to deal more dmg in a teamfight, at the very least be a lot more useful.
Maxing W 2nd is standard on Vi, I don't think anybody maxes E second
I don't see how maxing 2 skills simultaneously ever makes sense apart from being mildly aesthetically pleasing. Mind to explain your reasons? :3
Aaaaaaand no
I guess my reasoning for maxing W and E at same time (after maxing Q) is to have a more balanced role in game. I did some simple math on what a 6 hit combo (Q+AA+E+AA+E+AA) does at level 13 for having E at max and W at lvl 1, both at lvl 3, and having W at max and E at lvl 1. W max did slightly more damage than both E and W at lvl 3, which did slightly more than E max.
So for single target burst damage, W max is slightly better than evenly leveling E and W, but having some more points in E also helps with faster clearing of the small monsters in jungle camps, pushing lanes, and aoe damage in team fights.
I understand Vi is best used to focus single targets down but I don't think the slight single target damage increase from maxing W second instead of evenly maxing W and E is necessarily always going to outweigh the benefits mentioned above.
I would love some other insight or opinions on this though.
On March 01 2014 09:38 Alaric wrote: Also Vi is not an assassin, she doesn't have the scaling to be an assassin. Her Q has really high base damage so you can play her as such for some time in the early game (and if you snowball) but you won't 100-0 people and your damage will fall off in the midgale.
...Vi doesn't have scaling? Her ratios are even better than Wukong's, except that she has extreme single-target cc on top of that. The whole point of playing Vi is her damage, and if you don't build Lizard -> BC first you're wasting her AD assassin potential. Only in teamfights do you start to need tanky items, and as Vi you want to delay teamfighting as long as possible.
As you can imagine I strongly disagree with your characterization of BC in the initial post. I think it is the absolute best damage item on Vi. You stack BC extremely quickly and it synergizes very well with W, both by doubling the armor shred and also amplifying your %max health damage.
For the record, I usually don't take people too seriously when they advocate an early BC on an assassin/"carry" AD caster. It's not against you, it's just that I've ranted about it so many times that I'm getting tired of arguing about it.
Vi's full combo at level 6 is 430 + 4.3 AD + 5.1 bonus AD + 8% (+2% per 35 bonus AD) of max health Wukong level 6: 260 + 6.9 AD + 7.7 bonus AD Vi level 11: 675 + 4.3 AD + 5.1 bonus AD + 14% (+2% per 35 bonus AD) of max health Wukong level 11: 770 + 6.9 AD + 7.7 bonus AD (not included: Wukong having higher base AD than Vi)
And most of Wukong's (as in, between 1/2 and 2/3) is AoE.
Vi hurts like a truck because she has great base damage on Q, up to 2 aa-resets and W to add a bit more. But once Q is maxed she doesn't gain much (W gains ~3% enemy max health per level on the full combo, which more or less matches the increase in base damage of spells (40-50), however the ratio needs your target to have 1750 HP to be equal to 1.0 bonus AD on your whole combo; keep in mind that spells like Shadow Slash, Spear Shot or Taste Their Fear have a short enough cooldown that they can be used several times in a full combo, trumping Denting Blows for good). TL;DR: you hit a damage spike at levels 9 then 11, but after that your combo won't deal as much damage as assassin AD casters, regardless of the fact that you have inferior ratios anyway.
She also doesn't have an escape, and needs to stay in melee range to deal her damage (if you can hit a fully-charged Q, even peeled your ult should let you do it though) while lacking an escape, with her burst mostly scaling off levels. She's got power timings, but she's not an assassin.
Regarding BC:
Vi will deal around half of her damage with the Q/R-auto-E combo (I'm assuming a fully charged Q for the combo because if you're trying to assassinate people you're trying to maximise your damage), then she'll trigger Denting blows, providing 20% armour reduction (BC will add multiplicatively for 15%, meaning it'll reduce a further 12% of their armour at this point), and deal the other half of her damage to her target. BC won't be fully stacked until the final spell/auto (generally a spell in the rotation considered, so good for you even), and its efficiency is reduced anyway because there's already Denting Blows reducing the target's armour.
Actually, considering a fully stacked BC, you'll deal around 9% more damage compared to a Vi who stopped at the brutaliser, with the penetration mastery and ArPen marks. Before that you're mostly paying 1600 gold for ~30 AD.
If you buy LW, you spend 750 gold more +15 AD and replacing stacking armour reduction with immediate, always up 35% armour penetration. Considering how much of your damage is frontloaded, it'll outperform BC to absurd levels. It also has a smoother build path and grants more benefits until you finish the BC (up to 35 AD vs 150 health), which is important when you're snowballing and trying to stay ahead.
Obviously it's not as good later in the game when your goal is to help your team over chasing solo kills, which is why I prefer BC overall (plus, CDR), and when going brutaliser -> tanky, you'll still have to fork out 1663 gold at some point to complete the BC and it's not coming out of nowhere in the late game (and ruby is shit slot-efficiency-wise). This doesn't make it worth it to upgrade BC at a point where it won't do you much good just to invest for when they get armour/more levels, however, because you give up so much now which is counterproductive to trying keeping the snowball going.
TL;DR: The damage increase coming from upgrading to BC is too small to be of relevance if your goal is to burst people down by yourself/play Vi as an assassin, even this early in the game. You give up a lot of momentum as the game is transitioning to teamfights and staying alive to ensure the death of the carries you can't 100-0 anymore (and who get more help/peeling now), just to keep doing a little bit more of damage compared to a Vi who will get tanky and complete BC later. Vi doesn't do too well when behind because her "all-in" style makes her dependant on her team, so retaining momentum when you're doing well is crucial. Screw building BC early.
On March 04 2014 04:30 YouGotNothin wrote: So for single target burst damage, W max is slightly better than evenly leveling E and W, but having some more points in E also helps with faster clearing of the small monsters in jungle camps, pushing lanes, and aoe damage in team fights. I would love some other insight or opinions on this though.
A level of E gives you 15 more damage, 30 more if you use it twice (generally you won't, on a camp, unless it's the golems or the wight or something). It's really not a lot, especially considering that a fully charged Q will one-shot wraiths from level 5 or so onward, and mostly kill the little wolves too, so you don't have much AoE damage to provide on top of it.
Alaric have you tried going full yolo vi (aka sotel->trinity/brut in some order)?
after having gotten it a couple of times I feel like theres no other way to play her unless you get rekt early, and since you're Vi that shouldn't happen often
Haven't really, nope. Will do, but that probably won't be until next week (lack of time this week and I'm exhausted so I'd play like shit which wouldn't be fair to the idea tested). It feels like it's dumping 7k gold (+ boots) into a glass cannon build and hoping they lack burst when you ult in.
I can def. see it working in a game with a long laning phase, vision control, and picks happening to take objectives (over fighting for said objectives, like sieging inner towers) but it strikes me as a snowballing/"when ahead" build rather than a stable one you can shoot for every game. Maybe I'm too harsh/conservative with the evaluation of triforce given in the OP. I'll update that once tested (but I tend to be conservative in general with my approach to the game flow).
On March 04 2014 12:13 Dusty wrote: Alaric have you tried going full yolo vi (aka sotel->trinity/brut in some order)?
after having gotten it a couple of times I feel like theres no other way to play her unless you get rekt early, and since you're Vi that shouldn't happen often
Whenever a vi gets that build (triforce, BC, lizard elder) she can solo carry the game in solo queue. Like literally anyone who gets caugth out just insta dies. If she wants to, she can just yolo ult your adc until banshee's veil and erase them in 1 second. That burst is just insane and still kinda tanky with the passive shield popping up 24/7.
... that's a 10k gold build (~4k tri, 3k BC, 2k spirit, ~1k boots). Give 10k to a mage and he can get DFG+deathcap+void staff+sorcs and instakill anyone he catches too. Which is why I'm wary of all the suggestions sounding more like "yo you should do that build, it wrecks so hard when you're 10-0" compared to others who keep build paths and game flow in mind.
On February 04 2014 07:57 GrandInquisitor wrote: As to what skill to start first: W clears faster than E, but E triggers your passive and keeps you at higher health. Assuming you are getting a leash and smiting, E's extra health is better than the minimally faster clear.
High elo Korean streamer skilled EWQEQRQQQWRWWWEREE. I tried it used to E max not like you go wow what a difference. Think you need to adapt to your play style & do some math if you want to be optimal. If you gank a lot of tanks you might want to level W faster for more % dmg. If you need more mobility or team fight damage level Q. If you just want more raw damage to nuke mid squishies level E. I always start EW unless there is a level 1 fight.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that the neon skin is the best & if you use the acab skin I hope you lose ;-)
Huh, that second level in E at 4 is interesting, I wonder if that is a breakpoint for killing small monsters. Maybe my silver level theory crafting mentioned earlier wasn't completely dumb!
It depends on what you're trying to do at 4: gank or farm, I suppose.
The second point in E rather than Q costs you between 10 and 35 damage from your burst if you land only one E, and costs you between -5 and 20 damage if you land both E's. (The ranges depend on how far you charge Vault Breaker.) I see the big gain as the reduction in cooldown; not having an E charge up when you need it is a much bigger deal than a little damage.
On March 08 2014 01:00 Alaric wrote: ... that's a 10k gold build (~4k tri, 3k BC, 2k spirit, ~1k boots). Give 10k to a mage and he can get DFG+deathcap+void staff+sorcs and instakill anyone he catches too. Which is why I'm wary of all the suggestions sounding more like "yo you should do that build, it wrecks so hard when you're 10-0" compared to others who keep build paths and game flow in mind.
Its a snowball build, not something you get to go every game, but is really nice to aim for. Lizard elder and bruts with Ninja/Sorc is core, and a Vi who is ahead will be farming both jungles so you get a ridiculous amount of money from jungle already, plus a kill/assist every time ult comes back. TF becomes easy to reach by 22 minutes along with the core items plus a giants belt, making you pretty much unstoppable by then. Obviously you go randuins + banshees afterwards as theres really nothing else you need to go unless you plan on sniping tanks...
Black cleaver is a giant waste in a lot of cases - when behind you need hard tank items and the cc you provide for your back line is enough, and when ahead, you wont need a black cleaver to destroy the opponent back line. ~3700+~1400+2000+~1000 = only about 8k....along with wards and pots = 8500 gold by 22 minute mark...by then your team would have at least 2 dragons and a couple towers down...not hard to aim for for a snowballing Vi.
On March 08 2014 01:00 Alaric wrote: ... that's a 10k gold build (~4k tri, 3k BC, 2k spirit, ~1k boots). Give 10k to a mage and he can get DFG+deathcap+void staff+sorcs and instakill anyone he catches too. Which is why I'm wary of all the suggestions sounding more like "yo you should do that build, it wrecks so hard when you're 10-0" compared to others who keep build paths and game flow in mind.
Its a snowball build, not something you get to go every game, but is really nice to aim for. Lizard elder and bruts with Ninja/Sorc is core, and a Vi who is ahead will be farming both jungles so you get a ridiculous amount of money from jungle already, plus a kill/assist every time ult comes back. TF becomes easy to reach by 22 minutes along with the core items plus a giants belt, making you pretty much unstoppable by then. Obviously you go randuins + banshees afterwards as theres really nothing else you need to go unless you plan on sniping tanks...
Black cleaver is a giant waste in a lot of cases - when behind you need hard tank items and the cc you provide for your back line is enough, and when ahead, you wont need a black cleaver to destroy the opponent back line. ~3700+~1400+2000+~1000 = only about 8k....along with wards and pots = 8500 gold by 22 minute mark...by then your team would have at least 2 dragons and a couple towers down...not hard to aim for for a snowballing Vi.
why would you ever get sorc boots on Vi? she does alot of magic damage i heard
On March 08 2014 01:00 Alaric wrote: ... that's a 10k gold build (~4k tri, 3k BC, 2k spirit, ~1k boots). Give 10k to a mage and he can get DFG+deathcap+void staff+sorcs and instakill anyone he catches too. Which is why I'm wary of all the suggestions sounding more like "yo you should do that build, it wrecks so hard when you're 10-0" compared to others who keep build paths and game flow in mind.
Its a snowball build, not something you get to go every game, but is really nice to aim for. Lizard elder and bruts with Ninja/Sorc is core, and a Vi who is ahead will be farming both jungles so you get a ridiculous amount of money from jungle already, plus a kill/assist every time ult comes back. TF becomes easy to reach by 22 minutes along with the core items plus a giants belt, making you pretty much unstoppable by then. Obviously you go randuins + banshees afterwards as theres really nothing else you need to go unless you plan on sniping tanks...
Black cleaver is a giant waste in a lot of cases - when behind you need hard tank items and the cc you provide for your back line is enough, and when ahead, you wont need a black cleaver to destroy the opponent back line. ~3700+~1400+2000+~1000 = only about 8k....along with wards and pots = 8500 gold by 22 minute mark...by then your team would have at least 2 dragons and a couple towers down...not hard to aim for for a snowballing Vi.
why would you ever get sorc boots on Vi? she does alot of magic damage i heard
Fuck...Yeah I meant mercs...Doesnt stop the fact that when you are snowballing that hard it doesnt matter what boots you go anymore tho
so i have been going lizard elder -> randuin's omen -> banshee's veil picking up tabi or mercs on the way but I'm not really sure what i should go for next.
for runes i used to go attack speed / AD but i heard AD / arpen was better, or maybe it was just pure AD. Whats better?
AS/AD is a slightly better clear and possibly better damage on objectives too (it is on towers and big monsters, not sure about the drake since it's immune to cc and shreds, so maybe flat penetration doesn't affect it either?), ArPen/AD is obviously stronger during ganks and fights, especially early. Vi loses dps-wise to a bunch of junglers at level 3-4, but you can usually scare them away if you can get the jump, because fully charged Q -> auto -> E is enough burst to give you a good headstart, and in 2v2s it gives an obvious target to burst down.
I do more or less the same build as you, but I get a brutalizer after lizard spirit (usually off of boots1) so I can keep bursting people for longer, the CDR is also a really nice bonus since Vi greatly enjoys it. I never feel enticed to finish BC early though, it's usually after boots2 and 2 defensive items.
I feel like what I need in the late late game is some kind of sustain to keep going at people instead of dropping them to half and running away while they try to turn on me (buying time for the rest of the team), especially against mobile carries that my team won't be able to follow up on even if I ult, when there's a Morgana, or when there are multiple Banshee's Veils and no good way to pop them on our team. However, BotRK is super expensive and she's not its best user, Triforce is hard to build off of one slot and loses in value when it's bought that late... so usually I just get a thornmail and go full on "fuck me, you may drop me to 200 HP but meanwhile your divers die and my carry's healthier than you".
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/khhivn5.jpg)
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vs ![[image loading]](http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130319090758/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/9/96/Mercury%27s_Treads_item.png/32px-Mercury%27s_Treads_item.png)
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![[image loading]](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121116060558/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/9/96/Runic_Bulwark.gif/32px-Runic_Bulwark.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091014184042/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/6/62/The_Bloodthirster.gif/32px-The_Bloodthirster.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121116060558/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/2/2b/Zephyr.gif/32px-Zephyr.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121020084626/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/4/46/Blade_of_the_Ruined_King.gif/32px-Blade_of_the_Ruined_King.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091014183023/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/8/80/Last_Whisper.gif/32px-Last_Whisper.gif)
, rest tanky (see Staple and Luxury defensive items above)
She should especially take more damage on red buff, even after a smiteless leash on blue.
Makes me sad.![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091016144240/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/0/0f/Ninja_Tabi.gif/32px-Ninja_Tabi.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091014183953/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/9/90/Stinger.gif/32px-Stinger.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091014184304/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/9/9b/Warmog%27s_Armor.gif/32px-Warmog%27s_Armor.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20121116123831/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/c/c1/Iceborn_Gauntlet.gif/32px-Iceborn_Gauntlet.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120319111459/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/3/31/Maw_of_Malmortius.gif/32px-Maw_of_Malmortius.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091014182649/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/0/08/Guardian_Angel.gif/32px-Guardian_Angel.gif)
![[image loading]](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130319090537/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/b/b8/Kindlegem_item.png/32px-Kindlegem_item.png)
![[image loading]](http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130319090760/leagueoflegends/images/thumb/9/96/Mercury%27s_Treads_item.png/32px-Mercury%27s_Treads_item.png)
