So you had the bright decision to learn a little bit more about Lux? From build orders to matchups, tips and tricks to champion lore, this is your one stop shop for learning about the most cheerful and upbeat champion in League of Legends.
A little about me: I've been playing Lux since season 2, and since then I've logged over 1000 ranked games on her. Currently I'm Diamond 5, with a 63% ranked winrate as the Lady of Luminosity. While I don't pretend to be an amazing player at League of Legends, I like to think I know Lux fairly well.
As to the guide, it's been made with a lot of input from Diamond 1 players, as well as a lot of math and optimization to back up and prove the build orders and runes/masteries and such listed. Everything in the guide has been played by me, and tested thoroughly in ranked games.
I hope you find it a useful read, and thanks for checking it out! Lets get started.
***Note*** I have recently moved to Asia, and haven't had the time to update the guide since about mid season. While the latter sections on playstyle and matchups are still useful, please use this post for updated build orders since the AP item changes. ***End Note***
Why pick Lux?
I think that Lux is the best mid laner to learn if you aren't a mid lane player but need to pick up a mid lane champion for ranked play, or if you're just learning how to play and want to pick up a mid lane champion. Lux is an excellent, well rounded champion for newer players for the following reasons.
1 - She fits into any team composition. She can be used to poke, protect your carry, assassinate high value targets, and is excellent at sieges and objective control.
2 - She can be picked into any mid lane matchup. She has zero hard counters and can be very difficult to kill in lane, even when behind. You can first pick her blindly, and even then she can illuminate the enemy as support when that jerk 5th pick decides to play Yasuo.
3 - She is fairly simple and straightforward to play. While professional players tend to go for Ziggs, Xerath or Orianna to fill this particular niche in team comps right now, Lux is much easier to pick up and learn than any of these champions. As such, she is ideal for newer players wanting to learn a safe, reliable mid lane champion.
Building Lux
Our little light mage can be played in two ways, either as a solo laner or as a duo lane support. The build orders for these options are very different, but either way I've got you covered.
Tactical decision, Summoner. This is the way Lux is typically played, lighting the way in the mid lane. Lux offers her team safe, reliable pushing and damage, with a lot of ability to assist her jungler or other lanes while rarely being in much danger herself.
I've got three different build paths for you to choose from here. Each is fairly straightforward, letting you focus on the battle instead of your item choices.
Anti AP (Athenes) Build Order
This is a standard setup, and should be used in the majority of your games. It can be used with any rune/mastery page.
This should only be used when laning against AD champions, and should be used with the Anti AD rune page listed earlier in the guide. You can use any mastery page with this build order.
This is specifically designed for matchups in which both you and the enemy mid have little to no kill potential, and are just going to farm for the first 20 minutes of the game. You should always use the CDR/level rune page and a Utility mastery page with this build order.
It's important to only use this build in the right games, because going for it in the wrong game can lose you the game before your 25 minute item timing when you have Morello+Seraph. I use this build against Morgana and Master Yi, and in a few other matchups if I have a jungler who I think will not be ganking and I don't have 1v1 kill potential.
So you want to banish the shadows from the support position. Unfortunately, I don't think Support Lux is very good. This section of the guide is not meant to suggest that Lux is some secret OP support, but more guidelines on how to play her as support if you find yourself in that situation. While I've been able to light 'em up as support Lux from time to time, in general I'd suggest you play Morgana or Zyra instead for a stronger support character with a similar skillset.
However, if you first picked a solo lane Lux and have to do some rearranging because your fifth pick just has to play mid, stay positive. We can do this.
Your build path as Support is going to start off the same every game.
However, after the laning phase you have a lot of options, and need to make a decision to branch out into either damage or utility. Your late game item build may differ dramatically from game to game.
Lux isn't the greatest Crystal Scar champion, but she's not terrible. She is good defensively since she can stop point captures at range, but tends to struggle a little offensively.
Runes:Hybrid Pen Armor Magic Resist Ability Power Masteries: 21/6/3 + Show Spoiler +
I honestly only play TT if I'm goofing around with friends, so I can't really be much help here, these are just my best guesses of what to do.
If you find success with TT Lux that's great though, more power to ya.
Runes: Same as Summoners Rift Masteries: Same as Summoners Rift Spells: Same as Summoners Rift Skill Order: Same as Summoners Rift Starting Items: Dorans Ring + Flask + 2 Potions Item Build: Athenes > Morello > Wooglets Witchcap > Void > Some game appropriate 6th item.
If you're just an ordinary mage and not quite a light mage yet, here I've written a beginners guide for lower league players, that a veteran player reading the guide might skip over entirely.
Following is a matchups section, with details of which build order I take in each, and what to watch out for. Much like the beginners guide, the matchups section is written specifically for newer players. A Diamond League player probably doesn't need to read it at all.
The final section is for technical tips and tricks, hoping to teach a more advanced player some things they may not already know.
Welcome to the Rift, summoner. Here we're going to go through the basics of how to lead our Demacian princess to victory. Lux has no hard counters as a solo laner and scales into late game very well as support, so even in hard matchups she can beat her opponent with superior tactics. You'll love it when your plan comes together.
Playing Lux
Laning Lux isn't a top tier lane bully like Syndra, but she's perfectly capable of bullying many champions. Lux has above average AD for a typical AP mid, so don't be afraid to go very aggressive at level 1. Use your E aggressively to trade with your opponent, while saving Q and W to react to jungle pressure or an enemy dive.
But remember that you don't win lane as Lux by going for big flashy plays, you win by slowly whittling down your opponent, using your range to keep hitting them with E while they're unable to respond. Once their HP is low enough that your ult will kill them, you can move forward and start zoning them off their creeps or fishing for a kill.
If you're behind, it's easy to farm safely as Lux against almost any champion. Put an E on the ground in the middle of the enemy minions and then walk back to your tower, waiting the full 5 seconds before detonating the singularity. Follow up immediately with a second E and you'll be able to get 4-6 creeps every wave without your opponent ever being in range to hurt you.
If behind, another good trick is to use your ult to clear a creep wave right before backing. This will shove the wave a little and help keep your tower healthy while you base.
Roaming
You want to keep an eye on the map as Lux, because you may have opportunities to use your long range ult to assist a fight in the jungle without going very far. Typically you want to wait till your teammate uses a CC ability before hitting R. Lux's ganks are not that amazing, but her ability to countergank or to follow up on another players gank is very strong, so for a newer player I'd suggest just keeping an eye out and assisting your team rather than trying to make flashy plays.
When your opposing mid roams, you have two options. Either follow them, or hard push down the mid tower. If you decide to push, use your ult to take out an enemy creep wave. Final Spark has a very low cooldown and clearing the wave in this way will let your minions do a lot of damage to the enemy tower, robbing them of some CS and exp as well.
Teamfights
In the mid game you want to hold off on your spells and try to assassinate a squishy target. Be careful with using too much mana to poke in a siege if you don't have blue buff because before the late game you can run yourself out of mana before the fight starts. Once you use your initial combo you want to stay safe and peel for your ADC. Save your next string of spells to keep somebody from dying rather than finding a target to kill.
The late game as Lux plays similarly to the mid game, but now the enemy team probably has enough defense that you won't be able to one shot anyone but the ADC with your combo, and you have enough regen to use your spells over and over. You want to transition more towards poking than assassination in sieges. Just get your spells to soften as many people as possible rather than trying to assassinate one target.
Playing Support Lux
In lane your main goal is going to be to get as much gold as possible from Spellthief, by hitting repeated E's from safe distances on enemy champions, while saving Q and W for emergencies. You won't win an extended trade so you want to stay safe and focus on harassing at max range. With the right lane partner your snare can open up a big damage combo for your Marksman.
Once you hit level 6 you can start being more aggressive. With a high ability damage ADC like Graves or Jinx a snare at level 6 can mean an instant kill.
After laning, you end up playing support Lux very similar to mid Lux. You're just warding instead of farming. Remember you can use your E to safely check bushes while you ward.
Playing With Lux
It's okay to be patient. Lux thrives in extended siege scenarios both as the attacker and as the defender, so waiting out a siege is typically to your teams advantage. Eventually she will snare a prime target and then you can go in. If you're the jungler, realize that Lux needs blue more than most APs. She's a little vulnerable to ganks, but she assists ganks and counterganks much better than most champions.
As the lane partner of a Support Lux, be aware the Lux does not want to be starting fights, she wants to be following up on fights started by you or the enemy lane. She is however very good at following up on an engagement, so take the initiative in the lane and let Lux follow through, rather than playing passive and waiting for a lucky snare.
Playing Against Lux
This is fairly simple, dodge snares. I know that's pretty crappy advice but it's true, if you dodge every single snare you shouldn't have a bad time. When laning against her avoid standing inside your minions, or moving between your tower and wall, as these are areas where she can harass you easily. Be aware that her skills have long cooldowns and if she misses something you have a window to trade safely with her. Also be aware that Lux is exceptionally good at baiting people under her tower, and can be difficult to dive.
When against a support Lux, don't be afraid to go all in, especially after she misses a snare. Lux can defend well against an all in 1v1, but she's typically quite bad against all ins in a 2v2 situation. Support Lux is worst early in the game and best later, so punish her weak early game.
If you're having trouble with a particular matchup please let me know. I've played Lux mid against literally every champion in the game, and I've also played her on occasion top, in bot lane 1v2's, and as support in both 2v2's and 2v1's. And if you're having some problem that hasn't come up before, I'll look into it. Hopefully I can help you out.
You can also reply to the thread with links to replays of your Lux games, if you want me to give you a more in depth analysis of your play. I enjoy nitpicking things, so don't be shy about it.
I've split the matchups into categories, with spoilers below them giving the setup I think you should run and a brief description for each individual matchup. Within each category the matchups are split into Easier, Average and Harder difficulties.
Harder doesn't mean I think Lux loses the matchup, more that something about that champion is more difficult or more complicated than others within that group. I'm pretty confident in the idea that Lux is too safe to "counter" in a traditional sense. She never thinks about losing.
This section is real long, so use the links above to get where you're going.
vs. AD Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Standard or MR/level runes optional. Seraphs build also optional.
This is one of the easiest matchups you've got. Morde has no engage, no range, no burst, and his sustain is not as good as your harass. Try to hit him before he gets to damage minions or between waves, so he can't block things with his shield.
I use the vs. AD rune page here because I want more mana to bully him with, and he's not going to be able to damage me very well at all.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Malphite has some surprising burst post 6, but not enough to 100-0 you. His Q is slow and easy to shield though, so poke him down and shield his poke to keep your HP high and it's an easy lane.
Remember to auto him regularly to keep his passive shield down.
If he builds tank instead of AP, you can just shove waves on him all day and deny him CS. It's hard for him to farm under tower and if he builds an MR item first his sunfire timing will be too late to help.
Malphites ult has a really long cooldown at low ranks (130s), so after he uses it you can play super aggro for a bit, but the flipside is this guys ult gank assist is amazing, so watch for the enemy jungler.
vs. AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Back when AP Sion was a thing this was kind of a tricky matchup, but now it's not. Just use E on him a lot. The movespeed from Heal can make dodging his ult easy, and without it he can't really engage.
vs. AP Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Another matchup where you press E a lot until the other player calls Lux an unfair champion. Ryze can do some decent damage if he gets on you even early on and he has good gank assist though, so hold your Q for defense and just push him out of lane with E.
Junglers love ganking Ryze and love ganking for him, so you'll likely have a lot of company in this lane.
Lux can beat Ryze top, although it's more difficult than it is in mid since he has more room to leverage his higher movespeed in top lane. It's okay to lane swap if a top Ryze is countering your top laner.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Seraphs Build optional
Killing Anivia can be tricky with her egg, but pushing her out of lane is usually not. Play around her passive, do not try to dive her 1v1 while it's up, you don't have the sustained damage to pull it off.
Do your best to ward and steal blue buff here. Stealing blue hurts her much more than it hurts most champions.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Ignite Optional
Another annoying matchup, you can harass Vlad all game long, but you'll have difficulty killing him since he can dodge your combo with pool. But that's okay, it's not hard to push his lane in early and keep him down on farm.
Going for a Chalice > Morello > Athenes build order can be very strong in this matchup. You can also get Ignite, but I don't really like it, because he's hard to kill 1v1 even with Ignite since he'll dodge your ult, and you shouldn't be behind enough in this lane to need Ignite to kill him in a 2v1.
vs. AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
There's two kinds of Khazix players. The first kind will try to jump on you a lot and get kills, and they tend to be pretty easy to read. The second kind will evolve W first, shove waves with it, and then try to roam. They're a little bit harder, and the emphasis becomes more about counterpushing than trying to kill him.
Don't fight Kha without a minion around, and remember that he does have a good level 2 dive, but if he does it and you're prepared it'll cost him big.
vs. AP Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
This guy will turn into an unstoppable monster if you let him farm, but the good news is you don't have to let him. Really easy matchup for Lux, just bully him with E all game and keep allies alive with shields in fights.
The one thing to watch for is his level 1 is actually really strong, so don't get caught off guard there.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Ignite, Athenes Build
A rare Ignite matchup, Fiddlesticks is more annoying than difficult. You'll probably have trouble killing Fiddle 1v1, but with Ignite and a jungler it'll be real easy.
Going for a Chalice > Morello > Athenes build order can be very strong in this matchup, although it's not exceptionally necessary if you take Ignite.
He'll try to get out of vision to use his ult on you, and will often pair that with his jungler, so you want to facecheck things less than usual in this matchup.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Kind of like AP Malphite, Liss can get on you and she has burst damage, but she doesn't have enough of it to 100-0 you, so if you're not standing around at half health while her ult is up you're fine. Like most of these matchups, just use E on her a lot to win the lane.
She's tougher than Malphite though, because her self-ult makes her hard to kill, and her harass is better, but still much shorter range than yours. Her ult gank assist is also arguably better with a lower cooldown, she's hard to gank, and she can dodge snares with her E. All in all I'd call this lane harder than most in this group, but still one that Lux should win if played properly.
vs. AP Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Very positioning based, you can bully Azir, but if you stand in the wrong spots he can bully you. Try to stay away from your minions so he can't place soldiers that can hit you and them at the same time.
I placed Azir in the harder category because I'm not too familiar with the matchup yet and he plays differently than other champions, but this might be a misrepresentation of something that's easier with practice.
Standard Runes, 24/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Post 6 Veigar actually can kill you with a well timed combo, but he will normally have to flash to do it, and if he's not using flash to engage on you he probably can't do much, and you can just E him out of the lane.
If you're having trouble Merc Treads help a ton here, but if your positioning is good you shouldn't need them.
Buy Sorc Shoes earlier than usual in this matchup. The movespeed helps stop his engage, pen is strong on Lux, and his damage goes up the more AP you have.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Malzahars ult combo can 100-0 you, but you pretty much need to walk in his face like a moron in order for him to set it up. He also pushes waves really hard, so you may need to use E to counterpush when you're not poking him with it.
Eventually you want a QSS in this matchup, but with good positioning you shouldn't need to buy it until late in the game. If you're having trouble, buying it earlier shuts him down at the cost of your own damage.
Try to kill his Voidlings when it's easy to do so, it's free money.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Ignite, Athenes Build
This guys engage tools are terrible and his pre 6 is also real bad, but his post 6 damage is very high if you let him get in your face. Stay at range and poke him out of lane.
Ignite is important in this matchup for setting up jungle ganks, because Swain will heal more the more champions there are in his face.
Going for a Chalice > Morello > Athenes build order can be very strong in this matchup.
Ward and steal blue buff in this matchup. Stealing Swains blue will kill his sustain and make pushing him out of lane a lot easier.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Teleport optional
Mid Gangplank players are weird. Sometimes they will rush Tiamat and shove real hard, other times they will rush Sheen and Q you as much as possible. Sometimes they will max oranges and do no damage to you but be unkillable. Often they will try a level 1 or level 2 all in. You have to try to make a read on how your opponent is going to play the lane, and react accordingly.
If he rushes Sheen and maxes Q, or if he maxes oranges, don't try to fight him, just shield his Q's and shove the lane as hard as you can. If he doesn't have a Tiamat he can't farm well and you can win the lane just by pushing him to tower.
If he rushes Tiamat you can bully him out of lane with E.
If you snare him, make sure his cleanse is down before ulting.
Teleport can be useful in this matchup, because he has global pressure and will eventually go split push. But at the same time, GP players often try to dive you real hard early in the game, and having Barrier will help a lot for that.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Zilean is annoying because he's hard to kill 1v1, he can keep you from killing his carries, and his damage is very high and cannot be dodged. However, your E harass seriously outranges him, his damage is easy to shield, and your late game damage is much higher than his.
Don't kill people that have gold hourglasses around them, and don't walk up to friends while there's a bomb on your head, otherwise there's not much special about this matchup.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
The Cass matchup plays a lot like the Ryze matchup, only she's much scarier early in the game. You can't afford to miss a snare here, she will turn on you and has both high burst damage and high sustained damage all game long.
But if you stay at range and only snare defensively, you can abuse your range advantage and push her out of lane pretty well. I'd call this matchup a difficult one because mistakes will cost you here, but if played correctly I think Lux should win the lane.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Barrier Optional
You don't really see mid lane Gragas anymore, and it's not the beast that it used to be. Grags all in combo is still pretty rough, especially with a jungler helping him, but his harass is not that great anymore. You have to dodge skillshots here, but this is not a very hard matchup.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Zyra does an absurd amount of damage early game, and most mid Zyras will abuse this by opening Dorans into Haunting Guise. However, she's also absurdly squishy, and you do have a range advantage here.
You can poke her down, but if you get behind don't be afraid to use your range to safe farm and wait for your jungler to help, she's easy to kill with jungle support.
Try to kill plants when it's easy to do so, it's free money.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
You play against Nidalee the same way whether she's AP or AD, just dodge spears. It's difficult to give good advice here because that's what it comes down to, you have to be dodging skillshots.
If she's AD it's okay to build Armguard after Chalice.
Don't chase her around. She likes to bait and outrun people.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Viktor can do some good damage, but a lot of it is tied into skillshots that you outrange. He also has a pretty good level 6 combo if you let him hit you with it. In general this is one of the easier skillshot matchups, but sidestepping lasers can still be very important.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Good old Velcro does way more damage than you at all points in the game, and his mastery of geometry can make dodging his skills take some practice, but he's also a lot squishier and easier to kill than you are. Much like the rest of this group, at the end of the day whoever dodges the most skillshots will win.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Ziggs used to be a tougher matchup, but season 4 nerfs to him have put Lux in the dominant position in this lane, at least early on. You also need to dodge lots of bouncing bombs though, which is a lot easier if you stay away from your minions.
Go in for trades right after he uses his passive on a minion. It's got a pretty short cooldown so you don't want to wait too long.
Don't go back to base at low health in obvious positions, he might drop a Super Mega Inferno Bomb on your head.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Kind of like an Ahri with more damage and less mobility, if Brand stuns you you can eat a huge burst combo, but without that stun he's not good for much. I tend to have mixed success against Brand, and I imagine a lot of that is because he's so uncommon that when I do play him I'm not used to dodging his skills.
Remember that he can't stun you without hitting you with something else first, and his ult does the most damage when you're standing next to another champion.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
AP Corki can really test your skillshot dodging ability, but standing behind minions helps a lot. It's hard to win trades against this guy after 6, but you can outpush him all game, so shoving minion waves can be a good strategy here.
If he's AD it's real similar, just his rockets will do less damage and his autos will do more damage.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Fighting Orianna is tricky and complicated, because she wins both short trades (spells only) and long trades (lots of autos), but will lose a medium length trade where you back off after only one or two autos.
This used to be one of the hardest matchups for Lux, but in season 4 Lux's early game was buffed and Oriannas was nerfed, and now it's not so bad anymore. It does take some getting used to though, because being aggressive here requires a different tempo than other matchups.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
I kind of hate Xerath, because he combines really good poke with a mana regen passive that lets him continue that poke longer than you can. You're much stronger than him at levels 1 and 2, but his combo at 3 can be rough.
At the end of the day, and like most of these matchups, whoever dodges the most skillshots will win.
Much like Ziggs, don't go back to base at low health in obvious places against this guy.
Standard Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Heal optional.
Ahri can be a tough one. Her ult lets her engage on and tower dive you at any time, has a low cooldown, and also makes her hard to kill and hard to gank. She gets free in lane sustain, pushes waves just as well as you, does true damage, and roams really well. It's not hard to see why she's played in pro games so much.
You outrange her and you can harass her with E, but you've always got to be aware of where she could be rather than where she is, since her ult will let her close distances on you very quickly.
I take Barrier here just in case I eat a charm, but Heal also works.
She's got a strong level 3 combo to watch out for, but staying behind minions in lane makes it hard for her to use.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
You don't really see Kennen any more, because his damage just isn't that great. His only real way of attacking you is by flash ulting, and if you flash back every time he flashes forward you should never die here, and can bully him all game. It's pretty easy.
Be a little careful while you have two marks on you, because it means he's one spell away from a stun.
MR Per Level, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
AD Kogmaw mid is basically begging to be ganked all the time, and your jungler should help you turn this guy into a plushy paste. While AP Kogmaw can have some surprising damage at long range, AD Kogmaw is a massive pushover without support from his team, so bully away.
It's okay to buy Armguard after Chalice against this guy.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Ezreals ability to win duels and trades against you is huge, but he can't push waves hardly at all and his gank assist is poor. So don't try to fight him, just shove minion waves in, take his towers, and fight with your team.
It's okay to build Armguard after Chalice against this guy if you're behind, even if he's AP. Mystic Shot is still physical damage.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Early levels against Caitlyn can be rough, but after 6 it's a lot easier. Like most Marksman matchups, shoving waves works here, although Caitlyn is better at dealing with it than most.
Remember that her ult charge time is longer than yours, so if you're quick you can get her with it before she finishes.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Something of a cross between a Marksman and an Assassin, Quinn is low range and easy to harass, but has great mobility and a good burst combo. Be sure to call out when she might be roaming as Valor as her roam is scary, but 1v1 against her is typically not very hard.
Her blind will make your passive not proc, just a heads up.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
AD Teemo is just a really crappy marksman. AP Teemo can do a lot of damage, but has difficulty getting on you. Only hit him with spells, never move in to auto, and keep your eye on where shrooms are as best you can. If you make it out of laning fine you'll have an easy rest of the game.
His blind will make your passive not proc, much like Quinn.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Both AD and AP Varus are real similar, it's just a question of which of his abilities do teh damagez. Dodge his skills, hit him with your own, shove waves and you'll do fine.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
Much like other marksmen, AD Tristana can't shove waves as well as you, can be harassed down by your spells, but wins shorter range AA trades. Early in the game she's got some burst if she jumps in on you, especially at 6, but after 6 her burst goes away if she's playing AD.
I say to take Athenes in this matchup because she's often AP in mid, but if she's AD, you can forego the Chalice entirely and just build Morellos instead.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Barrier optional
This guy plays kind of like a marksman matchup, and kind of like a skillshot matchup. Dodging shock blasts is very important, but not getting into long, short range trades is too. One of the harder mid marksman matchups, and one of the only ones you're likely to see more than once in a blue moon. Try to stand behind minions here to stop his damage.
Jayce has a timing right after he buys Tear where you'll be a lot stronger than him and can win fights, so try to bully him in this window.
Stealing blue can help here, although it's not as big a deal as it is against Anivia or Swain.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Heal, Morellos Build
Mid Sivir can be a pain because you have to stand far away from minions to dodge her Ricochet damage, she shoves well, her gank assist is pretty good, and her spellshield can easily block your combo. This is the hardest Marksman matchup, but it doesn't really play differently than the rest, her kit is just really good against yours.
Try to bait her shield by tossing E's and not detonating them as a means of running her out of mana.
LoL Wiki says your passive autos will eat her spellshield. It is wrong.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
I don't really see mid Lee anymore, and he's been nerfed so many times that this lane is just not difficult anymore. But he does have multiple ways to dodge spells and engage, great gank assist, and high single target damage, so you've got to watch for him to try to do those crazy plays and get you.
In general, if you don't make bad positioning errors, you shouldn't have a problem here.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Exhaust Optional.
Lots of people think Talon is some scary Lux counter but he's really not, especially after his silence was removed. You have to play a little careful, but harass him like you would any melee, and be ready to snare him as soon as he jumps in on you.
If you're ahead after 6 you'll need to get an Oracles Lens or pink wards in order to keep threatening him.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Pantheon can be real scary early game, since he can block your passive and put out consistent damage, and can roam to other lanes with his ult. After a while he stops being so scary though, and his range is limited, so he's not quite as harsh as people think.
Later in the game Pantheon forces your team to group together, so don't push side lanes as much as you might against a different champion.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Your harassment is about equal to Leblancs early game. Do your best to go toe to toe with her pre 6, but post 6 you have to pretty much give her the lane. In general your usefulness will outscale hers as you go into late game, so safe farming here is perfectly fine. Leblanc actually does have the range to get in on you though, so you must be quick at shielding her damage in this lane or you will have a bad time.
If she roams it's often better to use an ult to shove mid real hard than follow, because getting caught by her in the jungle is normally kind of bad.
If you throw a snare at her as she's dashing in to you it will snare her inside your team and really screw her day up, but it can be pretty hard to do.
When she pops a Mirror Image after you combo her, the real Leblanc will have your passive on it and the clone will not, so you should always know which one to go after.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Karmas pre 6 is abusive and can be really hard to deal with, but after 6 she tends to fall off in damage. She's a lot like a reverse Leblanc, you can't deal with her before 6, but you can go toe to toe with her afterwards.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Early game against Annie isn't so bad, although she's a bit tougher than most short range champions, since her autoattack range is quite long.
But once she hits 6, if she's able to flash ult you you will probably die, and after you die Tibbers will kill half your tower and she'll laugh at you because she's a smaller girl than you are. You have to really really play around of Annie's ult, is what I'm saying.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
AP Tristana has a huge power curve. She's real scary right up until 6, and then if she isn't snowballing and getting crazy items, it starts to peter out. Just don't get killed in this matchup, and you'll outscale her pretty well.
This guide was made at the same time as the Tristana rework, and I honestly don't know if AP Tristana is even still a thing. This ranking is based on how she used to be before the rework.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Heal optional. Seraphs build also optional.
This little Yordle couples reliable and strong harass with the fact that you're probably not going to kill her 1v1 without her making terrible mistakes. All in all it's a pretty difficult lane, but you do outrange her, so it's not hard to farm safely, it can just be very hard to ever go aggressive against her.
I used to list this as one of the hardest matchups in this category, but nerfs to her as well as to Athenes have made this matchup easier than it used to be.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Exhaust Optional. Seraphs build also optional.
Kayle is very similar to Lulu, but while Lulu's utility gets better over time, Kayles damage gets better over time. You can trade with her while her E is down, but while it's up you have to stay away.
If you're having trouble with this matchup, my best advice would be to play a couple Kayle games in normals, and get the hang of the timings around the E cooldown.
A good 40% of her damage is physical, so don't use HP per level Seals here even if the jungler is AP.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Syndra is the ultimate lane bully. She's got tons of damage, good range (although not quite as good as yours), scales pretty well, and it only gets harder after 6. This is one of the more difficult lanes for Lux, and it usually consists of you being beaten back to your tower and doing your best to not die until later in the game.
With barrier and shield though you can usually survive her burst, but you'll need barrier and you'll be too low to do anything but base afterwords.
Anti AD Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Teleport, Athenes Build
You can bully Cho real hard pre 6, but after he has a few levels, his sustain will make him too hard to burn down. Pre 6 focus on harassing and killing him, but post 6 just shove waves and roam. This is one of the easiest Teleport matchups, all things considered. Cho does have a lot of burst, but it's short range and often requires a flash to get on you.
I take Anti AD Runes in this matchup for more mana to bully him with, and because post 6 a lot of his burst is true damage anyway.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Teleport, Athenes Build
Very similar to Cho, Galio runs himself out of mana early, but eventually becomes a lane shoving machine that you can't really kill. He's also more flash reliant than Cho is, so just counterpush and use your teleport to gank, it's fairly simple.
Standard Runes, 24/0/6 Masteries, Teleport, Athenes Build
Seraphs build optional
Heimerdinger lanes usually consist of him pushing real hard and you pushing real hard, and not much else. Killing his turrets is a good idea and it's free gold, and you can use Teleport to gank, but mostly you want to be in lane counterpushing him.
Heimer is really hard to gank, because even if he dies his turrets will likely get a kill afterwards. Unless your jungler knows what he's doing, don't call for ganks in this matchup.
Every once in a while you'll see a Heimer top as a counterpick, and Lux top beats it, probably better than she beats him in mid. If I see a Heimer top after picking Lux I will always offer to take teleport and laneswap.
This lane is dumb. You can't kill Master Yi, and unless you go aggressive on him he can't kill you. Stay away from your minions so Alpha Strike won't hurt you, counterpush, and gank with teleport.
If your jungler wants to go aggro on him you can take Ignite, but I prefer Teleport in this matchup. Ignite really won't help you kill him 1v1, it only helps in a 2v1 situation. If you do take Ignite, pre 6 you can use it on him right when he starts his first Meditate in lane to stop the heal, that usually screws up his early game pretty well.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Teleport, Athenes Build
Heal optional
I hate playing against Twisted Fate. He shoves waves real hard, has good gank assist, and his ult lets him roam all over the map, forcing you to take Teleport just to follow him and hope for the best. If you don't feel confident teleporting after him, take Heal instead.
You can harass him in lane by trading right after he uses a colored card on minions, and he's somewhat gankable, but in general no matchup plays quite like this one and it's quite frustrating for Lux to deal with.
Later on in the game your teamfight is better than his, which is great, but he can kill you 1v1 all game long, so be careful about being out on your own.
I'm gonna call Morgana the hardest lane in the game for Lux, and the closest thing to a counter that she has. You can't kill Morgana 1v1 ever, she can kill you 1v1 post 6, she shoves harder than you all game long, is hard to roam against because you can't get caught by her in the jungle, hard to gank, has good gank assist, and she can also prevent you from killing her teammates.
Your strongest point in the game against her are levels 1-3, so try to get a little bit of a lead inside this window. Post 6, if she snares you she will kill you.
In this matchup I take 21/0/9 for movespeed to dodge snares, Teleport to roam with, and I use a Seraphs build since my whole goal is to just not fight her ever and try to win in teamfights later on. If you're not confident taking Teleport against her you can take Heal instead, but I've found Teleport works better.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Fiora is very much the stereotypical pre 6 kill lane. She's gonna try to dive you at 2, and probably again at 3, and if you run Q>W>E and harass her at 1 you'll probably just kill her and then win the lane after that. If she can't kill you at her level 6 timing she falls off real hard and there's not much she can do.
Her ult has a really long cooldown and is a lot of her damage, so you can be more aggressive after she uses it. If you two both trade ults, you can use yours again as soon as it comes up and it'll still be up again by the time she gets hers back.
Remember that while she's ulting she's untargetable, but she will follow you wherever you move. If you can flash back to your tower and survive the burst with shields, you can snare her inside tower range and the result is usually kind of hilarious.
If you have a hard time here, Ninja Tabi reduces a lot of her damage and makes the lane much easier.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Xin Zhao is almost exactly like Fiora, except that if you stop his timing windows and shut him down he can transition into tank items instead of damage. But it plays almost exactly the same, just take Q>W>E and stop his all in at 2.
Again, if you have a hard time here Ninja Tabi shuts him down hard.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Wukong is similar to Xin Zhao and Fiora, but he tends to be a little bit stronger and a little harder to deal with in lane, has good gank assist, and can transition to tank items if he's far behind. Do your best to bully him and watch for level 2, 3 and 6 timings.
If you have a passive mark on him and he uses W, the clone will not have your passive on it and it's really obvious, so watch for this.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Another lane where she's going to try to jump on you at 2, 3 and 6, but the rest of the lane you're going to bully her. It's often easier to just shove waves against Riven than it is to try to kill her in lane though, because she's good at dodging skillshots and her shield will eat a lot of damage for free, testing the limits of your mana regen. In general in this matchup I just play safe, counterpush, and wait for my jungler to try and kill her.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Jarvan used to be one of the hardest lanes for Lux, but nerfs and buffs and season changes have made it easier than it used to be. What makes him more difficult than the rest is that he can flag toss while snared, and his gank assist with ult is tremendously good, often forcing a flash no matter what.
But his only real all in timings are 2 and 6, so you can bully him at 1 and then again at 3-5, and if you shut him down his late game is quite poor.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
There are two kinds of Fizz players. The first will play this lane like a pre 6 kill lane and will dive you at level 2 or 3. They're easier to play against, because if you take Barrier and wait until after he's used Trickster to snare you will win that all in and kill him, and then you can buy Chalice faster and snowball an advantage.
The other and increasingly more common way Fizzes play against Lux is to start Flask, play like a wuss early game and farm best they can, but then go in on you after 6. This is harder to deal with because while you can win a 1v1 with him at 3, you often can't at 6. In this situation you can go E>Q>W and harass him as best you can early, but then after 6 stay away, much like against an Akali or a Kassadin.
You can often tell which way a Fizz player will play by looking at his runes and masteries on lolnexus.com during the loading screen.
When he does go in on you, cast Barrier as early as you can. A lot of Fizz's damage is based off of how much HP you're missing, so if his early burst is eating shields instead of HP his autos afterwards will do less damage.
MR Per Level Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Likely the weakest of any of these champions pre 6, as well as one of the strongest post 6, Akalis power spike is huge. You should play hyper aggressive early on and do your best to get a kill here, but after 6 stay far, far away and just passive farm.
Oracles and Pink Wards are necessary in this matchup, and lots of times if you don't have one in your inventory your jungler just won't bother helping you.
MR Per Level Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
Diana plays a lot like Akali, except that her pre 6 is stronger and her post 6 isn't as bad. It's the same sort of matchup though, you can beat her up early and post 6 you have to stay away.
Standard Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
If Diana is stronger than Akali pre 6 and weaker post 6, Katarina is stronger than Diana pre 6 and weaker post 6. She can dodge your spells with Shunpo, but after she does so she can't engage on you for a while so you can move in and auto after that. Your shield plus Barrier if necessary will stop her burst and if she doesn't get resets from a kill she can't do much after that (unlike Akali and Diana), so watch for her all ins and when she does them just shield and walk away.
I take Standard Runes instead of MR Per Level here because she can actually engage on you and do damage pre 6, although it's usually not very scary without her jungler there.
Katarinas roam is very strong though, so keep an eye on her and warn side lanes when she's coming.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Exhaust, Morellos Build
Yasuo used to be a difficult matchup, but he's been nerfed so many times that it's not so bad anymore. But he's still kinda tricky, because he can dodge and block spells, but the trick is to hold Q back until after he's already on you, to snare him inside your minions. You're a lot stronger than him pre 6 and can beat him 1v1 pretty hard. Even after 6, if you're ahead and have an Armguard and Exhaust you can still win a 1v1 fight.
This is the only matchup where I will max Block and Unyielding in defensive masteries, since Yasuo's kit makes Enchanted Armor weak due to his skills counting as autoattacks and his free pen.
Post 6 his all ins will often be paired with a jungle gank, especially if it's a jungler with a knockup, so watch for that.
Your ult ignores Wind Wall, and this is a useful thing to remember. But at the same time, never throw a shield towards him, because he can block that particle as well.
Anti AD Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Morellos Build
Zed also used to be difficult, but taking Exhaust makes him a pushover. With Exhaust and an Armguard/Zhonya if he goes in on you 1v1 you can usually just straight up win the fight and kill him, and he's easy to bully pre 6. Much like Katarina, if he uses a shadow to dodge a spell he can't engage on you for a few seconds and you can go auto him freely.
What's more difficult about this matchup is it's easy for Zed to safe farm and he never runs out of mana, so it's often harder to deny him CS than against other people in this category.
MR Per Level Runes, 21/0/9 Masteries, Heal, Athenes Build
I honestly think AP Kog'Maw is a little tricky for Lux without jungle pressure. If you have jungle ganks you can pop him real easy and get ahead early, but if you can't, he's ranged so you can't bully him as well as you can everybody else in this group, and after 6 he farms just as well as you and scales into a very scary late game champion. My best advice in this matchup is to play aggro early and call for ganks.
MR Per Level Runes, 21/9/0 Masteries, Barrier, Athenes Build
This is a more difficult lane than the rest post 6, because even when you're farming with E at max range, Kassadin still has the range to jump in and do damage to you when you don't want to fight him. Be quick on those shields, but other than that it doesn't play much differently than the rest of these lanes. Try to get ahead pre 6, and post 6 shove waves, farm, and try not to fight 1v1.
Junglers love ganking for Kassadin, even more than they love ganking Kassadin. Be prepared for the enemy or possibly both junglers to set up a tent in this matchup.
Lux tends to like poke comps and sieging comps the most, since she's at her best when she's allowed to harass at range, siege, defend sieges, and disengage freely. Champions like Jayce, Maokai, Janna, Karma, Sivir and Trundle are really good at keeping the enemy team from closing distance, often while helping her poke.
4 and 1 Split Push comps also pair with her strengths, since she can assist them with her ult without actually going to their lane, and is good at holding towers against a larger enemy team. So champions like Shen, Tryndamere or Gangplank can be quite good with her.
What she really wants in an enemy team is a lot of squishy champions, so that she has a lot of potential snare targets. A team full of tanks can be hard for her to handle later in the game.
What she doesn't want to play against is a composition that has a lot of free engage, especially if it's tanky on top of that or has ways to dodge snares. Things like top lane Olaf or Maokai can be difficult to deal with, as can combos like Yasuo + Vi (or really Jarvan/Vi plus any diving Assassin). Champions like Kayle, Morgana, Lulu and Zilean can also give Lux a rough time from any lane, because they can easily stop her burst from killing allies later in the game.
Here are a few more advanced, technical tricks you can use to improve your play. Lux isn't a very mechanically complicated champion like Riven or Lee Sin, but she does have a couple bright decisions in her repertoire.
Light Binding
You can Q and flash right after to make your flash+Q's a bit faster. Easy to do with some practice.
Remember that you can Q a champion through a single minion. Use this to surprise people in lane!
Prismatic Barrier
You can flash into the shield particle to get the second shield instantly.
Your shield won't hit allies in Zhonyas, but will hit you during your own Zhonya. Cast W, then use Zhonya just as the first shield breaks, and you'll get the second shield as you leave stasis.
Lucent Singularity
Remember that the max range on E is actually outside of the targeting circle (see picture below)
In the early lane, level E after casting it but before detonating it (E > Ctrl+E > E). This gives that spellcast the mana cost of the lower rank and the damage of the higher rank. With practice, this trick will save you 30 mana in the initial lane every game.
If placed correctly, your E can see in two bushes at once, or over both sides of a jungle wall. (see pictures below)
Final Spark
Your standard burst combo is Q > E > R > E.
Your highest damage, 3 passive combo is Q > R > auto > E > E > auto. This only works if the enemy is in close range and has no escapes.
Remember, you can use your ults cast time to ignore short stuns, and can use summoners during the cast time.
Below is a collection of things that are not necessarily part of the guide, but still Lux related. We have things like champion lore and patch notes, as well as videos of professional players using my favorite champion.
Finally, I've written a pretty lengthy FAQ, answering questions from our previous Lux guides, along with lots of boring math about why the stuff in the guide is optimized the way it is. If you have a question about something, do check the FAQ first, if you don't then in the name of Demacia I will punish you T_T.
Born to the prestigious Crownguards, the paragon family of Demacian service, Luxanna was destined for greatness. She grew up as the family's only daughter, and she immediately took to the advanced education and lavish parties required of families as high profile as the Crownguards. As Lux matured, it became clear that she was extraordinarily gifted. She could play tricks that made people believe they had seen things that did not actually exist. She could also hide in plain sight. Somehow, she was able to reverse engineer arcane magical spells after seeing them cast only once. She was hailed as a prodigy, drawing the affections of the Demacian government, military, and citizens alike.
As one of the youngest women to be tested by the College of Magic, she was discovered to possess a unique command over the powers of light. The young Lux viewed this as a great gift, something for her to embrace and use in the name of good. Realizing her unique skills, the Demacian military recruited and trained her in covert operations. She quickly became renowned for her daring achievements; the most dangerous of which found her deep in the chambers of the Noxian High Command. She extracted valuable inside information about the Noxus-Ionian conflict, earning her great favor with Demacians and Ionians alike. However, reconnaissance and surveillance was not for her. A light of her people, Lux's true calling was the League of Legends, where she could follow in her brother's footsteps and unleash her gifts as an inspiration for all of Demacia.
''Her guiding light makes enemies wary, but they should worry most when the light fades.'' - Garen, The Might of Demacia
Passive: Illumination: Lux's damaging spells charge any enemies with energy for 6 seconds. Lux's autoattacks or Final Spark will ignite the energy, dealing 10 + (8 x level) + 20% AP magic damage to the target.
Q: Light Binding: Lux releases a sphere of light in a line, striking up to two enemy units along its path. It deals magic damage to the first enemy it touches and half that damage to a second enemy behind it. Additionally, the first enemy struck is rooted for 2 seconds, and the second enemy is rooted for 1 second.
W: Prismatic Barrier: Lux shields herself for up to 3 seconds and throws out her wand in a line, applying the same shield to allied champions in its path. Her wand then returns to her, again shielding allied champions in its path and Lux herself upon return. When reapplied, the shield does not stack, but is refreshed.
E: Lucent Singularity: Lux sends an anomaly of twisted light to a target area, slowing enemies within 300 range and granting sight of a slightly larger area for up to 5 seconds. At the end of the duration or if Lucent Singularity is activated again, the zone will detonate and deal magic damage to enemies in the area.
R: Final Spark / Finales Funkeln After gathering energy for half a second, Lux fires a broad and long-range beam of light in a line that deals magic damage to all enemies in the area. Any enemies that are already marked by Illumination have it ignited for additional magic damage, then re-applied.
Sometimes a player will be able to flash while snared by Light Binding. This isn't a Lux exclusive bug, it happens with many abilities. (Potentially fixed in 5.1, will get back on this)
Bug #2
While Lux's ult cannot be cancelled during its cast, if Lux is physically moved during the cast time (by say, a Lee Sin kick), the Final Spark AOE will also be moved accordingly. However, the particle for the laser will not move, and will cause situations where it looks like the laser hit, but did no damage, or situations where someone outside the laser particle takes damage.
This is contrary to other charge-time ultimates that can't be interrupted (such as Ezreal, Draven and Jinx ults) where moving the champion during the cast time does not alter the trajectory of the missile.
Bug #3
If Lux is killed just as she's finishing the cast of her ultimate, it's possible for the laser particle to appear, but do no damage and not go on cooldown.
Bug #4
When trying to cast Lucent Singularity over a wall, Lux will sometimes try to walk over the wall instead of casting the spell, even though the cast point is clearly in range. This happens a lot when using it to scout over the dragon/baron walls. Casting the spell at just under max range will typically prevent this bug.
Other Art This is also known as the Lux skins that would be better than Riots skins section. Images link to original source wherever I could find them. Void Lux: + Show Spoiler +
Why take Hybrid Pen runes over Magic Pen runes? + Show Spoiler +
Lux spends a lot of time autoattacking and bullying early in the game, and hybrid pen is more cost efficient, giving her more power to do so. When building Seraphs I take magic pen instead, as in those games I will not be focused on bullying and am waiting for a late game power spike.
This is more of a preference choice than anything else. Nobody is going to fault you if you want to run magic pen.
Here are EHP values for each of these runes against AP and AD damage, given normal item builds and pen, for levels 1 and 18. We're counting your shield and barrier into these calculations.
EHP vs AP, level 1 Flat Armor: 1672 Flat HP: 1771 Armor/lvl: 1672 HP per lvl: 1688
EHP vs AD, level 1 Flat Armor: 1561 Flat HP: 1524 Armor/lvl: 1457 HP per lvl: 1452
EHP vs AP, level 18 Flat Armor: 3949 Flat HP: 4039 Armor/lvl: 3949 HP per lvl: 4219
EHP vs AD, level 18 Flat Armor: 6173 Flat HP: 6123 Armor/lvl: 6524 HP per lvl: 6397
So here are the results.
For flats: At level 1 HP is 6% better vs. AP. Armor is 3% better vs. AD. At level 18 HP is 2% better vs. AP. Armor is 1% better vs. AD.
For scaling: At level 1 HP is 1% better vs. AP. Armor is 0.5% better vs. AD. At level 18 HP is 6.5% better vs. AP. Armor is 2% better vs. AD.
Here's what I get from this.
Flat HP vs. Armor the differences stay the same early and late game, with HP being twice as much better vs. AP as Armor is better vs. AD.
However, two things about this. Firstly, Armor scales with your HP regen, while HP does not. Secondly, almost all champions do more physical damage than magic damage early game (there are a few exceptions like Karthus, Ryze, Azir, Cassiopeia and Singed). Minions and towers also do physical damage.
As such, I prefer flat Armor over flat HP, in general.
For the scaling runes, the differences change from early to late game. Early game HP is twice as much better vs. AP as Armor is better vs. AD, just like the flat runes. However, late game HP is over 3x as much better vs. AP as Armor is better vs. AD.
Since I typically will only take scaling Seals against a heavy magic damage team (AP mid + AP jungle), I prefer HP/level seals over Armor/level seals.
Why doesn't the guide mention AP/level Runes at all? + Show Spoiler +
I thought about this one a lot, and basically at the end of the day I decided that I didn't want to suggest that you needed 6 rune pages.
In most AP lanes, taking MR runes vs. AP/level runes is going to be preferential, and there's not much of a difference between them. I could do a bunch of math to suggest that MR is a stronger laning stat than AP on Lux early game, but it'd be kind of academic because if you're not getting hit AP is obviously stronger.
In AD lanes, you need the mana regen runes with the suggested build, because you're opening 2x Doran + Armguard which is not enough regen by itself. The mana regen runes help to buffer that since your Morello is delayed.
When you're building Seraphs you're taking CDR/level runes.
The remaining matchups are like, vs. Mordekaiser and Cho'Gath, and in general mana regen runes are just as effective, or more effective, than AP there, since you have to poke them a lot to get them out of lane. So I decided we could use the Anti AD rune page we already had there, and get away with only having 5 rune pages.
But if you want to use AP/level runes, or if you want to have 6+ rune pages just for mid lane APs, it's not a bad idea at all.
In Season 5, Expose Weakness no longer increases your own damage, which makes it a bit less obvious of a pick for Lux. However, I think most people have come around to the idea that this is just a really strong teamfight mastery and there's very little reason to not take it. You're going to be teamfighting on Lux, you're not going to be off split pushing by yourself.
Further, you have a lot of AoE damage, and your passive counts as a spell hit and reapplies the debuff, so you're better than most champions at keeping this debuff on the enemy team for long periods of time.
What's Better? Sorcery vs. Archmage vs. Spell/Blade Weaving + Show Spoiler +
The important thing to remember here is that CDR is not useful on Lux early in the game before she gets her regen items. While it's useful late in the game, it's not much better than Archmage, and in two out of three of your builds you'll be capped for CDR without any points in Sorcery at all.
The other important thing to remember is that the Weaving masteries are quite strong on Lux early game, because her passive counts as an additional spell hit for them, meaning a passive auto gives her one stack of each. This lets her stack both weavings much faster than most champions when trading, and keep the bonuses active for a longer period of time.
Given that, here is my recommendation for how to choose these masteries:
#1 - If you're going for a Seraphs build order, you'll only get 35% CDR through runes and items, and will be focusing on late game anyway. Sorcery is the right choice here.
#2 - If you're not going for Seraphs, you need to make a decision. Do you want early game power in this lane? If so, go for Blade/Spell weaving. If you want late game power, go for Archmage.
Assuming a Seraphs build order, Lux's overall spell DPS will be about 6 higher with Sorcery. Her burst damage will be about 60 higher with Archmage. This means that Sorcery will be better in fights lasting more than 10 seconds, which will be the majority of late game fights. With this build you won't care about early or mid game pressure at all (if you cared you wouldn't use this build), so Sorcery is best here.
If you assume one of the other build orders and a damage item for your last item, Lux will either A - build DFG because you care more about burst damage in this game, so Archmage is better, or B - build Morello because you care more about sustained damage, putting her at 40% CDR and making Sorcery points not do anything, so Archmage is still better.
As for Archmage vs. Spell/Blade Weaving, I want to look at the damage from a level 2 Q auto E auto combo. Archmage will give you about 1.3 more AP at level 2, adding 2.34 damage to this combo.
The weaving masteries on the other hand, will add 4.12 damage to this combo, as well as continuing to add 1.73 damage to any subsequent autoattacks in the trade. This is significantly better than Archmage in the early game.
However, since you don't get to autoattack much in late game fights as Lux, Archmage is significantly better than the Weavings later in the game.
The most important stats for Lux early in the game are regen, as she fights in lane by whittling down her opponent over time rather than going for big all in plays. The regen on Feast is more than worth 2 mastery points to her.
We're going to assume that both Recovery and Meditation are good masteries (they are), and that you're getting diamond level CS (10 CS/minute), and that Butcher is totally useless (it's not), meaning Feast basically costs 2 points for what you get.
Given these assumptions, Feast gives you about 2.5 HP5 and 0.83 MP5, or 1.25 HP5 and 0.415 MP5 per mastery point spent.
This means that Feast is about 160% as efficient as the other regen masteries, both of which are worth taking. Therefor, Feast is very worth taking.
Since Lux will typically build a resistance item on her first back (Chalice or Armguard) Enchanted Armor is more valuable to her than Unyielding and Block.
I will however switch to Unyielding+Block against Yasuo, whose Q counts as an autoattack and who has tons of innate armor pen.
First off, lets assume we're going against an AD champion, whose autoattacks will be a problem to deal with in lane. Most ADs start the game doing around 70 damage with their autos.
Recovery will heal 1.27 effective HP per 5 seconds.
This 70 damage auto against level 1 Lux will do 54.7 after factoring armor with one point of Enchanted Armor. The same 70 damage auto will do 54.0 damage after factoring armor with one point of Block.
So, at level 1, Block stops 0.7 damage more than Enchanted Armor per autoattack. Enchanted Armor helps against skill and minion damage too however, so we can guess that it's more like about 0.5 damage better, unless you're against a champion whose skills count as autoattacks (like Yasuo).
Block is only better than Recovery if you take more than two autoattacks every 5 seconds. This doesn't happen often in the early lane.
So, if we were only looking at level 1, the order of importance would go Recovery > Block > Enchanted Armor.
However, the key thing here is how each one of these scales. Both Recovery and Enchanted Armor scale better the more resistances you have. In our 3 builds we either A - buy a Chalice first back, B - buy a Cloth Armor first back, or C - only care about late game with a Tear build and want late game masteries anyway.
Block actually scales negatively with level, because it is stopping a smaller percentage of the enemies damage the more AD they have. While the difference between Block and Enchanted Armor might be 0.5 at level 1, by level 6 it might be as low as 0.1. After level 6 Enchanted Armor is likely stronger.
As such, I value the skills in this order on Lux: Recovery > Enchanted Armor > Block.
The exception case is vs. Yasuo, whose Q's count as autoattacks, and whose ult gives him free armor pen. Vs. Yasuo I think Recovery > Block > Enchanted Armor is correct.
Summoner CD reduction is much more valuable on champions who use their summoners to initiate plays, such as an Annie or a Galio. Lux typically uses her summoners as a defensive reaction to her opponent, meaning they pick the timing in which your spells get used. As such, it is hard for Lux to obtain an advantage out of having a shorter cooldown window on summoners, and I find more movespeed or regen more valuable on her.
This is a big preference choice for me. By the numbers, Runic Affinity is very strong. However, I personally don't like masteries whose power is conditional. If you're being given blue buffs, Runic Affinity is strong. If you're not, it's useless. While I might switch to this mastery in ranked 5's, in solo queue I don't take it because I can't guarantee I'll be getting regular buffs.
Because Lux's mana cost on E goes up significantly on level up, the damage per mana point spent of her rank 2 E is not much higher than rank 1. Getting W at level 3 does not significantly reduce your damage, but does make you much more resistant to ganks, all ins, and protects you if you make a mistake.
If I know the enemy jungler has died already when I hit 3 I may take the second point in E, because I know at that point I can do so safely, but in a "standard" game I never will.
Counting her passive damage, level 1 Lux E at 3 does 124.4 damage for 70 mana, or 1.77 damage per mana. Level 2 Lux E at 3 does 169.9 damage for 85 mana, or 1.99 damage per mana. This is not a significant increase.
Lux's shield however gives 3.0 shielding per mana at full effectiveness. Counted together, her level 1 W+E has a mana efficiency of 2.39. So basically, as long as you see yourself using the shield when you trade, it's more efficient to have E+Q+W at 3 than E+Q+E at 3.
The case for E+Q+E is if you don't need to use the shield. So if you're already ahead and beating the other guy at level 3, and know the enemy jungler won't gank (maybe he's already shown top or maybe he got invaded and killed by your jungler), E+Q+E can be a good choice.
Q first is strong for invades, because it lets you get CC on one target. If you take Q for an invade and you get something for it, it's typically worth it.
However, between levels 1 and 2, you regen enough mana in lane to cast two spells, and if those two spells are Q's you're likely not gonna do any damage with them. With E first you can potentially do 150 or so damage to the enemy champion at level 1, nearly for free.
So I only skill Q first if I'm invading, and even then I won't do it until the moment I'm going to use it, because if I don't get a kill or assist with it I'm putting myself behind in lane.
There's about 35 seconds between when laning "starts" and when you hit level 2. In that time you'll regen 63 mana, plus up to 41 from Feast and Dring Passive, plus 18 with utility masteries. So probably usually about 100, and max 122.
E at 1 costs 70 mana, so between level 1 and level 2 you can (and should) cast it twice. I will typically wait until right when I hit 2 for the third cast, because this will make my passive do more damage.
If you start Q you can use two Q's at level 1 the same way, but it's a lot harder to hit people with Q at level 1 than it is with E.
This is a pretty common question and unfortunately the answer is "it's complicated." It really depends on how much CS you're getting. Math (lots of it below) seems to say that Dring becomes better if you're getting 5 or more CS per minute.
In general I prefer Dring in 1v1 lanes, and prefer Flask in the rare 1v2 lane.
So basically, the difference between Flask and Dring is that Flask gives you more defensive stats, while Dring gives you more damage stats. We're going to try to equalize this as best we can, and then we're going to try to figure out how good your CS needs to be for Dring to be better in initial laning. We won't worry about mathing things out after your first back at level 6, because at that point you could have both items if you wanted and it doesn't really serve a purpose.
We're also going to say that, if the results are equal, Dring is better. There's three reasons for this. #1, Dring is better until you can use your flask charges, so it's better at level 1. #2, Dring gives more stats in an all in situation, and #3, Dring has better cost efficiency, since you spend 35g less on consumables.
First we have to figure out how much mana you have. Flask gives 360 more HP, counting masteries. This is worth roughly two full shields. Flask also gives 280 more mana, so Dring Lux starts 400 mana down.
When calculating max mana, I'm going to assume you save enough mana for Q, W and R in case a fight starts in the lane.
So now what we're left with is your harassment with E over time. Dring gives 12.5 more damage per spell hit and more regen, while Flask gives you 408 more mana to cast spells with.
You have 532 base mana at level 6. It takes 9 minion waves to reach level 6, which takes about 5 minutes. In that time your base regen gives you 407 mana. Drings base regen gives 162 mana.
Utility masteries give another 182 to Dring Lux, and 210 to Flask Lux.
So, Flask Lux has a total of 1009 or 1219 available mana. Dring Lux has 771 or 953, plus some amount relating to Dring passive.
E costs an average of 85 mana between levels 1, 2 and 3, and does an average of 123 damage with passive, +12.5 with Dring. Dring also adds 27.75 to the damage of the spells we're holding in reserve.
So, here is the total amount of damage Lux can do with each item:
Given all this (we're getting somewhere, promise) we can come up with how much CS you need to get in the lane for Dring to be better than Flask.
With defense masteries: 26 CS (130 mana, equalling 207 damage) With utility masteries: 27 CS (135 mana, equalling 215 damage)
This happens over 5 minutes, so you need to be getting about 5.2-5.4 CS/minute for Dring to equal Flask.
So, ultimately, if you're in a low enough league that you're getting less than 5 CS per minute, Flask is likely better. At 5, it's probably about equal (which by our rules means Dring is better) and over 5, Dring is better.
Flask is also probably better in a 1v2 lane, where it will be difficult to beat 5 CS per minute, and where you'll likely take Teleport to let you recharge your Flask.
Deathcap vs. Void Staff vs. Zhonya vs. Morello, which to buy first? + Show Spoiler +
Deathcap does less damage to champions than Void Staff, but allows you to kill caster minions with just your E. As such, buy Deathcap first if you feel you need to prioritize farming, and Void Staff first if you feel you need to prioritize teamfight damage.
Void Staff first is also the right choice if you are so far ahead or so far behind that Deathcap will not change whether or not you kill caster minions with E. In general, if I can't finish Deathcap by around 25 minutes, I get Void first. This scenario is increasingly common in season 5, since the gold costs of all of Lux's early itemization has been increased from season 4.
Zhonya first is more defensive, but is a good pick up vs. AD Assassins like Zed and Fiora, where it completely prevents their ults and makes it almost impossible for them to kill you in a teamfight. You can also get it first against AP Assassins such as Fizz or Katarina if they are far ahead enough to warrant it. If you get Zhonya first, you should always get Void second and Deathcap third, because getting Zhonya first will ruin your Deathcap farm timing anyway.
Morello in general does less damage than either Void Staff or Deathcap, but can make it much easier to farm and defend towers when you're behind and need to cast E a lot to stay at long range and defend. As such, I wouldn't call an early Morello the most optimal or efficient option in a standard game, but if you're behind and need it to stall the game out, it can be a good purchase. Much like with Zhonya, if you get an early Morello you should always get Void before Deathcap.
To prove how universal it is that Void Staff outdamages Deathcap, I'm going to use some pretty silly numbers. Lets say you have 1 AP, and the enemy target only has 42 MR (level 1 MR + MR runes), and you already have Sorc Shoes (20 flat pen). Lux's highest ratio spell (her ult) is a 75% AP ratio, but lets say it only does 1 base damage.
With Deathcap, this 1 damage + 1 AP 75% ratio spell on a 30 MR target does 1.65 damage. With Void Staff, it does 1.75 damage.
So if your opponent is not buying any MR at all, and your AP is equal to the base damage of your spells (this is not the case in the early to mid game) Void staff still outdamages Deathcap using your highest AP ratio spell. If we were to do realistic calculations of mid game damage, Void Staff would kick Deathcaps ass so hard it would not be a contest at all.
For example, a rank 5 Lux E with 2x Doran, Morello and Deathcap (6300g) does 332 damage. 2x Doran, Morello, Void and Blasting Wand (6155g) does about 355 damage. That's over 5% more damage with Void Staff against somebody with zero MR items. If they're buying MR, Void just gets even better.
The only reason you buy Deathcap second on Lux is because minions have 0 MR, so Deathcap is better for farming. If you don't feel like you need help farming in a particular game, get Void Staff first.
If you're far enough ahead that you can buy a Mejais early and stack it, Mejais is the best 6th item for Lux.
The second best 6th item is Seraphs, utilizing the listed Seraph build with CDR/level runes. If you are not taking CDR/level runes, Seraph is not a good option.
Third place is either Morellonomicon or Athenes, depending on if you want 80 AP or 60 AP and 25 MR.
Banner of Command is also acceptable if you want a sort of hybrid damage+defense item, but it's not as strong offensively as any of the above.
Liandry's Torment and Lich Bane are bad as a 6th item, don't buy them. If you want proof of that, look at the math below.
Here are some charts of how these items compare to each other in terms of raw numbers. These numbers assume 3 points in Archmage and 2 in Sorcery. I also threw in Rylais and Twin Shadows, just for fun.
Some notes on these numbers: The Seraphs numbers here assume you also took CDR/level runes. If you don't take those runes, the Seraphs DPS numbers are between Liandry and Rylais (meaning you shouldn't buy it). I counted the Seraphs shield at about 75% mana.
For Liandry's, I'm counting the Mpen and burn damage to be equal to about 100 AP, which is arguable but I think that's fairly generous. I added Liandry and Rylai's HP values to burst shielding.
I counted the DFG active as 300 damage, which I think is about the minimum. DFG isn't an available item anymore, but I'm keeping the math here because well, I did all the math I don't want to take it down QQ.
For Lich Bane, I counted 1 spellblade proc per spell rotation, which is not the most efficient, but is typical in normal Lux play.
AOE Sustained Impact (per second) #1: Mejais - 316 damage, 162 shielding, 478 total #2: Seraphs - 310 damage, 159 shielding, 469 total #3: Morello - 295 damage, 152 shielding, 446 total #4: Athenes - 288 damage, 148 shielding, 435 total #5: DFG - 274 damage, 141 shielding, 415 total #6: Twin Sh - 262 damage, 135 shielding, 397 total #7: Banner - 256 damage, 132 shielding, 388 total #8: Liandry - 246 damage, 114 shielding, 360 total #9: Rylais - 234 damage, 120 shielding, 354 total #10: L Bane - 227 damage, 117 shielding, 344 total
Single Target Sustained Impact (per second) #1: Mejais - 561 damage, 162 shielding, 723 total #2: Seraphs - 550 damage, 163 shielding, 713 total #3: Morello - 527 damage, 152 shielding, 679 total #4: Athenes - 517 damage, 148 shielding, 665 total #5: DFG - 503 damage, 141 shielding, 644 total #6: L. Bane - 503 damage, 117 shielding, 620 total #7: Twin Sh - 482 damage, 135 shielding, 617 total #8: Banner - 474 damage, 132 shielding, 606 total #9: Liandry - 462 damage, 124 shielding, 586 total #10: Rylai - 445 damage, 136 shielding, 581 total
Single Target Burst #1: DFG - 4095 damage, 954 shielding, 5049 total #2: L. Bane - 4051 damage, 913 shielding, 4964 total #3: Mejais - 3928 damage, 1015 shielding, 4943 total #4: Liandry - 3813 damage, 1183 shielding, 4996 total #5: Seraphs - 3720 damage, 1435 shielding, 5155 total #6: Rylais - 3625 damage, 1334 shielding, 4959 total #7: Morello - 3552 damage, 913 shielding, 4465 total #7: Twin Sh - 3552 damage, 913 shielding, 4465 total #8: Athenes - 3477 damage, 893 shielding, 4370 total #8: Banner - 3477 damage, 893 shielding, 4370 total
AOE Burst #1: Mejais - 3051 damage, 1055 shielding, 4106 total #2: Liandry - 2957 damage, 883 shielding, 3840 total #3: Seraphs - 2881 damage, 958 shielding, 3839 total #4: DFG - 2869 damage, 954 shielding, 3823 total #5: Rylais - 2802 damage, 934 shielding, 3736 total #6: Morello - 2744 damage, 913 shielding, 3657 total #6: L. Bane - 2744 damage, 913 shielding, 3657 total #6: Twin Sh - 2744 damage, 913 shielding, 3657 total #7: Athenes - 2682 damage, 893 shielding, 2682 total #7: Banner - 2682 damage, 893 shielding, 2682 total
So, basically, here's what we get from that. I'm going to rank all of these items.
First place: Mejais is the best (durrrr).
Second place: Seraphs Embrace (with CDR/level runes) (also kinda durrrr).
Third place: I'll call it a tie between Morellos, Athenes and DFG. - Athene/Morello are better at sustained damage. - DFG is better at burst damage. - Athene/Morello overtake DFG in damage after about 18 seconds. - Athene is about 2.5% less damage than Morello, but gives 25 MR.
Unfortunately DFG isn't available anymore, so the choice is between Morello or Athenes.
Fourth place: Liandry - Liandry's sustained values are terrible, and its shielding values are terrible. While its burst is reasonable, it's not good enough to make it a better choice than Morello/Athenes, since they will outdamage it by the second spell rotation.
I know we have some Liandry fans in the old Lux thread, so let me point out that Liandry has gotten worse in season 5, since CDR is harder to come by. Since we used to have 32.5% CDR before buying a sixth item, DFG used to only give 7.5% CDR, and Morello/Athenes weren't options at all. Now you can get 17.5% CDR from Morello, which makes it so much better at sustained damage than Liandry that Liandry's extra burst is irrelevant.
There is one time Liandry is good though, and it's weird. If you go the Seraphs build and take CDR/level runes, but then for some reason don't buy a Tear (maybe you got real far behind early game or something), Liandry is suddenly the best 6th item for damage, because CDR/level runes work really well with it. However, at the same time it's not a good idea to go for this build intentionally, because if you do take CDR/level runes, Seraphs is better than Liandry.
Fifth place: Twin Shadows / Lich Bane - You should only buy these super late game as a boots replacement, not as a 6th item. - A little bit of math on replacing boots with these. If you can make use of Twin Shadows CDR, its single target DPS is only about 7.5% lower than Lich Bane, and its AOE DPS is about 7.5% higher, while giving 1% more movespeed, an active, and better shields. If you can't use the CDR, Lich Bane is pretty obviously better unless you really need the Twin Shadows active.
Sixth place: Banner of Command. - It's a fine buy if you want a hybrid damage+defense item, especially if nobody on the team has a Locket. But as a damage item it's not good.
If you need MR, either Locket or Banshee is acceptable. I tend to prefer Locket, and only buy Banshee if I feel the individual game necessitates the spellshield.
If you need both Armor and MR, get either Randuins or Locket/Banshee, depending on which resistance you want more of. All three of these options give you better defense to both AP and AD than Guardian Angel does.
Only buy Guardian Angel if the enemy assassin is so far ahead that there is no other way to stop them from killing you.
Here are the end game effective HP values for different defensive items for Lux, counting her shield and barrier, for different items, both before and after standard amounts of penetration. We're assuming 21/9 masteries for all of this.
So, basically, here's what we get from that. I'm going to rank all of these items.
Ohmwrecker, Iceborne and Warmogs are always an inferior pick to some other item, and you shouldn't get them.
Banner of Command is good if you want hybrid damage+defense against AP, but as a defensive item is worse than the competition.
vs. AP, Locket and Banshee are very similar. Locket gives CDR and team stats, while Banshee gives the spell shield. I'd probably lean towards Locket in most situations.
vs. AD, Randuin and Frozen Heart are similar. Frozen Heart also gives offense through a ton of CDR and mana, while Randuin also gives pretty decent defense against AP. I kind of like Frozen Heart the best, in most games. 20% CDR is worth a slight defense reduction.
Guardian Angel I don't like on Lux. You don't really get to do anything after you revive because all your spells have long cooldowns and cast times, and you'll usually be the last person on the team to die. You'll just die again. Plus, its stats are worse than other items, even if you want it against a mixed damage team. Just buy Randuin or Locket against mixed damage.
The exception is that GA can be useful if you're so behind that there's no other way to prevent death, but that rarely happens on Lux.
I tend to upgrade boots / buy Homeguard on Lux a lot earlier than I do on other champions. Part of this is preference, but in general boots are stronger on her than they are relative to other champions. Spell pen is usually a higher damage stat on her than AP is (see the Deathcap vs. Void Staff math above), and while her cooldowns are too high to make Liandry cost efficient, Sorc Shoes are very efficient. If I think the movespeed will help me dodge skillshots in a particular matchup, I'll get Sorc Shoes very early.
As for Homeguard, Lux is one of the best champions in the game at defending towers, and can easily defend towers 1v2 or even 1v3 if played well (1v4 is usually too hard they will dive you). But unlike the king of tower defence Ziggs, Lux tends to have to be close to the tower in order to defend it. So I'll buy Homeguard if I think the movespeed boost will let me rush to a tower that is about to be sieged and keep it alive with a long range ult, and in general this means I buy Homeguard earlier on her than I do on other champions.
Other
Your spoiler tags are all off center. What's up with that? + Show Spoiler +
There's no way to center a spoiler tag but left align the text inside it on TL (if you know of a way, please tell me.) I've done the best I can with indent tags, but on some resolutions it looks pretty silly.
I only put up matchups that I thought people might actually see in games, and there are some on the list already that shouldn't be there. (mid Sion lol)
If you want advice about some crazy weird abnormal matchup I can write about it in the thread, but I don't really want to make the matchup section even more cluttered unless something suddenly becomes really popular and played often.
Credits Big thanks to: NeoIllusions, Soniv, Atrioc, GhandiEagle, Alaric and Chiharu for helping me edit the guide Sufficiency and Eiii for statistical data Dae, loSleb, Scip and Navi for giving me build and matchup input from a competitive ELO perspective WaveofShadow and Lord Tolkien for buying me Lux skins wo1fwood for his BBCode guide Shurelya and Riot for making such a cool champion and a great game.
Runes:Hybrid Pen Armor Magic Resist Ability Power Runes Note: Use CDR/Level instead when playing aggressive. Masteries: Any mastery page within reason Summoners: Barrier/Heal and Flash Opening Items: Dring +2 Pots Spells: E>Q>W, max R>E>Q>W, start Q for invades. Itemization: 2x Dring > Athenes > Ludens Echo > Void/Dcap/Zhonya > If needed, sell Ludens for a defensive item.
Buy Mejais if fed early.
If behind, buy Morello second.
If using MR Runes, sell Ludens for Morello at 6 items.
Defense item should be Locket, Banshee, Frozen Heart or Randuins.
So, I'm looking at Lux builds on probuilds, and this double Morello or Athene+Morello start looks like it's pretty popular.
I kind of want to examine the particulars of this vs. going Morello/Athene+Void Staff.
We'll look at about level 11, and look at both burst and sustained damage, assume you've got 2 dorans and sorc shoes, and assume your target has MR runes but no MR itemization yet.
Morello + Void 210.79 AP 22.5% CDR Target MR 0.162
Damage combo: 898+2.25 AP
So based on that, here's some values:
Damage (burst) M+M: 1223 M+V: 1370
Damage (sustained per second) M+M: 102.49 M+V: 88.72 (note: Autoattack DPS is 51.875)
Shielding (burst) M+M: 314.553 M+V: 307.553
Shielding (sustained per second) M+M: 37.44 M+V: 28.34
The results are kind of herpderp obvious, Void Staff is better at burst damage, Morello is better at sustained damage. But here's some things about this, I think.
#1 - We're assuming people haven't bought any MR. If they're starting to buy MR, Void is going to perform even better than this.
#2 - Morello's build path is way better.
#3 - Morello also makes farming and sieging much easier.
#4 - It takes about 11 seconds for 2x Morello to outdamage Morello+Void, which at this level means Morello starts to outperform on the third spell rotation. This is a critical thing for me because I think a lot of level 11 fights are over by the third spell rotation.
I think, based on this, I like the idea of Void second if you're ahead, because it gives you more burst to one shot and threaten people, and if you're ahead the enemy team is more likely to buy MR. But I like the idea of Morello second if you're behind, because that lets you defend towers, farm easier, means you don't need blue buff so if it's being stolen or your jungler is taking it it's fine, etc.
I don't know about everybody else, but in my games Deathcap second is becoming basically impossible in season 5. You can't get it by the necessary timing to one shot caster minions anymore, since Athenes is more expensive, you're getting 2 drings, and Dragon no longer gives gold.
I kind of wonder about 3 item timings now, if Morello+Morello+Void+Blasting Wand would outperform Morello+Void+Deathcap. Maybe some other day I'll do math for that.
I believe i saw in the Scip Jungle Thread that Expose Weakness doesn't work on yourself anymore? Might wanna take a look at that. Other than that the guide looks good to me at first look.
2x Morellos was used in part because of how cheap it was prior to 5.1. Patch 5.1 increased Morellonomicon from 2100 to 2300, which makes it slightly less appealing.
According to this it's still stupidly gold efficient (134.4% lol) though.
The wiki points to a scenario required for Void to be gold efficient here ("The percentage magic penetration stat must have at least a value of 772g for Void Staff to be gold efficient.")
As it relates to Lux, I definitely think M+M can be more useful than M+V when behind, because 2 of the three biggest problems facing Lux when behind (CDR and mana regen) are solved with the second Morellos, which helps her work towards solving the third problem, which is damage. If she is behind, she likely isn't bursting priority targets, and so increasing the number of cycles is very helpful. M+M also helps with her wave clear, which is critical for a team when behind.
Is there an easy equation or something that can tell someone on the fly whether M+M or M+V will be more efficient in a given situation?
Obviously, intuition can assist most players in determining what works, but I like to think TL isn't satisfied with intuition.
(should we start a new thread for the M+M vs M+V conversation?)
#1 - If the enemy champ has an MR item, Void is gonna be stronger. Here's the same numbers again if the enemy champion has the Enchanted Armor mastery (pretty common) and a Null Magic Mantle. + Show Spoiler +
Burst M+M: 985 M+V: 1196
Sustained M+M: 83 M+V: 77
So, it goes from taking 11 seconds for M+M to outdamage to 35. Kind of a big difference.
#2 - If enemy champs have zero bonus MR from anything, Morello is gonna be stronger. This is not going to happen very often, because melee champs get MR with levels, MR runes are common, and getting an early Chalice/Hexdrinker/Merc Treads is also fairly common. But you might be able to lolnexus the enemy team before the game and figure out that M+M is the best bet for a small percentage of games.
Here's some 3 item timing math for the earlier Morello discussion: + Show Spoiler +
Looking at level 16 here.
Morello+Morello+Void+Blasting Wand 339.45 AP
Morello+Deathcap+Void 441.28 AP
Burst Damage M+M+V: 1901.76 M+D+V: 2130.88
Sustained Damage M+M+V: 174.48 M+D+V: 153.3
So it's actually really really similar to before. Morello+Morello+Void outdamages Morello+Void+Deathcap after about 11 seconds. I think by this point in the game though a lot of fights do last longer than 11 seconds.
So, basically, here's your flow chart for Lux items in an ideal vs. AP game, especially starting patch 5.2.
First item - Athenes (or Chalice+Morello)
Second item - Mejais if super fed, Void if ahead, Morello if behind
Third item - Deathcap for burst, Morello for sustained, Zhonya for defense
Another funny note, if you're going Athenes+Morello, the most efficient way to do it is to do Chalice > Morello > Athenes.
He does a build that's fairly similar to the build I'd suggest for that matchup, although he delays his regen/CDR longer than I would and takes Heal instead of Exhaust. He's also taking AP/level glyphs.
Every time I see Lux in an LCS game recently I always get all sad because the NA pros always seem to underperform on her and make her look bad, but Faker does real well in this game. He beats Zed in lane despite getting ganked over and over and over, and has quite a lot of teamfight impact without getting killed much.
The build is a lot better than LCS builds I've seen, although I can see a couple times where delaying mana regen hurts him. At about 13 mins in the video he needs to back because he's OOM but can't do it, and ends up being in a fight without any mana to cast basically anything. Then later on his second death would have been avoided if he'd had a Forbidden Idol instead of the Chalice.
Also he buys Deathcap before Void Staff, which is always wrong in that build path and should never be done ever.
But, in general, this is a real good game, and a good video for learning how to lane/teamfight as her. I enjoyed watching it.
Question on lux. Would Liandry's Torment be any good on lux if you are hitting a lot of pokes (E while laneing or siegeing ) rather than just bursting people down?
This is already answered in the FAQ section. Some other damage item is always better than Liandry.
The only case where Liandry is a good buy is if you take CDR runes because you expect to build Seraphs, and then for some reason never buy Seraphs. Lets say I decide I want to go a CDR runes Seraph build against Syndra (a bad idea, sorry PowerOfEvil you're a dumbdumb), then get killed at level 3, can't buy Tear so I get faerie charms, then get killed again at level 6. I might build Chalice instead of Tear here and then buy Liandry for a 6th item instead of Seraphs.
But this is already making the best of a bad situation that you put yourself in in the first place. A different build order would have been better in general.
Deathfire Grasp has been removed (sadface), there were some notations added to the build paths talking about our double Morello discussion. I also changed some stuff in the FAQ around, notably the 6th Offensive Item question, Expose Weakness section and added a bit on when to upgrade boots and buy Homeguard.
I also moved Matchups to its own section rather than hiding it in the Beginners Play Guide, because there was a request on Reddit to make that section easier to get to.
Opps, I think I was unclear. The FAQ mentions it as a 6th item, I was thinking more early / mid game (after sorc shoes and grail / morelol but before anything else).
Some math shows its going to do meaningfully more damage (17%-25%) on pokes compared to void-staff at the same point in time.
But I suppose maybe the argument is that you are eventually going to buy void-staff and all the other stuff and if you bought torment third it eventually becomes your sixth item late game and at that point you are weaker than if you had picked something else...
If a game is going to end at 20 minutes, getting an early Haunting Guise is actually pretty good. It's got real good stats on it.
The problem is that buying it makes the rest of her build order real awkward.
For starters, if we're gonna get an early Haunting Guise, we're assuming Liandry is gonna be our 6th item, so we're getting CDR/level runes in order to compensate for that. That's fine, but it weakens our early game. It makes up for the lost MR in the mid game because you get some HP though.
You still have to get Athene/Morello first for mana regen/CDR. So we'd be at minimum talking about Haunting Guise for a second item. In a mid game situation where you'd be at Doran+Morello+Guise with CDR/level runes, that's actually quite strong.
But now you can't sensibly go Deathcap for your next item, because you've screwed up the Deathcap farm timing. Liandry and Deathcap just don't synergize well together in general either.
You can't sensibly go Mejais, because there's nothing to replace it with. In a 6 item build Void and Deathcap will outdamage a 20 stack Mejais, if you replace Liandry with it why did we go Liandry in the first place, and you can't replace Athenes with it because you require the regen. You also don't get any CDR from Mejais if you fully stack it.
You can't go Morellos as your next item because you're already CDR capped.
You can't even really go Void Staff, because you're now sitting on 40 magic pen, which means you're likely reducing peoples MR from 0 to 0 with Void. If they're super tanky you can do this I guess.
Basically the thing to get for your third item is Zhonya, but Zhonya isn't really what we'd call an offensive item. I'd rather have Morello+Deathcap+Void or Morello+Morello+Void than Morello+Liandry+Zhonya.
You also can't buy tank items for the same reasons, you have nothing to replace them with but the Liandry that you may as well not have purchased. Your CDR runes also make your best defensive choices, Locket and Frozen Heart, inefficient.
So yeah, if you're downing inhibitors at 15 mins, buy a Haunting Guise. But that's just winning an already won game harder. It's not actually good.
I guess the right time for an early Haunting Guise is in the reverse situation.
If you've already lost inhibitors at 15 minutes and all you've got is an Athenes, a Haunting Guise might be a good emergency buy. But even in that situation I'd probably want to get Morellos for better siege defense in order to try to stall the game out.
The game is kind of a stomp so it's maybe not the most exciting game to watch, but it is some spectacular Lux play, and the draft around her is very good as well, so I want to analyze it a bit.
Starting with the composition, I don't know if Lux was their original plan or not (she's picked last), but it's a very good composition to build around her. Gnar and Corki are both excellent champions for poke comps, strong at disengaging, and also both strong in lane.
The following Nunu pick is also an excellent jungler to pair with Lux. Nunu's style of play (and the way he's played in this game) is to be in the enemy jungle stealing things, getting vision and warding. This deep warding gives Lux the safety to throw Q's out in the 1v1 (which Pawn does a lot of in this matchup), and Lux's ult gives Nunu the safety to fight Lee 1v1 if he needs to, since Lux can assist the fight faster than Leblanc can. Later on in the game, Nunu gives a lot of area control through his ult and pushing power through blood boil, which does a lot for the comps teamfight.
The only pick I'm a little curious about is the Leona, which I don't necessarily think pairs all that great with Lux. They hovered over Annie for a while which I think would have been a better pick to assist Lux, but at the end of the day I think what they wanted with the support pick was guaranteed engage, since little Gnar and Nunu don't have that, and Leona's engage is more guaranteed than Annies I suppose. Either way, meiko did very well.
As to the build, Pawn ran what I feel is a very greedy build to take against Leblanc, with HP/level yellows, CDR/level blues, and 21/0/9 masteries and Heal. It ended up working out for him, and I wonder if he just figured he was a stronger player than Dade and could afford the greedier build, or if he assumed Nunu would be backing him up for most of the game. He also ran 3 points Archmage instead of Sorcery or the Weavings, which is what I take against LB as well. It can be hard to get passive autos on LB because she jumps around like a bitch.
I'm a little bit curious as to the later items in his build, although they're not bad. He goes 1 Dorans into Athenes, which is fine, Clearlove gives him every blue buff and they also steal or attempt to steal a couple of the enemy teams, which tend to go to Corki if Lux already has one, and Lux if she does not.
After that he goes for Deathcap, which he does finish by the 25 minute timing, so that's also fine. Then he builds Void and ends the game with a NLR. Basically the standard season 3 Lux build.
But I'm wondering if Void Staff + Haunting Guise would have been the superior pick here. Since Pawn is taking CDR/level blues, a Liandry 6th item is appropriate (although the game ends before he would have even gotten close to getting 6 items). By the time these items would have finished, Lee had almost 100 MR, Kennen had a Zhonyas so he could dodge the combo whenever, Leblanc had about 70 MR, and Thresh had enough HP items that combos were not killing him anymore. On top of that, Gnar and Corki both have real strong waveclear, so I don't think extra waveclear from Lux was very necessary.
I think it's fairly academic because Pawn was so far ahead that he could still kill Leblanc and Tristana if he landed a combo, which is what you want to do, but I think Void+Guise into Deathcap would have been a slightly stronger build had M3 been fighting back a bit better, and would have been obtainable with the gold he had at the end of the game. I think Lee should have built a Locket first item in this game, and if he had done so the early Void would have definitely been the better choice.
I suppose at the end of the day since Pawn was 100-0ing the required targets either way, getting more minion damage was the correct choice.
In terms of playstyle, Pawn plays it excellently. He hits Dade with two E's at level 1, which puts Dade on the backfoot early on, and Nunu's warding lets him stay aggressive the whole time without worrying about Lee ganks. I think Dade could have been more aggressive in the level 2-5 area to punish Pawns greedy build, but it seemed like he was playing a little scared. Maybe he was scared of being snared as he jumped forward and being stuck inside the enemy minions, which Pawn does do to him a couple times. This is something that's extremely difficult for me to do in the Lux LB matchup, and it's fun to watch a professional playing her with much better mechanics than I have.
There's a really good example of strong aggressive Lux play at about 17:05 in the video. Pawn pushes a wave up, then moves just out of vision at the side of the lane. He snares Dade by Qing through a minion, following up with a combo that gets him below half HP.
After pushing the following wave up, he E's in the middle of the lane. This is excellent E positioning, because Dade has three choices here. He can either A - miss all 3 CS. B - Walk through the E and take the hit, or C - Try to go around it. C seems like the sensible choice, but it's not because it funnels him into the space between the tower and wall, which is an easy Q hit. Pawn Q's him during the jump, which snares him forward enough for a passive auto (Pawn could have gotten a second auto here if he'd been a little quicker, I think.) Dade ends up taking more damage than he would have just walking through the E, and if Pawns ult had been up this would have been a kill.
Pawn has two deaths in the game, and they're both fairly understandable. The first is in a teamfight at 20:20. He kills Dade, has to flash away from Kennen, and gets enough damage on Lee that an auto will kill him too, so chases for it and gets taken out by a pretty confident Q confirm from Dreams. Pawn makes a slight misplay here, his shield is up but he doesn't use it when the Sonic Wave lands, and I think if he had been attack moving he actually would have landed the auto before Lee finished sailing in anyway. But chasing the Lee is totally understandable, and it was a good play by Dreams.
His second death is shortly after at about 21:50. We don't really see what happens because it comes right after a replay, but it looks like he got caught by about three people going to his blue buff, and that shit happens sometimes, if it's not warded there's not much you can do. This is more good positioning by M3 than it is a mistake by Pawn.
There's also some examples here of M3 playing poorly against the Lux pick. In general I think they don't respect her damage later in the game, and Pawn gets a lot of free bindings that turn into easy kills. But a prime example of how you should never play against Lux is at about 22:50. After the fight at about 22:20, Corki is very clearly seen moving bot by M3's wards. But rather than send somebody bot to stop him, they send 3 people mid in order to attempt to trade towers.
This is a bad call, because a fed Lux like this can easily defend her tower 1v3. She just ults a creep wave (and hits Tristana with it in the process, the casters comment on that but not on her deleting the wave which is the objective), and M3 gets no damage on the tower at all while Corki easily takes bot by himself. They can't dive her in this situation because with her shield and snare she'll go at least 1 for 1 and they won't get to take the tower after anyway.
This is also an example of strong play by EDG, because they had Clearlove and Meiko at the enemy red buff at this time, not only taking the buff, but ready to collapse bot lane if M3 had gone after Corki like they should have.
After this it really becomes kind of a bit of a boring game, EDG is far ahead but since their comp is mostly poke it takes them two barons to break into M3's base. There's some good bindings and a really nice Tristana snipe towards the end of the game, but not too much that stood out for me to comment on.
Ultimately, Pawns Lux looked leagues better than the Lux play I've seen in the LCS, in terms of build order, mechanics, and also strategy of how she's built into a team. Pawn ends 7/2/9, and even though it was a bit of a boring game, it was really cool for me to see my girl used to such success.
I actually thought Frozen played pretty well considering the matchup and the game, and according to the end of game stats he considerably outdamaged Azir, stole a baron, and ended 4/2/4, so I don't think the Lux pick really deserved the bashing that it got from Montecristo and Doa.
I'm not going to go super in depth analyzing his play this game, because the camera was on him almost none of the time, and he didn't really do much that I'd consider worth talking about in depth. He had two deaths, one of which was a good play by CJE that he couldn't have escaped no matter what, and the other was in the last 20 seconds of the game. He had good skillshots for most of the game and played it real standard, so not much to talk about.
It is worth noting that the team composition around this Lux pick is very similar to the LPL team composition, except they have Jarvan for hard engage so they can take the better poke support in Janna.
I would however like to spend some time bashing Frozens build, because it was bad, and you could tell he was playing Lux because Xerath was banned and he didn't have an optimized game plan set up for her.
I'm gonna start with him taking Cleanse. The only cleansable hard CC on the enemy team in this game was from Leona. He had no reason to take Cleanse in lane, and arguably no reason to take Cleanse in teamfights. He only uses it three times in the entire game. He uses it for both of his deaths, and both times Leona isn't on him so it doesn't do anything.
The third time is to stop a Leona stun in the fight at 41:30. While he does stop the stun, all of his cooldowns are down, he doesn't get bursted by anybody, and he walks around for a second without even autoattacking.
I'm pretty comfortable in saying his Cleanse had absolutely 0 impact on the game, and anything (even Revive) would have been better. I would have taken Heal. Frozen had Heal, but switched it to Cleanse when the Leona got locked in, I'm not too sure why he thought Leona would be stunning him over Corki.
This is the biggest build error he made and would have made the biggest difference. The other things are pretty nitpicky, but they're there and I want to pick at them, because I don't think professional players should be making mistakes that can be solved before the game starts.
But they could have been better. For starters he doesn't take Double Edged Sword, which is a spectacular mastery on Lux, since she's often attacking people who can't fight back, and isn't worth too much in a fight after she's used her burst combo anyway so dying faster makes very little difference.
He also does the Korean thing of taking 3 Archmage 2 Devastating Strikes, instead of the other way around. I was a little curious as to the math on this so I did some.
What I found is that, while this is probably the right decision for most champions, it's not the right decision for Lux. Xerath for example has lower base damages and higher AP ratios than Lux does, so this is probably the right move on him.
For Lux, her base damages are so high and her ratios are so low, that a point in Devastating Strikes outdamages a point in Archmage basically the entire game long (although it's usually very small, usually within a single point of damage) while also increasing her AA damage. That's for champions that have the minimum expectable MR in a game. Against tanky champions with big MR items, Devastating Strikes is much better than Archmage on Lux. Every enemy champion in that game had an MR item by the end of it (except Leona who has her W), so this mastery choice was simply incorrect.
His runes were fine, he ran Mpen / HP per level / MR / AP, which is standard.
His item build however was also bad.
He started Flask + 3 HP pots, and had no mana for what looked like the entirety of the early lane, meaning he was unable to harass Azir when Azir is at his weakest and obtain any kind of an advantage. Having Cleanse also prevented him from being aggressive here, but we already talked about that.
He goes back to base at 5:45 with 35 CS, so he got 9.33 CS per minute. Based on our Dring vs. Flask math in the guide, this is well over the amount needed to make Dring the superior choice. So he's unable to bully Azir at all, and Azir goes in to the game with a CS lead when he scales better anyway.
He builds Athenes first and then Sorc Shoes, which is fine.
But then he goes for a Deathcap, completing it at 25:45 minutes. This is too late of a timing to get Deathcap second for farming, and much like the LPL game, this is a team that has Corki and Janna, giving them ridiculous waveclear already. You'll notice that at no point in the game can Frozen one shot caster minions with E. He may have been able to immediately after buying the deathcap and we don't see it, but shortly after the minions level up enough that he can't again.
He 100% should have bought Void Staff second in this game, especially considering that at the time he buys Deathcap, Maokai and Reksai have already purchased MR, and Leona has it built in to her kit.
I honestly don't think these errors would have turned the game around. IM pretty much got outplayed, and I think Frozen actually did just about the best of anybody on his team.
But it's sad to see professional players using builds that are just mathematically inferior to some other setup like this. I thought these Korean teams are supposed to have analysts who figure this stuff out and tell the players prior to the games? The Korean teams are usually much better at this sort of thing than the Western teams.
Which is why I think Frozen wanted to play Xerath and couldn't because he was banned, picking Lux as the backup. All of these decisions (except the Cleanse, wtf Cleanse???) would have been correct for Xerath.
Also, while I set a posting in my own thread record.
Is anybody actually interested in and reading these game analysis? They take a couple hours to do apiece, and since nobody is replying to them, I'd like to know if people are enjoying reading them.
If anybody has a Lux game they want me to pick apart, whether it's a pro game or a replay of one of your own games, link it and I'll see what I can do.
I've been following Lux champion threads in TL ever since someone once posted an OP stating that Lux can't be played mid and can only be support (this was back in mid S3). Before we know it, the entire S3 worlds was about getting Lux mid.
I've been using Lux as a yardstick on how the mid lane rotates through priority picks. This actually feels like S3 already, where Ahri/Morgana/Leblanc mid was common. Then, they get nerfed and Lux becomes popular. Then, mages get nerfed and it becomes bruiser mid 2.0.
I really think that Lux need to be played with J4 on your team. Never had much success with mobility junglers (Vi, Rengar, even Nidalee) other than being able to win lanes. They do not have the synergy J4 have with Lux. In the whole duration of J4's ult, Lux can throw E/Q while ulting into that small enclosure.
Even when Lux is behind, one good teamfight where people underestimate her Q-E-R/E-Q-R combo can turn a game. Now that her nemesis Ahri/Kass/Talon/Leblanc were nerfed. Lux mid is gaining more and more popularity. I'm afraid this just means Lux might become a priority pick soon, and we go back to S3 with tanky/teamfight junglers/top, together with Lux.
I think you're getting your League history mixed up a bit.
Lux was most popular in late season 2 and very early season 3, when popular mids were still Karthus, Anivia, Ryze etc, because she pretty much dumpsters on all the "I'm going to safe farm for 30 minutes and then go destroy teamfights because I have half my teams gold" champions. Safe farming against a Lux who is ahead is impossible, she can always hit you with E's if you're on the same screen as the minions.
S3 worlds was Zed/Orianna/Gragas, and it was Zed and Kassadin that really kicked Lux off the stage.
Although, after Exhaust was changed and people could take it against Zed, Lux actually wins lane against Zed pretty hard now.
In S4, Ziggs was basically Lux 2.0, and now that Ziggs has been nerfed quite a bit, Xerath is sort of in command of the "1400 range Mage" spot. I do think Lux is getting more popular in competitive play though, this season she's already been played half a dozen times or so, usually when Xerath is banned.
On February 13 2015 03:21 Ketara wrote: I think you're getting your League history mixed up a bit.
Lux was most popular in late season 2 and very early season 3, when popular mids were still Karthus, Anivia, Ryze etc, because she pretty much dumpsters on all the "I'm going to safe farm for 30 minutes and then go destroy teamfights because I have half my teams gold" champions. Safe farming against a Lux who is ahead is impossible, she can always hit you with E's if you're on the same screen as the minions.
S3 worlds was Zed/Orianna/Gragas, and it was Zed and Kassadin that really kicked Lux off the stage.
Although, after Exhaust was changed and people could take it against Zed, Lux actually wins lane against Zed pretty hard now.
In S4, Ziggs was basically Lux 2.0, and now that Ziggs has been nerfed quite a bit, Xerath is sort of in command of the "1400 range Mage" spot. I do think Lux is getting more popular in competitive play though, this season she's already been played half a dozen times or so, usually when Xerath is banned.
Oh fk me, it was S2 that lux was considered 'Only Support' until worlds, which TPA wonned.
Its going a full circle though. Nerfs to kass/zed throughout s4/s5 while leaving lux untouched have made her stronger and a viable pick over xerath, whom i predict a nerf soon since riot loves to nerf, and ziggs, whom was already nerfed to oblivion.
I still remember the Lux thread that stated that Lux can only be played support and people who tried mid lux was silly.
Xerath had so much changes and a rework that made him viable lol. That previous tether to increase range was just 'Hit me with EQ as hard as you can, Jayce' bait. Also, getting raped by zed mid wasn't funny.
Honestly, Xerath's Q should have to charge its damage just like it charges range because his counter-play is supposed to be "get in melee range" where as currently he does just as much damage (more burst actually) in melee range as he does from max range.
Just read your analysis of the Lux games and it's given me a good insight as to which team comps Lux performs better with. When you calculated that Void Staff was a better 2nd item than Deathcap for Lux did you factor in the synergy Deathcap has with Archmage masteries? I'm starting to agree more with you about Void Staff as a second major item although NLR is still a tempting buy if I'm backing with over 1600 gold. Would you agree?
Assuming Lux already has Sorc Boots and Athenes and you're in base with 1700 gold what items should Lux generally buy?
1) Start working towards void staff and buy its components. 2) Get the NLR and build Deathcap. 3) Get the NLR but still build Void Staff before Deathcap. 4) Buy a Haunting Guise, then work towards Void Staff.
Yeah the Void Staff calculations use both 3 points Archmage and 1 Dragon buff. It doesn't matter. Void Staff is always better on Lux at damaging champions all of the time.
I think getting the NLR is kind of a trap, because it locks you into the Deathcap route. If you get Deathcap fast enough, it's still a fine buy. But once you get the NLR you have to get the Deathcap, and if suddenly you stop getting kills and don't get the rest of the gold fast enough, it was the wrong decision.
On the other hand, in your proposed situation you could get Blasting Wand + Amp Tome and upgrade your trinket for 1545 gold, and get 60 AP + trinket wards which is probably even better than an NLR. Then you have the itemization routes to go for Deathcap, Void or Morello, depending on what the game looks like in the next few minutes.
In other news, it's very possible that this new static shiv type item they're talking about will be a must have #2 item on Lux and might make me rewrite the entire fucking guide, sigh.
This guide is amazing. I read it from the very start to the end. Lux is my favourite champion to play and she has been for about 3 years now. I'm now in Plat 3 but i'm constantly moving forward thanks to you and your very detailed and in depth guide in which you wrote every aspect of the game as this champion and adapted to various situations. I've been following this guide for a moment now and I think i will stick to it because of the freshness and constant updates. Thanks a bunch and please keep working on it constantly.
I hadn't considered the new item for lux but since she does play some what like a poke mage because of her long cool downs I think it will be rather good item on lux.
I don't want to really bring up a discussion on it because it's not even on the PBE yet and might never make it in or might be drastically changed.
But the stats that were teasered for it are just completely overpowered. It'd be better for farming than Deathcap and better for champion damage than Void Staff and give movespeed to help you roam all at once, for less gold than a Deathcap. It'd be broken and a must have item on the majority of AP mids.
As an all time Lux fan, I love this thread. I usually play dota these days, but when queuing alone I like to play a game of League once in a while. Here is my match history, as you can see im usually going Morellos/Athenes -> Mejais -> Void Staff, sometimes Zhonyas before if I play against stuff like Zed/Yasuo etc.
I don't know though if its the right choice to go Mejais in my games, what would be the usual indicator to decide if I should go Mejais or not?
On February 23 2015 23:26 Vallelol wrote: As an all time Lux fan, I love this thread. I usually play dota these days, but when queuing alone I like to play a game of League once in a while. Here is my match history, as you can see im usually going Morellos/Athenes -> Mejais -> Void Staff, sometimes Zhonyas before if I play against stuff like Zed/Yasuo etc.
I don't know though if its the right choice to go Mejais in my games, what would be the usual indicator to decide if I should go Mejais or not?
personally, I buy mejais on AP lux mid when I dumpster on the opposite mid and can already kill the other mid any time I want. And just shoot lazers at their team when they're doing objectives to get free stacks.
Other than that, you get mejais when you know you aren't a priority target/are an expert at staying alive on an immobile champion. For example, you're just doing fine in mid, but bot lane is destroying and top is doing average. You get mejais to snowball your team's advantage.
I go Athenes/Morellos/NLR (needlessly large rod) first depending on how well I'm doing in lane/my lane matchup, and then go void staff/deathcap next. Have been my build ever since I played lux.
Hey, sorry that it took me a while to get back to this. I was banned lol and then forgot about it.
There's two factors to consider when deciding whether or not to go Mejais.
#1 - Am I going to keep getting kills/assists? If you're behind, you probably don't want to get Mejais.
#2 - Am I not going to die?
This one is more critical because you might be super far ahead, but if their team is Lissandra Yasuo Vi, when you have a lot of stacks they will just focus the fuck out of you and it's hard to stop that trio from getting in your face if they really want to dive for it.
You only want to get Mejais if you can say yes to BOTH of these questions. So you need to be at least somewhat ahead, and the enemy team needs to not have crazy long range dive assassins, for it to be a good idea.
I am really excited for Lux. Luden's Echo could be a totally legit early purchase for Lux if it creates a one item wave clear timing with E and a bug fix that adds 0.2 ratio to a full combo. It still doesn't put Lux on the level of Xerath but if it works out the QOL improvements would make her way more fun to play.
So, I'm actually going to wait a patch before I update the guide, because I'm fairly suspicious that Ludens Echo is too strong and will get nerfed in the patch after this one. Also because I'm going to Asia soon and can't really afford the time to do two guide updates before I leave, so I want to do one larger one right before I go.
But I'm pretty confident that in its current state you should be building it as second item on Lux (after Athene/Grail) all of the time, and that it's completely killed the Seraphs build order.
Also should probably use CDR/level runes whenever you think you can get away with it now.
I don't think it will get nerfed but I base that almost entirely on some math, that I didn't double check, that I saw on reddit after the first reveal which showed that for basically every AP it is worse than deathcap. This means that for all champs in meta right now it is at best a 5th/6th item and that assumed you don't need any defensive items at all. The ONLY reason I think it will be good on lux is because it allows you to wave clear with one rotation at one item. Champs like Xerath and Ahri can already do that with lower cooldowns and conventional builds.
Not according to what I read. Maybe I am just being silly but as a second item deathcap passive is worth a little over 70 AP. Assuming you get one proc per rotation you will get about 130 damage (100+.15 ratio on 200AP) chain lightning at 2 items with ludens so a 2.0 ratio (which is low for any mage's rotation) already out scales at 2 items. There may be a slight shift in value from missing spells (favoring echo) or from getting fewer than one proc per rotation (favoring deathcap) but it certainly seems far from cut and dry that echo is better even at this stage.
So, if you've got a Dorans ring and typical runes/masteries and you're level 9.
With Deathcap you have 213.213 AP.
With Ludens Echo you have 164.01 AP.
So you're looking at a difference of 49.203 AP.
The Ludens Echo proc will do 105 damage.
In order for the Deathcap route to do more damage, the AP ratio on the spell used would have to be about 225%, which is impossible for a single ability.
Then on top of that Ludens Echo has 7% movespeed, a better build path, and costs less.
It's pretty broken. Won't be for everybody, but on the champs it will be good on it will be pretty broken, and Lux will be one of them.
I agree that double doran's straight into echo will generate a window, I just disagree with it being OP. I used a 2 item timing and you used one, I assume because the earlier you get it the better it is. What I am saying is that the window is very narrow and not without significant cost. In a heads up match-up, even at one item as you showed, deathcap is way better when using your entire kit. Luden's echo is superior when running around at a thousand range throwing one spell pokes but any type of true engage flips the math. Add to this that you significantly delay your deathcap timing which scales better with every AP than echo and I just cant see it being more than a niche pick.
Lux specifically benefits from it because she is a mage with one AOE basic ability that isnt strong enough to one shot casters unless way ahead so it adds an entirely unique farming utility to her kit. I agree that if the timing works Lux will rush it but I honestly cant think of another champion that will get it early. This isn't because echo is bad, it is because the other 5 required items are already set to critical timings.
The game right now revolves around rotational play to take objectives and team fighting. In both those scenarios Luden's Echo seems superior unless you have a 2 threat comp (maokai top, Sejuani jng, Janna support) that looks to scale in addition to a slower scaling ADC. Even then the potential burst on Echo might still out damage Deathcap while not even factoring in the move speed.
I think it'll be exceptionally interesting to see how it worst for low cd mid Mages. Somebody like Karthus.
When bought as your first major item on almost every mid-lane champion with decent AP ratios, Deathcap is going to out damage or at least be equal to Ludens on the first full burst (Most AP champs have 225% ratio on a full combo). But its the second time you can proc Ludens ability that it should begin to surpass deathcap's damage. Deathcap is much stronger as the game goes on while Ludens is strongest when first purchased.
I do think Luden's gives you insane poking.
As I said after this was released on PBE, Luden's should be a great item on any AP champ with good poke damage because it basically makes that single spell deal ~50% more damage. First champ to come to my mind was Lux who can hit hard from max range with a long cooldown spell and below average AP ratio.
Right now I'm thinking the go to Lux build is Dring>Chalice>Ludens>Void into finish Athenes. Lux's low AP ratios make Luden's almost equal to deathcap in a full burst and poking with E is going to be 50% stronger in the early game which is more valuable to Lux because its much easier to 75-0 enemies than it is to 100-0 them.
On March 12 2015 17:02 geript wrote: The game right now revolves around rotational play to take objectives and team fighting. In both those scenarios Luden's Echo seems superior unless you have a 2 threat comp (maokai top, Sejuani jng, Janna support) that looks to scale in addition to a slower scaling ADC. Even then the potential burst on Echo might still out damage Deathcap while not even factoring in the move speed.
I think it'll be exceptionally interesting to see how it worst for low cd mid Mages. Somebody like Karthus.
I think low CD mages will still benefit more from buying other items before ludens because the bonus damage isn't going to proc on every spell making it much less efficient than on poke champs. Sure if you are spamming a low CD spell you can charge Luden's faster but you are just going to OOM yourself. I think spammy mages are going to want a CDR/Mana item first before they get Ludens so they can take advantage of that synergy without going OOM quickly.
I'm not so sure. I can see Luden's Echo being build on a variety of Tear/Seraphs based mages like Karthus, Nidalee or Cass. I can also see it be for bursty pick type mages like Ahri, Morgana or Syndra. I think there's also a reasonable reason to build it on a few assassin mages like Leblanc. It is a question of where and when to build it, but I think more people will be building it early on than just poke mages.
#1 - The math I posted above was based off Ludens doing 60+5 per level like it said in the patch notes. It's actually doing 100+15% AP like it was on the PBE, which is a lot stronger.
#2 - This is the Lux thread, not the Champs Who Like Ludens Echo thread, so while discussion is fine, it should probably be discussion relating to Lux.
#3 - As for Lux, I think Chalice > Ludens Echo is the go to build. I have tried it and I like it. I still want to wait a patch before updating the guide because I'm gonna have to change like, the entire fucking thing (ugh), but I think that's the build.
I am inclined to agree on the build. I have tried a few and the one I initially thought would be best (ring->chalice->echo) is the best. I also feel even stronger that they won't nerf it unless there is some other champion it breaks (this is possible) because it feels BARELY better than deathcap and that gap will be even smaller when Lux's ult combo gains 0.2 ratio next patch with the bug fix.
If it gets nerfed it will most likely be the stack generation rate which doesn't effect Lux nearly as much because she has longer cool downs and spends most of her time moving to charge it.
The most surprising thing about it is that all ability damage procs it. Sirhcez built it on singed and the poison damage procced it. Totally not what I expected.
It's because there's a difference between spell casts and spell damage. Lux passive deals spell damage (which is different from magic damage), so it procs things like spell weaving and Ludens Echo. But it's not a spell cast so it doesn't up the stacks by 20 or give Kassadin a W stack or things like that.
Can Lux replace Lulu in the Juggermaw team comp? You lose the speed boost. The shield is roughly equivalent. You lose the wild growth for CC and hp. But you gain more long range CC, poke and wave clear.
I assume for a 'protect the ADC' comp Deathcamp would be better than Echo right?
On March 14 2015 17:54 geript wrote: Can Lux replace Lulu in the Juggermaw team comp? You lose the speed boost. The shield is roughly equivalent. You lose the wild growth for CC and hp. But you gain more long range CC, poke and wave clear.
I assume for a 'protect the ADC' comp Deathcamp would be better than Echo right?
Everything you just said about Lulu is why the Juggermaw works. The shield on Kog (ap damage+ %health damage + ad damage) + the speed + the wildgrowth if needed are all things that make a hypercarry even more hyper. Lux doesn't add anything to that except the shield you've mentioned. Lux is best in a siege or maybe a pick comp, but for the pick comp to work the vision has to be excellent.
Yeah I went and tried to do it in customs today the way the guy suggests to do it, I got it to work once out of like 15 tries. So sad.
There's another youtube vid where he explains it. He basically said you have to put your secondary flash key near your first, and then spam them once you do it. He then said this way it becomes 100%. It might be useful for some kind of juke/outplay kind of thing I guess..
Probuilds screenshot: Two builds seem to stick out: Scaling AP runes with Mejais rush into lots of AP items delaying CDR until 3rd or even 4th item OR the more standard early Morellonomicon.
Maybe I am a noob but when I see 10 "pro" games (I am lookin' at you Dinh) with one upgraded trinket it makes me think pros are just slow to change their ways.
Okay, having listened to the first bits of this, here is my opinion.
For Lux at least, he says that you can't buy Ludens because it delays your primary damage items, which he lists as Deathcap and Void Staff.
His reasoning is sensible.
However, the problem is he has ignored the math, which shows that Ludens Echo does more damage than Deathcap.
When he talks about Nidalee, again he says "what ends up occuring is you get Deathcap and then get Zhonyas blah blah", ignoring the fact that Ludens does more damage than Deathcap.
He also says movespeed isn't a useful stat when sieging, which is LOLOLOLOLWTF.
It's just LS talking out of his ass, like he usually does.
Not completely related, but I feel that Luden's + Lich could be a nice core for some assassins-- adds a decent amount of AP, and a pretty nice bit of AP ratio.
On March 24 2015 02:40 Ketara wrote: The problem with his Nidalee review is that he said that Deathcap outdamages Ludens on Nidalee, which is not true.
It's not even remotely true.
So, LS is dumb, nothing is new. Lets move on.
Nidalee has 6(!) skills that scale off AP, Ludens over Deathcap is straight up silly on her. Hell, if you only value damage Lich Bane would be better than Ludens, she's not only about throwing spears anymore.
I would just like to clarify that it is never a matter of luden's OR deathcap, it is a matter of hitting timings for each. After playing dozens of games with echo I maintain that Lux is the only champ in the game who should rush it. Just like champs that rush hourglass, such as morgana, you can only stray from an early deathcap build if the utility has some special synergy with the character.
On March 24 2015 05:14 Velocirapture wrote: I would just like to clarify that it is never a matter of luden's OR deathcap, it is a matter of hitting timings for each. After playing dozens of games with echo I maintain that Lux is the only champ in the game who should rush it. Just like champs that rush hourglass, such as morgana, you can only stray from an early deathcap build if the utility has some special synergy with the character.
I can definitely understand the matter of timings, if it's possible to waveclear an item earlier for instance which from what I can gather is the case with Lux.
Something completely unrelated. Is there really nothing to do than being a scaredycat vs a Syndra? Have found myself often having to use ult just to save tower super early. In the few games I've had this match up it've always felt like I got smashed and my only redeeming factor was if I could land better snares and shields than her stuns later in the game. :'-(
Syndra and karthus play the same for me as Lux. You have to play far enough back that they cant disable you and get follow up but if your jungler has any kind of disable your wombo combo is a guaranteed follow up kill. After chalice/echo your full combo will probably 80-0 them so one E with echo proc puts them in kill range to Q.
Long story short, it is a jungle match-up if they are really good and an outplay match-up otherwise.
On March 24 2015 02:40 Ketara wrote: The problem with his Nidalee review is that he said that Deathcap outdamages Ludens on Nidalee, which is not true.
I guess if being dumb means being held in high regard by most people important and making the money I do, then by all means sign me up. I must surely put David Blaine to shame with all the pros and teams I've pulled a trick on too yeah?
Ah yes *ahem* and btw, Nidalee does deal more with DCap over Luden.
If you asked me what bottoming felt like, I would be unable to tell you, however I'm sure you could now tell me.
I really like how this math video posted is talking about 3 item timings in a 20 second fight against a 3 item Shyvana. Realistically no fight with Shyvana is going to last 20 seconds, and my point was always that Ludens is often better at 1 item or 2 item timings anyway.
I could see how Luden's might do more damage on one spell if you were looking at things in a vacuum however I'm guessing where deathcap does more damage is when you're looking at doing an entire combo (spear + cougar w/e/q). I'm curious though if you might end up getting more than one Luden's proc in most situations since you will be getting 1 from your spear but you'll then be building up charges from not only your spell casts following that but also from the distanced pounced. She definitely seems like a champ where there's a lot of variables that can impact which is going to output more damage, sounds that Rabadon's might be more consistent but Luden's has potential to be more damage overall in some cases? Would be interesting see the math on this.
It's entirely possible that if you look at the full, maximum damage combo, a first item deathcap outdamages a first item Ludens on Nidalee.
The thing is though, as far as I'm aware, you don't just pounce on every spear as Nidalee. You throw spears until you're sure that your combo will kill the guy and then you dive in. I dunno. I don't play Nidalee.
As much as I like dick waving and all this shit though, this really is the Lux thread, so if we're going to dick wave and do Ludens math, we should do dick waving Ludens math on Lux. And that's honestly even an easier argument for Ludens than Nidalee is, because you can argue all sorts of non damage stuff for Nidalee like Zhonyas or whatever, whereas Lux basically always goes 1st item CDR, 2nd item pure damage.
So while I'd encourage LS to do a better job of backing up his argument with an actual mathematical analysis (and not just very silly examples of Leblanc getting in a 20 second fight with Shyvana), lets stick to Lux stuff in this thread. If we want to continue the Nidalee discussion lets move it to GD. I'll happily respond to Nidalee related posts there.
And as far as Lux goes, Ludens is clearly and blatantly better than Deathcap.
In regards to LS's video and how it pertains to Lux, he shows some 4 item Lux math (Athenes + Void + Ludens + Zhonya vs. Athenes + Void + Dcap + Zhonya), which would seem to indicate that a Dcap combo does 148 more damage than a Ludens combo.
He ignores that Lux's passive is currently bugged, but that's fine I can ignore that too, I probably would if I was doing the same thing. His math also seems strange, I'm not sure if he's running AP blues in this math or something? Standard Runes/Masteries for that, counting a Dorans ring for the last item and level 18, would be 16+6+15+15+60+70+120+120, which = 422 AP, 447.32 with a dragon buff, but he has the Ludens build at 458 AP somehow.
Even the Ludens to Dcap stuff he's listed is awkward, because if his Ludens build is 458 AP, his Dcap build (458 x 1.3) should be 595.4, but he has it as 595.8
His ratios are off too, for Q, 595.8 x 0.7 = 417.06, but he has it as 417.479. If you counted Havoc and Double Edged Sword, it'd actually be 436.015, so it can't be that either. And so on and so forth.
I'd be really interested in seeing the level and exact build we're talking about here, because these numbers are basically all wrong and I'd like to go over them.
But anyway, there's some less nitpicky issues with this example.
For one, we're talking about a 4 item build that goes Athenes + Void (standard and obvious) and then either Ludens + Zhonya or Dcap + Zhonya. Realistically, you could also have Ludens + Dcap here, which would be the most damage. In many games on Lux Zhonya is not actually needed that quickly, the active is not very useful on her (she likes the armor though). So it's weird that this is the example used. Even back in the DFG days I would on occasion go Athenes + Void + Dcap + DFG on Lux, and get Zhonya as the last item, and Lux likes Ludens MUCH more than DFG. I would even argue that in many games the Ludens movespeed is a better defensive statistic for Lux than the Zhonya armor is, since so much of her defense is positioning, and when people get in her face late in the game it's likely that nothing will save her.
A better example would be a 3 item timing, either Athene + Void + Ludens or Athene + Void + Deathcap. If he'd done that example it'd look a bit more like this, I'll use level 18 just to favor Deathcap a bit and make things easier on myself:
Athenes + Void + Deathcap (6+16+15+60+70+120)x1.3 = 373.1 P = 74.62 Q = 261.17 W = 130.585 E = 223.68 R = 279.825 PQER = 839.295
Athenes + Void + Ludens (6+16+15+60+70+120) = 287 P = 57.4 Q = 200.9 W = 100.45 E = 172.2 R = 215.45 L = 143.05 Total = 789
So, when we get to 3 items, a Deathcap combo is outdamaging a Ludens combo by about 50 damage, supposing the AOE only hits one person. If you suppose the AOE hits 2 people, Ludens actually comes out ahead, since about 70 HP of the damage in the Deathcap combo is (more or less) single target. We can also see that Ludens comes out ahead in terms of sustained poke damage since so much of the increase in Deathcap is in the ult which is only going to be used once.
I am admittedly ignoring shields here, but I don't think we want to bring that up, because if we really wanted to get nitpicky I could start talking about AOE damage vs. single target damage, or about how Ludens lets you do magical things like increase the AOE range of your E by letting you hit 1 champion with E in a siege, making Ludens proc on 4 people for like 600 total damage.
But we can say this is mostly equal, which makes Ludens the stronger choice, because of the 7% movespeed, better build path and costing less.
And we can see that if Ludens is better at 3 items, it's also better at 2 items or 1 item. This would beg the question of is Ludens + Athenes better than Void + Athenes, and is Ludens + Chalice better than Athenes + Morello or Athenes + NLR. These are good questions, and I actually haven't done the math for them yet. I'd likely guess that Ludens is better than Void, because it helps you CS while Void does not, and the damage values are likely similar unless targets have a lot of MR. As for Athenes vs. Ludens + Chalice, after my test games I'm actually leaning towards Athenes, but need to do math to verify that.
But at the very VERY least, we can see that there are going to be cases for an early Ludens Echo in your games as Lux, which would seem to prove LS's premise that it's an altogether bad or noob trap item wrong. In his defense, I will say that I really doubt it's going to be an effective early buy on most champions, which is also what LS appears to be saying, I think we just disagree on which champions those are, of which Lux is certainly one.
So, there we go, now we're having a healthy Lux discussion again, hooray!
As much as I like dick waving and all this shit though, this really is the Lux thread, so if we're going to dick wave and do Ludens math, we should do dick waving Ludens math on Lux. And that's honestly even an easier argument for Ludens than Nidalee is, because you can argue all sorts of non damage stuff for Nidalee like Zhonyas or whatever, whereas Lux basically always goes 1st item CDR, 2nd item pure damage.
What? In no world is Lux getting 20 seconds of free deal and procing Ludens 6 times in 20 seconds. The statistics alone try to give Ludens an unfair advantage and it still loses to deathcap (not even factoring in W or passive)
This isn't even like a discussion, Ludens is not better at three items which the inven article shows(while ignoring W and passive)
The lissandra tests showed best what happens with suboptimal AP ratios end up making Luden superior.
Then you go on to say it builds better or whatever. Uh.. Aether Wisp 850 vs 860 blasting wand gold is not a huge difference and the recipe is negligable.
You dont rush an early ludens because lux scales with cdr and then needs a power spike due to how her skills interract with cs'ing. Whether this be void staff ruehing due to gold effieciency and how the game is playing out or deathcap.
I mean if you want to play the Luden's ricochet card then you can also hit people with said E or Q or R in which case deathcaps ramp rears its head even more. Not to mention the inarguable mathematics on percentage scaling in relation to damage vs MR.
I mean you go on to say Deathcap outdamages but Luden does if it hits two people ?? If ludens is able to hit two people then you also argue in most instances youll hit your AoE, again making deathcap annihilate Ludens.
In conclusion its amazing the sheer neglect for stuff or how you didnt even really look at the math, simply because youre trying to defend a factually incorrect statement, which you yourself havent even done math on properly. Opinionated theory has no place vs math in league Especially if "ideally" how something turns out if it means it has to bend to favor what you desire. All of this again, is not even considering W and Passive, which you cant just choose to ignore considering their AP is relevant and only have interraction with deathcap.
About your original comment about "on these forums we discuss stuff", no its not much of a discussion when you dont even do the math on the stuff you talk about or entertain abstract reasoning or stuff . Instead choosing to preface an argument with a dislike for someone (as evident by your comments in the Annie tank thread and how you try to shut it down without doing any math or logical thinking).
Lastly the Nidalee stuff, I don't know what to say man lol, if you can't see the math or why people on reddit dont even bring her up as a real candidate outside of the same theory ppl(myself included) gave TF then I'm pretty shocked.
Before you call someone dumb over and over and simply are looking to get a circle jerk against said person simply cause it's TL(well, liquid legends now), it might help to not neglect things and actually do the math and game theory.
I'm not one for taking sides on internet dick waving exchanges, but he did provide math. Genuinely curious to see what's incorrect about the figures he worked out since I'm far too lazy to work them out myself.
LS - Ketara has actual numbers in his post. You have none. Stop trying to wield the "I'm LS, a reputable person you should be listening 100% to because I'm well known". Well here's the deal. I don't give a shit if you're LastShadow, Faker, or fucking Shikyo. If you want to call someone out about not crunching the numbers, show me your numbers. No one gets preferential treatment here. And stop being an ass towards anyone who disagrees with you. I understand that half this forum literally hates your fucking guts, but you're choosing to post here. You can easily choose not to post here and just avoid all controversy. But if you do, you get 0 preferential treatment even if you may be well known in the community. Come with the numbers if you're calling others out on them. I see Ketara crunching more values than you ever have in your lifetime on TL. If his are wrong, call him out on it. But don't tell him to crunch the numbers while he's trying and then take a shit all over him because you feel entitled and you believe you're right. If you're truly right, give us the proof, not a 20 minute video detailing your thoughts. Give us the numbers. I don't fucking care how you present it, just give it to us.
Ketara - Stop being an ass to LS simply because you believe everything he says has absolutely zero merit. As I mentioned to LS above, if you want to disprove something, crunch the numbers. It's simple. Don't jump to conclusions and call him a fucking retard unprovoked. LS might be the devil in your eyes, but you don't need to talk down to him like he's Satan.
I don't give a fuck about what you two do honestly, but lets disregard posting histories and personal histories when posting here again. If you want to settle things, you settle it with facts and not opinions.
Edit: Roffles why you gotta post while I'm writing things <3. QQ.
Okay so, here's the best I can do at a reply to all this, since unfortunately I am not a paid analyst (ha!) and can't spend all night arguing over these sorts of things on the internet.
LS says the following:
What? In no world is Lux getting 20 seconds of free deal and procing Ludens 6 times in 20 seconds. The statistics alone try to give Ludens an unfair advantage and it still loses to deathcap (not even factoring in W or passive)
Which claims that, after 20 seconds of attacking this mythical Shyvana who stands still getting hit, proccing Ludens 4 times (not 6), Ludens actually does do more damage than Deathcap (40 more). LS in his video says that this 40 damage isn't worth the extra shield value that Deathcap would give you.
So, LS is already contradicting himself, and has said in this thread both that Deathcap outdamages Ludens in his example, and that it does not. The example is bad in general because you really don't care how much damage you're gonna do to a Warmogs Visage Shyvana, you're not gonna kill them either way. I would have preferred a more realistic example.
But we'll try to get to the bottom of this, don't worry.
His second statement is also a contradiction to the actual article:
This isn't even like a discussion, Ludens is not better at three items which the inven article shows(while ignoring W and passive)
I suppose I should point out that I actually can't read Korean, and am basing this contradiction purely on LS's own proferred translation.
The next statement:
Then you go on to say it builds better or whatever. Uh.. Aether Wisp 850 vs 860 blasting wand gold is not a huge difference and the recipe is negligable.
It's worth pointing out that the build path is better (though not by much), because one of LS's own statements against the item in his initial video was, and I quote:
"The issue with this item is it has a pretty clunky build path. The reason that I say that it's clunky is because it contains needlessly large rod, which is the single most expensive item purchase in the game. When you have NLR inside of the item, that can be really difficult to get basically."
I mean, this is true. NLR's can be annoying to buy. I'd love it if Riot would make NLR build out of Blasting Wand, that'd be cool.
The problem here is that LS is advocating that you shouldn't buy Ludens because it has a "clunky" build path, but his statement of what you should buy instead is probably the only comparable item that has an even clunkier build path. So again, another contradiction.
Next statement:
You dont rush an early ludens because lux scales with cdr and then needs a power spike due to how her skills interract with cs'ing. Whether this be void staff ruehing due to gold effieciency and how the game is playing out or deathcap.
I would actually disagree with the first part of this logic. What Lux scales with the most is actually mana regen. It just so happens that the big mana regen items also give CDR, and Lux tends to like CDR more than AP because her ratios are so low. It's entirely possible that a big AP item, if it were good enough, would be a better first item buy than Athenes. Probably the absolute best first item for Lux would be something that gave mana regen and Mpen, which unfortunately does not exist.
But in general he's right, you really do want to get Athenes/Morello as your first item (I still haven't done any math to check and see if Ludens+Chalice is more efficient than Athenes, but Athenes is also getting buffed tomorrow so this might have to wait a little).
The second part of the statement, talking about how items interact with her CSing and what items to buy at what timings, is basically a confirmation of one of the biggest reasons why we've been advocating for Ludens as a second item on Lux.
Most of the time, Ludens at a second item timing will let you one shot caster minions with E on Lux, when Deathcap will not. This depends a lot on how early you get the Deathcap, but in general you have to be getting progamer level gold generation in order to make it happen these days. I'd imagine LS is generally talking about these items in terms of competitive play, whereas I in general talk about items in terms of how this thread will be useful to like a Silver League player who might actually be the person reading it, so maybe there's a bit of a disconnect here.
Then there's some goings on about "ricochet" damage which I think missed the point that I was trying to make in regards to that if you hit one person with an E in a siege you can still proc Ludens on four people. We'll do a bit of math for an example here, using the AP values listed in my above post.
If you're in a siege situation and you hit an E on one person, you're gonna do the following damage:
Athenes+Void+Deathcap 463.86
Athenes+Void+Ludens 555.25 - 984.4
The difference here is because even though your initial E only hit 1 person, the Ludens Echo damage can still hit up to 4 people if they're close enough to that one person. So, imagine a scenario where you're sieging a tower, right. You throw an E out as poke damage. Maybe you only hit their front line tank or something. Ludens Echo can still throw damage all the way into their back line. Ultimately, your Ludens E can do more than twice as much total AOE damage as your Deathcap E in this scenario.
Here's the same numbers for what would happen if that E hit all 5 champions on the enemy team, something that probably doesn't happen almost ever, at the very least being much rarer than the first example:
Athenes+Void+Deathcap 2319.3
Athenes+Void+Ludens 2633.2
So we can see that, even in that incredibly sketchy example case, Ludens is STILL doing more damage than Deathcap. And since we're talking about sieging here and you're running around and using E's to poke, you can actually have Ludens up again for the next E.
What's really important in all this though is that Ludens has this magical ability to actually increase the range of your skills in a sieging situation, right. Because even if the back line squishy target is staying outside the range of your E, as long as you can tag somebody in the front with it, Ludens can still throw damage into the backline.
Here's a screenshot of how far away somebody can be from the thing that gets hit to still take damage from Ludens: + Show Spoiler +
That's like, really far away, probably close to 500 range or so (I'm guessing 475-500). Graves was able to AA Gromp from there, but was not able to if he moved more than a step or so farther away. Basically, it's very likely that in a poke damage scenario, even if your E only hits 1 champion, Ludens will still hit multiple people.
So not only is it providing all that damage, it has the secondary effect of making your damage easier to land on the targets you want to land it on, while also making it safer for you to go up and poke by increasing your movespeed. And that is worth quite a bit, IMO. Lux loves movespeed, for what it's worth.
Before I wrap this up, I want to talk a bit about LS's logic that you should get Deathcap 3rd over Ludens, because Deathcap gives you more shielding, which totals to more overall value in a fight. I mean, this is fine logic, and if you feel like what you really need for an individual game is shielding, I'm not gonna argue against that.
But if you really want to talk about the defensive value of the shield, you have to be talking about it in comparison to the defensive value of the 7% movespeed you get from Ludens, not in comparison to the offensive value of the damage. And personally, I'd rather have 7% movespeed to avoid skillshots, position better in the fight, or actually get to the person I need to shield, over shielding them for 60 more damage. That's a difficult thing to assert with math unfortunately, and I'd be interested in seeing some higher leveled players opinions on this.
Following that it's basically four paragraphs of LS insulting me, and demanding I post math to prove what I'm saying, which is ironic since I've been doing exactly that, and he has not. I'm not going to bother to reply to most of it.
I will point out though Mr. Shadow, that when we get in LS hate competitions here on TL, I'm usually one of the only people who says that you shouldn't hate on a guy because of their actions of 10 years ago, and that you should be given a clean slate and the ability to prove yourself as a good analyst in your adult life. I think it's great that you've been able to make a career out of what you're doing. It's not something I would want to do, but I'm glad you're happy with it.
But it's getting harder and harder for me to play devils advocate with you, because your behavior on the League scene, and honestly in this thread in particular (my lovely Lux thread!) is difficult to defend. I may have called you dumb, and if that offended you I apologize, it's true I probably shouldn't insult somebody just because I disagree with them. It is a bad habit that all of us internet citizens have. But your responses to me, when you're the well respected, paid analyst, have been pretty immature. I'd challenge you to be a little more professional when writing, since you're trying to get paid for your services while I am not.
It is all academic at this point anyways. They are removing echo next patch until they figure out a way to make it a better item. Echo brought me back to LoL and I guess its removal signals a hiatus. Of course I will try the new Athenes into deathcap build but I am almost positive it will help literally literally every other AP mage mid more than it helps Lux. Welcome back to the world where you can't one shot caster minions until almost 10k gold.
On March 25 2015 09:36 Velocirapture wrote: It is all academic at this point anyways. They are removing echo next patch until they figure out a way to make it a better item. Echo brought me back to LoL and I guess its removal signals a hiatus. Of course I will try the new Athenes into deathcap build but I am almost positive it will help literally literally every other AP mage mid more than it helps Lux. Welcome back to the world where you can't one shot caster minions until almost 10k gold.
On March 25 2015 09:36 Velocirapture wrote: It is all academic at this point anyways. They are removing echo next patch until they figure out a way to make it a better item. Echo brought me back to LoL and I guess its removal signals a hiatus. Of course I will try the new Athenes into deathcap build but I am almost positive it will help literally literally every other AP mage mid more than it helps Lux. Welcome back to the world where you can't one shot caster minions until almost 10k gold.
Why does everyone think this? It's only removed on TT and CS, not on SR.
On March 25 2015 09:36 Velocirapture wrote: It is all academic at this point anyways. They are removing echo next patch until they figure out a way to make it a better item. Echo brought me back to LoL and I guess its removal signals a hiatus. Of course I will try the new Athenes into deathcap build but I am almost positive it will help literally literally every other AP mage mid more than it helps Lux. Welcome back to the world where you can't one shot caster minions until almost 10k gold.
Okay so, I had a big talk with LS over skype about Lux and shit and I think basically at the end he agreed that he could see the value of Ludens as a second item for Lux at least situationally, which is like all I was arguing for to begin with.
I want to go over some of the damage math though in regards to Athenes + either Ludens, Deathcap or Void in terms of a 2 item combo, so we can see just how much better one is than the other. For Void we'll also throw in a Blasting Wand as per usual.
So, this is what I want to look at:
Standard masteries, level 11, CDR/level runes (because with Ludens you sort of have to take them). 2 Drings.
Here's our AP values. With each build we have 33.91% CDR:
A+V: 230.79 A+L: 240.79 A+D: 313.027
Here's how much damage each skill does with each of these things:
A+V P = 150.70 Q = 336.16 1st, 168.08 2nd W = 160.77 x2 E = 395.67 R = 599.13
A+L P = 152.80 Q = 342.90 1st, 171.45 2nd W = 164.27 x2 E = 401.94 R = 606.98 L = 142.30
A+D P = 167.90 Q = 396.34 1st, 198.17 2nd W = 189.55 x2 E = 447.26 R = 663.32
So here's how that translates into typical Lux damage rotations. All of these values are against a 60 MR target, which I am just sort of throwing out as an example.
And here's how that translates into sustained damage values. Counting 1 Ludens proc per E. Again, a 60 MR target.
I'm using 40% CDR (so assuming blue buff) just to make the math easier on myself. The CDR is the same with each build so it doesn't actually make a difference.
#1 - For all of the AOE damage values, we're assuming Ludens Echo hits just as many people as the other AOE skills hit. This isn't going to always be the case.
If there's only one person then our spells can only hit one person. If our spells hit 2-4 people, then Ludens will also hit 2-4 people.
Ludens can only hit 4 people max, but I'd submit that if both our E and R hit all 5 people on the enemy team (VERY rare), we probably just won the teamfight right there and it doesn't make a difference what our items are, so we don't really care about the 5 person scenario.
However, it is possible, and arguably even likely that a spell that hits one person will still proc Ludens on multiple people. This means that for all of the AOE values above, it's likely that Ludens is actually going to perform slightly better than the numbers listed.
#2 - Ludens and Deathcap make CSing easier than Void Staff. Critically, Deathcap makes it easier if you hit the 25 minute timing window that I talk about in the guide, but doesn't if you don't hit that timing, while Ludens just always makes it easier, although not quite as much easier as Deathcap makes it if it hits said timing.
#3 - Ludens gives 7% movespeed.
#4 - Void is the easiest to build if you're behind and can't farm 1600g for an NLR.
#5 - Ludens 2nd makes your 4 item timing awkward, because it makes you choose between either Deathcap or Zhonya, which might force you into choosing a 4th item Zhonya for Athenes+Ludens+Void+Zhonya, which is not quite as efficient as Athenes+Deathcap+Void+Zhonya.
If for the individual game you can safely go Athenes+Ludens+Void+Deathcap it isn't a problem, however, so this really may or may not be an issue depending on the individual game.
Here are my conclusions based on this:
For Offense Void staff in general outperforms Deathcap while costing less and being easier to build, by about 1-5% depending on target MR and so on. We already knew that.
For Ludens vs. Deathcap, in terms of single target damage (both burst and sustained), they are almost identical. However, Ludens is doing more AOE damage, both in terms of in lane poke damage and teamfight poke damage, by about 2%-10% depending on the individual circumstances. It is also more reliable at landing that poke damage.
For Ludens vs. Void, Void is equally better than Ludens in terms of single target damage, but Ludens is better than Void in terms of AOE damage.
So - 1st place = Ludens 2nd place = Void 3rd place = Deathcap
For Defense Void is obviously the worst route in terms of defensive stats.
Deathcap gives 29-58 more burst shielding, and about 7 more shielding per second, while Ludens gives 7% movespeed. What's better is going to depend on the individual game, but in general I think I'd personally prefer Ludens in terms of defense. LS might disagree on this point but I think it's fairly preferential.
So - 1st place = Tie between Ludens and Deathcap, arguable 3rd place = Void
For CSing Basically it's like this:
1st place = Deathcap if you can get it inside of the 25 minute timing window. 2nd place = Ludens 3rd place = Tie between Void and Deathcap if you can't get it inside of the 25 minute timing window.
For Utility Ludens clearly wins for utility, because it provides 7% movespeed, and also has the added effect of increasing the ranges of your skills ability to do damage, and making your AOE damage more reliable in a teamfight (somebody can dodge an E but still get hit by the Ludens damage).
So - 1st place = Ludens 3rd place = Tie between Void and Deathcap.
So, tl;dr, this is what I'm going to recommend in the guide:
In matchups where you can safely take CDR/level runes, Ludens 2nd item is the ideal choice. It's going to entirely replace the Seraphs Embrace build order in the guide. Final build will be Athenes+Ludens+Void+Hat+Zhonya.
In matchups where you can't safely take CDR/level runes, you're gonna play just like you did before, and go Athenes into either Deathcap (standard), Void (if you're far ahead), or Morello (if you're far behind). Final build will be Athenes+Void+Hat+Zhonya + either a Morello or a defensive item.
Anybody have any questions or concerns about this?!?!?!?!?!?!etcetc11
Supposedly a Lux visual update will drop tomorrow on PBE. It is the very last one to be released but at least we made the list. Fingers crossed it comes with a skin in tow.
On March 26 2015 04:47 Ketara wrote: So, tl;dr, this is what I'm going to recommend in the guide:
In matchups where you can safely take CDR/level runes, Ludens 2nd item is the ideal choice. It's going to entirely replace the Seraphs Embrace build order in the guide. Final build will be Athenes+Ludens+Void+Hat+Zhonya.
In matchups where you can't safely take CDR/level runes, you're gonna play just like you did before, and go Athenes into either Deathcap (standard), Void (if you're far ahead), or Morello (if you're far behind). Final build will be Athenes+Void+Hat+Zhonya + either a Morello or a defensive item.
Just wanted to make sure you didn't mix up your items here -- unless you're no longer suggesting Athene's -> Void -> Deathcap? I thought one of your central tenets was to always build Void before Deathcap, and Deathcap first only if you're very far ahead, but the quote suggests the reverse.
On March 26 2015 04:47 Ketara wrote: So, tl;dr, this is what I'm going to recommend in the guide:
In matchups where you can safely take CDR/level runes, Ludens 2nd item is the ideal choice. It's going to entirely replace the Seraphs Embrace build order in the guide. Final build will be Athenes+Ludens+Void+Hat+Zhonya.
In matchups where you can't safely take CDR/level runes, you're gonna play just like you did before, and go Athenes into either Deathcap (standard), Void (if you're far ahead), or Morello (if you're far behind). Final build will be Athenes+Void+Hat+Zhonya + either a Morello or a defensive item.
Just wanted to make sure you didn't mix up your items here -- unless you're no longer suggesting Athene's -> Void -> Deathcap? I thought one of your central tenets was to always build Void before Deathcap, and Deathcap first only if you're very far ahead, but the quote suggests the reverse.
To be honest, if you can safely take cdr/level runes already, I dont see how after athenes, you cant just get a NLR and wait for deathcap/ludens.
I'm trying out ludens before deathcap on many immobile mids (viktor, kog, lux) and I'm having success. Honorary mention: luden first on ahri makes people cry.
I apologize guys, I'm still running around making preparations for moving to Thailand.
I've got another 2 weeks before I leave and I'll make sure the guide gets an update before I go.
As to the questions, I didn't mean to suggest that the Deathcap build order has changed, it has not.
Basically, Ludens build orders are stronger than others at 2-3 items, but weaker at 6 items unless you're running CDR runes, in which case they're still stronger.
So if you're planning on running Ludens, you should also be taking CDR runes, and this is sort of your ideal build order now. If you can't take CDR runes because it's not safe for the matchup, then some other build order may still be more efficient.
Can somebody do me a favor? Go into a custom game and find out the sell value of Ludens Echo. LoL Wiki is not listing it. I would do it but I'm super busy today, getting my visa arranged.
just curious if considered you say you like Luden's in match ups where you can run cdr runes. what are your thoughts on going cdr shoes in "bad" match ups.
Ludens sell value is high enough that I think I can math out a way in which you'll always buy Ludens every game, and if it goes late enough and you don't have CDR runes you'll just sell it later for a Morello.
I always wanting a more feminine Lux skin. But Sailor Chibi Moon Lux is not the skin I had in mind. Is Sailor Moon still on the air? Is it popular or something?
I was hoping for a more serious skin cuz I have been hyped for the "champion defining skin" that riot attempted to do with steel legion and failed to such an incredible degree they had to admit defeat publicly. That said, this is an obvious skin that had to be a part of her wardrobe. She even references sailor moon in one of her quotes so we all saw it coming.
Yeah it's a little too anime-y/girly for me, probably will still get it just because it's Lux. Also, new particles. Spellthief still my favourite.
On April 29 2015 17:02 Velocirapture wrote: I was hoping for a more serious skin cuz I have been hyped for the "champion defining skin" that riot attempted to do with steel legion and failed to such an incredible degree they had to admit defeat publicly. That said, this is an obvious skin that had to be a part of her wardrobe. She even references sailor moon in one of her quotes so we all saw it coming.
Never cared for Steel Legion either. Was actually really confused when they released it since it was so similar in concept to Commando Lux.
Runes - Same as before. If you can get away with it, CDR/level blues are very strong when paired with Ludens. Should use them in every matchup you are confident with.
Masteries - Same as before. Put your extra 2 Offense points in CDR if you're taking CDR/level blues, in %AP or Weavings if you aren't.
Spells and Openers - Same as before.
Item Build
This is where it gets a little complicated, because it basically depends on whether or not you're getting the CDR/level blues.
The Seraphs build is no more, it is teh sux now because Ludens is just better.
The Anti AD build is still strong against AD Assassins, and probably shouldn't be changed at all.
1 - 2x Doran + Boots start 2 - 1st item Athenes 3 - Sorc Shoes (can get before Athenes finishes in some matchups. Big skillshot ones or when far ahead) 4 - 2nd item Ludens Echo 5 - 3rd-5th items Void (offense), Deathcap (farming), Zhonya (defense)
If you want a defensive item, you either need to sell Ludens or your boots. Ludens gives 23 movespeed while boots give 45, so in some games selling boots for a defensive item is not bad.
1 - 2x Doran + Boots start 2 - 1st item Athenes 3 - Sorc Shoes (can get before Athenes finishes in some matchups. Big skillshot ones or when far ahead) 4 - 2nd item Ludens Echo OR Mejais if very far ahead OR Morello if very far behind 5 - 3rd-5th items Void (offense), Deathcap (farming), Zhonya (defense) 6 - If you have Ludens at 6 items, sell either Ludens or your boots for a Morello.
This build order is awkward because Ludens is still better as second item, but at 6 items is worse than Morello because getting to 40% CDR becomes such a big deal. But as luck would have it, Ludens sells for 2100 and Morello costs 2300(?), so you can just switch them.
Defensive items is similar in this build order, you sell either your Ludens or your Boots, but you have more/better items to choose from.
Defensive Items: Frozen Heart (vs mostly/all AD) Randuins (vs Mixed damage but mostly AD) Locket (vs AP AoE) Banshee (AP Single Target AP)
The special case use items are the same as they are in the guide for all the builds. + Show Spoiler +
Lich Bane / Twin Shadows instead of boots super late in the game if you're all offense (Ludens in your 5 offensive items) Ludens instead of boots super late in the game if you have a defensive item.
QSS eventually against Malz/Skarner and maybe WW if he's federino.
GA if you absolutely must.
Switch trinket to red trinket against stealth champs.
Sorry I didn't have time to pretty this up before I move. Basically what happened is I had to go to the doctor yesterday and that ended up taking half of the day, so the time I was going to work on the guide got cut short and then I was like "Yeah I'll pack and update the guide in the same day." Nope, I finished packing at 9 PM.
This is the content of what would have been updated, just not in a pretty imagery format. I'll find time to pretty it up at some point.
On April 29 2015 11:15 Sonnington wrote: I always wanting a more feminine Lux skin. But Sailor Chibi Moon Lux is not the skin I had in mind. Is Sailor Moon still on the air? Is it popular or something?
Sailor Moon got rebooted last year. There are 30ish episodes so far.
On May 08 2015 05:10 Harem wrote: Should add a section on flash ghost (with distortion) So good on immobile mids as shown by Korea i.e. Dade and Lux is no exception.
I have been doing my own testing on this. The reason I have been skeptical is two fold. First, Lux has a MUCH later power spike than most other immobile mages. IMO Lux has her first big spike at around 7K gold between 20-25 mins depending on how the game has gone. Lux has mediocre base damages/scaling and absolutely requires a CDR/mana item (130 mana/10 sec CD on E RIP) which are also two things not common to popular immobile picks. What this all means is that getting distortion enchant early is not really an option.
Second, not having a defensive summoner such as heal against Talon/Zed/LB is basically suicide in my experience and since heal has a speed boost built in it is usually stronger in lane anyhow.
What turned me around on it is that I basically stopped playing Lux into assassins and I gotta say ghost Lux into a mage matchup is pretty good, possibly better than heal. The option to run down river as an escape even against speed boosted junglers is strong enough that it may be worth it even if you are only buying distortion late game for enhanced effects.
One nice thing about Luden's is being able to clear caster minions with E. Worst feeling is not being able to kill the caster minions with E + passive and needing to auto them again. Fortunately that only happens in the first few levels depending on your runes or if you manage to get behind in levels. With that said, I feel like Lux being given more efficient wave clear would break her.
On May 11 2015 20:58 ConanTroutman wrote: One nice thing about Luden's is being able to clear caster minions with E. Worst feeling is not being able to kill the caster minions with E + passive and needing to auto them again. Fortunately that only happens in the first few levels depending on your runes or if you manage to get behind in levels. With that said, I feel like Lux being given more efficient wave clear would break her.
I do not believe that making level 5 E one shot caster minions would be OP, sentiments like this largely feel like a reaction to her being almost competitive to me. That said, I do not think that just pushing her cooldowns and damage to the levels of a champ they would release today is appropriate. It is probably way better to add some unique utility like they did with Ahri Q when she occupied a similar "almost good" space.
Lux could one shot casters with E in season 2/3, and at that time she was a top pick/ban in pro games.
Buffing her damage is tricky because so much of it is long range, hard to dodge and essentially zero risk. I would like to see her utility or her mana issues buffed, and I'd like to see xeraths damage Nerfed to be more in line with lux.
Let's be real. What keeps lux out of pro games is the fact that xerath occupies the same character space but does more damage for no justifiable reason.
On May 12 2015 10:12 Velocirapture wrote: I do not believe that making level 5 E one shot caster minions would be OP, sentiments like this largely feel like a reaction to her being almost competitive to me.
It might not be "op," but riot have to be careful with giving champions really easy long ranged waveclear. If one mid laner can just afk shove the wave from safety, without even needing bluebuff to do so, the mid lane meta goes to shit.
When the mid meta becomes based around just waveclearing, then the diversity in mid lane gets crushed. Assassins, roamers and a lot of mages who can't efficiently counter that level of shove just have to spend the entire game sitting under tower doing nothing. These days the only champion that can really completely afk shove is w max morg, and she has to give up a lot of her burst/damage to go that skill path, on a champion who's already pretty limited in scope.
If you want to be able to get guaranteed safe freefarm, and shutdown the enemy from roaming/playmaking, you should at least have to go a sub-optimal skillpath, or have itemise differently/be blue dependant to do so. It shouldn't be a given on a champion who can already do plenty of things.
On May 12 2015 10:12 Velocirapture wrote: I do not believe that making level 5 E one shot caster minions would be OP, sentiments like this largely feel like a reaction to her being almost competitive to me.
It might not be "op," but riot have to be careful with giving champions really easy long ranged waveclear. If one mid laner can just afk shove the wave from safety, without even needing bluebuff to do so, the mid lane meta goes to shit.
When the mid meta becomes based around just waveclearing, then the diversity in mid lane gets crushed. Assassins, roamers and a lot of mages who can't efficiently counter that level of shove just have to spend the entire game sitting under tower doing nothing. These days the only champion that can really completely afk shove is w max morg, and she has to give up a lot of her burst/damage to go that skill path, on a champion who's already pretty limited in scope.
If you want to be able to get guaranteed safe freefarm, and shutdown the enemy from roaming/playmaking, you should at least have to go a sub-optimal skillpath, or have itemise differently/be blue dependant to do so. It shouldn't be a given on a champion who can already do plenty of things.
I'd agree with this. I don't think anyone wants to go back to the days of Gragas or AP Sion insta-clearing waves and having to cry under tower for the first 15mins of the game.
The biggest gripe people tend to have with Lux is her E since in a lot of ways it is a very dated ability in that it has an absurd mana cost and is a bit on the lowside when it comes to damage/waveclear when you compare it to other champions in similar roles. As far as buffing it goes I think they should keep the damage where it is, a buff to the mana cost would be great though. I'm just afraid if you give Lux anymore damage she'll just end up doing too much too well. We all know once Lux hits 2-3 items she can start 100-0ing squishies meaning she not only has a ton of utility, but can also function as a long range assassin.
On May 12 2015 13:16 Ketara wrote: Lux could one shot casters with E in season 2/3, and at that time she was a top pick/ban in pro games.
Buffing her damage is tricky because so much of it is long range, hard to dodge and essentially zero risk. I would like to see her utility or her mana issues buffed, and I'd like to see xeraths damage Nerfed to be more in line with lux.
Let's be real. What keeps lux out of pro games is the fact that xerath occupies the same character space but does more damage for no justifiable reason.
She was picked now and then but let's not exaggerate and call her "top pick/ban" lol.
On May 12 2015 13:16 Ketara wrote: Lux could one shot casters with E in season 2/3, and at that time she was a top pick/ban in pro games.
Buffing her damage is tricky because so much of it is long range, hard to dodge and essentially zero risk. I would like to see her utility or her mana issues buffed, and I'd like to see xeraths damage Nerfed to be more in line with lux.
Let's be real. What keeps lux out of pro games is the fact that xerath occupies the same character space but does more damage for no justifiable reason.
She was picked now and then but let's not exaggerate and call her "top pick/ban" lol.
Pretty sure in early season 3 she was first pick material. You probably remember better than me though.
Did some digging around, she was picked semi-frequently through Season 3 in EU/NA but was more or less only a target ban and if picked was almost always picked in the final rotation.
With my old build (Ludens - Sorc into CDR/mana item) you used the significant power spike from Ludens to carry you through the power nadir while building Athenes or Morello. With the reduction in AP and ratio that spike, especially in respect to wave clear, only lasts 1-2 minutes in most games which is simply not enough.
Basically with my new build I use Ludens as 100AP boots and rush Deathcap because a large amount of power has been shifted into the item. Since you are building AP constantly with its improved build path you maintain burst and wave clear power. Once you have Deathcap it mitigates the downside of investing in an 80/60 AP item with its amplification so it doesn't feel nearly as bad.
Now for the drawbacks. You don't buy boots until very late, sometimes even 5th item so you are very slow. To put this in perspective Lux gets 45 MS from T2 boots and 33 MS from Ludens and no boots at all. Secondly you postpone your CDR and mana item. The CDR is not missed that much for the first 15-20 mins or so but the mana regen issue needed help so I started running scaling mana regen yellows instead of scaling HP(along with pen reds/scaling CDR blues and AP quints). They exceed flat mana regen yellows at level 7 and give a whopping 11 mana/5 at 18 which makes morellos a less painful buy.
I was very skeptical of this setup at first and honestly I made it out of frustration but I encourage you all to give it a go and see if it feels as strong to you as it does to me.
A more *fair* comparison would be assuming more or less equal gold, so maybe Void Staff vs. the components of Dcap.
Dcap: 120+20+40+60 = 240 Void: 120+80= 200
Slapping on a MR of 40, you get a reduction to 26 which results in a decrease from 29% to 21% damage reduction. Seems like you're getting a 10%ish increase in damage (71%/79%) which would have to exceed 20% more AP. Throwing in mpen runes changes the math a little. Probably not worth though.
It's also important to remember that once you've 2 item'd Ludens + Void in the second scenario, you've got to build your way back up. Whereas if you're sitting on Luden's + Dcap pieces, it's only a few hundred gold till you power spike.
I just played an unranked game of Lux the other day. My mmr is complete shit, but the new instant E feels sooo much better at 100 ping. I haven't really played mid lane since the utility master changes with mana regen. So with all the tweaks to AP items I have no idea what's most efficient. While I don't think I can get away without building some form of mana regen early. Is Luden's still the first damage item Lux goes for?
The proper comparison would probably be ludens + deathcap vs. Ludens + void + sorc shoes. The pricing is similar and void and sorc shoes are synergistic.
As long as the damage is similar, the void build would be a lot better because movespeed. You should put runes and masteries and dorans into your comparison.
I'd be willing to bet that the void build would do more damage. Might math it tonight for you guys.
It is up to you guys but I am not 100% sure this is an issue which can be resolved entirely by calculating which does more damage to champions as a 6500 gold item timing. Going D-cap second basically allows you to maintain instant waveclear with one E for the entire game after 11 minutes (something I value highly as a mage especially in this meta) and going ludens into void does not maintain that in my experience. Additionally, if you go for mana/CDR after void/sorc you are extending the waveclear weakness until 3rd big item completion at least (sometimes 3 1/2 if the game is a little rough).
Lux has a couple really big weaknesses, there is a reason she is not first tier, and I find this build mitigates those weaknesses as much as possible without sacrificing her ability to kill any squishy target with a combo. I am by no means a perfect player and maybe I just suck too bad at farming to hit the timings necessary to make ludens - void work. Either way I look forward to the math.
What about ionian+tear into morello -> deathcap -> liandries -> seraphs -> void -> zhonyas? The idea is the mana and 40% cdr to spam your e without relying on blue buff, you'll hit enough e's to slowly wear people down when sieging and you practically never have to go back. Your ult at lvl 16 is at 30 seconds. Obviously it's a slower build, I don't know if it's stronger or anything, but it feels really good rushing 40% cdr with the tear stacking your mana. I guess this may be a stronger build if they have a more tanky game, but I'm not completely sure. Also, I feel she's not too bad at the moment with all your Viktors and other control mages in the game at the moment.
On July 29 2015 09:58 Velocirapture wrote: It is up to you guys but I am not 100% sure this is an issue which can be resolved entirely by calculating which does more damage to champions as a 6500 gold item timing. Going D-cap second basically allows you to maintain instant waveclear with one E for the entire game after 11 minutes (something I value highly as a mage especially in this meta) and going ludens into void does not maintain that in my experience. Additionally, if you go for mana/CDR after void/sorc you are extending the waveclear weakness until 3rd big item completion at least (sometimes 3 1/2 if the game is a little rough).
Lux has a couple really big weaknesses, there is a reason she is not first tier, and I find this build mitigates those weaknesses as much as possible without sacrificing her ability to kill any squishy target with a combo. I am by no means a perfect player and maybe I just suck too bad at farming to hit the timings necessary to make ludens - void work. Either way I look forward to the math.
How much is your build dependent on blue buff? I'm curious whether having blue buff is an assumption in that build, i.e., is it a build made viable by blue buff tiding you over for mana, or is it viable even without blue buff, and very strong with blue buff?
You kinda have the luxury to not trade as lux though.. your ult is already on a low cooldown, your fast second tier boots allow you to roam and help out sidelanes after you've cleared your wave or whatever. Granted, you won't do alot of damage (but with passive procs after bindings you do some damage off of runing) but cc is strong at all levels of the game and don't forget about the double shields for baiting and clutch plays. I'll have to check it out how punished this can actually be though
On July 30 2015 00:35 Uldridge wrote: You kinda have the luxury to not trade as lux though.. your ult is already on a low cooldown, your fast second tier boots allow you to roam and help out sidelanes after you've cleared your wave or whatever. Granted, you won't do alot of damage (but with passive procs after bindings you do some damage off of runing) but cc is strong at all levels of the game and don't forget about the double shields for baiting and clutch plays. I'll have to check it out how punished this can actually be though
i thought liandrys was like a troll item on lux or something
On July 30 2015 00:35 Uldridge wrote: You kinda have the luxury to not trade as lux though.. your ult is already on a low cooldown, your fast second tier boots allow you to roam and help out sidelanes after you've cleared your wave or whatever. Granted, you won't do alot of damage (but with passive procs after bindings you do some damage off of runing) but cc is strong at all levels of the game and don't forget about the double shields for baiting and clutch plays. I'll have to check it out how punished this can actually be though
i thought liandrys was like a troll item on lux or something
The buff to liandrys was big.
But Ionian boots on Lux are bad. Don't get them.
In fact Ionian boots are bad in general. You can get 15% CDR just from quints. If you get mpen from quints you get like 6, not 20.
But they're especially bad on Lux.
Mpen is actually the best stat in the game for Lux damage wise, the reason why you don't go for crazy mpen builds on her is because mpen runes and items aren't cost efficient. If you wanted to invent a perfect item for her it'd be like an athenes that had mpen instead of AP.
I think my big problem with going ludens first on Lux is its sort of a case of why aren't you playing a different champion.
Ludens first is very strong on a lot of champions. So strong that it sort of skews champion picks towards people who can effectively buy ludens first.
Lux has a lot of mana issues and really prefers to buy a regen item first, but right now athenes and morellos are just not as awesome as getting that ludens, dodging all the ranged poke with your heeps of movespeed and forcing trades.
So while ludens first might be doable on Lux, the better decision is realistically to just pick a different champion in the first place.
That said, I'm all for doing some math on Lux itemization, although I can't play or test anything from Thailand. I just sort of think she's a weak pick right now and we need to see either some buffs to modernize her, or a meta that returns to poke champs.
Not to mention that you do so little damage that you need multiple, multiple spells to waveclear, so you don't necessarily come out ahead in regards to mana.
New Zeke's is super good on support Lux. Go full greedmode with spellthief + pickpocket, grab flask then rush Zeke's.
Luden's isn't that centralizing after the nerfs. 10% movespeed isn't that significant v champs that abuse Rylai's/Liandry's or just go the much stronger Dcap for damage. The meta is just stubborn. Poke will likely be the preferred comp if/when Sivir gets nerfed.
Majority of champs in mid atm (should) go Morello's. It's still far and away the most efficient AP item in the game. Issue is mostly that it doesn't give as much regen as Grail but is much quicker to get, so old high MP usage mids that can't get a RoA/Tear, Brand/Lux/etc., are stuck with 500 more gold spent on a trivial amount of defense and 20 less AP just to get the regen they need until lategame/blue buffs.
Scaling Quints of CDR aren't really that efficient until lategame, where they're great, but you're better off getting 15% in yellows if you're on a champ that actually wants that CDR, because AP quints carry early game. If you're a champ (like Lux) that wants pen/assassinates, there's no reason to ever go anything but Sorc's; they're the most efficient boots in the game because pen is rare. CDR boots are for AD casters and utility mids/supports.
Lux's problem is mostly that what she brings is out of meta. Safety is great, but when you're dealing with a heavy engage control meta, what's she bring compared to a Viktor who stops hard engage in its tracks? Kog who abuses Rylai's/Liandry's? Jayce with poke about as strong and a potent engage/disengage tool? She could really badly use a buff to E's mana cost though.
On July 30 2015 05:02 Ketara wrote: In fact Ionian boots are bad in general. You can get 15% CDR just from quints. If you get mpen from quints you get like 6, not 20.
Slightly misleading insofar as those are scaling CDR quints; if you actually wanted 15% flat CDR from runes, it's 9 blues + 3 quints, which is 11.67 magic penetration. Also, Sorcerer's Shoes are 15 magic pen, not 20.
Why on earth would you go all of your quints and blues into CDR when you could trade 6 blues of defensive stats on a safe champ for all the scaling CDR you'd need?
On literally any champ, actually.
CDR is easy to get; your laning phase is not.
On an actual topic, super late Liandry's is probably ideal for Lux, after CDR/Luden's/Void/Dcap. Rylai's is bad on her, Zhonya's is niche depending on game. It's certainly the most damage.
On July 30 2015 06:22 Ketara wrote: Velocirapture, I'd love it if you could post a replay of one of these games. I want to stare at your mana bar for half an hour.
Maybe I will find a way to do this since this seems like the main point of contention. I don't currently run a replay system since the old one caused so many problems but I know OP.GG records them now.
I very rarely get a blue unless I am hugely ahead and it is 25-30 mins in. I do lean on pots a bit on first and second back but I do not spam them. I actually probably spend less money on consumables than most higher elo players because I am so focused on getting Ludens ASAP. I would also like to point out that scaling mana regen yellows are a pretty big deal. At level 18 morello + scaling mana regen yellows gives more mana regen than two morellos + scaling HP yellows (if my math is right).
I'll look into the replay thing now.
Edit: Apparently OP.GG is having issues due to API output throttling. If anybody knows a better replay program/site feel free to shoot me a message otherwise I may just download bandicam or something.
Okay, it is really hard to get mid and I have already used my dodge so I didn't get a large sample. I got Lux twice and the first game was a trolly disaster that happens from time to time (lots of flaming/dc/afk) and the second was pretty one sided for my team. I am gonna post the link to the second game because it was vs Zed and so I had to use abilities to farm a lot and it may be useful for mana tracking even if my last hitting sucked.
Like i said, it isn't what I would call a good game lol. The major issue people seem to have with the build I posted is that it looks like you would really suffer on the mana front. I am not trying to hold up my game as an example of pro Lux play but simply as evidence that mana issues are not a convincing reason to not use my build. I agree that more evidence is needed and I will try to get games vs Viktor/TF/Ahri.
I don't think I've ever seen a Zed take Exhaust against Lux. Zed with Exhaust and Lux with Barrier already makes this a weird one.
You're in general being much less aggressive early game than I would be. When Zed goes in on you at level 3 you should have been able to kill him or at least force a flash. After missing the snare (QQ) you just Exhaust him, he has to Exhaust you but he's still standing in all your minions, it'll force a flash out of him.
Lux absolutely destroys Zed at levels 1-3, you don't need to play scared the way you are.
Dying to him at 6 was 100% your fault. You should know that your combo isn't going to kill him while he has 500 HP. You also Barriered too fast, your Barrier disappeared before the Death Mark finished. Barrier and Exhaust last 2 / 2.5 seconds respectively and Death Mark takes 3 seconds to complete, so you have to wait before using them. This is a big reason why Exhaust is so good against Zed over Barrier. If you wait one second to use Barrier you don't block the Q and E damage with it, whereas with Exhaust if you time it perfectly you can likely reduce almost everything.
Plus Exhaust lets you save your ADC when he jumps them later on, not just yourself.
You just barely died too, a more defensive rune/mastery build may have saved you. Or just having Exhaust / Barriering at the right time.
I think it's pretty safe to say that with my build listed in the guide you would not have died, and you may well have also killed him. Or at least gotten his Flash, which would have meant a kill when Nid ganks him later on.
So your first back you buy an NLR and potions, where I would have bought an Armguard. At this point the extra AP from NLR isn't changing your ability to waveclear at all, it's still E+auto either way.
I think the gank by Nidalee goes about as well as it could have considering your Q is down and Zed has Flash. Build differences I think wouldn't have changed anything here.
Second back you buy the Aether Wisp, I would have gotten a second Dorans and started on Morellos. The problem at this point is that since you don't have Exhaust or Armor, you have to play far back, any time you get too close to Zed he can kill you. Movespeed isn't a good defensive stat against a Zed and your AP still isn't at a level where you can one shot caster minions. This inability to get close is noticeably costing you a few CS, although I think you're doing a good job of playing defensively with the cards you've been dealt. You're still keeping up in CS, Zed isn't killing you again, and when he roams you do the best you can at countering it.
Your mana isn't really having issues at all, but you're using a very similar build mana wise to what I use in this matchup.
In the fight at 13 mins you could have maybe saved the Nidalee if you had Exhaust and shielded faster, but probably not she was pretty low.
After the fight your mana is noticeably low. If you'd started on Morellos here you could have pushed Zed off his creeps here I think, but it's minor. This is really the point where our builds start to differ mana wise.
I dislike how at this back you're only buying potions. Once the game is over I want to look at how many potions you purchased after the initial 2. You've got about 4300 gold at this point, so with my build you actually would have more AP than you have now.
You're at 152 with Dorans+Ludens
With my build you'd have at this point 2x Dorans, Armguard and Morello. You'd have about 175 AP here, and you'd still have 45 Armor, 20% CDR, and more Regen. If you'd been more aggro earlier, gotten a kill on Zed and a CS lead you'd also have Boots I think for similar movespeed.
Ludens procs are pretty good, but they're not that good.
I think the kill on Elise is free, I don't think builds would have changed it any.
I don't think builds would have changed the fight top any either, and meanwhile your Vayne is apparently 6/0/2? Teehee.
At 21 minutes you're still not one shotting casters, it's worth noting. You do have a ton of AP now, about 50 more than I would have at the same timing, although I'd also have Sorc Shoes here. Not sure who would be doing more damage.
Its this point where I think your build is really going to pick up speed, if you hadn't been behind in lane you might have Deathcap finished at this timing and you'd have quite a lot of damage. This is about when they surrender though.
So it's a stomp, but it wasn't really a stomp for you. I think you kinda got carried. I think you did well playing from behind and supporting your team, which is the advantage of a Lux, if she's not ahead she can fall back into that position and still be very useful.
But I don't think I like your build more than mine in this Zed matchup. I think your build is pretty clearly inferior prior to this 2 item timing, and even in a game where you were 4/1/4 with reasonably good CS you don't hit that timing till 24 minutes. It's unfortunate that we don't get to see you showcase this timing in a more even game, but 24 minutes is likely 2/3rds of most games, so I'd probably still prefer a build with a stronger early / mid game.
Mana wise, there wasn't much of a problem, but you also buy a total of I believe 12 potions, where I would have only bought 4-6. Not sure how big of a problem that is, although it does slow down your timing.
Hope that sounds like a fair review to you! I'm much more interested in the TF game, since that's one where I would open Athenes, and a matchup I typically have a lot of problems with.
Most of the time Zed is an easy lane for Lux, unless the enemy jungler is heavy on ganks like J4 or Lee or Reksai or whatever and decides he really wants to play with little schoolgirls.
Like I said, the only reason I posted that game is so you could track my mana bar. In the zed game i use A LOT of abilities to farm. It is not uncommon for me to use two E on one wave.
My hesitation in posting anything is that every game is gonna read like what you wrote. "X player was bad so you won for free" so on and so forth. I totally didn't notice that Zed had exhaust so i got caught off guard at 6 when I should have backed for AP.
The reason I posted a replay was not to say "I am so pro, do exactly this". At higher elos both sides would be hitting milestones earlier and at lower elo they hit them later. What that game shows is that even when you get behind a little bit you are still one shotting waves with E and building up to a huge power spike without suffering the postponement of the CDR and mana item too badly.
I appreciate that you disagree with my Lux play style and encourage all of you to try it for yourself and see if the benchmarks I value are relevant in your games.
The thing is though that you're not one shotting casters with E. Not till 2 items at 24 minutes.
Put in perspective, if you'd gone 2x doran > Morello > dcap, you'd have the same AP and still waveclear in one spell at the same timing. But you'd also waveclear better before that timing, and also have better laning one vs one at all stages prior to that.
Basically what I saw from the Zed game is that yes, your 2 item timing was strongbut it wasn't appreciably different from a conventional build, while your early game was significantly worse as a direct result of the way you were forced to play due to your build choices.
If you go zhonya deathcap you can one shot casters too, but you also beat the Zed in a 1v1, which means you get more gold and hit that timing faster. With ludens deathcap you don't.
You are free to play it any way you like but just for clarity, in the zed game E+ludens proc one shots casters the whole game even when i am behind 1 1/2 mins on the timing. Any instance where E is not one shotting the back line is because I casted E on the whole wave and the proc hit melees (which is a factor you control as the caster). Zhonyas/Deathcap does not one shot the casters until second item completion 3500 gold later because you get the same AP for the same cost and no proc. The reason I value waveclear so much is that having strong waveclear greatly enhances your ability to fall into Lux's strongest play patterns of poke and siege. My frustration with what were previously conventional builds is that you accept a huge deficit, bigger than ever before, in these areas until very late in exchange for a little personal comfort and safety. Often the game is decided before 15 minutes and If I have to skirmish on one item I would rather it be Ludens than Zhonyas and this is equally true if I get stuck in a push war against a fed bot lane while my team tries to catch up.
This is all my opinion. I do not think my play pattern in lane is weak. I play Lux my way because I think it is the best way to play her. If you think on Lux going deep and aggressive to trade and focus on 1v1 outplay potential then we are not on the same page generally.
Edit: Clarity - I got Ludens at 12:18 in the Zed game and you can get ~3000 gold from perfect cs in 10 mins so that is why I say my timing is slow.
There's two reasons why you want to be able to waveclear just with spells.
#1 - So you can clear faster, giving you more time to roam or to stop enemy roaming.
#2 - Because the enemy champion is pressuring you in such a way that you can't use autoattacks on minions safely.
If you're only throwing E at casters so that the Ludens proc damage will kill them, you're not doing #1. It'd take you just as long to kill the wave as if you E the entire thing and then auto, or E it twice. You're not satisfying condition #1 till you have two items, and if you get Deathcap 2nd you're realistically satisfying it regardless of what the two items are.
You do satisfy condition #2, since you can use one E on the casters and then a second spellset on the melees. We can see you doing that in that game, since you get behind vs. the Zed and are scared of him.
However, the reason you need to do that is because you go for that Ludens in the first place. Ludens does not let you win a fight with Zed, while other item builds do. He's not a champion that you just can't beat in a 1v1 situation, you can actually beat him quite easily.
So wouldn't it be better to take items that let you win the 1v1, which means you're the one zoning him off creeps and denying him CS, rather than the other way around? It satisfies the requirement you're setting via farming, while also letting you shut down your opponent.
On July 31 2015 12:47 Ketara wrote: Let me try to explain it a different way.
There's two reasons why you want to be able to waveclear just with spells.
#1 - So you can clear faster, giving you more time to roam or to stop enemy roaming.
#2 - Because the enemy champion is pressuring you in such a way that you can't use autoattacks on minions safely.
If you're only throwing E at casters so that the Ludens proc damage will kill them, you're not doing #1. It'd take you just as long to kill the wave as if you E the entire thing and then auto, or E it twice. You're not satisfying condition #1 till you have two items, and if you get Deathcap 2nd you're realistically satisfying it regardless of what the two items are.
You do satisfy condition #2, since you can use one E on the casters and then a second spellset on the melees. We can see you doing that in that game, since you get behind vs. the Zed and are scared of him.
However, the reason you need to do that is because you go for that Ludens in the first place. Ludens does not let you win a fight with Zed, while other item builds do. He's not a champion that you just can't beat in a 1v1 situation, you can actually beat him quite easily.
So wouldn't it be better to take items that let you win the 1v1, which means you're the one zoning him off creeps and denying him CS, rather than the other way around? It satisfies the requirement you're setting via farming, while also letting you shut down your opponent.
Discalimer: opinion as always
This would be true if you snapshot the game at milestone moments but not if you read the flow of the game. I don't get to choose how the game will play out. I need to be ready at any moment to respond to rotations, ganks or plays. After first back would I rather skirmish at dragon with an unstacked armguard or a NLR? NLR 100%. On a low economy first back would I rather have tome+cloth or wisp? Wisp 100%. At 1 item would I rather skirmish with Ludens or Zhonyas? Ludens 100%. There is no reason in my experience to think of a 3000 gold item as a laning tool. The safety you get from it at the 11-12 minute mark is too champion specific and comes at a significant offensive cost. When pushing a tower as a team the ability to 1 spell clear casters while the ADC or top laner kill the more accessible melees is a big deal. The 10% MS is a more general utility that applies to all circumstances (which is critical when postponing boots). Tunneling on the 1v1 is not the way to give you the best chance at victory across all games given all variables.
I think against a Zed you would absolutely rather have an unstacked armguard (or more realistically a second dorans, amp tome and cloth armor) than an NLR, and would rather have Tome+Cloth than a Wisp in early fights.
I think a lot of the individual game is just that the TF's ults are poor, and the Lee Sin feeds pretty hard.
But the build looks promising there. You don't really run out of mana too badly, and Ludens actually does give you what you want against a TF, waveclear and movespeed. MR doesn't really make a big deal against TF because movespeed is a better defensive stat, and he really tests the limits of how well you can waveclear.
I think it'd be worth it to do some math and look at the actual mana regen at different levels and item values for the build to see how far it's off from just going for Athenes.
On July 31 2015 13:34 Ketara wrote: I think against a Zed you would absolutely rather have an unstacked armguard (or more realistically a second dorans, amp tome and cloth armor) than an NLR, and would rather have Tome+Cloth than a Wisp in early fights.
But you are not vs Zed lol, you are vs some combination of the enemy team. It is just as likely I will be against Elise/Sivir/Vel'Koz or Singed and Elise. You have no way of knowing how it will go and the only circumstance where armguard is better is if in a 3v3 or 4v4 Zed can get to me and sit on me. There is no guarantee in skirmishes that the armor will have any value at all and then you spent 1200 gold on 25 AP rather than 60. Nevermind that wisp gives 17 MS which is a pretty big deal when roaming and positioning against people who don't have boots.
In my experience when it comes to team fights there is very little that Zhonyas can do that can't be done for free with better positioning. That isn't to say that there are no "inescapable predator" team fight scenarios that arise but if I am going to be pushed into hourglass it won't be by a Zed, it will be by Zed/Jarvan/Irelia or some such ridiculous combination. And even then it is damage control that comes at a cost I don't want to pay.
But what would you rather have in the fight? 30ish more AP? Or a good chance that Zed isn't able to join the fight because you're beating him in lane so badly?
I think you're looking at the Zhonyas a little too hard, when that isn't even the build. You could easily go Armguard > Hat or Armguard > Morello or Armguard > Ludens or Armguard > Void or whatever. A 3000 gold item isn't a laning tool, but a 1200 gold item definitely is.
I also think you're overestimating the impact that the AP has on Lux. Her ratios aren't all that great.
On July 31 2015 14:39 Ketara wrote: But what would you rather have in the fight? 30ish more AP? Or a good chance that Zed isn't able to join the fight because you're beating him in lane so badly?
I think you're looking at the Zhonyas a little too hard, when that isn't even the build. You could easily go Armguard > Hat or Armguard > Morello or Armguard > Ludens or Armguard > Void or whatever. A 3000 gold item isn't a laning tool, but a 1200 gold item definitely is.
I also think you're overestimating the impact that the AP has on Lux. Her ratios aren't all that great.
And I think you are overstating the impact of armguard as a defensive item when laning. You have literally no clue if the armor will ever be meaningful and 30 armor isn't some gateway to crushing Zed in lane. If going armguard gave some level of certainty that you will deny him a huge amount of gold then fine but it isn't even close to that. What you are doing with armguard is gambling on a much weaker long term build in the hopes that you pull off some sic 1v1 outplay. What happens when you get camped? What happens when you need to roam? What happens when Zed goes bot for a double kill and your armor is no longer stops the 100-0?
Postponing the items in my build by 1200 gold is crippling to every timing in my experience (I did not give up on buying boots easily and they are a cheaper purchase). If you go armguard first it pushes everything else, including boots and cdr/mana down the road in a very significant way. The entire premise of the build is not to get Ludens fast, it is to get Deathcap ASAP. Ludens is the tool that allows you to postpone 3400 gold in early purchases by giving MS and dramatically increasing the mana/cooldown efficiency of your farming/sieging.
I have quite a few Lux games this season and have tried a lot of different variations and I encourage all Lux fans to give it a go in an actual game. See for yourself if armguard is giving you so much 1v1 pressure you can position ahead of the wave denying cs or if you are better off developing your combo into the most dangerous tool possible. I am not some Lux god so I can't tell people how to play it but I have played a lot of games and am confident in the value of my experience. If you find more success running at Zed guns blazing with 60-70 armor than with my more conservative scaling build, more power to you.
So, I'm gonna look at the differences between mana regen builds.
To start with, we need to get an idea for how much mana regen Lux actually needs. This is a debatable figure, but what I'm going to go with is that Lux needs to be able to cast E twice per minion wave.
My logic is that you must cast E once per wave in order to clear the wave. This is a minimum, there are matchups where you need more spells than this. However, you must also be able to cast E once per minion wave to harass the enemy champion. If you are not also doing that you are not applying any pressure in the lane, therefor there is no reason for you to be buying AP. You should be getting more mana regen until you are capable of casting E twice per minion wave, and then buy AP.
Two E's per minion wave is 8.66 mana per second.
You also need to save enough mana for a full spell rotation in case a fight starts, or 340 mana. So once Lux drops to just above 340 mana, we can assume she has to go back to base or use a potion.
With this benchmark, we're going to figure out, using different builds, approximately how many minion waves Lux can stay in lane for until she has to go back to base for more mana. We'll look at level 9.
Athenes builds This is the "standard" Lux build and is what is listed as build #1 in the guide.
Regen from masteries: 0 (9 defense) or 75 extra mana (9 utility)
Regen from items: 1x Dorans - 9.6 (this is assuming 10 CS per minute, which is maybe too high for lower level players) 2x Dorans - 19.2 Athenes - 100% mana regen, 2% of missing mana (we will average this)
Total regen: 35.7 (def m, 1x doran), 36.1 (util m, 1x doran), 45.6 (def m, 2x doran), 46 (def m, 2x doran)
Time Lux can stay in lane: Def m, 1x doran: 226.7 seconds (7-8 minion waves) Util m, 1x doran: 281.9 seconds (9-10 minion waves) Def m, 2x doran: Infinite (positive mana regen at 2 E's per wave) Util m, 2x doran: Infinite (positive mana regen at 2 E's per wave)
Morellos builds This is the standard build, but if we bought a Morello instead of an Athenes (against Vladimir for example)
Regen from masteries: 0 (9 defense) or 75 extra mana (9 utility)
Regen from items: 1x Dorans - 9.6 (this is assuming 10 CS per minute, which is maybe too high for lower level players) 2x Dorans - 19.2 Morellonomicon - 100% mana regen
Total regen: 32.4 (def m, 1x doran), 32.4 (util m, 1x doran), 42 (def m, 2x doran), 42 (def m, 2x doran)
Time Lux can stay in lane: Def m, 1x doran: 151.8 seconds (5 minion waves) Util m, 1x doran: 196.2 seconds (6-7 minion waves) Def m, 2x doran: 1273.2 seconds (42-43 minion waves) Util m, 2x doran: 1561.5 seconds (52 minion waves)
Guides Anti AD build This is the anti AD Assassin build listed in the guide. At the same gold level here (about 3000) Lux will have 2x Dorans, an Armguard, and either a Forbidden Idol or a Fiendish Codex.
Regen from items: 2x Dorans - 19.2 (this is assuming 10 CS per minute, which is maybe too high for lower level players) Forbidden Idol - 50% mana regen
Total regen: 30.6 (mana runes, Codex), 33.57 (mana regen runes, Codex) 36.3 (mana runes, Idol), 39.27 (mana regen runes, Idol)
Time Lux can stay in lane: Mana regen runes, Codex - 170.09 seconds (5-6 waves) Mana runes, Codex - 170.17 seconds (5-6 waves) Mana runes, Idol - 308.75 seconds (10-11 waves) Mana regen runes, Idol - 410 seconds (13-14 waves)
Velociraptures build This build goes heavy on mana regen runes so you can go Ludens > Deathcap for max damage.
Regen from masteries: 0 (def) or 75 extra mana (util)
Regen from items: 1x Dorans - 9.6 (this is assuming 10 CS per minute, which is maybe too high for lower level players)
Total regen: 26.265 (def masteries), 26.265 (util masteries)
Time Lux can stay in lane: Def masteries - 97.1 (3-4 waves) Util masteries - 119.1 (4 waves)
Conclusions: For starters, we have to wonder whether or not 2x E's per minion wave is a good figure. For some of these builds it is clear that you could increase it to 3 per wave and still stay in lane an appreciable amount of time. If you're only doing 2, you definitely only need 1 Dorans Ring with Athene and Morello builds. I typically buy 2, but I also typically cast E on cooldown while in lane.
A better benchmark might be to see how many E's per minion wave each build can sustain, and then look at how much damage threat each build has on the enemy champion based on that figure.
So basically, given the above, and given utility masteries for the Athenes/Morellos builds to be as comparable as possible, this is how many minion waves you can stay in lane for with each build approximately.
Athenes: 9-10 Morello: 7-8 Anti AD: 5-6 Velocirapture: 4
One way of looking at this is that Velociraptures build can stay in lane another 48 seconds for each mana potion used, so 2-3 mana pots puts his build around a similar level as the Athenes/Morellos builds. This means that in order to stay comparable, he has to spend gold worth maybe half a CS per minion wave just in mana potions.
In other words, in order for his build, which we've stated a primary advantage of is better waveclear, to be better at waveclearing, it has to result in an average CS increase of at least 1 per minute. I would be willing to bet that it does not do that, so based on this and the replays that I saw, I'm willing to bet that this build is not significantly better at waveclear than the others. It is probably similar, or situationally slightly better and situationally slightly worse.
However, the more I look at it the more I actually really like Velociraptures build, but I think only for specific matchups. More on this later.
I gotta get ready for work now, so we'll look at this more later .
For waveclear, it is comparable to the other builds. While you do waveclear a little better and faster, especially after the two item timing, you lose gold by having to buy more mana potions, and the end result is a comparable amount of gold gained. An Athenes build could E each minion wave twice and have a similar mana consumption as Velociraptures build (I'll call it a Ludens build) Eing each minion wave once.
So I don't think differences in waveclear are really worth much, before this 2 item timing.
This is what I do think the differences are.
Pros of the Ludens build: More gold in offensive stats - You're not spending gold on MR or Armor, which theoretically we like a lot for early teamfights.
A strong 2 item timing - As stated before, the 2 item timing at about 25 minutes is quite good.
A better late game - Getting CDR/level and Mana regen/level runes makes your 6 item stats better than they are with other builds.
Better movespeed - This build spends a lot of gold on movespeed over resistances, so it may be good against champions who need to hit specific skillshots in order to kill you, or against champions that do not have dash abilities.
Cons of the Ludens build: Worse early game - Per level runes coupled with gold inefficient early buys means you're more vulnerable and unable to apply as much threat in the first 10 minutes or so of the game.
Worse lane harassment - Less mana regen means less available mana to throw E's at your opponent in lanes where you want to be a bully.
Worse resistances - Vs. a champion who can close range and blow you up with point and click spells, this build doesn't offer as much defense, since it spends gold on movespeed instead of resistances.
So the question is, what sort of a matchup do the pros really help Lux, while the cons aren't so big a deal?
Matchups where: A - Lux isn't really able to apply much threat anyway, so losing some ability to threaten the enemy champion doesn't matter too much.
B - Movespeed provides all the defense Lux needs in the lane.
C - Lux cares more about the post 25 mins part of the game than parts prior to that.
I think there are a number of matchups that are like this for Lux. The big one is Morgana, who I think is one of the hardest or possibly the hardest matchup in the game for her.
Harassing Morgana is generally kind of pointless because you can never kill her, since she will black shield your snare and then avoid your ult. Even with a jungle gank killing her is often difficult.
However, Morgana MUST hit a binding in order to kill you, so realistically movespeed should be all the defense you need.
Further, early game against Morgana is typically just waveclear vs. waveclear (which Morgana wins in general), and Lux can out teamfight her later on in the game by just doing way more teamfight damage and mitigating Morganas damage with her AOE shield.
In this kind of a matchup I think Velociraptures build is probably better than a conventional build.
Other matchups where I think it might be better would be Twisted Fate, Master Yi and possibly Cho'Gath. Based on your individual playstyle, I might include some other matchups as well.
What I would definitely not use this build against is against Assassins with point and click damage, such as Leblanc, Zed, Fiora, Fizz, Ekko, etc. I would also not use this build against champions with so many dashes that extra movespeed doesn't really give you any safety, such as Ahri or Kassadin.
If you get 2x Dorans with your build, the mana regen is very similar to a standard Athenes build on 1x Dorans.
Have you tried going 2x Dorans > Ludens > Sorc Shoes > Void Staff instead of 1x Dorans > Ludens > Deathcap?
I realize that it doesn't hit the waveclear timing, but it probably waveclears equivalent to a conventional Athenes build, and does about 10% more teamfight damage at the 2 item timing (math below). It also lets you buy boots a lot faster.
Damage differences: I'll look at 3 MR values. 30 (lowest possible) 42 (MR runes, probably the minimum standard) and 67 (minimum standard for somebody with a Chalice or a Hexdrinker or a Locket aura or something like that)
E damage vs. 30 MR Build 1 - 494.32 Build 2 - 521.55 (5.3% more)
E damage vs. 42 MR Build 1 - 451.97 Build 2 - 507.19 (10.9% more)
E damage vs. 67 MR Build 1 - 383.51 Build 2 - 465.69 (17.7% more)
Also, because I know somebody is going to be like "But the Deathcap build hits the 2 item damage timing 325 gold faster", here's what the values look like at that timing.
E damage vs. 30 MR Build 1 - 494.32 (2.7% more) Build 2 - 481.02
E damage vs. 42 MR Build 1 - 451.97 (3.8% more) Build 2 - 434.81
E damage vs 67 MR Build 1 - 383.51 (5.7% more) Build 2 - 361.96
So at 6900g the first build does slightly more damage than the second does at 6200g, but the second build overtakes it significantly when Void Staff is finished at 7400g.
E damage vs. 30 MR Build 1 - 433.29 Build 2 - 439.16 (1.4% more)
E damage vs. 42 MR Build 1 - 396.16 Build 2 - 396.65 (0.2% more)
E damage vs 67 MR Build 1 - 336.15 (1.8% more) Build 2 - 330.18
So ultimately we can say these things about these two builds:
Both builds maintain similar damage values till about 7000-7400g, where build 1 starts doing more vs. minions (one shotting them with E), and build 2 starts doing about 10% more teamfight damage.
Both builds have similar defenses. Build 2 has 60 more HP, but Build 1 gets about the same amount through more AP on the shield.
Build 2 has more movespeed and more mana regen, and gets those bonuses quite early.
E damage vs. 30 MR Build 1 - 494.32 (94.7% of build 2) Build 2 - 521.55 Build 3 - 363.57 (69.7% of build 2, 73.5% of 1) Build 4 - 375.45 (71.9% of build 2, 75.9% of 1)
E damage vs. 42 MR Build 1 - 451.97 (89.1% of build 2) Build 2 - 507.19 Build 3 - 353.55 (69.7% of build 2, 78.2% of 1) Build 4 - 339.15 (66.8% of build 2, 75.0% of 1)
E damage vs. 67 MR Build 1 - 383.51 (82.3% of build 2) Build 2 - 465.69 Build 3 - 307.83 (69.7% of build 2, 80.2% of 1) Build 4 - 282.28 (60.6% of build 2, 73.6% of 1)
So, as we can see, the Ludens builds E damage is significantly higher because of the Ludens proc. This isn't surprising, since builds 3 and 4 put a lot of gold into resistances that builds 1 and 2 do not.
I want to see the full teamfight combo damage though, since that will be a closer comparison. Just looking at E weights things pretty heavily towards builds that have Ludens. We'll look at a level 11 combo (888+2.25 AP)
Combo Damage Differences:
Combo damage vs. 30 MR Build 1 - 1532.06 (96.5% of build 2) Build 2 - 1587.51 Build 3 - 1388.89 (87.4% of build 2, 86.0% of 1) Build 4 - 1396.58 (87.9% of build 2, 91.1% of 1)
Combo damage vs. 42 MR Build 1 - 1400.79 (90.7% of build 2) Build 2 - 1543.78 Build 3 - 1350.63 (87.4% of build 2, 96.4% of 1) Build 4 - 1261.53 (81.7% of build 2, 90.0% of 1)
Combo damage vs. 67 MR Build 1 - 1188.62 (88.4% of build 2) Build 2 - 1344.12 Build 3 - 1175.96 (87.4% of build 2, 98.9% of 1) Build 4 - 1050.00 (78.1% of build 2, 88.3% of 1)
So the difference between builds 2 and builds 3 and 4 is still significant, but not anywhere near as significant as the simple E damage is.
Based on this, I'd also be really interested in how our build 2 fared against a champion who is all skillshots, such as a Xerath or a Ziggs, where movespeed helps mitigate your damage taken and you can win the long range damage skillshot fight.
I think I'd still prefer builds 3 and 4 over build 2 against point and click damage Assassins to prevent them from killing you in lane. For example, against an AP Assassin, while your build 3 combo is doing probably 87% as much damage to them, they are only doing 77% as much damage to you. Against an AD Assassin, you are doing 81% as much damage to them, but they are only doing 74% as much damage to you, and you've got Zhonyas.
Build 1 noticeably does not have significantly different teamfight damage from build 3, possibly as much as 5% higher. While its harassment (E only) damage is higher, it does not appear to give you the mana necessary to sustain such harassment.
I have done double dorans >ludens> morello and I have tried pushing for boots in every which way but I don't think I have gone void before dcap since the changes. I am not sure of the exact math but when I already am rushing a 100AP item the 35% amplification is such a big deal. I have also done ludens>deathcap>void but you really start to miss the CDR as 3v3s turn into 5v5s.
Feel free to favor penetration advantage over AP advantage just keep in mind that the ludens power spike can only make delaying CDR/mana tenable for so long. Going double dorans>Ludens>sorc>void gives you 280 AP (@ level 18 so probably less in a game) at 7400 gold not counting any consumables so I suspect minions may start taking 3 illuminations lol.
I would watch a replay of it if only to see how hoe the combo holds up.
Well I just posted the math for you, with Void over Deathcap you are doing about 10% more damage to champions.
The AP values are similar to standard builds (slightly higher). I don't think farming would be any different than a standard build. It wouldn't be as easy as going Deathcap second, but I'm not convinced with how significant that is.
I'd love to see a replay of 2x Dorans > Ludens > Sorcs > Void against somebody like TF, Morgana, Master Yi (lol when is the last time anybody played against Yi mid), Cho, Xerath, Ziggs or Brand. Possibly also Azir not sure.
With a little help from Gahlo, I am going to make a spreadsheet where all you have to do is plug in stat values like AP and CDR and Mpen and target MR, and it will tell you the damage and DPS values for every reasonable Lux combo I can think of.
On August 19 2015 09:24 Ketara wrote: With a little help from Gahlo, I am going to make a spreadsheet where all you have to do is plug in stat values like AP and CDR and Mpen and target MR, and it will tell you the damage and DPS values for every reasonable Lux combo I can think of.
Gobble gave you the Lux calculator. I gave you the Liandry tick calc.
Difficult to say. Bigger for Support Lux than Mid Lux.
With my fancy new Lux spreadsheet, we can see that the mana reduction late game won't have a huge effect. In a typical late game Lux build it ups the amount of time she can stay in a teamfight from 46 seconds to 50 seconds, not major.
And it won't help early game since you level Q second.
The damage difference is fairly inconsequential I think. The damage of the second Q hit isn't a big part of her overall damage.
The snare duration is difficult to quantify, and may be a pretty big deal. In a teamfight situation it's not so big because if you snare the right target even for one second you can ult them and your team can engage.
But for early game what it does is increases the amount of pressure Lux places on the lane, because you can Q through a minion and still get the full damage/duration.
You can do this trick already and if you do it at the right time, to set up a gank or when your minion wave is about to push (Q kills the last of their minions, snares them behind it and then your minions push up and do free damage) it can be very strong even on a 1 second snare. Doubling the snare time makes it even scarier.
It especially will add pressure in a duo lane, since the enemy Support can't block the snare from hitting the ADC and you can potentially snare both of them for 2 seconds. Since Support Lux doesn't have to level E, if the reduction in mana cost lets her level Q over W it might make her a lot more threatening.
I doubt that'd be enough to turn Lux Support into a first tier pick because AP Mage Supports like Zyra/Velkoz/Brand/whatever are currently frowned on anyway, but it'd certainly give her a boost in comparison to the other AP Mage Supports.
That'd be my first guess, we'll have to see if it makes it to live.
We're going to play with my fancy Lux spreadsheet.
I want to look at what gives Lux the most damage at different numbers of items. We're gonna look at our five big damage items, Morello, Liandry, Ludens, Void and Deathcap.
For 1 item? Lets assume that she gets her first big item finished by level 9 and has sorc shoes. Target MR is 42 and we will ignore Liandry burn unless it appears to break a tie.
1 Item Winners Poke damage - Ludens #1 by a lot Burst damage - Deathcap #1, Ludens #2 Sustained damage - Morello #1, Ludens #2
Overall winner - Ludens Echo, IMO.
How about 2 items? Now we're level 13 and our target has a Locket aura. We will remove Liandry from the running since Void already beat it and target MR has gone up.
So their sustained teamfight damage is roughly the same, Ludens having a slight edge. But Ludens clearly has more burst. We're not surprised.
The next bits are where I'm more interested. Lets look at regen stats. I'm gonna assume 1 mana pot for each guy: + Show Spoiler +
Athenes Build At 3 E's per minion wave, 163 seconds before OOM At 2 E's per minion wave, 528 seconds before OOM At 1 E per minion wave - Infinite Sustainable Harass Damage - 4 DPS
Ludens Build At 3 E's per minion wave, 114 seconds before OOM At 2 E's per minion wave, 220 seconds before OOM At 1 E per minion wave - Basically Infinite Sustainable Harass Damage - 0
This is I think a big deal. We've said that the big draw to Velociraptures build is that he only needs to E each minion wave once to clear the caster minions.
Well according to this, if the Athenes build E's each minion wave twice (which kills all 6 minions not just the casters) it can still stay in lane for up to 10 minutes, which is longer than you would want to stay in lane anyway. So it appears that the Athenes build actually waveclears better than the Ludens build.
And the Athenes build is also better able to sustain harass damage on the enemy champion.
But the Ludens build does more damage so its stronger in an all in, right? Lets look at some defensive stats and then put that together.
Athenes Build: 1563 (base) + 352 (shield) + 401 (barrier) EHP vs. Magic 1427 (base) + 321 (shield) + 366 (barrier) EHP vs. Physical Total: 2316 EHP vs. Magic, 2114 EHP vs. Physical Movespeed: 356
Ludens Build: 1312 (base) + 333 (shield) + 337 (barrier) EHP vs. Magic 1368 (base) + 348 (shield) + 351 (barrier) EHP vs. Physical Total: 1982 EHP vs. Magic, 2067 EHP vs. Physical Movespeed: 364
It's really difficult to figure out how much the EHP matters if we don't know our opponent and how much damage they can do to us.
However, we can see what would happen if these two Lux's were to fight each other.
Neither one can kill the other in a combo. AthenesLux's combo does 1038, leaving LudensLux at 944 EHP.
LudensLux's combo does 1280, leaving AthenesLux at 1036 EHP.
AthenesLux sustained damage is roughly equal to LudensLux, and her ability to do harassment damage in the lane is higher, so we can say with some certainty that given equal play, AthenesLux outlanes LudensLux.
That doesn't tell the whole story though, I want to see one more thing. How much damage do these two do to a typical enemy ADC? I'm gonna look at your typical level 8 Ezreal in a teamfight situation. He's got 42 MR and 1011.46 HP.
This is also a big deal. Neither of these builds can one shot the Ezreal at this level. The Ludens build admittedly comes reeeeeeal close though, as long as the Ezreal doesn't have his Heal available.
So, these numbers don't tell the whole story. What's more interesting is the 2 item power spike, where the Ludens build gets a lot of synergy while the Athenes build just sort of buys Void and waits for the 3 item power spike. It may well be worth it to guzzle mana potions until you hit that power spike in certain matchups.
So lets look at the damage difference of the 2 item powerspikes. Ludens+Deathcap vs. Athenes+Void+Sorc Shoes. Target has a Locket aura by 2 items so 57 MR.
I'm also going to add in a third "build", to see how the AthenesVoid build compares if it used its lane pressure advantage in the early game to get a slight lead and also buy an Amp Tome.
So LudenHat Lux does about 10% more burst damage, while AtheneVoid Lux does about 15% more sustained damage. AtheneVoid Lux with the extra gold from her early game lead closes the gaps some, she's losing in burst by about 5% but winning in sustained by about 20%.
Burst damage is I think more valuable than sustained damage, esp. for Lux, and LudenHat Lux's shields are a LOT stronger (441 vs. 306 / 372) so I think we can say that LudenHat Lux comes out ahead here. But it's not as obvious as might be expected, and she's only very slightly ahead of the AtheneVoid Lux who got a lane advantage.
Our defensive stats haven't really changed so I'll forego doing that comparison, although now AtheneVoid Lux has more movespeed instead of the other way around. If they were to fight each other 1v1 AtheneVoid Lux is still going to win, although at this point it's not like you're actually fighting the enemy mid 1v1 anymore.
The regen has changed slightly since the per level seals are getting more valuable for LudenHat Lux, but the differences between the two are still fairly similar. But because of the deathcap, LudenHat Lux is now clearing much faster and more efficiently.
Conclusions: As long as we're talking about things pre-6500 gold, I think the lovely spreadsheet supports my hypothesis that a conventional build is stronger than Velociraptures build.
However, at the same time, it appears that once Velociraptures build hits the 2 item spike, it becomes stronger, both in terms of waveclear/mana efficiency and in terms of teamfight power. While AthenesVoid Lux probably still does better in a 1v1 with the enemy mid due to her higher defensive stats, at this stage in the game you're not likely to get into such a 1v1 anymore.
Of particular note is that even if AtheneVoid Lux uses her advantage to get ahead in gold and is an Amp Tome up on LudenHat Lux, LudenHat Lux is still coming out even to very slightly ahead depending on how you look at it.
The key thing for me is that most of the early game advantages of the Athenes build are based on an assumption that you're going to be aggressive and try to get ahead in the lane by fighting the enemy champion, or the enemy champion is going to do the same to you.
If neither of you have the opportunity to get ahead in lane and plan on playing passive till the two item powerspike, this math seems to favor Velociraptures build.
Later I'll look at 3 item power spikes, where I have a suspicion that the Athenes Lux is going to come out ahead.
So it's kind of all over the place. Velociraptures build is about 12% higher in poke damage, while a standard build is about 15% higher in both burst and sustained damage once the teamfight actually starts. Their shielding values are more or less the same now.
So basically Velociraptures build at items favors siege and poke wars, while a conventional build favors all in fights.
The defensive stats tell a similar story. The conventional build has higher resistances and better EHP, which would favor defense against people diving on you, while Velociraptures build has higher movespeed, which would favor sieges and poke wars.
The regen stats are getting closer to each other. Conventional Lux stays in a teamfight 36 seconds, Velocirapture Lux 34. Conventional Lux can sustain 34 DPS in a siege without losing mana, Velocirapture 32. We can safely say their mana pools are fairly identical, with Conventional Lux slightly ahead due to Athenes unique passive.
What's interesting about this to me is that if we follow this logic from where we started, the kind of matchups where you'd play passive and farm would normally be against safe poke champions, meaning teamfights later in the game are more likely to be poke wars, making Velociraptures build satisfactorily even early in the game, but better at the 2 and 3 item timings.
The matchups where you want to or have to go head to head with the enemy mid are also probably matchups where teamfights later on will be less siege-centric and more dive-centric, meaning that in these situations the conventional build is better at 1 item, basically even at 2 items, and then better again at 3 items.
So, after all this blah blah blah lecturing my audience of zero people, we end up with a confirmation of basically what I hypothesized when we talked about it a couple weeks ago.
This is a more general mreg thing than Lux specifically, but I'm finding it *really* hard to justify Athene's cost on most champs. It feels so much less efficient than Morello unless I'm just begging for mana the entire game. The MR is trivial except in very early bully matchups, though in that case you could probably still just sit on the mantle and be totally fine because it goes into Abyssal and it's now 50 gold cheaper.
It's bad enough that I think champs that need the passive (which may include Lux? Don't play her enough outside ARAM l0l) are at a notable disadvantage.
Athenes is definitely not as good as it used to be.
Chalice is still really good.
If you look at Morellos + Null Mantle vs. Athenes on Lux, Athenes can stay in lane at 3 E's per wave for like 5 minion waves whereas Morellos can only do about 3. Their mana pool in a teamfight looks pretty similar on paper until somebody dies and Athenes gives its big snowbally mana boost.
The costs are similar, if you get a Mantle the MR is the same. You're basically deciding between 20 AP or more mana regen.
For Lux, her AP ratios are below average and her mana costs are above average, so the Athenes is justified. For champions with better ratios, Morellos is going to be the better pick.
I honestly think the two items are fairly balanced right now. I think it's more a problem of perspective. It's easy to see 20 AP as being a big deal, but having more mana regen is more subtle and difficult to notice how much of a difference it's making. In terms of mana efficiency, an Athenes Lux actually does more damage in lane than a Morello Lux, because she's able to cast E more often.
I love all this math man, thanks. It's nice to know what different builds actually look like on paper instead of going by gut feeling. Makes itemization choices much clearer (or murkier if you don't know how to apply the numbers to your champ select ).
I asked about Ludens + Void + Sorc Shoes vs. Ludens + Deathcap, right. Lets look at the 2 and 3 item timings for that and see how it compares damage wise.
So the teamfight burst and poke damage at 2 items are about 7-10% higher than the Velocirapture build. The sustained damages are very similar. Notably, if you were attacking tanky targets, the Void build would be performing much better.
At 3 items, it's performing significantly better in damage.
The 2nd item timing also has much more movespeed.
The tradeoffs are that Velociraptures build clears better, and also has significantly better shields.
So I'm not sure on this one. It probably depends on how much you need the waveclear. If you don't need the help waveclearing, the Void build does more damage, especially at the 3 item timing. But if you do need more help waveclearing, the better shields on the Deathcap build probably make up for the loss in damage.
This thread has me thinking about something I've been mulling over a bit. When is a game actually won? It sounds like a dumb question, but it feels like last worlds games were won in the 15-25 minute range; they weren't necessarily over then, but that felt like the most important time to be strong in. Right now though, I think games are won in the 25-35 minute mark. So the question I'd ask is what build at that point makes you the most strong? How many levels do you usually have at that point? How much gold (minus consumables/wards) have you spent on items usually by that point?
I don't have any hard data to back it up, but it feels like teams get control of the game generally 10-15 minutes prior to ending (sometimes longer e.g 5 dragon control timings, sometimes sooner due to 50/50 late game teamfight games). It's just a thought that I've had regarding why specific champs are good (numbers aside) and why specific builds are good.
I think that's definitely more of a GD topic than a Lux thread topic. It's not something that's very theorycraftable in our sort of isolated lab environment, it depends heavily on the individual game.
In terms of Luxs personal power curve, she tends to be really strong levels 1-3, then calms down 4-6, then picks up again 7-11. Her strongest points are probably levels 3 and 11. After 13 her damage starts to drop off and she becomes more about utility and her sieging than overall teamfight damage.
EHP vs. Phys Dead Mans Plate: 7584 Randuins Omen: 7361 Frozen Heart: 7019 Guardian Angel: 6300 + 1169 Locket: 6558 Banshees Veil: 6227 Spirit Visage: 6136
EHP vs. Magic Banshees Veil: 5381 Spirit Visage: 5302 Locket: 5110 Guardian Angel: 4487 + 833 Dead Mans Plate: 4320 Randuins Omen: 4076 Frozen Heart: 3588
[b]EHP vs. Mixed Damage (50/50 split) Dead Mans Plate: 5952 Locket: 5834 Banshees Veil: 5804 Spirit Visage: 5719 Randuins Omen: 5718 Guardian Angel: 5393 + 1001 Frozen Heart: 5303
I was gonna do some more math with 5th item Liandry and 5th item Ludens Echo but... Fuck it honestly, this is pretty telling.
For Armor, the three big items (Randuins, FH, Dead Mans Plate) are all pretty similar. Similar enough that really which one you're buying is going to be based on the other stats. Is the movespeed on DMP really good? I dunno, it might be. Are the anti crit and anti AS passives on Randuins really good? Yes they're actually really good, especially vs. certain enemy teams. The active on Randuins is kinda crap, but whatever. Is the CDR on FH really good? Yes, if you need CDR.
For magic, Spirit Visage is unsurprisedly pretty crap. I used to like Locket a lot more, but it got nerfed a little and Banshee got buffed a little. So I'd probably only go Locket now if you need the team aura. Banshee being better EHP even without the spell shield is kind of a big deal.
If you want both Armor and MR, I'm not really sure what's best. Possibly Banshee? This is where it might depend on whether or not you have Zhonyas.
Some quick math on the difference between that Zhonyas and the Liandry's says it's not going to change these numbers more than about 100, so I think it's prob fine.
So I think if you want mixed resistances basically any of the big items that have both HP and a Resistance (DMP, Randuin, Banshee) are fine. Buy one based on what passive you want, or make a best guess on whether or not you're taking more magic damage or more physical.
Guardian Angel is a trap buy, it's only competitive when you get the revive which is typically not every fight, and the revive is bad on Lux because her skills all have cast times and her cooldowns are often not up when she revives anyway, so even though it's more total EHP when you get a revive, it's not actually useful EHP unless your team wins the fight while you're reviving. If you have Liandry's as your 5th item it helps GA a little in comparison to the others, but not enough for it to matter.
Frozen Heart used to be a really good defensive buy on Lux, but is now only good if A - You want the CDR, and also B - You're taking mostly physical damage. So it's probably good in our Anti AD build, but not good in the other builds.
So, given all of the math we did in the previous page of the thread, here is, as simplistic as I can make it, current Lux guide build suggestions for 5.16:
Up against an AP Assassin who can engage on you and force fights, such as Leblanc, Fizz, Kassadin, Akali, Diana, Ekko, Katarina, Lissandra? - Use the Athenes Build.
Up against a Ranged AP poke Mage with skillshots such as Orianna, Ziggs, Xerath, Viktor, Azir? - Use the Athenes build if you prefer a more aggressive early game playstyle with a stronger 1 item timing. - Use the Ludens build if you prefer a more passive early game playstyle with a stronger 2-3 item timing. (By 4 items, these two builds are functionally the same.)
Up against a champion who you cannot pressure in lane and need to prioritize waveclear such as Morgana, Galio, Twisted Fate, Cho'Gath, Master Yi? - Use the Ludens build.
Up against an AD Champion? - Use the Armguard build.
Want to play Lux support? - Use the Support build.
Want something more aggressive early game with a weaker late game? - 21/0/9 - Hybrid Pen / Armor / MR / AP - Barrier vs. Assassins, Heal vs. Ranged Mages, Ignite vs. Fiddlesticks & Swain.
Want something more passive early game with a stronger late game? - 21/9/0 - Hybrid Pen / Armor / CDR per Level / AP - Barrier vs. Assassins, Heal vs. Ranged Mages, Teleport vs. Heimerdinger
Want mid game defense against an Akali/Kassadin/Diana? - 21/9/0 - Hybrid Pen / HP per Level / MR per Level / AP - Barrier vs. Akali/Diana, Heal vs. Kassadin
Enemy team has a regen champion like Vlad/Mundo and know you need to buy a Morellonomicon later in the game? - Same as above, but take AP per Level runes instead of CDR per Level for a late game setup, since you will be capping CDR with Athenes+Morello late in the game.
- 24/0/6 (use for a stronger late game) - 21/0/9 (use for a stronger early game) - Mpen / MRegen per Level / CDR per Level / AP - Heal standard, Teleport vs. Morgana, TF, Galio, Cho'Gath, Master Yi
Is there a place for Zeke's as the 6th item? If you're going scaling CDR runes and Lucidity boots, it puts you slightly over cap. If you're going Athene's/Morello's first, the CDR is effectively 0. Idk, just kinda seems like numbers wise it could be a strong 5th-6th item if you're safe in the back. Especially with a carry top (Ryze, Rumble, GP, etc) or long range ADC (Jinx, Trist, Kogmaw).
As a defensive item, no. Its defensive stats are crap.
As an offensive item or a hybrid offensive/defensive item, it's a little bit more difficult.
For example, lets say we took it as an offensive item instead of Zhonyas, which is the closest available comparison.
These are our comparable AP figures:
With Zhonyas: 776 AP With Zekes (Active): 842 AP With Zekes (Inactive): 701 AP
So, for the Lux, its stronger during the 8 seconds and weaker otherwise, in both cases by about 70 AP.
The problem I think is that Lux is a poke champion, and likes to do poke damage in sieges with repeated E's. So you're going to be activating your Zekes with poke damage, and may not necessarily want to engage right then. Likewise you'll do poke damage or waveclear defensively and if the enemy team is gonna engage they can just wait out the 8 seconds.
So I'm not sure it's a good idea. I'm not even sure it's a good idea on Support Lux. I feel like Zekes is an item for supports who don't do poke damage unless their poke damage creates an engage.
Have you looked at Banner of Command? It's not insanely good defensively, but I feel like it complements one of Lux's biggest strengths in pushing a lane really hard. You ult and fry a few minion waves promote a minion and that will force the enemy team to deal with it sooner or later.
It's *very* hard to estimate the value of the passives/effects of items apart from Locket which gives a 345hp shield, but you could play around with some numbers given logical assumptions. I'd be interested. DMP seems like a bit of a weird choice given that the staggering blow (or whatever the second passive is called) only works for melees.
Banner of Command is acceptable if you want a hybrid Offense/Defense item vs. MR.
A lot of its strength is tied into how useful the active is in your particular team comp vs. their particular team comp for that particular game, so just looking at it with math is a little disingenuous. If you want MR and AP and CDR, its stats aren't bad at all. It's certainly better than Abyssal on her.
If you don't want CDR and don't want the active and your team doesn't need the aura and basically just want AP+Defense you may as well just get Liandry.
The DMP staggering blow only works for melees, but I believe you get the movespeed on everybody, and only goes away if you take damage, not if you're dealing damage. Since I can't actually play League here in Thailand I can't test it, I'd be interested to hear what other people think about it.
But the Randuins passives are both really ridic good. The DMP movespeed would have to be very high value to make it worth.
I was thinking of it more as a range burst mage build similar to how split push TP Diana or TP TF is played; potentially even grabbing TP to allow the early back for Doran's #2 without losing XP. Where you replace Morello's/Athene's with Zeke's. Things might need to be moved around a bit and there's potential for wanting Liandry's instead of Zhonya's. Zekes provides less CDR, but the AP hit isn't as impactful. It's a question of what the cost of running Lucidity Boots over Sorc Shoes is DPS wise (which will vary).
I was thinking of it more as a range burst mage build similar to how split push TP Diana or TP TF is played; potentially even grabbing TP to allow the early back for Doran's #2 without losing XP. Where you replace Morello's/Athene's with Zeke's. Things might need to be moved around a bit and there's potential for wanting Liandry's instead of Zhonya's. Zekes provides less CDR, but the AP hit isn't as impactful. It's a question of what the cost of running Lucidity Boots over Sorc Shoes is DPS wise (which will vary).
Okay so, we can look at some numbers comparisons between this and Velociraptures Ludens build, which is the closest comparison.
Time before OOM in a Teamfight Ludens Build: 34 seconds Geript build (Zekes Inactive): 30 seconds Geript build (Zekes Active): 30 seconds
So, the time before OOM in a teamfight is similar due to the flat mana on Zekes, the Ludens build wins by 4 seconds.
But the Ludens build can sustain twice as much harass damage in the siege prior to the teamfight.
The Ludens build also does about 5% more teamfight damage than these Zekes builds even when the Zekes is active, both in burst damage and sustained damage. When the Zekes is inactive it's doing about 15% more damage. You also don't get the Morellos passive, for whatever that's worth.
Given that, again, I doubt the reliability of being able to have the Zekes active up at the correct time on a Mage who will be doing constant poke damage in a siege, and given that the conventional build with Sorc shoes does more damage regardless of the situation, I think you can see how crappy Lucidity boots are.
With Zekes active you've got 100 more AP and are still doing less damage.
Note that if you increase the target MR, you have to go up to 200 before the Zekes build with Zekes active and 100 more AP even equals the Ludens build in teamfight damage, and the Ludens build in that situation is still something like 75% more efficient in harass damage.
This is also looking at full level 18 builds. The earlier in the game we are the worse Zekes+Lucidity is going to be and the better Morello+Sorc is going to be.
Just don't buy Lucidity boots on Lux ever they're terrible.
On September 01 2015 10:49 Ketara wrote: Banner of Command is acceptable if you want a hybrid Offense/Defense item vs. MR.
A lot of its strength is tied into how useful the active is in your particular team comp vs. their particular team comp for that particular game, so just looking at it with math is a little disingenuous. If you want MR and AP and CDR, its stats aren't bad at all. It's certainly better than Abyssal on her.
If you don't want CDR and don't want the active and your team doesn't need the aura and basically just want AP+Defense you may as well just get Liandry.
The DMP staggering blow only works for melees, but I believe you get the movespeed on everybody, and only goes away if you take damage, not if you're dealing damage. Since I can't actually play League here in Thailand I can't test it, I'd be interested to hear what other people think about it.
But the Randuins passives are both really ridic good. The DMP movespeed would have to be very high value to make it worth.
I was referring more to trying to "value" the non-stat effects of the various items, though perhaps it'd be better to do some sort of Harvey Ball type thing for each one for various situations (like AP/AD heavy, tanky vs. no tank, etc.).
Liandry's is very very good right now, and I think it's almost a perfect fit for Lux given that she has two built in CC's (so she doesn't need Rylai's) and is a poke type champion. You need some insane hard engage to beat a team with a well-farmed/fed Lux.
@above: you're not counting the extra crit dmg on your AD/yasuo/GP/whatever from Zeke's though. If you want to play support Lux, build Sorc boots + Aether Wisp -> whatever
No I'm not counting it. If you can show me how to reliably make it so you can constantly throw E poke in a siege situation and also get a good teamfight engage right when the Zekes bonus damage activates, we can look at that.
I can show some numbers of what Banner looks like vs. Liandry a little later today, I'm going to work soon.
We'll use the Athenes build since that's probably the only one where you'd be looking to buy a hybrid defense item in Banner.
We'll also throw in Abyssal to illustrate how bad it is. I'll calculate the Abyssal aura effect on single target DPS since that's supposedly in AA range, but not for burst damage since that's usually too far away.
These numbers are assuming our Lux has Barrier and MR Runes, which is probably the situation in which you'd want a big MR item. + Show Spoiler +
Teamfight Time Before OOM Liandry: 48 seconds Banner: 40 seconds Abyssal: 48 seconds
Regen wise the Liandry build can sustain 20% more harass damage and teamfight for 8 seconds longer.
Damage wise Banner and Abyssal are nearly identical in all categories, but they're both beaten severely by Liandry, which does about 15% more burst damage and about 5% more sustained damage. Those numbers are not calculating the Liandry burn at all.
Defense wise Banner and Abyssal are fairly identical vs. Magic, and both about 12% or so better than Liandry. However, Liandry is slightly better than Banner vs. Physical, and Banner is about 5% better than Abyssal vs. Physical. When you average the damage out Liandry/Abyssal are about equal and both are only very slightly behind Banner.
Conclusions: So, obviously enough Liandry beats the other two severely in damage categories. If you changed MR runes to CDR/level runes it'd be an even bigger disparity, Liandry would likely be 15% ahead at both burst and sustained damage. Switching Zhonyas for Ludens in this comparison would further favor Liandry.
For defense, Banner is superior to Abyssal even ignoring all the extra utility Banner brings to the table, so it's safe to say you should just never get Abyssal on Lux ever.
As for getting Banner over Liandry, you either need to be in a situation where you highly value the MR but not enough to get a full Banshee's Veil / Locket, or you need to be in a situation where you put enough value on the active to make it worth a significant damage decrease.
I note you specifically call out adding Expose Weakness in the Luden's build. I have heard rumblings that it doesn't work on your own damage any more - you still think it's worth taking?
When you're going 21 Offense you have to choose between one of these three: Points 3+4 in CDR Points 2+3 in % bonus AP Spell+Blade Weaving
Usually you choose the Weavings for early game, the AP for late game, and the CDR is always the wrong choice.
When you're going 24 offense with a build like the Ludens build, you're building specifically for teamfights and late game and not for laning, so with the extra 3 points you can take Expose Weakness, and get both CDR and % AP. You don't want the Weavings because they're most useful for early laning and you don't give a shit about that because you're going to play passive anyway.
Doing some math on how different these different masteries are might be fun, I can do that some other time.
So basically they're all really fucking similar late game.
The CDR build stays in a teamfight 2 seconds less. Sustainable Harass Damage is basically identical.
Burst damage is about 2% higher with Archmage.
Sustained damage is about 2% higher with CDR.
Normally we favor burst damage over sustained damage, and the regen values for the AP runes are very slightly higher, so late game we can say that the % AP mastery is more valuable than the CDR mastery. The Weavings are basically just the worst of the three late game.
Now lets look at early game stuff. I'm gonna look at a normal level 6 with the same build.
Burst damage on a zero auto combo is 0.5% higher with AP.
Burst damage on a combo with an auto at the end is just barely higher with Weavings than it is with AP. Most combos at level 6 you get the auto at the end.
The Q auto E auto combo which is sort of your laning combo is 1.25% higher with Weavings.
Sustained damage is just under 3% higher with Weavings.
So you can see how early game the Weavings are having the biggest impact. The lower the level, the more impact the Weavings have, at level 2 the disparity in the Q auto E auto combo is more like 2%.
You can also see that while it's by an incredibly small amount, the AP masteries are better than the CDR masteries early game. Since they're very slightly better late game, but also very slightly better early game, you should always be taking the % AP mastery over the CDR mastery.
So, what I said in the post above is correct (ha!) If you want early game you go with Weavings, if you want late game you take % AP, you never go 4 points CDR on 21 offense. On 24 offense you can get two of the three but you're usually playing for late game there so you go CDR + % AP.
A final thing that I want to look at is Feast, because people regularly are surprised that I take Feast on Lux. They shouldn't be.
We're gonna look at how Feast affects these early game values.
Time before OOM (3 E's per minion wave) With Feast: 96 seconds Without Feast: 92 seconds
Time before OOM (2.5 E's per minion wave) With Feast: 178 seconds Without Feast: 163 seconds
Time before OOM (2.25 E's per minion wave) With Feast: 309 seconds Without Feast: 266 seconds
Time before OOM (2 E's per minion wave) With Feast: 1162 seconds Without Feast: 721 seconds
Sustainable Harass DPS in Lane With Feast: 4.3 Without Feast: 4
HP Regenned per second from Feast With Feast: 0.5 Without Feast: 0
So, why is this a big deal?
First of all, if you're using less than 3 E's per minion wave the amount that you can stay in lane longer is tremendous. With this build you're probably going to be doing somewhere between 2.25 and 2.5 E's per minion wave, and it's going to let you stay in lane for an entire extra 30 seconds.
And second of all, during this time you're going to regen a ton of HP. If you stayed in lane for lets say 270 seconds (9 minion waves, basically one back between dragons), Feast would regen you 135 HP. So essentially on top of this mana regen, it's giving you an extra potions worth of HP on every back.
This is also true for the initial lane, where you're gonna get maybe 30-40 CS or so before backing, and Feast will give you about as much regen as another potion. If you start with the equivalent of Dring + 3 potions and your opponent mid starts with Dring + 2 potions, that is literally enough to potentially win you the entire lane right there, and maybe the whole game. It's difficult to understate the amount of impact something like that has at level 1.
At the very least it is going to give you an advantage in lane which should likely be worth enough gold over time to make up for not getting the CDR masteries.
And in all of these calculations we are completely ignoring Butcher, which may get you another one or two CS that you would have missed. That's not significant but it's not nothing.
Feast is pretty good.
It's way better than getting 2 more points in CDR which gives you essentially nothing early game, and late game has no impact on burst and only 2% better sustained damage.
I want to look at how much AP the passive damage is worth on FQC.
FQC adds 15 damage to an E, and presumably 45 damage to a combo.
So this is as much as 25 AP on an E, and 20 AP on a combo. Since it doesn't help your shields, I can say it's roughly worth 15 AP.
If we compare this to a Twin Shadows which is IMO about the closest comparable item, if you were to buy Frostfang, then sell it for Twin Shadows, that would cost 2919 gold total. For a similar cost you could get FQC + a Blasting Wand, and have about 105 AP vs. 80 and 50% mana regen vs. 0, while retaining the gold generation.
So selling Frostfang for another item is probably kinda silly.
However, I think upgrading Frostfang to FQC quickly is also kind of silly. Doing so doesn't increase your mana regen or gold generation. You pay 1335g for 40 AP, 10% CDR and the active. Fiendish Codex is 820g and gives 30 AP and 10% CDR, and can build into other things, so you're really paying 515g for 10 AP and the active. 10 AP is only worth 200g.
So you're really paying 315g for the FQC active. It's not a fantastic active. Getting another item faster is probably a better deal. If you got a Forbidden Idol first for the regen like you should, and then spent that 315g into upgrading said Idol into a Morellonomicon, that route you're getting 50 AP and 50% mana regen for 880g, which is like a 1300g value. Or if you went for an Ardent Censer, you're spending 680g for 10 AP, 50% mana regen, 8% movespeed and the Ardent Censer passive. Either of these options appear to be gold efficient.
Given this, I'm going to add a support build to our above updated guide post and I'd love it if people could try it.
Okay the makeshift guide at the top of this page is now current and updated, and linked to in the OP.
I can't test this shit anymore, so if anybody is playing Lux games, please post what you think about this stuff in the thread so I can go over it. Post game screens and replays or whatever would be great.
You said I could take you up on the question of Lucidity boots vs Sorcs on Lux. Out of curiosity, how much more damage would Sorcs do over Lucidity boots? For the sake of argument, lets say they're running the same rune pages without cdr and same masteries with the flat 5%cdr. With roughly the same 3 item build, Morellos, Deathcap, Void Staff, and respective boots. For the sake of argument, lets say the enemy has 30mr and 100mr. If it makes big enough of a difference we can switch Void for Luden's.
For Harass damage: At 30 MR - Mpen +13% At 42 MR - Mpen +14% At 55 MR - Mpen +14% At 100 MR - Mpen +11%
For Burst damage: At 30 MR - Mpen +13% At 42 MR - Mpen +14% At 55 MR - Mpen +13% At 100 MR - Mpen +11%
For Sustained damage: At 30 MR - CDR +7% At 42 MR - CDR +6% At 55 MR - CDR +7% At 100 MR - CDR +8%
So as we can see, Pen boots are 11-14% better at burst and harass damage, and can stay in a teamfight 35% longer, while CDR boots are 6-8% better at sustained damage.
In general we tend to prioritize Burst damage 1st, Harass damage 2nd and Sustained damage 3rd I'd say. This can potentially change based on the game, but it's a good generalization.
Now, if you want to dig a little deeper into that sustained damage figure, lets look at the 30 MR figure. Assuming no harass damage at all, Mpen does 261 more burst damage, while CDR does 19 more sustained damage.
This means that CDR doesn't start doing more damage until 14 seconds into the fight. Since after 37 seconds the CDR runs out of mana, you can functionally say that even for sustained damage, CDR is only better at fights that last between 14 and 37 seconds, while Mpen is better at fights 1-14 seconds and 37+ seconds.
For every 4 seconds of E harass prior to the teamfight, that gap closes by another second in favor of Mpen. So if there's 12 seconds of harass prior to the teamfight, CDR only performs better at 17-37 seconds.
As you can see, Pen boots are much better in all categories but sustained damage, where they are arguably about the same.
This math doesn't touch at all on one of the primary reasons why CDR boots are bad though, which is that you can get CDR runes but you can't really get Mpen runes.
If you wanted to do a more accurate comparison of how good Mpen boots are, you'd do Mpen boots + CDR/level runes vs. CDR boots + AP/level runes. In that comparison the Mpen boots would also be performing better at sustained damage, because the CDR would be the same for both builds, but 15 Mpen outdamages 27 AP.
Or if you wanted defensive runes, MR boots + CDR runes would give you 15% CDR, 25 MR and Tenacity, while CDR boots + MR runes would only give you 15% CDR and 12 MR.
Basically, in order for CDR boots to be good, you either A - have to have a kit that places very low value on Mpen (Lulu), or B - you have to have some reason why it's difficult to get CDR elsewhere in your item build (Viktor). Potentially both of these things need to be true, actually.
Wow, that's a surprising amount of extra damage. I would've imagined it to be less than 10%+ with Void Staff in the inventory. I assume the time it takes to run out of mana is calculated by spamming all your spells on CD? Also, how did you calculate the DPS and sustained damage?
The teamfight time before OOM calculation looks at how much mana you use if you spam every spell on cooldown, and how much mana you regen per second, and comes up with how many seconds it takes you to run out of mana. So, the more CDR you have the more spells you cast and the faster you run out of mana.
The sustained damage is just the maximum possible DPS you can do if you're doing everything perfectly.
The sustained harass damage is how much damage you can do with E without your mana going down prior to a teamfight. If you E on CD you can do more damage with CDR boots, but you're also casting more spells so you lose mana faster. So it's not a calculation of the maximum possible harass damage, it's a calculation of how mana efficient your harass damage is.
Wouldn't it make more sense to compare Ludens/CDR Boots/Deathcap/Void vs Ludens/Sorc/Nomicon/Deathcap or Void
I know Sorc boots would be better for damage on Lux but the Ludens build delays the second Dcap/Void item by 2300g. I'd imagine getting an earlier Dcap/Void would make up for the loss damage from Lucidity vs Sorcs
Lux eats mana terribly. I really don't think you can get 3 items in with no mana item. And if you did, you wouldn't want CDR boots anyway, because you'll be getting fewer spells off regardless and those spells will do a lot more damage with pen.
Okay so, there are some reasons why we don't want to do this.
For starters, lets ignore mana regen issues just for a second, I'll get to them later in the post.
Even assuming that A - there are no mana problems, and B - this gives you a stronger damage timing at the item point you suggested, this makes our final build awkward.
As I said in the previous post, one of the big problems with Lucidity Boots is you can't get Mpen with runes/masteries. If you're going to get Morello later on anyway, you're going to have to get different runes, since your CDR/level runes are no longer helpful. So late game what you're doing is trading 15 Mpen for either 12 MR or 27 AP. 15 Mpen is more valuable than either of these things by a wide margin.
If you elect to not get the Morello at all (again ignoring mana regen issues) so that you can do Lucidity + CDR runes + some other item, there is no other item that gives you enough damage to account for that lost 15 Mpen and 5% CDR. As we saw earlier when I talked about Zekes Harbinger on Lux, late game the 15 Mpen is more damage than 100 AP, so even a fully stacked Mejais + Lucidity would not outdamage Morello + Sorcs.
So, problem #1 is that this makes our late game item build very awkward and inefficient.
After that, the idea that this gives us a stronger item timing is questionable. Looking at the item timing where we have Luden+Hat+Lucidity+Void vs. Luden+Hat+Sorc+Morello, this is the difference in stats (again, ignoring regen for now).
So the thing here is that 15 Mpen is actually about the same as 35% Mpen for most MR values you're likely to encounter at this item level. They're likely to have a Locket passive in teamfights by then so the MR values that you're probably looking at are something like 45-100.
At 57 MR, Void is 4 more Mpen than Sorc. At 70 it's 8 more. At 45 MR Sorc is actually better. So while the earlier Void here is helping you against tanks, against squishies it's really fairly similar, with you losing out on 5% CDR and the Morello passive.
Here's how that disparity looks in math, looking at 57 MR. + Show Spoiler +
Burst Damage Ludens - 1993 Inflicted - 2053
Sustained DPS Ludens - 330 Inflicted - 319
So, at this level Inflicteds build is 3% better at burst and 3% worse at sustained. As we've said before we value burst damage more than sustained damage, so this is a little bit of an improvement, but not much of one. Against tanky targets it'd be a bigger improvement, but against a squishier target Sorcs would actually be superior in both categories. And the issue with trading sustained damage for burst against tanks is that the tankier the target is the longer it takes you to kill them, so the less burst matters and the more sustained matters.
So, problem #2 is that the idea that this gives us a stronger item timing at the 10kish gold value is debatable. Depending on the enemy team it may be slightly stronger, but I do not think it will ever be significantly stronger.
So, then we get to problem #3, which is the regen. Here's some math on the regen:
So, as we can see, while you can stay in a teamfight for just as long due to the lower CDR, when you're laning the Ludens build can do 3 E's per minion wave and be about as mana efficient as the suggested build doing 2.
The difference in the amount of harass damage you can put out is tremendous, the Ludens build is 146% better when laning. In a teamfight it's 54% better.
So, problem #3 is that the lost mana regen is actually a pretty big deal.
Problem #4 is that losing out on that 5% CDR means you have less utility (fewer snares, fewer shields) which isn't represented in math but is a problem.
Conclusions So, ultimately this build makes your late game significantly worse, gives you significant mana regen issues, and lowers your utility, for teamfight damage at the 10k gold timing only that is debatably something like 2-4% better depending on the enemy team comp.
The ludens/deathcap/lucidity boots build works for things like Viktor and Azir who can just kill the wave without using much mana. It doesn't work for Lux, who needs two e's to clear a wave, or has to auto the wave forever...I'd say you would just get shoved in and lose.
I'm pretty convinced that if she's super strong, it's not because of Lux, it's because of all the low mobility champs that are being picked around her.
She's good both with and against champions like Darius/Garen/Skarner etc.
Hey Ketara, what do you think about scaling AP blues? I find myself never needing the MR so scaling AP seems pretty good to me. I also never build zhonyas unless I'm vs zed or something like that, wouldn't Ludens just be flat better in those scenarios? Or maybe even Rylais for the slow?
Surely the best late game sustained damage would include 40% cdr, so something like 15% scaling + 5% masteries + athenes, then rabadons/sorc shoes/void staff/ludens/liandry's? Only issue I can see is this build gives you almost no defense and you just roll over if they get onto you.
I'm not going to outright say that Rylais is a bad item, because its stats are pretty good. But for Lux it should always be inferior to Liandry. You don't get any added CC on your Q or W, your E already has a 0.25s slow after it damages so you only get 75% effectiveness on that, and while you get the slow on your R, you typically only R CC'd targets in the first place.
I mean even if you assumed the Rylais slow is the same value as the Liandry burn (Liandry burn is pretty crap too) you're talking 100 HP vs. 15 Mpen, and 15 Mpen is just so much more valuable. Liandry build path is also much smoother.
If you already have Liandry, either Zhonya or Ludens should be better than Rylai based on what you want. Zhonya should be better at defense, and Ludens should be better at offense.
I can imagine there'd be a hypothetical game where you need extra CC so badly that Rylai becomes an acceptable choice (Fiora top, Garen jungle, Morde ADC?), but the circumstances would be so unlikely that unless you're diamond+ and making a really well thought out, intelligent item decision I'd suggest just not doing it.
For Zhonya?
First of all, you don't want to trick yourself with the statement "Ludens is better than Zhonya", because you have the ability to get both in your build. Zhonya doesn't need to be more valuable than Ludens to buy, it needs to be more valuable than either Ludens OR Liandry for that particular game. Basically if it's more valuable than the weaker of those two, it's worth getting.
It's less damage than either of them, obviously. And the active is not as good on Lux as it is on most champions.
But against AD, the 50 armor is really valuable. Lux likes resists much more than HP because she'll be running around with a giant shield and defensive summoners. Lets compare the defensive value of Zhonya to the afformentioned Rylais.
EHP vs. AD Zhonya: 5930 Rylai: 5606 Liandry: 5417
That's after counting LW armor pen, remember. So even after a LW the Zhonya is still 6% better than Rylais and 9% better than Liandry.
And this is assuming you only get to shield yourself once in the fight. Every subsequent shield adds another 300 EHP in favor of Zhonya. A Locket shield from your team adds another 70. Heal from your ADC another 100. Any survivability from your Supports kit are more valuable, and so on.
And even though the Zhonya active isn't super high value on Lux, it's still more value than the Rylai slow which as we said above is almost useless. Especially against a couple specific AD champions like Zed or Vi.
If you're taking mostly AP damage, the Zhonya armor isn't any good. Either Liandry for more HP or Ludens for more movespeed to dodge skillshots and position better will in most cases be better, or Banshee/Banner of Command if you're really desperate for defense.
But what's funny about Zhonya is that the active is actually pretty good against certain APs too, because they have burst with projectiles that you can dodge with it. A list of AP champions where the Zhonya active lets you dodge most of their burst is something like: + Show Spoiler +
Fiddlesticks Fizz Karthus Katarina Kennen Lux (lol) Syndra Velkoz Vladimir
So that's actually quite a lot of value vs. a good number of APs as well. APs who aren't on this list are generally either all skillshots or low range, so Ludens is actually a really good item against them defensively, making Ludens+Liandry probably better defensively than Rylai+Liandry.
The Zhonya active also just gets more valuable the more dive the enemy team has, while the Ludens added sieging ability gets less valuable the more dive the enemy team has.
So there are lots of potential games where I think either Zhonya + Liandry or Zhonya + Ludens is a perfectly good final two items.
But you're in general correct that since the AP itemization changes, Zhonyas is no longer an obvious pickup, and you sort of need to have a reason to get it over Ludens + Liandry. Ludens + Liandry is probably your default setup. There are just lots of potential reasons why you'd add in the Zhonya.
For AP Blues?
AP blues are a perfectly acceptable rune choice. There's nothing bad about them.
The reason I don't have them listed in the guide is because I think in nearly every situation something else is a little bit better. I'll explain.
Lets assume that what you want is late game power. I'd say CDR/level blues are better. Here's some math given a normal Athenes build: + Show Spoiler +
Teamfight Time Before OOM AP/lvl: 50 seconds CDR/lvl: 37 seconds
So first off, while the Teamfight before OOM calc favors AP/lvl heavily, I'm going to argue that 37 seconds is enough time for the majority of late game teamfights, especially when you have Dangerous Game / Athenes to push that a bit higher, so it's really not much added value there. Basically anything over 35 seconds I wouldn't really be concerned, that's enough time to get a second ult which is generally what will end a fight if it hasn't ended yet.
So what we get for results is as follows. Harass: +4% AP Burst: +3% AP Sustained: +15% CDR
Basically, even though I think we value burst and harass damage more than sustained damage, I think +15% sustained is more value than +3% burst. Especially when you factor in having more utility value from more snares and shields and so on.
It'd be neat if I could put a number value on utility, I'd like that. Prob can't tho.
So, for late game CDR/level beats AP/level. The exception here is if you're vs. a Mundo or Vladimir or something and want to go Athene+Morello for max CDR and the Morello passive, in which case AP/level runes are better.
So how about for early game?
For this we're going to examine the effect of AP/level blues vs. Mana Regen blues and MR blues. We'll take level 9 when these runes would be equal, flat runes will obviously be better levels 1-6.
So, if you're against an AP champion, the difference in damage by taking AP/level at this low level is negligable. Your in lane harass is basically identical, because what's constraining your harass damage at this level is your mana regen, not your AP. The difference is so small that any increased harass can basically be cancelled out by increased EHP you're getting from your health regen with MR runes.
You do get 25 more burst damage in a combo, but your EHP is 161 higher with the MR, because you get so much added value from MR on your shield and defensive summoner. If you use a potion during the fight you get 18 more EHP from that as well.
So your in lane harass is the same, but in an all in situation MR runes are actually way better. Even if only 25% of the damage you take is Magic (got ganked by an AD jungler), they're still outperforming AP runes.
Now, there are a few champions, such as Ryze and Mordekaiser, where if you play well you should basically never take damage in lane, meaning there's an argument for early game AP runes for more damage. But even in these situations Mana Regen runes would perform better for damage (as we'll see below), and these champions you will slaughter in lane regardless of your runes, so you're probably better off taking CDR runes for a late game setup as these champions are usually really strong late game.
So, against an AD, you do get 28 more burst damage in an all in situation.
But you're doing much more harass damage prior to the fight, because most of your early game harass is gated by mana regen, not by AP. What this means is that even though in an all in the AP/level runes will be slightly superior, your target will start the fight at a lower HP, meaning the mana regen runes will be equivalent or better anyway.
You can also stay in lane much longer, which is kind of a big deal early in the game.
The other big reason I prefer mana regen runes against ADs is that most all AD / heavy AD comps tend to be strongest early and mid game, and fall off late game anyway when your team stacks armor, meaning you prefer rune pages that are slanted towards higher value earlier in the game.
You're also already getting Morello in the Armguard build, so the edge situation where you want Athenes+Morello + AP/level runes to fight off a Mundo doesn't occur.
So, while AP runes are certainly not bad, I don't advocate for them because I think in 99% of situations some other runes are slightly better.
I plan on giving the Luden's build a whirl tomorrow if we do 5s again, I'll let you know how it goes. The Athene's build feels good even vs ADs that I don't think i'm going to play with the armguard build.
I don't think you properly appreciate just how awesome my Armguard build is. Check this out.
We'll look at the stats you get from runes/items at different early game item levels vs. an Athenes build where you had really heavy anti magic runes, HP/level and flat MR.
So, up until about the 6000 gold point, these builds are damn near identical, you're just getting Armor instead of MR. You're a little harder up on Mana Regen with the Armguard build because you have a second Dring passive instead of an Athenes passive, but not by a lot. You also have fewer item slots, but you've always got at least one for potions and a trinket for wards anyway, so it's k.
The Armguard build has slightly less Mpen and slightly less HP at each timing, but it makes up for it with higher AP. It's also got less movespeed, but movespeed is generally more important against AP champions, who typically rely more on skillshots than AD champions.
By about 7750g the Armguard build finishes Sorc Shoes and the Athenes build grabs an NLR and then they're both functionally the same, except again you've got Armor instead of MR.
The armguard build flows pretty well, you should try it!
Ehhh what about just straight up Dorans -> Morellos -> damage vs AD's? With going armguard on first back you don't have enough money for enough mana regen after the 7:00-8:00 blue buff runs out.
You can do that too. It's a riskier build, but it's fine.
You should go 2x Dorans > Morello though.
A Dorans Ring is more regen than a Forbidden Idol till level 11. + Show Spoiler +
(2 Drings is more regen than a Chalice till level 9) (A Dring and a Forbidden Idol is more regen than a Chalice till level 8)
In that case you're basically doing the Athenes build but not getting any MR in favor of more AP.
When you do the Armguard build, you shouldn't go Armguard first back, you should go Dorans + Amp Tome + Cloth Armor. You feel like you want to get Armguard ASAP to start stacking it, but honestly it stacks really fast so getting it second back is fine (it should be fully stacked in 3 minutes), and the mana regen on the second Dring is super valuable when you're doing this build. If you get a kill or something you can get both, 1600g on first back isn't impossible.
The reason why the Armguard build is so good vs. ADs is because most AD Assassins (Zed Talon Riven Fiora etcetera) can only pressure the lane by threatening to all in you, they can't do effective harass damage.
You get so much multiplicative scaling building AP+Armor on your shield, that when you have an early armguard they usually can't kill you in an all in. Zed jumps in and ults you and you literally just do more damage than him and win the fight.
If they can't harass you and can't all in you and have to CS in melee range, you can just abuse them as much as you want in lane and it shuts them down hard. You can deny CS, prevent them from roaming, force their jungler to camp you (which is great if it's an AD jungler because guess what, you're building in a way that makes it hard for him to kill you too) and so on. It gives you so much lane pressure that it's worth delaying your 3 item power spike by 1000 gold. As we saw above, your 1 item and 2 item timings are really not delayed, only your 3 item timing is.
If you go 2x Dorans + Morello you can still play better than the other guy and win the lane, but you're risking an AD Assassin outplaying you, getting a kill on you, roaming and starting a snowball.
Builds like this are why people think that Talon and Zed counter Lux, honestly. You think you're all 1400 range bullshit and they're never going to be able to engage on you, but all it takes is one positional mistake and suddenly you've built in a way that allows them to 100-0 you if they can just get there to do it. Plus, if you build like this they can roam and you can't follow, you have to stay where you have vision. If you build Armguard and they roam, you can follow them and if you meet them in the jungle you just win the fight.
You're playing against a Zed, and at around 1600g, lets say level 7, he all ins you. He's got Cutlass + Dorans + Longsword. Lets say he gets a pretty perfect all in, 2 autos, multiple shurikens, etc.
His all in does about 1000 phys damage and 100 magic damage (Cutlass), plus damage from his passive and 190 from Ignite.
How do these all ins play out based on your items?
If you're going 2x Doran > Morello: You do 714 damage to him (leaves him at 360 HP) He does 753 phys + 78 magic +190 true damage to you. Your shield blocks 216, so he takes you down to 175, and his passive does an extra 45 damage, leaving you at 130 HP.
If you're going 2x Doran > Armguard (unstacked armguard): You do 728 damage to him (leaves him at 346 HP) He does 621 phys + 78 magic + 190 true damage to you. Your shield blocks 220, so he takes you down to 311 HP. But you don't go below half health till the Death Mark pops, meaning he never gets his passive damage.
If you're going 2x Doran > Armguard (stacked armguard): You do 757 damage to him (leaves him at 317 HP) He does 571 phys + 78 magic + 190 true damage to you. Your shield blocks 231, so he takes you down to 372 HP.
Do you see the difference?
If you're going 2x Doran > Morello, he only has to hit you with one unshielded shuriken to get you in range to kill you with an all in. You have to hit him with 2 E's to be able to kill him with an all in.
If you're going 2x Doran > Armguard, he has to hit you with 3 when it's unstacked, and 4 when it's stacked. You still only have to hit him with 2 E's.
Basically, even before you have any stacks on the Armguard, if he all ins you it likely means you're going to kill him rather than him killing you.
So if he can't all in you, how is he going to win the lane? You can literally just walk up and auto him as much as you want and he can't do shit about it other than go back to his tower and bitch for a gank.
Well I cant auto him to death because I get rekt by creep aggro and he can just hardpush the wave every single time then go roam, but yeah I think I'll try this build.
There's no build that's going to 100% prevent an enemy AD Assassin from farming your bot lane. Sometimes that shit happens.
But you're much better at preventing it if you can play the lane up in his face fighting him than you are if you have to play scared trying to waveclear with spells at range.
Buffs, gradual itemization shifts, a favorable meta, Viktor nerfs (not sure they're specifically applicable to Lux matchups, but imo, a Viktor nerf is a buff to every other mid atm)
It's not *that* big of a surprise, looking at all that.
On September 14 2015 05:00 Caiada wrote: Buffs, gradual itemization shifts, a favorable meta, Viktor nerfs (not sure they're specifically applicable to Lux matchups, but imo, a Viktor nerf is a buff to every other mid atm)
It's not *that* big of a surprise, looking at all that.
Itemisation shifts haven't really changed in 3-4 patches, and lux was one of the champs who didn't really have problems against viktor :o
I'm not surprised she's good, just surprised the q buff was enough to literally jump her from 50% to 55% winrate over all regions and divisions :o
Really, Azir and Viktor being so far down now opens up the viability door for so many teamfight mids. Lux is just a highlight because she was also buffed at the same time and four immobile guys jumped all over the meta.
Just a question about Lux in general who would you consider a general counter to most of her counters, like a champion who if you main lux and you see the enemy pick a lux counter first pick this champ.
That is a difficult question. Mostly because I don't play very many champions. Somebody else can maybe help out here more.
In general Lux is a super safe pick and doesn't need to worry about being countered. While some champions are definitely stronger against her than others, usually they're stronger because:
They are hard to pressure in lane.
They have some mechanic that makes them strong vs Lux in teamfights later on, and its usually something defensive rather than offensive.
For example, Kayle, Morgana and Lulu are strong mid lane picks against Lux.
But to call them counters is a bit of a stretch. A counter to me is somebody who demolishes you when laning, invalidating your champion choice by starving it of gold. For example, Quinn counters Tryndamere (please don't debate this example in the Lux thread its just an example)
Nobody counters Lux in that sense.
So to answer the question, if you are facing an enemy team where you feel like Lux's strengths are not what your team needs, pick a different champion based on its synergy with the rest of your team.
But don't worry about lane counters as a Lux player.
If you're having trouble in a specific matchup and feel like it is countering your Lux personally, tell me what matchups you are having trouble with, I think that is probably a question where I can be more useful to you
If you feel uncomfortable in matchups like Fizz, Talon and Zed, you might want to pick up Diana. She does pretty well versus those picks if you have a bit of experience.
Honestly Lux should be beating the shit out of Talon and Zed.
Fizz is more difficult but definitely winnable. I would even say its Lux favored if both players know what they're doing.
According to Champion.gg (yay numbers!) Lux has an above average winrate against Fizz and Zed, and slightly below average vs Talon (but still above 50%), which confuses me because I'd consider Talon the easiest of the three.
If we only looked at the champion.gg stats it'd say one of the hardest lanes for Lux is Morgana, which I actually agree with. Morg can be rough.
What does well against Morgana mid?
One thing that I've theorized since the juggernaut changes, but haven't been able to test, is that new Fiora mid should be very hard for Lux. Would be interested in knowing if anybody has played that matchup.
How is Morgana a hard matchup exactly? She has no kill potential and waveclears slower than you. I've played the matchup only one time, but it was pretty easy.
Hey Ketara, I want to main Talon, and I was just wondering if you could help me on what tilts the matchup in favor of Lux? And how do I play against a Lux as Talon?
She waveclears faster than you till you have two big items.
Neither side of the matchup has much kill potential, but hers is better than yours. You cannot kill her in lane ever because she can save black shield to stop Q and walk out of your ult. Rank 1 Q won't completely remove a rank 1 black shield so even with a jungle gank doing more than burning a flash is almost impossible.
On the other hand, she can kill you 1v1 (usually requires poor positioning on your part though), and her gank assist against you is fantastic.
From level 3 you're basically playing the whole lane reacting to her and letting her take the initiative to do what she wants to do. You have a slight edge levels 1-3 in trading power, but that's only enough to get you a couple CS lead usually, which you will lose by mid game as she takes control of the lane.
Later on, fast black shields to stop your snares can allow a good Morgana to prevent you from sniping carries at any point in the game ever.
The way you win the game against Morgana is to not try to kill her in lane, but focus on not mispositioning yourself and matching her waveclear and roaming. Tell your jungler you dont want ganks, use Es and even Qs just to cs, and dont let her snare you. Later on she prevents your combo from reaching carries, but you still have a lot more teamfight damage than her plus shields to stop her aoe damage, so you can outclass her later in the game if she didnt get ahead.
I take teleport against her. I find that if she killed you its usually because you were too far forward and let her get both a snare and an ult stun on you safely, so a defensive summoner isn't too useful there, just don't fight.
Teleport is useful though because it gives you opportunities to make plays elsewhere on the map since you have no in lane playmaking potential.
I'd probably also use the shiny new Ludens Echo first build, although we came up with that after the last time I've played this matchup.
It's certainly a matchup you can win though (Lux doesn't have matchups she cant win)
On October 13 2015 20:02 Skitter wrote: Hey Ketara, I want to main Talon, and I was just wondering if you could help me on what tilts the matchup in favor of Lux? And how do I play against a Lux as Talon?
Talon is really similar to most AD Assassins as Lux.
If you can dodge a Q, you can all in and kill her.
If you jump in while she still has Q, she snares you inside her minion wave and shields, forcing you to take a bunch of minion damage and her combo. Her numbers are so high that you usually lose that fight.
An inexperienced Lux will try to throw Qs out at you while laning. If you dodge a Q, trade with her while her Q is down and you can kill her and snowball.
An experienced Lux will never use Q unless either A - your mobility skill is on cooldown, or B - your health is so low that she can miss Q and win the fight anyway. Against that style of play, there's really not a lot you can do, because you can't out trade her with just poke damage. You can't dodge Qs that she isn't casting.
The best advice I can give is to be very aware of her Q cooldown, and be cognicent of if/when she uses it at the wrong time so you can punish it.
The other good advice is to pair with a high damage diving jungler and camp her. Lux is very safe vs 1 assassin, but tends to have trouble vs 2. It's too many snare targets and more burst than her shield can handle. This is especially true if you are 1 ad and 1 ap champion, because Lux likes to buy early resistances but cant buy both armor and mr.
For example, Fizz isn't a hard lane for Lux, and a Reksai gank with poor followup isnt enough burst to bring her down, but Fizz + Reksai has huge kill potential together and will force me as the Lux to play like a little bitch whenever I don't know where Reksai is.
I don't really see how morg waveclears faster than you till you have 2 big items, you both need 2 W's or E's. The time I played the matchup I just poked her out with my E's while she could do absolutely nothing about it. Sure you cant 100-0 her but you have way better poke than her.
On October 13 2015 21:29 Ketara wrote: Morg can kill casters in 1 W on zero items. If she was needing 2 in your game she was maxing Q.
400+1.1 AP vs 240+0.6 AP.
You know there are also these other minions called melee minions in the game :^) If she W's the wave, she only has Q left as offensive ability and since you will always have melee minions between her and you, you can freely autoattack the wave to clear it in the same speed as her.
She kills the whole wave with 1 W and 1 auto on each melee. Then she can walk up and beat on you with a minion advantage while you're waiting to cast 2 Es on the wave. You can't Q her but she can Q you, and if she lands a Q while her jungler is around you're dead.
I promise I have played this matchup more than once wheelking! It can easily devolve into a farmfest, but the reality is she has playmaking potential in the lane and you don't.
hi - after not playing this game for awhile, tuning in to worlds, and reading about lux changes, was wondering if you could answer a few questions because i wanna pick up lux again
1) kassadin vs lux looks hilariously lopsided in favor of lux now according to champion.gg yet i remember it as a gigantic pain in the ass matchup. why is her win percentage so high against this champ?
2) does she get murdered in botlane as a support? i really wanna use the new Q
On October 15 2015 03:27 scrubtastic wrote: hi - after not playing this game for awhile, tuning in to worlds, and reading about lux changes, was wondering if you could answer a few questions because i wanna pick up lux again
1) kassadin vs lux looks hilariously lopsided in favor of lux now according to champion.gg yet i remember it as a gigantic pain in the ass matchup. why is her win percentage so high against this champ?
2) does she get murdered in botlane as a support? i really wanna use the new Q
Kassadin is melee so he lubes up for the first few levels, and Lux wins trades easily until level 6 where she needs to just play around the edge of blink. He blinks, you shield and punch him in the nose. Lux has to play more carefully than in other MU's, but it's basically a melee vs. range MU where the melee has minimal kill and outplay potential unlike Yasuo or something.
She's a cheese pick support, you either snowball and become an AP carry or you are a useless snarebot with a wimpy shield and a tickle laser.
The reason why Kassadin vs Lux used to be hard and now is not is because Kassadins range got nerfed.
It used to be R>Q on Kass had 1350 range. Lux E is 1100 + 300 on the AoE, so basically every time you tried to E minions he could poke you with Q. This poke outdamaged yours. He could also dodge your snare with the same combo, and it silenced you making follow-up damage hard to shield.
Basically while you won pre 6, if you didn't get a kill and an item lead you lost the lane after that or were forced to play defence vs a champ that scaled better than you.
Now his R>Q is down to 1150 range, which makes it difficult for him to get that free poke. And it doesn't silence, making shielding easier.
He's a tiny bit more resilient pre 6 with the shield now, but you can sometimes delay detonating E till it ends and Luxs pre 6 damage is like 50% physical vs melees anyway, so you still have enough of an advantage pre 6 to try to get a kill or a big CS lead.
He's stronger on 6 items than he used to be, but weaker overall because now you can still fight him mid game.
Lux support is more gold reliant than other mage support picks (Zyra Brand Velkoz)
Zyra has true damage on passive, and plant damage scales with level.
Velkoz has true damage and really high base damage.
Brand has %hp damage.
Lux has pretty high base numbers, but not as high as Velkoz and no true damage or anything like that. Of these mage supports her damage is the lowest. While she has more utility than Velkoz and Brand, she doesn't have as much as Zyra.
Her main advantage over this competition is her shield, but unlike other utility mages with shields like Karma, Lulu and Orianna who give secondary stats to people they shield, Luxs shield value is completely tied to her AP.
So she needs gold, which she can get as support, but its more difficult than as mid.
What her shield is really good against is aoe burst like from Karthus, Kennen, Fiddlesticks, MF or something like that. So in a world where mage supports were popular and big aoe comps were popular she might be a strong pick, but not in the current meta.
Ultimately the buffs were good for her as support, but she still feels weaker than the competition for AP mage support, and mage support is a type of support that isn't often picked anyway.
That said, I want to test Q max on Lux support since the buff and see how I like it. Somebody should do this for me.
What do I do vs a team with a good/fed Janna. Played vs one yesterday and I couldn't 100-0 anybody due to shields, heals, locket, abyssal sceptre on their mid and mikaels. I tried just shielding everybody and throwing out E's on CD but I felt like I didn't do enough damage.
That's sort of what you do? Focus on good shields, E on cooldown, don't ult early in a fight ult when you can hit 3-4 people and proc passives as much as possible.
If you're that late in the game that they've all got MR and Janna shields are strong you're never going to instakill anybody, so don't try anymore. Focus on good shielding so you're doing the same thing to their team that they're doing to you.
You can also focus on peeling for the ADC in that situation rather than dealing damage. Your late game peel is good and your ADC has much better sustained damage than you.
On October 18 2015 19:21 Ketara wrote: That's sort of what you do? Focus on good shields, E on cooldown, don't ult early in a fight ult when you can hit 3-4 people and proc passives as much as possible.
If you're that late in the game that they've all got MR and Janna shields are strong you're never going to instakill anybody, so don't try anymore. Focus on good shielding so you're doing the same thing to their team that they're doing to you.
You can also focus on peeling for the ADC in that situation rather than dealing damage. Your late game peel is good and your ADC has much better sustained damage than you.
Well our ADC was super underfed, so he didn't deal that much damage yet, which incidentally also made their Janna pretty fed. I was also pretty fed, but I just didn't deal any damage because they all stacked MR. Basically we ended up with no damage and our frontline always just melted a lot faster than theirs.
That sounds like a team issue more than a Lux issue.
Lux late game/when enemies have MR is more team support than a carry. This is good in some games and bad in others.
Maybe you could have tried to avoid teamfights while your ADC got gold, use your stupid OP late game waveclear, ward and try to get picks?
Dunno.
In many games after a certain point I will stop CSing if my ADC is around and cede gold to him. After 3 items or so I think the ADC should be a much higher gold priority than the Lux.
Alright, I'm just gonna state all the things I do different:
Runes: I took my page from probuilds, where basically every competent midlaner is running a page somewhere along the lines of magicpen/scaling HP/scaling AP/AP, which has always worked pretty well for me. Hybrid Pen seems better on Lux, but I don't have enough runepages so I only use this one for all my mids and most of them don't auto as much as Lux. I also run this in perceived more difficult matchups. Only vs LB do I sometimes go for my MR page.
Masteries: I run 21/9/0 in defensive matchups and 21/0/9 in lanes where I feel like I can snowball or farmfests. In the offensive tree I skip the whole left side, instead I get bonus AP and an extra point in CDR. I feel like the 1% increases dont matter enough to justify skipping the bonus AP. In the 21/0/9 page I take Runic Blessing instead of biscuits, since this makes it easier to go double dorans Ludens or other offensive builds if you wanna snowball.
Summoners: I like Heal a lot more than Barrier, especially with Ignite going out of meta. The speedup from Heal has saved my life many times where Barrier wouldn't and it's way better for 2v2 scenarios earlygame. Usually I also don't just pick my Summoners just for lane, e.g. I'll sometimes still take heal vs Yasuo because it will be much more useful lategame.
Skill order: Taking W at level 3 is a must!!! Good thing that the guide emphasises that, but I felt like saying it too.
Build order: If behind vs AP I go for the Grail route. If ahead with chance to snowball I go double dorans ludens or something similar, basically dorans -> AP. Usually with Morellonomicon after the damage item. Playing vs AD I almost always go double dorans into armguard and then I evaluate from there whether I want more AP, Morello, finish my zhonyas, etc. Seraphs build feels too weak, even if it's a farmfest it still delays your powerspikes too much from my experience.
Matchups all seem fine, except you can bully Talon way harder than you make it seem here, same for Fizz.
Rammus is not a jungler you want to have on the enemy team though, he can dodge your binding really easily.
Also in advance of a spell weaving discussion: bullying earlygame is never a problem for me, so I personally value the extra burst lategame way higher. Idk about the extra point in CDR though.
The rest seems spot on, I'm interested to hear what you think about my opinions.
Thought it was 1%, lol. Changed it over now. This is a game where I went double dorans ludens: matchhistory.euw.leagueoflegends.com Was versus a Kassadin, bullied him early and got a couple assists so I decided I was gonna go with a more aggressive build, Ludens>Morellos>Deathcap (could have been Void as well) Should be pretty straightforward
I'm wary about the mana issues. Riot has said they think the mana item changes will hit supports especially hard and will be compensating them somehow, and in Riot terminology Lux is a support, so its possible that she might get some compensation.
But its definitely something I want to try. Mejais is a lot easier to work into builds on the pbe for a couple different reasons.
I'd love to help out (as I started playing a lot of Lux after reading this thread) but patch hasn't hit live where I'm at. I'll get back to you when it does.
Hey guys, please check out my Lux testing thread in the strategy forum.
In the meantime, I am going to work on updating my Lux spreadsheet for the new changes. After I've finished that, we can start mathcrafting what the changes have done go her.
I want to start by listing what's changed in terms of masteries.
We used to get something like: 2.5% CDR 22 AP (6 +16 at level 18) +4.545% damage Execute damage (+5% below 50%) +5% AP Feast regen Dangerous Game Regen +5% AP damage on autoattacks 6% Arpen and Mpen +75 Mana Strength of Spirit Regen 1.5% movement speed Biscuits n' Alchemist Regen
Now we get: 10 AD (at level 18) 15 AP (at level 18) +4.55% damage Dangerous Game Regen 8.1 Arpen and Mpen (3 +5.1 at level 18) +50(-3) Base Mana 3% movement speed out of combat Biscuits n' Alchemist Regen Meditation Regen +2% spell damage Thunderlords Decree
So in total we are losing: 7 AP +5% AP About 25 damage on autos at level 18 (spellblade vs. 10 bonus AD) Execute damage 25 Mana Feast Regen Strength of Spirit Regen
And we are gaining: +2.2% damage S6 pen from masteries is better (by some amount needs math) Meditation Regen Thunderlords Decree
I would say that a large amount of the time Lux is bursting people at higher than 50% HP, so the increased spell damage is probably equivalent or better than the execute damage.
Damage from autos will be better early game because of how much better Precision is and how arcane blade isn't really relevant till later in the game. Damage from autos late game will probably be slightly worse.
Meditation is obviously going to be way better than 25 bonus mana and some Feast regen.
Thunderlords Decree and more efficient pen stats will be a bigger damage increase early game than some extra early game AP.
Late game, bonus AP was giving us about 40 total AP. Thunderlords Decree is obviously going to outdamage that for burst. For sustained damage I'm not super sure, I can check on the spreadsheet but sustained damage will be lower regardless because of the lack of Arcane Blade.
The loss of Feast and Strength of Spirit HP regen is not being replaced anywhere, so that might be felt in tougher matchups. This is compounded by Double Edged Sword making you take a bit more damage. You can switch Double Edged Sword for Feast in the new masteries which makes up for this, but this drops our damage by 2%.
Shields will be worse since we're trading AP for % damage sources.
So, in conclusion, with the new masteries we've got:
More mana regen.
More early game damage.
More late game burst damage.
Less HP regen & very slightly worse shields.
Less late game sustained damage.
For runes and items most of the AP items were only changed in price value, so that stuff will obviously stay pretty consistent. However, there will be some slight changes:
Pen becomes slightly more valuable (we have more of it, more % damage sources to increase our base damage)
AP becomes slightly less valuable (no more +5% AP)
Flat mana becomes slightly more valuable (Meditation)
Mana regen becomes slightly less valuable (Meditation)
The differences in all this will be small enough that I don't think it will make huge differences. Void Staff before Deathcap was already typically best and Liandry was already super strong, so I think item builds will be pretty similar.
However, one item was significantly changed, and that was Lich Bane. It may be more competitive as a 5th item vs. Ludens and Liandry now, need to do checks on that.
Mejais is also much better now so I want to look into that.
So, conclusions. What are some key things I want to know here through theorycrafting and testing:
#1 - How much better is our mana regen? Is it better enough to alter rune/item builds? Is it better enough that we don't need to go 5 points Meditation, and can drop 1 or 2 for a couple points in Merciless? Answer: With Meditation and Dark Seal instead of Dring, math seems to say we're only about equal or slightly better than we were before, so Merciless is probably a bad idea.
#2a - In difficult early game matchups is it worthwhile to switch Double Edged Sword for Feast? If we do this how does this effect our damage? Answer: See 2b
#2b - Same question but switching Natural Talent for Vampirism. Which of these changes is more efficient? Answer: Dropping DES for Feast is probably better than dropping Natural Talent for Vampirism, if you need early game survivability in a tough matchup.
#3 - Exactly how much did our burst and sustained damage values change? Answer: Burst damage appears to be up about 9%, sustained damage is only lower in autoattack range and about 6% lower.
#4 - How does Thunderlords Decree compare to Deathfire Touch when we look at it with maths? Answer: Maths says Thunderlords Decree is crazy better.
#5 - Is Mejais core now? Answer: Maths says that Dark Seal is really cost efficient after initial lane, but you shouldn't upgrade it to Mejais. Mejais dropping from 180 max AP to 145 max AP makes both Luden and Liandry better for damage.
#6 - How does Lich Bane compare to Luden/Liandry in builds? Answer: Even with bonus CDR, Lich Bane is still not any good.
#7 - How do changed damage figures effect breakpoints for clearing minions?
This is the stuff I expect to be working on in the coming week or two.
For Harass Damage All very similar. New builds 20% more mana efficient.
For Burst Damage 12/18/0 about 9% better than S5 numbers 18/12/0 about 2.5% better than S5 numbers
For Sustained Damage (outside AA range) All very similar.
For Sustained Damage (inside AA range) 12/18/0 about 8% worse than S5 numbers 18/12/0 about 6.5% worse than S5 numbers
So, basically.
The new masteries give us a more mana efficient siege and higher burst damage, without really affecting our sustained damage until we start autoattacking a lot.
Once we start autoattacking a lot we lose some sustained damage, probably mostly from losing Arcane Blade.
18/12/0 has very slightly higher sustained damage than 12/18/0. Deathfire Touch does add some damage, but the better pen from Precision evens this out a lot. Deathfire Touch doesn't appear to be very good on Lux, or at least not as good as Thunderlords Decree.
Against higher MR Deathfire Touch will slowly start to perform better, but I think it's fairly inconsequential. The burst damage difference between the two at 200 MR goes from 6.5% to 5%.
So I'm pretty certain that on the whole 12/18/0 is best, we are doing more damage now, and are more mana efficient in that damage.
Time Before OOM (2 E lane) S5 Lux: 339 seconds S6 Lux: 349 seconds
Time Before OOM (3 E lane) S5 Lux: 72 seconds S6 Lux: 80 seconds
Time Before OOM (Teamfight) S5 Lux: 24 seconds S6 Lux: 29 seconds
E Max Efficiency S5 Lux: 1.72 E per minion wave S6 Lux: 1.70 E per minion wave
So it appears that by level 9 you have roughly equivalent or better regen than you did in season 5 even if you get Dark Seal over Dring. So any mana problems with Dark Seal are probably only relevant before your first back.
What about our other builds at level 9, how do they stack up?
Armguard Build (S5) vs. Armguard Build (S6) 2x Dring vs. Dark Seal + Dring. + Show Spoiler +
Time Before OOM (2 E lane) S5 Lux: 129 seconds S6 Lux: 215 seconds
Time Before OOM (3 E lane) S5 Lux: 53 seconds S6 Lux: 70 seconds
Time Before OOM (Teamfight) S5 Lux: 23 seconds S6 Lux: 27 seconds
E Max Efficiency S5 Lux: 1.28 E per minion wave S6 Lux: 1.51 E per minion wave
Big difference here. Changing Drings from 3 MP5 to 50% MP5 is a nerf at level 1, but by level 9 it's a buff.
Time Before OOM (2 E lane) S5 Lux: 102 seconds S6 Lux: 110 seconds
Time Before OOM (3 E lane) S5 Lux: 48 seconds S6 Lux: 53 seconds
Time Before OOM (Teamfight) S5 Lux: 23 seconds S6 Lux: 26 seconds
E Max Efficiency S5 Lux: 1.09 E per minion wave S6 Lux: 1.04 E per minion wave
Again, season 6 is coming out on top.
So it seems like for all builds (especially for the Armguard build), season 6 builds are better mana wise after the initial lane, even with a Dark Seal opener.
Whether or not you can sustain the Ludens Echo build without mana pots is another question, you might be forced to take a Dring as well in that build. This needs to be tested.
Feast Regen vs. Magic - 1.03 vs. Phys - 1.30 vs. True - 0.66
Vampirism Regen (lifesteal) vs. Magic - 1.07 vs. Phys - 1.35 vs. True - 0.69
Vampirism Regen (spell vamp) vs. Magic - 2.73 vs. Phys - 3.45 vs. True - 1.75
For this comparison I counted the Vampirism values at about half the ideal amount to sort of get a more realistic average. Even so they are blowing Feast out of the water (at level 18), and more than making up for the regen discrepency.
So how much does losing Double Edged Sword and Natural Talent reduce our damage?
Dropping DES reduces our damage by about 2%, that's obvious.
vs. Magic - 0.41 + 0.14 = 0.55 vs. Phys - 0.35 + 0.12 = 0.47 vs. True - 0.26 + 0.09 = 0.35
So, the results are weird.
Changing DES to Feast gives us more regen in the early game while not making us take 2% extra damage.
Changing Natural Talent to Vampirism gives us more regen late game.
The difference in damage is small. For burst it's about the same, Natural Talent gives a slightly higher damage increase to AA's than DES does.
Since you're typically only concerned about health regen early in the game as Lux (late game survivability is more positioning than tankiness) I'd say dropping DES for Feast is probably the better option than dropping Natural Talent for Vampirism.
Of course in a really difficult matchup to survive you can do both, but Lux doesn't really have those does she.
Harass DPS (E Only) Luden: 105 Liandry: 93 Lich: 89
ER DPS Luden: 132 Liandry: 123 Lich: 119
Single Target DPS Luden: 340 Liandry: 347 Lich: 407
Aaaaaaaaand I'm actually gonna stop this comparison right here.
Because #1 - the Lich Bane numbers are still too low to be of value. Burst sucks, harass damage sucks, sustained even when it's giving 10% bonus CDR is barely about the same as Liandry.
It still gives great single target DPS in autoattack range, but that's not enough to justify big drops in everything else.
And because #2 - These numbers are actually lower than our numbers with Ludens + Liandry.
So we've learned something else here too.
Mejais is bad now. Liandry is better.
Which is funny because Dark Seal is actually really super good it looks like.
Okay, some more stuff I want to look at in my spreadsheeto.
1 - How does Morellonomicon + Athenes with AP/level runes look now? Answer: Still only worth if you're getting high value out of the Grievous Wounds passive, which has been nerfed so it's likely there's fewer reasons to do this now.
2 - How does it look to take 1 CDR/level quint for 40% CDR over an AP quint? Is that worth the early game damage loss (would need to test) Answer: Maths says 1 CDR/level quint would be way better later in the game. We need to test to see how much losing 5 AP early game would affect things.
3 - How have the changes affected defensive itemization?
4 - How good is Corrupting Potion compared to Dring? Answer: Woops, Corrupting Potions damage bonus is single target stuff only. No good on Luxo.
5 - Is Rod of Ages any good after buffs (coupled with Meditation)? Answer: Maths and logic says no.
6 - Is Seraphs any good when coupled with Meditation? Answer: Maths and logic says no.
7 - For the Armguard build, is flat mana runes any good when coupled with Meditation? Answer: Maths says mana runes are slightly better than mana regen runes now. But it's similar and difficult to math those kinds of things, so this needs to be tested.
Single Target DPS Normal: 385 Luden: 366 Liandry: 382
Teamfight Time Before OOM Normal: 39 seconds Luden: 40 seconds Liandry: 40 seconds
So basically, CDR runes + Luden + Liandry is better at everything than AP/lvl runes + Morello + Someotheritem.
As such, much like before you should only do AP/lvl runes and Athene+Morello if you're pre-planning on dealing with an enemy Tryndamere or Vladimir or something like that. Since the values are really not all that much lower, if you're getting big gains from Grievous Wounds it's an okay option.
So, much like most other things, we find that this hasn't really changed in season 6.
For Rod of Ages and Seraphs, I'm just going to apply some logic.
Capped RoA gives 120 AP now. That's pretty good, but it's not as good as 145 from Mejais, which we already proved isn't as good as Luden or Liandry.
It's worth looking at as a replacement for your mana item slot.
However, for both of these, you still need to get your CDR from somewhere, as Lux requires a minimum of 20% CDR in general. There's no convenient item to get that 20% CDR from. So it can't really take the place of your mana item slot.
As such, RoA and Seraphs are still not valuable.
In other news, Geript bought me Star Guardian Lux (and Kindred!). Thanks man
What questions do we want to ask for how this has changed support Lux? (That haven't been answered already)
1 - What runes/masteries do we use for Support Lux? Are they different than Mid Lux or is it the same build now? Answer: Yeah I think they're different. Need to test this.
2 - Have Frostfang / Frost Queens Claim item timings changed? Answer: Maths and logic says yes, but not a lot.
3 - Is Eye of the Watchers any good? Answer: Not really?
Natural Talent and Vampirism are both bad on support. Both are better late game, and while Vampirism is better early, it loses a lot of value when you aren't CSing.
Oppressor is really good, and even better in a duo lane.
6 points Resolve is very strong early game.
Neither Runic Armor nor Veterans Scars is very big a deal on Lux. They're good but buying more defenses isn't really all that important.
Perserverence is pretty ridic for early game probably.
Sorcery is really good. Lux likes damage, especially early game.
DES is a good damage increase but also makes you easier to kill. Feast is useless on a support. Funnily, Feast might actually be really good if you were in an arranged game and did it so each wave the ADC took 5 minions and the Support took 1.
So I think 6/18/6 is the build. In a really difficult lane (vs. Blitzcrank Graves or whatever) 0/18/12 might be better, but that costs you 4% damage for stuff that's only good early game.
You could also potentially get Windspeakers Blessing. Might be preferential. Lux likes damage and Thunderlords gives her damage that isn't completely tied to her AP.
For support items, I think the changes have actually reduced the number of itemization options for support.
To start with, FQC got buffed fairly significantly. Better active (much better active) and way more mana regen.
Then we're not getting 10% CDR from masteries anymore. In fact, Precision is so overpowered that getting Intelligence at all seems dumb unless you're like a Soraka or somebody who just isn't going to attack things.
This loss of CDR means that when you're getting a mana regen / CDR item, going for Ardent Censer or Mikhaels, both of which had questionable usability on Lux, seem pretty crap now. Ardent Censer just doesn't give enough CDR to be useful over Morello and its stats suck. Mikhaels doesn't give AP, and while the active is good, it still doesn't give enough CDR and it gives probably too much mana regen now that FQC gives so much regen.
So FQC + Morello now seems pretty required.
After that you've got so much mana regen that getting more seems silly. FQC + Morello is more regen than Athenes. Here's a few numbers. All of these assume 40% CDR.
You don't really need to spam all your spells for 40-50 second fights.
It is true that we're not getting Dangerous Game or the Athenes passive, but...
Actually hold on I can totally see how much time that shit gives us in the spreadsheet.
Yeah you get an average of 0.8 seconds more uptime per Dangerous Game Assist in a mid Lux build, and 1.5 if you're almost OOM. So you can assume it gives you like 3-5 seconds more uptime per teamfight.
The Athenes passive gives you an extra 10 seconds per assist which is rofl ridiculous it's such a dumb passive I hate it.
Anyway.
Point is, FQC+Morello really looks like it's plenty regen.
Which means that you can't get value out of another CDR item that has mana regen on it, which basically kills Ardent Censer and Mikhaels. It also makes Zeke's more questionable, and it was already pretty goddamn questionable on Lux. More crit on ADC builds reduces the effectiveness of Zekes too.
The CDR items that don't give mana or mana regen were Twin Shadows and Will of the Ancients, and WotA is bad on Lux and Twin Shadows was actually good on support Lux but got removed from the game.
In its place is Lich Bane, which I think has some value on support Lux because she can make better use of Lich Bane passive since she's not as concerned as mid with deleting the enemy backline, and the Lich Bane passive lets her deal with the enemy tanks better, and the CDR gives her more utility. Movespeed is more important on support than it is on mid too.
Then we've got Eye of the Watcher. Which has basically really terrible stats compared to FQC.
FQC + Sightstone gives you, for 3k gold. 150 HP 50 AP 10% CDR 150% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive Sightstone Active Twin Shadows Active
Eye of the Watcher and a Fiendish Codex gives you, for 3k gold. 200 HP 50 AP 10% CDR 150% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive Sightstone Active
So you're basically getting the same stats and just not getting the Twin Shadows active. That's pretty pointless.
But!
It's not very pointless if you want to be more slot efficient. You don't need to be as slot efficient as maybe you did before since you're never going to get mana potions or green wards or anything like that. But if your'e really fed, I can see some logic in getting Eye of the Watchers for slot efficiency to let you go a more traditional AP build.
I think the Eye items are more for Junglers who might want to grab a Sightstone than they are for Supports, frankly. Eye of the Equinox on junglers is probably pretty good. I dunno that it's as good as Face of the Mountain though (lol)
If the Eye items gave the CDR they'd be way way better. But, I digress.
So the final question is. Before the FQC changes, it was more stat efficient to go Frostfang, then grab Morello, then finish FQC. Has this changed?
FQC is 2200g with 50 AP 10% CDR 150% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive Twin Shadows Active
Frostfang + Codex + Idol is 2200g with 50 AP 20% CDR 150% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive
Then for a look a little later on.
Morello + Frostfang is 3400g with 95 AP 20% CDR 200% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive Morello Passive
FQC + Codex + Idol is 3550g with 75 AP 20% CDR 250% mana regen 2 GP10 Tribute Passive Twin Shadows Active
So I'm actually not sure here? The stats are better going for Morello + Frostfang. It depends on how high value Spooky Ghosts is for your team comp, I guess. It's not as obvious as it was before.
SO, CONCLUSIONS
This is about what I'm gonna suggest for support items:
* FQC first or Morello first is preferential. ** If you're real fed and just want to do a solo lane build, get Eye of the Watchers + Morello instead and build like a mid lane Lux.
CDR Item (Pick one) - Banner of Command (MR aura for Siege comps) - Locket of the Iron Solari (MR aura for Teamfight comps) - Zeke's Harbinger (Questionable value on Lux) - Lich Bane (For killing/peeling enemy tanks)
I still need to do a post mathing out defensive items, but I have to fuck with my spreadsheet for that because I have to figure out how to make armor pen from LW only apply to bonus armor which will be awful.
And I want to put it on this page and this is the 20th post of the page, so, I'm saving this post for that.
Up against an AP Assassin who can engage on you and force fights, such as Leblanc, Fizz, Kassadin, Akali, Diana, Ekko, Katarina, Lissandra? - Use the Athenes Build.
Up against a Ranged AP poke Mage with skillshots such as Orianna, Ziggs, Xerath, Viktor, Azir? - Use the Athenes build if you prefer a more aggressive early game playstyle with a stronger 1 item timing. - Use the Ludens build if you prefer a more passive early game playstyle with a stronger 2-3 item timing. (By 4 items, these two builds are functionally the same.)
Up against a champion who you cannot pressure in lane and need to prioritize waveclear such as Morgana, Galio, Twisted Fate, Cho'Gath, Master Yi? - Use the Ludens build.
Up against an AD Champion? - Use the Armguard build.
Want to play Lux support? - Use the Support build.
For Merciless, we can be like "Well on average it will increase damage by 2.5%" but that's probably bullshit and favors Merciless pretty heavily.
If Lux put out a steady stream of constant DPS, that would be a reasonable assumption. But Lux's damage is mostly frontloaded burst. If she bursts a target who is already below 50% at the start of a fight, she probably kills them regardless of masteries. So in that case the value of Merciless is actually zero.
If she bursts a target from 100%, it's very likely that the initial Q to lock them down doesn't get them below 50%, so the R doesn't get any bonus from Merciless. If the Q does get them below 50% then the rest of the combo should kill them regardless.
The E probably does get the bonus, but in Lux's combo the E is less than a third of the total damage. Somewhere between 1/4th and 1/3rd.
Yes if the burst kills them because of the small boost Merciless does to E, or doesn't kill them, Merciless starts helping then, but only for Lux's shitty autoattacks and a passive proc or two.
So, theoretically at least, Merciless is really not going to be giving you an averaged 2.5% damage increase in an average fight. We'd have to average it at less than that. How much less than that is situational and very difficult to define.
Meditation is likewise very hard to value with numbers, because mana regen is either the most important thing in the world, or zero value, depending on the situation. Meditation is further difficult because the amount of regen is based on your missing mana. I average this in the spreadsheet, but that is a poor metric because it's easy to manipulate Meditation (and Chalice passive) by spamming spells at high mana, and becoming more conservative when your mana gets low so you have better regen instead of evening things out over an entire siege or laning phase.
Further, mana regen is just more important when you're almost out of mana, obviously.
So if we average our two values, averaging Merciless favors Merciless, and averaging Meditation also favors Merciless.
So given that handicap, what do we know?
We know that in a normal full build, Meditation on average increases the amount of time Lux can spam spells by about 6% (from 37 seconds to 39.2 seconds)
We know that it on average increases the amount of DPS she can put out in a siege without losing mana by 16%, from 61 DPS to 71 DPS.
In both of those metrics, Meditation seems to be better than Merciless, on average.
So if you're expecting extended fights or extended sieges, Meditation is probably better than Merciless late game.
If you're expecting a short fight, Merciless should be better than Meditation regardless of how low the actual value of Merciless is, because if you wouldn't run out of mana regardless then Meditation doesn't do anything.
What about earlier in the game?
At level 9 with a Dark Seal and an Athenes, how much longer does Meditation let you stay in lane?
Without Meditation you can stay in lane: - 182 seconds at 2 E's per wave - 127 seconds at 2.25 E's per wave - 66 seconds at 3 E's per wave - 50 seconds at 3.5 E's per wave
With Meditation you can stay in lane: - 349 seconds at 2 E's per wave - 191 seconds at 2.25 E's per wave - 80 seconds at 3 E's per wave - 58 seconds at 3.5 E's per wave
So basically, after using E once to kill minions, Lux with Meditation in this scenario can use E to harass the enemy champion 1.25 times for every 1 time Lux without Meditation uses it.
So in laning, it appears that Meditation also outperforms Merciless. It's worth noting that Merciless doesn't damage minions, so for laning Meditation should be outdamaging Merciless while also letting you farm better and giving you more safety and utility.
The next question is how good is Meditation in the early part of the game? I'm gonna get pretty anecdotal with this.
So, in Filduns two games he's streamed for us in testing atm, both times laning starts at around 1:30, and he bases (or dies to a gank) at around 4 minutes. So he's regenning mana for about 2 minutes 30 seconds. Both times laning stops at level 4.
He's not casting E on cooldown. There are definitely opportunities for him to hit the other guy with E that he doesn't take in both games.
Between levels 1 and 4, on average Meditation gives about 4 MP5. This is a little bit better than a Faerie Charm.
So on average Meditation would give him an extra 120 mana in these lanes. This is enough to cast another E on the enemy champion in one of those opportunities that he had and didn't take.
So, in order for Merciless to outdamage an extra E, he'd need to cast like, 20+ E's in that time. In both games he only casts E 5 or 6 times.
So we can presume that having Meditation and using E more would have increased his total harass damage by as much as 20%, and that Merciless doesn't do that.
I think we can also presume that most starting lanes go to longer than level 4, where Meditate would become even better.
So, basically, my conclusions are that, for different parts of the game.
For initial laning Meditation should be better than Merciless. - Meditation should be increasing your damage by as much as 20% here. - Merciless should be increasing your damage by some amount less than 2.5%
For mid game laning Meditation should be better than Merciless. - Meditation should be increasing your damage by as much as 25% here. - Merciless should be increasing your damage by some amount less than 2.5%
For short teamfights without a poke war beforehand Merciless should be better than Meditate. - Meditation should not increase your damage here. - Merciless should be increasing your damage by some amount less than 2.5%
For long teamfights or teamfights with sieges beforehand Meditation should be better than Merciless. - Meditation should be increasing your damage by something like 5-15% here, depending on how long the siege is. - Merciless should be increasing your damage by some amount less than 2.5%
But this is something that really needs to be tested, because so much of our theorycrafting math is using approximations, averages and guesswork.
Time before OOM (3 E per wave) Athenes: 80 seconds Morello: 62 seconds FQC: 74 seconds
Hmm, based on that, I actually want to test this. Burst damage is similar, and the gold gen + active might be worth the lost CDR.
FQC has been a no-brainer on literally every single AP on lane for a while now. It's simply too powerful when you can get a better twin shadows for less gold with extra gold value every time you fight.
Would love any feedback on different teamfighting decisions that could have helped win. Just started playing, she feels strong, but I have big issues with not really being able to clean up teamfights. I can get 1-2 solo kills pretty easily, but then have to wait for cooldowns and the fights generally lost by that point.
I'm taking an intensive teacher training course atm. At school 8AM-5PM every day, homework every night, etc. And still teaching in the evenings on top of that.
So I'm reeeeeeeeeeeeally busy.
But I'll get back to the guide next month when the class ends. Might have a chance to go over this replay on the weekend, killerdoge.
Another big problem I'm having is mana issues when fights/sieges drag out. I really like morellos just for it's cheapness and high ap. (I can almost always finish it second back,) but later on if I don't have blue, which is often in soloq, I just can't siege properly. Half the fights I'm oom before they're over.
Not sure if athenes fixes this, but it's build is so much more awkward, but meditation means losing some important masteries. :s
I watched the first 5 minutes of the vod, things I noticed so far: - You don't cover any jungle entrances at level 1. If you covered the entrance just below you it would have prevented the first blood. - Auto one minion at level 1, with new creep changes all minions will become low at roughly the same time so autoing one minion at level 1 makes it so that csing becomes easier, plus you wouldn't have had to use your E, which then could have been used to trade with karma/pick up the ranged minion you ate a Q for. - Stand besides the wave at level 1/2, your E-auto combo trades pretty well vs Karma if she goes for Qs on you, plus it makes dodging easier. - Don't do this anymore when jungler ganks are possible (unless you have that side warded) - The E at 2:22 gave me cancer - Use more autos, this will save you mana - Take W at level 3 - At 2:50 you waste an E and a Q for no good reason, next time tank 3 creep hits and let them hit your own minions out of tower range so you can lasthit them with your autos. (and dodge the Karma Q) - Your jungler went full retard, unlucky. Next time dont waste your mana on helping him. - Ping Kindred back at 3:22 - Dont use E at 3:23, auto the cannon instead (assuming you took Savagery) - Get W at level 3 - No reason to E at 3:45, you push the lane with it and it doesnt actually help you cs. - If you decide to back, do so. Don't just stand around for a minute having no mana and thus not being able to do anything.
Build seems fine, except at 9:23 you could have bought sorc shoes instead of the amp tome, but it doesn't really matter that much. That was a pretty random dark seal. FQC still pretty good as well for setting up easy Qs. You really need to learn how much damage her spells do at early levels, there were a lot of times where you just fire out random Qs while praying it would get the last hit, which in turn makes you go OOM very fast.
You also need to practice reactive Ws. At 12:23 or so there is a Lee that shows up in your lane, you really dont need to be afraid of him at this point, you can easily solokill him if he does anything stupid.
First teamfight, 13:30-14:30: All your Qs are never gonna hit, even if the enemy actively tries to dodge into them. If its not gonna hit you should just save it. Use your shield more! Its really good in teamfights. There is a moment where you try to hit Poppy with a Q and she Es someone instead so it doesn't hit. That was a rather predictable Poppy E so in the future it might be better to just aim at the spot where she's gonna be. Don't lock your camera on yourself so much. Half the fight you don't see whats going on above you, which is really important when playing Lux.
I watched the first 5 minutes of the vod, things I noticed so far: - You don't cover any jungle entrances at level 1. If you covered the entrance just below you it would have prevented the first blood. - Auto one minion at level 1, with new creep changes all minions will become low at roughly the same time so autoing one minion at level 1 makes it so that csing becomes easier, plus you wouldn't have had to use your E, which then could have been used to trade with karma/pick up the ranged minion you ate a Q for. - Stand besides the wave at level 1/2, your E-auto combo trades pretty well vs Karma if she goes for Qs on you, plus it makes dodging easier. - Don't do this anymore when jungler ganks are possible (unless you have that side warded) - The E at 2:22 gave me cancer - Use more autos, this will save you mana - Take W at level 3 - At 2:50 you waste an E and a Q for no good reason, next time tank 3 creep hits and let them hit your own minions out of tower range so you can lasthit them with your autos. (and dodge the Karma Q) - Your jungler went full retard, unlucky. Next time dont waste your mana on helping him. - Ping Kindred back at 3:22 - Dont use E at 3:23, auto the cannon instead (assuming you took Savagery) - Get W at level 3 - No reason to E at 3:45, you push the lane with it and it doesnt actually help you cs. - If you decide to back, do so. Don't just stand around for a minute having no mana and thus not being able to do anything.
Build seems fine, except at 9:23 you could have bought sorc shoes instead of the amp tome, but it doesn't really matter that much. That was a pretty random dark seal. FQC still pretty good as well for setting up easy Qs. You really need to learn how much damage her spells do at early levels, there were a lot of times where you just fire out random Qs while praying it would get the last hit, which in turn makes you go OOM very fast.
You also need to practice reactive Ws. At 12:23 or so there is a Lee that shows up in your lane, you really dont need to be afraid of him at this point, you can easily solokill him if he does anything stupid.
First teamfight, 13:30-14:30: All your Qs are never gonna hit, even if the enemy actively tries to dodge into them. If its not gonna hit you should just save it. Use your shield more! Its really good in teamfights. There is a moment where you try to hit Poppy with a Q and she Es someone instead so it doesn't hit. That was a rather predictable Poppy E so in the future it might be better to just aim at the spot where she's gonna be. Don't lock your camera on yourself so much. Half the fight you don't see whats going on above you, which is really important when playing Lux.
Thanks
Yeah I'm still getting the hang of last hitting/early levels. Regarding a few things.
Is w at level 3 really worth in all matchups? I find in most matchups that if I'm taking a trade level 3 it's because the other guy fucked up, and I'm punishing him, which generally means he isn't able to fight back without getting completely dumpstered, so getting the +45 damage feels very worth. It also gives me a lot more wave control early on as i can outshove almost anyone if I need to. Also makes mana feel easier to manage but that might just be a result of bad last hitting.
Dark seal was because I could see if I also started feeding we'd lost anyway, and karma seemed pretty trash, so I might as well go yolo.
The reason I was shoving so randomly at like 3-4 minutes was because I was just super afraid of karma. she was massively ahead in xp, had a dorans on me, and red buff. So what I wanted to do was base and buy a second dorans and a pink and some pots so laning would be slightly less painful. It's something you need to do often on tf when a matchup starts going bad, just sack 5-6 farm now, so you won't be zoned off the next 30-40, but I guess maybe that's not neccesary on lux. (It did completely fail in this case, but if I'd just stuck the recall safely after the first attempt rather then dithering, would it have been worth?)
I agree I need to be more sparing with my q's in teamfights. Part of that is just still feeling out the character, so my insticts on q are still trash :p
The main thing I'm curious about is just how I was meant to be playing the lategame teamfights though. I was super strong, and basically in a perfect position to kill everyone. But I couldn't work out how to get more then 1-2 people a fight.
Skimmed over it on 2x: - Your laning is pretty bad, you waste so many skills that don't even help you last hit. You're basically <50% mana the entire time. I think you're better off running TP if you're gonna keep playing like that - Your positioning in teamfights is fine, really far back which is good for Lux (though a few times you were too far back, try stick next to the caitlyn and CC whoever shes hitting). I found most of your "skill timings" to be weird, like you would throw out Q/E/ult without thinking about if you need to save it for a later skirmish. Especially when you use ult to farm right before pushing which means you lose your the kill/zone pressure - The fight at 29:00 wasn't Kindreds fault. Your entire team basically split against really good skirmish champions. You have a strong kiting backline with Leona+Shen, you would've won if you moved & sieged together. - You type WAY too much. That Leona was aggressive but you probably tilted her even more. Just follow her as as team and use her as bait next time
I don't think your playstyle is wrong for Lux but you could have played more aggressive. I don't think you procc'd your passive once in a lategame teamfight. Especially when you have Flash up, their team didn't have much threat of blowing you up so you could've been in their face a lot more
On February 10 2016 02:54 Inflicted wrote: - Your positioning in teamfights is fine, really far back which is good for Lux. I found most of your "skill timings" to be weird, like you would throw out Q/E/ult without thinking about if you need to save it for a later skirmish. Especially when you use ult to farm right before pushing which means you lose your the kill/zone pressure - The fight at 29:00 wasn't Kindreds fault. Your entire team basically split against really good skirmish champions. You have a strong kiting backline with Leona+Shen, you would've won if you moved & sieged together.
This is part of what I'm not really sure on. If I have the choice between blowing a q-e on a tank, or holding them incase a squishy jumps in, should i just not shoot them off? It felt like I was capable of pretty seriously chunking most of the frontline, I even bought a void staff for this purpose, and I didn't think anyone else was going to be able to do it. Whereas outside of shen flash taunting ez, we're never gonna get on him or karma (cleanse.)
And there weren't that many occasions where I felt like I was being punished for having blown a combo on poppy or lee. But at the same time I was almost never able to actually kill anyone important. Should I actively be trying to run past/around the frontline to get at the backline?
I was considering just going forward, and just flash q'ing the second shen gets a taunt on a squishy, but with karma having cleanse we'd only get ez, and then I'd 99% get oneshot. And trading myself out 1 for 1 when I'm the main damage source felt not worth.
The fight at 29:00, if kindred and poppy had just both died, I'm pretty sure we all just back out after the 1 for 1 and our team is left in a much stronger 4v4. The few autos everyone wasted on poppy stalled us long enough for us to get collapsed on. It's also much harder to judge what's happning in game then from a vod, especially when a kindred ult catches you completely off guard :p
As for leona I disagree, she's either literally silver, or intentionally suiciding, and being nice solves neither of those. She'd already suicided like 4 times before I even mentioned her, and at that point the only chance is to hope she's silver, and hope you can drive home how important it is that she stops going alone by any means necessary. But that discussion isn't really relevant anyway.
You should be Q/Eing tanks but I feel like you were just throwing out Q/Es for the sake of it rather than actively trying to land them. I'll try to find some examples but that's the general feel I got.
The fight at 29:00 was lost regardless of the Kindred ult. Leona caught under you and Shen just abandoned the team which let Poppy get into your backline. It would've been 2v4 even if Kindred didn't ult but you guys just overstayed. I mean caitlyn just stands there hitting a Kindred ult'd Poppy, can't blame the Kindred for that.
edit
Hm, I don't think your lategame teamfighting was that problematic, your entire team just didn't have a single good fight after 29:00.
Could you point out which fight you're talking about with the wait for cooldown problem? I feel like most of the fights were lost because you got picked off one by one beforehand.
With the way you're playing, your job isn't really to burst anyone. It's to keep the caitlyn alive and let her destroy the enemy frontline which of course relies on your adc being good. It's not a wrong playstyle with the team comp you had but if you want to be bursting people, you need to be willing to go much closer and outplay them Take advantage of the fact that you're a much bigger threat to Poppy/Thresh than they are to you. They basically have one chance to engage and if they screw up, they can't get out between your constant Q/Es so you can afford to walk up to them
I watched the first 5 minutes of the vod, things I noticed so far: - You don't cover any jungle entrances at level 1. If you covered the entrance just below you it would have prevented the first blood. - Auto one minion at level 1, with new creep changes all minions will become low at roughly the same time so autoing one minion at level 1 makes it so that csing becomes easier, plus you wouldn't have had to use your E, which then could have been used to trade with karma/pick up the ranged minion you ate a Q for. - Stand besides the wave at level 1/2, your E-auto combo trades pretty well vs Karma if she goes for Qs on you, plus it makes dodging easier. - Don't do this anymore when jungler ganks are possible (unless you have that side warded) - The E at 2:22 gave me cancer - Use more autos, this will save you mana - Take W at level 3 - At 2:50 you waste an E and a Q for no good reason, next time tank 3 creep hits and let them hit your own minions out of tower range so you can lasthit them with your autos. (and dodge the Karma Q) - Your jungler went full retard, unlucky. Next time dont waste your mana on helping him. - Ping Kindred back at 3:22 - Dont use E at 3:23, auto the cannon instead (assuming you took Savagery) - Get W at level 3 - No reason to E at 3:45, you push the lane with it and it doesnt actually help you cs. - If you decide to back, do so. Don't just stand around for a minute having no mana and thus not being able to do anything.
Build seems fine, except at 9:23 you could have bought sorc shoes instead of the amp tome, but it doesn't really matter that much. That was a pretty random dark seal. FQC still pretty good as well for setting up easy Qs. You really need to learn how much damage her spells do at early levels, there were a lot of times where you just fire out random Qs while praying it would get the last hit, which in turn makes you go OOM very fast.
You also need to practice reactive Ws. At 12:23 or so there is a Lee that shows up in your lane, you really dont need to be afraid of him at this point, you can easily solokill him if he does anything stupid.
First teamfight, 13:30-14:30: All your Qs are never gonna hit, even if the enemy actively tries to dodge into them. If its not gonna hit you should just save it. Use your shield more! Its really good in teamfights. There is a moment where you try to hit Poppy with a Q and she Es someone instead so it doesn't hit. That was a rather predictable Poppy E so in the future it might be better to just aim at the spot where she's gonna be. Don't lock your camera on yourself so much. Half the fight you don't see whats going on above you, which is really important when playing Lux.
Thanks
Yeah I'm still getting the hang of last hitting/early levels. Regarding a few things.
Is w at level 3 really worth in all matchups? I find in most matchups that if I'm taking a trade level 3 it's because the other guy fucked up, and I'm punishing him, which generally means he isn't able to fight back without getting completely dumpstered, so getting the +45 damage feels very worth. It also gives me a lot more wave control early on as i can outshove almost anyone if I need to. Also makes mana feel easier to manage but that might just be a result of bad last hitting.
Dark seal was because I could see if I also started feeding we'd lost anyway, and karma seemed pretty trash, so I might as well go yolo.
The reason I was shoving so randomly at like 3-4 minutes was because I was just super afraid of karma. she was massively ahead in xp, had a dorans on me, and red buff. So what I wanted to do was base and buy a second dorans and a pink and some pots so laning would be slightly less painful. It's something you need to do often on tf when a matchup starts going bad, just sack 5-6 farm now, so you won't be zoned off the next 30-40, but I guess maybe that's not neccesary on lux. (It did completely fail in this case, but if I'd just stuck the recall safely after the first attempt rather then dithering, would it have been worth?)
I agree I need to be more sparing with my q's in teamfights. Part of that is just still feeling out the character, so my insticts on q are still trash :p
The main thing I'm curious about is just how I was meant to be playing the lategame teamfights though. I was super strong, and basically in a perfect position to kill everyone. But I couldn't work out how to get more then 1-2 people a fight.
I didn't get to the last teamfights yet, I'll post an update soon tm.
As for your post, W level 3 is pretty essential if you're trading because it negates minion damage and any trading that the enemy does back on you. So if you're trading cuz he fucked up you don't take minion damage/random karma Q (really good) and if you're trading cuz he's trying to trade you win cuz W OP.
About the whole shoving thing, I don't see how shoving helps you if you're scared. Lux farms pretty well under tower if you know her damages plus you can last hit pretty much fine if the wave is at 1/3 lane, even if the enemy is scary. They can't allin you and since Lux is the master of trading at range it's 100% fine (as long as you have mana). Your problem was that you don't have mana because you waste your spells doing basically nothing and as a result you had to back early. Shoving to try to back doesn't work when you have 100 mana.
I think if you stuck to your back at 500 gold it would have helped a lot. Consider getting amptome + pot though, you can't defend your pink anyway. Sitting under tower with 100 mana does absolutely nothing for you, might as well back.
Early teamfight positioning was fine except for UNLOCK YOUR CAM. Please. You don't even know what you're aiming your spells at half the time.
The only time when you should use your ult outside of fighting is either when it's a complete farmfest and you want to pick up blue/their blue fast or when you're gonna back and wanna shove the wave out quickly. You often just randomly ulted the wave while there was a real possibility of a fight happening in the next 10-20 seconds.
Been having a bit more success in teamfights going more yolo and actually trying to predict who the enemy is gonna jump on.
Have another interesting game, I've been trying to use less mana cs'ing, and miss a fair few as a result, but i do gain some more pressure from it. But I just felt like in this game that I couldn't utilise my early lead for anything. She just bought negatron, and any hope of killing her is gone, so i kind of desperately tried to roam top because malph had no mr, but that just ended up being dumb. Then voli just sat on me and I didn't feel like there was anything I could do.
Luckily yi snowballed stuff, but how am i meant to play lane when the jungler is being that agressive? Do I just never ever use q in lane or what? Obviously I don't want to just afk under tower but it felt like every time I even just moved to ward or cs or follow or roam or anything, I just die.
The reason why you don't feel comfortable trading at 3 is because you don't get W at 3.
You can either get 45 more damage or 180ish shielding at 3. You'll trade a lot harder at 3 if you get the shield and use it to get right in the other guys face and trade autos with him.
You'd think 2E at 3 would be more mana efficient, and if you stayed at 3 for 10 minutes it would be, but the reality is you are only going to cast E like twice before you hit 4. Better to get W and be aggressive. After you hit 4 you go back to passive harass.
On Lux vs Diana matchup: - You needa punish her a lot more at level 1. Starting Q on Diana in a ranged matchup is just asking to get zoned at lv1. Pre-6 she should never be able to walk up to the wave without her W on. When she does walk up, just keep auto-attacking her (but don't miss CS). Your W will mitigate her Q and minion damage so you can keep harassing until her shields gone then punish her with Q/Es if she's comes back to farm with her shield on CD. I think you got this part later on in the matchup but you had already given her so much farm - When Diana gets Negatron, her laning becomes so much easier so it's not surprising you couldn't bully her anymore. I think after that point, you just trade farm which is a good situation for Lux. - Post-6 I don't think you should walk into Diana ult range without Q up. But there wasn't much you could've done in the ganks, you just need more wards in the river which you need your Jungle/Support for - There was a point where you were level 6 vs level 5 Diana. At that point, you should've zoned her off the entire wave until she leeched enough for her ult but you let her walk up to the wave and missed your ult. In general, you gave her way too much room to farm in that lane
Disagree with the zoning at level 1/2 bit, you will get absolutely destroyed by minion damage if you spam autos on her. I agree with that jungle/support should have placed more wards, but when they don't place them you have to play around that as well.
- I think you played the lane fine (other than than FB). That LB wasn't that good, took so many bad trades but got bailed out by that Naut gank. - Rather than trying to Q predict her distortion, you can W her combo then use your spells after to abuse the fact that her W is down. But you can't really do this when LB gets fed like that. - You don't have kill pressure anymore when she's that fed so try combo her so she's low. It'll force her to back or risk all-ining at low hp which gives you more room to farm. - I think LB screwed up once she started shoving and trading farm. She could've zoned you a lot more and started tower diving with Naut or Wukong - Might want to run MR runes/Barrier against LB - You really need to buy pink wards when they're invading your jungle like that - Teamfighting was fine but you kinda got carried by your team there.
On February 10 2016 23:09 Inflicted wrote: - I think you played the lane fine (other than than FB). That LB wasn't that good, took so many bad trades but got bailed out by that Naut gank. - Rather than trying to Q predict her distortion, you can W her combo then use your spells after to abuse the fact that her W is down. But you can't really do this when LB gets fed like that. - You don't have kill pressure anymore when she's that fed so try combo her so she's low. It'll force her to back or risk all-ining at low hp which gives you more room to farm. - I think LB screwed up once she started shoving and trading farm. She could've zoned you a lot more and started tower diving with Naut or Wukong - Might want to run MR runes/Barrier against LB - You really need to buy pink wards when they're invading your jungle like that - Teamfighting was fine but you kinda got carried by your team there.
Yeah it was pretty unlucky that I went full retard at the first Wukong gank and I didn't see Naut coming at all. After the Naut gank I think I was 1/2/1 right? and she was 2/1/0. I was like "she cant kill me in one combo right" but then she could and I officially lost lane. At that point I just started AFKfarming. I agree that I should try to combo her so she's low, but I also feel like if I use my spells she can just allin me at will too. I don't have that many runepages for mid so that's why I didnt run MR ^^. I usually like Heal even in Ignite matchups for the speedboost, but I'll try Barrier. I'll also buy some pinks next time, but I felt it was pretty useless since we couldn't defend them anyway. And then we randomly won.
The range on her dive is long enough that she can get to you if she really wants to, you have to be able to use your shield to survive it.
I agree with whoever that the way to play is to hold Q+E, wait for her to engage, reflexively shield and then combo when her spells are on cooldown. MR blues + Athenes first item and your shield will absorb a lot of her damage, while one successful combo is all you need to cripple her ability to be aggro in lane. Once she can't be aggro you can poke her down with E and get an advantage.
LB used to be scary when she silenced because you had to be super tight with your shield timing to block her damage. Now she's really pretty easy if you play the lane the right way.
I've been doing fine the 2-3 times i've hit an lb, just running 6 cdr/lvl runes and 3 flat mr runes.
The only mildly scary part is having to dodge her chain if she wqe or wqre's you, but that's pretty trivial in the majority of situations. Unless she starts getting overly fed, it felt like I could just control the creep wave and trade way more mana efficiently then her, up until the point where i had enough ap/cdr to just e-ult the wave whenever she started gaining lane control.
You also get to see RF Legendary on Malphite get fed and build Swifties -> Spectre's Cowl -> Bami's Cinder -> Spectre's Cowl -> Sunfire -> Glacial Shroud -> Iceborn Gauntlet ...
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7OPbXoH.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZDJ23mp.png)
Yasuo.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3N2HpuS.png)
Ziggs, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fpXNIk7.png)
Xerath or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vQ6RrWL.png)
Orianna to fill this particular niche in team comps right now, Lux is much easier to pick up and learn than any of these champions. As such, she is ideal for newer players wanting to learn a safe, reliable mid lane champion.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xGfwWXt.png)
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Mordekaiser.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lBW0Dn0.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9Lh38R1.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1unTSo7.png)
Leblanc.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/d7LVjBg.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jQPqNhk.png)
Morgana and ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8hIPRBZ.png)
Master Yi, and in a few other matchups if I have a jungler who I think will not be ganking and I don't have 1v1 kill potential.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/S9VqavS.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/csfXVI6.png)
Morgana or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7PWhCO7.png)
Zyra instead for a stronger support character with a similar skillset.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aWd2O3Q.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GRG0Yle.png)
Soraka lane.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/EEp9HpD.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2enfRDG.png)
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Blitzcrank. The last couple points in Defense are fairly preferential here.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/R7qE8l7.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/MelD2yT.png)
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9gkFvUN.png)
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dZ2zY37.png)
+ Show Spoiler +![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/q1Pdq.png)
Magic Pen ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/b0Cl5.png)
Armor ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dyS4h.png)
Magic Resist ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bdrvl.png)
Ability Power![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sQea7W0.png)
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Syndra, but she's perfectly capable of bullying many champions. Lux has above average AD for a typical AP mid, so don't be afraid to go very aggressive at level 1. Use your E aggressively to trade with your opponent, while saving Q and W to react to jungle pressure or an enemy dive.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lLNiXUd.png)
Graves or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/un9rTC9.png)
Jinx a snare at level 6 can mean an instant kill.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lztAMk6.png)
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Mordekaiser![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IFbmpAC.png)
Malphite![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zHvCVAO.png)
Sion![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/St6r5Av.png)
Ryze![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RYqSufv.png)
Anivia![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iCsmjJV.png)
Vladimir![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/I6D3e4I.png)
Kha'zix![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5aqSqNz.png)
Karthus![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TIpFsra.png)
Fiddlesticks![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QaGFyag.png)
Lissandra![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Bi9i9Kj.png)
Azir![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/D5E5er7.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hCUY7Oz.png)
Veigar![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/X6sqsBO.png)
Malzahar![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/zjrHGxO.png)
Swain![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3TjMpz0.png)
Gangplank![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/W9kOfbl.png)
Zilean![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mANdnmn.png)
Cassiopeia![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/5LwtS5O.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/13F0L9f.png)
Gragas![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/COgz8Do.png)
Zyra![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/HPFObCU.png)
Nidalee![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8sbBXI4.png)
Viktor![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/3ZWXdyH.png)
Vel'Koz![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ZQPbHok.png)
Ziggs![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9uUnRZR.png)
Brand![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7gcmfCK.png)
Corki![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gULSnkn.png)
Orianna![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bF90eDe.png)
Xerath![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VMnl3xD.png)
Ahri![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jmHDMJD.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lVQA6XH.png)
Kennen![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KNpJlKb.png)
Kog'Maw (AD)![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rj3x7d6.png)
Ezreal![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gniNZA1.png)
Caitlyn![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JrJcOl2.png)
Quinn![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/GbaTWuM.png)
Teemo![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/VyzXsie.png)
Varus![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/KGDmGZ2.png)
Tristana (AD)![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Is3I38K.png)
Jayce![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/z0NnM8v.png)
Sivir![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tdx1ymY.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/D7fwol1.png)
Lee Sin![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OFAkVbX.png)
Talon![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/c155WVB.png)
Pantheon![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BPACWnE.png)
Leblanc![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Tjgs4S8.png)
Karma![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mXvZHS3.png)
Annie![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/swCPCKF.png)
Lulu![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/TnSLvY0.png)
Kayle![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lvModiN.png)
Syndra![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/scG45eB.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/k0MBbt0.png)
Cho'Gath![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/O4Witrr.png)
Galio![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YJ1N1yd.png)
Heimerdinger![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/nFuuavs.png)
Master Yi![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/A52BnNM.png)
Twisted Fate![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Arq7d5B.png)
Morgana![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/JlLxm8X.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/XLVEfq2.png)
Fiora![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/aYhiajb.png)
Xin Zhao![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/icfDLyX.png)
Wukong![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/f7SGXHE.png)
Riven![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/EtTw8Mz.png)
Jarvan IV![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/YDGAQqW.png)
Fizz![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/tUfnicF.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xHu61RW.png)
Akali![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8xCCWEJ.png)
Diana![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/PHDrGHT.png)
Katarina![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/t0JSRMj.png)
Yasuo![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mlW8NUs.png)
Zed![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2ig3Ieb.png)
Kassadin![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/elzcvGR.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Qcwa8VI.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QFJ44C5.png)
Jayce, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yBxKTp5.png)
Maokai, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6xRuC09.png)
Janna, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WiAFabz.png)
Karma, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Gwxy4qN.png)
Sivir and ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Abcudxw.png)
Trundle are really good at keeping the enemy team from closing distance, often while helping her poke.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lDJsDQd.png)
Shen, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/n95msX4.png)
Tryndamere or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/eHz7SLM.png)
Gangplank can be quite good with her.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/LxLj05R.png)
Olaf or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/0Me9Ub2.png)
Vi (or really Jarvan/Vi plus any diving Assassin). Champions like ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/G3CXvF3.png)
Kayle, ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/vvW4OFd.png)
Lulu and ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/fzkAAmu.png)
Zilean can also give Lux a rough time from any lane, because they can easily stop her burst from killing allies later in the game.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Rtrp8jm.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7Ys8NWz.png)
Riven or ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/QrQY8pn.png)
Lee Sin, but she does have a couple bright decisions in her repertoire.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/e6WAjzy.jpg)
Light Binding![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/hX14j6f.jpg)
Prismatic Barrier![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/xMky6Wb.jpg)
Lucent Singularity![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/WSouYoK.jpg)
Final Spark![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dzA0yk8.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/gM5ZGFw.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/quQlZnV.png)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yXF6uhG.png)
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Passive: Illumination:![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bV0kUbk.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/1FumW.jpg)
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/UIAltWa.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/yCFOcyf.png)
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).![[image loading]](http://www.liquidlegends.net/images/lol/items/8.image)
![[image loading]](http://www.liquidlegends.net/images/lol/items/3.image)
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