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| There will be a video here sometime tomorrow morning when I wake up. I didn't record any gameplay last night like I should have. Sorry! |
I was not expecting this character to come out this week so we have two weeks of League of Legends posts in a row. The last time we had a support released into the game (not including Orianna which most people don't play as a support) was Karma, who was released February 1st, 2011. That means that it's been almost fourteen months since we healers have seen a new support character added to the League of Legends. Is this the support that fans of the champion type have been waiting for?
Overview of Lulu's Abilities and How To Use Them
Lulu is a mix between Janna and Soraka with the ways that their abilities work. Lulu's passive makes her companion fairy Pix (much like Orianna's ball) shoot 3 bolts of magic damage towards whatever opponent Lulu auto attacks (it can be block by enemy units such a creeps between you and the enemy attacked) and it increases with every level (instead of every third level like most increasing passives do). This makes it easy to kill steal early game if you're not careful (your early game auto attacks can do as much damage as an early game AD carry without items with the added damage) so always be careful with this champion. Lulu's Q is a ranged skill shot that shoots two shots (one from Lulu and one from Pix) in a direction of your choosing that slows anyone it hits (but enemy units can only be hit by one bolt). This ability is extremely useful for an escape or setting up a kill for your carry. The ability is pretty difficult to miss with since it can be shit from two different directions depending on where your pixie is.
Your W is one of the more fun abilities, Whimsy can either give an ally Movement Speed and Ability Power or will change an enemy into an animal/food product based on your skin choice. This ability has so many uses and is extremely unique, anyone who has played a Mage in World of Warcraft will feel some love for this ability. You can polymorph the enemy AD carry into a cupcake during a team count, making them unable to do any damage for 3 seconds making them completely useless for the beginning of the fight. It's also extremely useful for chasing if they're just out of reach but your AD carry isn't. Lulu's E is where Soraka comes into play. If used on an ally it gives them a shield and your passive (Pix added damage) will be given to your ally, I'm honestly not sure if Pix gets the final hit if Lulu receives the kill or not. If used on an enemy it does magic damage and grants vision of them for 6 seconds. This will guarantee a kill for a champion like Caitlyn if used on a retreating enemy that has low health.
Lulu's Ultimate, her R ability, is where she is much like Janna. You place your ultimate on an ally and they grow in size knocking enemies away from from them. However, in my experience in game play the knock back can sometimes be a knock up instead. The ally then gains health and an aura that slows all enemy by up to 60% for the time they remain in the aura. The health remains on the champion as well so if your shield is on CD and your champion may die while running away it is beneficial to pop it on them because the health the champion receives stays on the champion even after the ults duration has finished which makes it (kind of) a heal and a major one.
What Abilities To Choose and Builds
Lulu is a little different where her ability sequence doesn't have to be cut and dry. It's pretty obvious that when you're supporting you're always going to max out your shield (E) as quickly as possible. However, your Q and W are not so obvious with this champion. Your choices will be based on what your lane is turning out like. If the enemy AD carry is pushing a lot and poking and getting the two of you in a lot of tight corners then you're going to want to take your polymorph first. This will allow you to stop a poke or make a clean getaway for your AD carry. If you're winning the lane and putting pressure on the enemy team then it's pretty safe to pick up your Q early. This will allow you to put pressure on them and do some pretty hard poking if they're tower hugging. The range on your Q is 925 as well as an AoE so standing behind creeps is useless.
Lulu also needs to be built extremely differently from all other supports, at least at the present time. All of Lulu's abilities scale extremely generously from AP, even the amount of health her ultimate gives scales off of AP. You need to build her as you would an AP carry to get the most out of her which is something you don't need to do with most of the supports (since they're made to survive without items made for themselves.
I give her Ability per Level Marks and Glyphs and Gold per Second Seals and Quintessences. You want to give her AP early so that her poke and shield become extremely powerful. This means you need to sacrifice the usual Gold per 10 items to accomplish this, but since you're still a support you won't be getting as much gold because of no CS or Champion kills. So getting gold from your runes is important to your bank account.
These are the items I pick up first for Lulu. Starting out with 40 additional gold from your support masteries allows you to pick up one Sight Ward to ward your river bush at the 3 minute mark and stop any potential early level ganks from the enemy jungler. By the time the 6 minute marks comes around you should have enough money to grab your next set of items.
If you're lucky to get some early kills then you should be able to back with about 700 gold which will get your Gold Per 10 item and your Tier 1 boots as well as more wards. This is the only GPS item in this guide because of the gold you receive from your masteries and runes. If you choose not to get gold masteries you might want to pick up a second support item such as Philosophers Stone or Heart of Gold. You should stay in lane as long as possible at this point. Stay until your wards run out (which should be 6 to 9 minutes based on how many wards you bought on your last back) or until you are just shy of 1500 gold.
Pick up some more fire power as you start to build a Rod of Ages with a Blasting Wand and a Sapphire Crystal. This will further help your poke as well as allowing you to stay in lane much longer with 200 more mana. I suggest getting Rod of Ages first because it helps you not be such an easy target for ganks and team fights. As a support you don't start out with a lot of health. This item makes you a little beefier early game and gives you a lot more longevity in early game.
This will be the final build in the order that you buy them in. In late game Lulu will be more beneficial, more or less, to your AP carry because of the AP buff that her W gives so building around helping herself and her AP carry is very beneficial. Grabbing a Will of the Ancients and an Abyssal Scepter helps your AP carry while giving a boost to Lulu's abilities giving her a carry build with Support intentions. At the end of all of this you will have around 750 AP which is huge for your abilities.
Summoner Spells
Heal is a pretty obvious choice to me. I pick up Heal on supports that don't have a regular healing ability, which allows for a quick jump in health while running from a losing battle or changing a team fight for the better or just keeping yourself alive if you've become the punching bag. Also, with all of the slows and CC that Lulu has I don't see any reason to pick up Flash. But I have always been a strong opposition of Flash since it's nerf several months ago. So if you're more comfortable with Flash than I am than feel free to pick it up. I however, feel teleport is much more useful for a support. It allows you to quickly back and grab wards and items and return to lane before your carry even knows you're gone. It also allows you to show up in a different lane if someone if being dove or having trouble with a particularly large push.
Pros
Ability Power Conversion On Abilities: I am almost guaranteeing that the AP ratio will be nerfed because it is just too good on her shield and Ultimate. Her Shield (E) receives 0.6 Magic Damage/Shield Value for every 1 Ability power you have. If you're in your full build you can shield your carry for 700 damage every 6 seconds. Her ultimate also scales 0.5 Health for every 1 AP you have. Which means at Tier 3 your Ultimate can give you carry over 1000 extra health during a team fight. I feel that either CDs will be increased (even though they are fairly long early game) or AP Ratios will be reduced because those numbers are just too good for a support character (since youre supposed to be able to live without much or any AP to begin with).
Really Good Early Game Harass: Another reason why her AP ratios, I believe, will be nerfed. If you hit your Q and your E on an enemy champion you can deal around 300+ magic damage around level 5 and the poke is just crazy with the large range of her Q. She is definitely one of the best aggressive supports due to the amount of damage that she can do.
Great CC: All of your abilities can do something to hinder your opponent. Your slow reduces movement speed by 80% and decays but that is still a really big number to hit a fleeing opponent with. You can even make an enemy unable to do anything to help their team for 2.5 seconds which makes turret diving nearly impossible to do.
Cons
No Heal: This is a pretty big draw back for me. Not having a heal hurts a support 9/10 with Janna being an exception, and even she has a heal with her Ultimate. Unless you can shield all incoming attacks your carry will have to back to get health at some point because you can't increase their health pool. I feel supports without any sort of heal are at a great disadvantage.
Easy to Kill Steal With: Lulu's abilities right now do a lot of damage and even her auto attacked can hit upwards of 160+ per shot. This is great until your pixy steals your carries kills early game and they're bitching at you late game.
Not For Beginners: Lulu is definitely not a champion that you pick up on quick. She isn't a straight forward support like most of them are. With all of your abilities doing different things you have to make split second decisions that are easy to kill wrong. Do you give your AP carry 60 extra AP or do you polymorph that Rammus that has taunted your fleeing AD carry? Do you shield someone taking damage in a team fight or do you deal 700 damage to someone in a team fight?
Knock Back Ultimate: Knocking back is generally never a good thing as I have learned time and time again with pissed off AD carries while playing Janna. And Lulus Ultimate has been extremely unpredictable with hers. Sometimes it will merely knock someone up and keep them inside the aura and everything is great and sometimes it just blows people clear across the map and everyone's left going "WTF Did you do that for you nub!?!?!?!!1". I don't like things that knock people back because I find myself sitting in a team fight going "well, if I ult while we're all grouped up I risk knocking someone backwards whose on the brink of death and having people screaming at me" and while I'm thinking that the AD carry dies because I was too worried about losing them a kill instead of saving their lives. Happens with Janna all the time and it's extremely frustrating.
All in all I really like the champion for fun. She has a lot of harass and a new set of abilities that we have never seen before. However, I also don't really feel very satisfied with her either. We haven't seen a support in over a year and we get this one, one without a heal, kind of conflicting in her roles as a support when she seems to want to play like an AP carry with sustain and CC, and an ultimate that makes me scared to use it. We probably won't see a support for another long time because it is a class that isn't played very often aside form those who really love the role and competitive 5v5s. And she definitely won't be used in Competitive gameplay because there are so many supports that are much better for the role. Something gives me the feeling that she is going to start out as a support (because the League of Legends staff tells you that's what she's supposed to be) but will slowly transition in a few weeks to an AP carry or hybrid. Janna, Sona, Taric and Soraka are just too good supports and this one isn't living up to that standard.
However, I will never grow tired of turning someone into a Derp Cupcake!
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