Having the optimal setup will increase your chances of winning games as you will be building items or retrieving game resources that reinforce and synergize with your champion kit.
- A Beginner’s Guide to League of Legends Situational Items
- Marksman example: Lucian
- Core 1
- Core 2
- Core 3
- Situational 1
- Who is Zeri?
- Zeri abilities & gameplay
- Why researching builds is important
- How to research builds
- Patch 12.1 Summary
- MOBAFire Featured Content – January 7th
- Summoner Spells
- Runes
- Using the Build Calculator
- Engine Options
A Beginner’s Guide to League of Legends Situational Items
Update: As this article was written around patch 6.22, some item specific stats may be out of date now due to buffs and nerfs. However, the general conceptual approaches we propose to think about building are timeless and will still hold true. Enjoy!
League of Legends has over 200 items. Learning what each of them is doing is an important process; especially if you are new to the game and already have so many other things to do. With so much to focus on while playing the game, the quick and efficient operation of the store based on enemy duels and the state of the game is like a meta game in itself.
A common mistake made by beginners is to stick to the same set of items as it means that one thing less takes up valuable mental space. It’s understandable, but it won’t help you climb. Game knowledge is one of the most influential factors in the success of Bronze and Silver players (which together make up 70% ~ of the League of Legends player base). The more information you have at your disposal, the better your decisions will be.
The main idea behind this article is not to point out what items to build with a particular champion, but rather to give you specific examples of item selection so that you think the right way so you can go ahead and go ahead and change your setups depending on the game situation. We’ve broken down item sets into two types:
- Core = Necessary for the master, must be purchased
Basic components are almost always selected. They match the champion so well that you never want to donate items in those rows. - Situational = Sample choices based on the circumstances of the game
In item sets marked as “situational”, you can choose up to two or even none of the items from this list. They are simply great examples to introduce you to situational building.
It’s a long read, but you can just skip to a section of two or more roles you play for some inspiration. Here are a few page jumps so you can jump straight to the role you want.
It’s a long read, but with the links below, you can jump straight to the roles section you play. At the end of each, you’ll find “back to top” links.
Marksman example: Lucian
Lucian is a great example for an ADC; both strong and popular in the meta at the time of writing.
Core 1
Essence Stealer will always be the first primary item, as it simply has too much synergy with this champion to be overlooked. Cooldown Reduction (CDR) means making the most of Lucian’s passive, and since you’ll be stacking critical damage later, increasing the cooldown with this item’s unique effect is a great idea.
Core 2
Your second slot to fill should be an item with Crit / Attack Speed so you can start earning CDRs from the Essence Stealer bonus as mentioned above. Basically you have three options:
The Rapid Firecannon gives you extra range that’s perfect against heavy harassment combinations as you don’t have to get close and put yourself in danger. If you’re playing against a team where no one is building Magic Resist (MR), the Statikka scythe is a good DPS buff which also makes a big contribution to your waveclear. It also means farming efficiently, which is perfect for champions like Vayne who can’t farm as fast as some of the other handlers.
On the other hand, if you are battling against divers and skirmishers looking to fight you 1v1 up close, the extra damage reduction and mobility to keep those melee heroes at arm’s length or low distance is something you can get from Phantom Dancer.
Core 3
This is another great example of situational building. Being a soft handler, a little survivability and life steal (LS) is the way to go as it provides defense when dealing damage. Therefore, The Bloodthirster is suitable for many games. But if you’re dealing with a lot of crowd control nerfs, going from Mercury Sash to Mercury Scimitar means you can counter these kinds of skills and still get your most important LS in the third slot.
Situational 1
Often as a champion, your fourth slot will be used for stacking armor penetration, Last Whisper is your best bet.
This item is part of Lord Dominik’s Salute (LDR) or Mortal Reminder. You’ll choose the LDR in most situations, as most of the tanks you’ll deal with will accumulate armor and health. The deadly reminder is a bit more situational as it helps you control “emptying the tanks”. Swain, Vladimir, Maokai are examples of “drainage tanks”. They regain a significant amount of their health over time to maintain their durability, rather than getting a percentage damage reduction or additional armor / magic resist like other tanks.
If you’re fighting a fragile team and don’t need an armor pen from these two items, Infinity Edge is the way to go.
Finally, we can also see the order of the skills they have adopted in this game. Now, for the most part, heroes don’t take different skill orders, but in some stacks you might want.
Who is Zeri?
Zeri, the 158th League of Legends champion, hails from Zaun. Born into a working class family, she spent her life fighting chembarons poisoning the underground city. With the help of her neighbors from Entresol, she was able to harness her electric powers in a rifle – and a large jacket, to try and keep her under control.
On Summoner’s Rift, Zeri is smart, lively, and always ready to fight. Playable as both a bot lane carry and lane solo lead.
Zeri abilities & gameplay
Zeri has a unique attack pattern for marksmen in League of Legends, where her basic attack is actually a skill. Her Q, Burst Fire, breaks her basic attacks into two: an auto attack scaling with ability power which is treated as a skill, and a skill shot scaling with attack damage which is treated as an attack. Confusing, we know.
This turns Zeri into a pseudo-Ezreal, where you keep spamming Q to deal most damage, while short-range autoattacks are useful (slow down). Your Q cooldown also depends on your attack speed, but it ends when you hit 1.5 attacks per second. This means that to optimize your Zeri build you need to be close to the limit as the Bonus AD conversion isn’t great.
The rest of her kit thrives on her electric personality. With high mobility at the infinitely stacking movement speed she gains a ultimate, and a dash that would make Talon envy on her E, Zeri can quickly avoid Summoner’s Rift. Once in the middle of a battle, it can be nearly impossible to block it without point-and-click crowd control.
Her laning phase suffers from its short range. However, after hitting two objects, it really sticks into her really hard. This two-item spike makes her an amazing lone lane character – able to get out of control with snowballs – and a bot lane carrier (although she can struggle with long distance leads late).
Be sure to use W to lead fights and chase enemies, then fly around them with E and attack from distances to melt through enemies like butter.
- Passive: Living Battery – Zeri gains Movement Speed each time he gains a shield. When it damages an enemy shield, it absorbs its energy, shielding itself.
- Q: Explosive fire
- Passive: Zeri’s basic attack deals magic damage, scales with ability power, and is treated as a skill. Moving and throwing Burst Fire stores energy in Sparkpack Zeri. Once fully charged, its next basic attack will slow down and deal bonus damage.
- Active: Burst Fire fires a series of 7 missiles that deal physical damage to the first enemy hit. Burst Fire scales with AD and is treated as an attack, with the first round applying on-hit effects. Cooldown matches the duration of Zeri’s basic attack.
For example, if you are still stunned by a specific hero, you might consider swapping one of your items for a Mercurial Scimitar. This item allows you to remove stuns, allowing you to dodge skill shots and unleash full damage to your opponents.
Why researching builds is important
Having the optimal setup will increase your chances of winning games as you will be building items or retrieving game resources that reinforce and synergize with your champion kit.
If you take the things that don’t give you the best chance of winning the game, you’ll be fighting from the very beginning. For example, taking the wrong runes can make a huge difference during your laning phase.
Also, if you buy the wrong items, you can do more harm than good, and buying items that aren’t needed late game, for example, won’t help you in laning phase. Rabadon’s Killer Hat is not a good first item!
How to research builds
There are many different ways you can research to find the best setup for your hero. Honestly, there are a lot of websites and resources that provide builds for every hero in the game. But you have to be careful about blindly copying each site, make sure your source is trustworthy.
For starters, you’re on the Mobalytics blog, so we’ll naturally start with our own tool recommendations!
- Please visit our hero pages to find setups for each hero based on stats such as popularity and win rate.
- If you have the Mobalytics desktop app, you can download builds from hero pages automatically imported in each game so you never have to worry about picking the wrong runes.
- You can find structures used by pro players and ponies with one trick by using our ‘Professional Buildings’ section of the Hero pages. This can be a good way to find builds before they become popular.
- Check out guides that are made of high ELO one tricks, not guides made by lower-level players in places like Mobafire.
- Look for your favorite master’s Youtube guides, but they can be hit or missed. Be careful with clickbait builds that are designed for entertainment.
- Sites like Lolalytics can be useful, but the site isn’t very new player-friendly and is better for more experienced gamers.
So what specific version should you go for and when should you move away from your standard version? All of these questions are very important, and learning to customize your setup will make you a better player overall. Let’s take a look at the most important things you need to understand when choosing a League of Legends build.
Patch 12.1 Summary
Hello and welcome to the MOBAFire 12.1 update summary!
This patch brings a number of new changes to champions where Rek’Sai, Sona, and Diana are among the few targets of this patch. This patch will also make a few changes to some items and summoner spells like Teleport. Finally, patch 12.1 also includes new visual changes to Ranked Frames.
MOBAFire Featured Content – January 7th
Each week, administrators and scouts will select different content to be featured on the front page and will receive a small token of appreciation from us for their activity and contribution. Anyone can be featured for guides, TFT team lineups, tier lists, and basically any contribution!
Continue creating amazing content and we’d love to introduce you to… read more
The Shroud of the Banshee is an excellent example of situational building against explosive mages such as Ryze, LeBlanc, and Veigar. Choosing Maw over the Vale with Lee Sin depends on whether something breaks your combo.
Summoner Spells
Since Jinx is the lead and bottom lane player, you’ll definitely want to pick Flash and Heal. Healing is a great spell that gives you a speed boost and can save you in difficult situations. Flash is a versatile, brilliant spell and can be used to escape from enemies, dodge skill shots, and even catch people.
Odds are on any other line you want to flash, as well as generally accepted as the best summoner spell. The second spell will depend on which lane you are playing and how it fits your setup. If you are into the jungle, you probably want to use Smite. On the other hand, if you are playing in the top lane, you will likely want to set fire to or teleport.
Now we’ve removed summoner spells, let’s talk about runes.
Runes
If you’re playing Jinx, you probably want to increase Attack Damage, Attack Speed, and Defense for later in the game. In that case, a good build would be:
● 9 x +0.95 Great Sign of Attack Damage
● 9 x +1.34 larger magic resist glyph
● 9 x +1 Greater Seal of Armor
● 1 x +1.7 Greater Attack Speed Sign
● 9 x +0.16 larger magic resist scaling glyph
● 3 x +4.5 Greater Quintessential Attack Speed
If you add them all together, they’ll grant you an extra +8.55 Attack Damage, + 14% Attack Speed, and +9 Armor at the start of the game. At level 18, you will also have a total of 27 magic resistances. These numbers may seem small, but they all add up.
So why these runes? Well, the build in this case is designed to have as much attack speed as possible in the early game as it helps to increase the damage dealt. The attack damage runes also increase the initial attack damage, making it easier for minions to last hitting and dealing more damage to enemies.
Since Jinx is the lead and bottom lane player, you’ll definitely want to pick Flash and Heal. Healing is a great spell that gives you a speed boost and can save you in difficult situations. Flash is a versatile, brilliant spell and can be used to escape from enemies, dodge skill shots, and even catch people.
Using the Build Calculator
Build Page
To use the site, go to the Builds page in the top bar.
Please select your master first, you can use the search bar at the top to find a master quickly
For now, choose Zoe as your champion.Champion Page
On the hero page, you can open the build calculator or view buildings written by other people in the guides.
For now, open the build calculator.Build Calculator
Now you have to choose what role you play the hero in. At the top are Mid, Adc, Top, Assassin, Jungle, and Support. Then you need to choose the master’s play style. The style of play determines the set of statistics for which the site will optimize the build.
In this case, he will choose Mid -> Standard Mage Builds for Zoe.All builds are optimized for raw damage. The other optimized statistics are shown below. In this case: Skill Boost, Mana Up, Stasis, and Gap Closure. In this example, we will set the skill acceleration to be very high.
This gives you the following build order below. This is optimized for the stats we asked for. Stats like ability power, attack damage, attack speed, etc were automatically translated into damage using Zoe’s skill model.
But statistics on paper don’t always give the full picture, Zoe has a strong early game and she can take advantage of this by using items in the early game. We can force you to take a Delivery of Biscuits, Time-Warping Tonic and Contamination Potions. Below the Reset and Add Engine Option buttons a bar will appear, initially red, will turn yellow (upon receipt of a possible build) and then disappear once the compilation is optimized. This will start up in your browser and take anywhere from 0 to 60 seconds. Runs faster in Google Chrome thanks to better Javascript engine.
We now get the following version:
That’s good, but we think the shoes are in the wrong place. Let’s change that with the Add Engine Option button. We can add two motor options, Set Tier 1 Boots Gold and Set Tier 2 Boots Gold to get the boots in the correct position.
This gives the following build below with the shoes in the right place:
Engine Options
The optimizer supports the following options:
Engine option Description Level 1 boots Sets the maximum amount of gold spent on construction before obtaining shoes Level 2 boots Sets the maximum amount of gold spent on building before earning Level 2 boots Change your mana curve The required mana is checked at 5 points in the build order, here you can adjust the required mana. The required mana is multiplied by the given values. Gold limit Limit the total amount of gold for construction to X. This can be useful when researching your next purchase item The best compilation Increases gold income after 20 minutes and increases item slots by 1 Add data files Add additional build names here to include items from those builds when searching. Important when making drastic changes to the build options. Comma-separated list of data files. The default value displays the data file for the current build. Take a look at other builds for their data file names. Proc Spellblade counter How many times the sorceress will work Melee Heroes auto attack modifier The percentage of time a hero usually contacts another hero to perform auto attacks. Range: 0.0 – 1.0 Item groups Consider a set of items on an item in the build
Usage: Item, Item 1, Item 2, Item 3
e.g. 0, Horizon Focus, Rabadon’s Deadly HatEnemy HP Enemy’s HP from the beginning of the game (minute 0) to the end of the game (minute 45),
default: 550 to 2150Enemy armor Enemy armor from the beginning of the game (minute 0) to the end of the game (minute 45),
default: 30 to 90Enemy magic resistance Enemy magic resistance from the beginning of the game (minute 0) to the end of the game (minute 45),
default: 30 to 50No additional runes If you run out of banning slots above, you can add an extra ban rune here No additional items If you run out of banning slots above, you can add an additional banning item here Fight length override Change the length of the fight in the damage calculation.
0.5 to Poke, 1.5 to Burst, 4.0 to SustainEarly Combat Length Change Change the length of the early fight in the damage calculation
default: 0.5 for poke damageMid-game fight length change Change the length of the mid-game fight to calculate the damage
default: 1.5 for burst damageLate game combat length change Change the length of the late game fight to calculate damage
default: 4.0 for Sustain DamageExtended Combat Value Change the effectiveness of Conqueror and DoT items for this hero. Increasing this will encourage the choice of a Conqueror and the purchase of items such as Liandry’s Suffering and Demonic Grasp.
Range: 0.0 – 1.5Replace stat coefficients Change the ratio of the requested statistics
E.g
This can be used to create builds outside the normal ranges given by the statistics buttons
For example, you can set the Skill Rush to 10 for a build that focuses almost entirely on Skill RushEvolve the Icathian Rain Evolve Kai’Sa’s Icathian Rain before X gold is spent on build Evolution of the Void Seeker Evolve Kai’Sa’s Void Seeker before X gold is spent on the build Evolve Boost Grow Kai’Sa Recharge before X gold is released on the build Schedule Stat Modify how many stats count over time
Format: [(ts1, multiplier1), (ts2, multiplier2), (ts3, multiplier3)]
For example [(0, 5.0), (1200, 0.0)]
says stat counts 5x at start of build, linearly decreasing to 0x at minute 20