I want to say this before anything. I dont want Sivir to become too popular. I have always played Sivir since before they reworked her and stayed with her in almost every match no matter if people called her weak or up. My ingame name is G1aD0S. I care not about my elo. I naturally have a short fuse of a temper and I end up making everyone on my team hate me. I will be blunt with many things. If you are reading this as a person new to Sivir and using this guide in the very few moments before your match begins, this guide will not help you. If you are seeking to learn about this champion and her ways, if you want to know my most stable build with Sivir, I will show you, but know that I am reluctant since I want to play Sivir every match. I dont want you taking her from me, but if you do, you might as well not fail my team.


You will need to read all of this to know Sivir.

And you may want to stop reading if you dont like words. I will use a lot.




EDIT

This guide is still incomplete in terms of a complete encyclopedia on how to play Sivir.
The build that I am giving is just a tested one that is consistent with results when played right. I will update this guide when i have a consistent Sivir build that uses the more mainstream rune/mastery/playstyle build. (When I say consistent, I mean "play every game as sivir for the ad carry and win most games")

This type of build is meant for you to be able to bounce back from a bad game with ease if your team still haven't completely lost the game by mid game.


Date of entry: 6/23/2012

Know your weaknesses. Know to use your strengths. The every champion can become great.

Pros:
-nearly or completely unrivaled pushing power and farming speed
-strong laner if played well
-can pull off the unthinkable with unsuspecting summoners
-excels at laning vs champions that are either heavily reliant on one or two skills for harrass or skill shots with a time delay (ie: malphite's slow, caitlyn's skill shot, karth ulti)

Cons:
-requires many bf swords (1650 gold) which results periods of being weaker in terms of AD
-focused alot in teamfights
-doesnt do as well in lane vs champions with instant effect skills (ie: irelia's gap closer/stun)
-no cc (cc=stuns,slows,taunts, etc)
-requires lots of gold before mid game/late game starts ( the reason behind this: no gold= no damage = a champion that cant deal damage or stun or slow or tank = useless)
-requires exteremely sharp map awareness
-people will hate you if your score isnt good

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

This is my first guide ever so i dont know if someone ****ed up on the runes system but the Greater Glyph of Magic Resist runes (+1.34 magic resist) werent showing up for me. I replaced them with 5 Greater Seal of Magic Resist. Just know that those 5 Greater Seal of Magic Resist runes are supposed to be 5 Greater Glyph of Warding runes

Other variants of runes, What I think of them:

Greater Mark of Attack Damage (+.95 AD):
During early game it has nearly as much effect as a Greater Mark of Desolation (+1.66 AmrPen) However, AD slowly becomes more and more useless as the person gains armor. AmrPen on the other hand, stays more effective longer. Also, to those who argue that it benefits Sivir's Boomerang Blade, relying on solely on her dodgeable 9 second cooldown skill for damage is hoping for a bit too much vs people familiar with Sivir.

Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage(+2.3 AD):
Ends up being nearly 6-7 additional AD with all three. (I used to go with this)
One of Sivir's main weakness isn't lack of attack,its that she lacks about 40+ additional attack when she doesn't have her bf sword and gets into a bad situation when her farming gets suppressed.

Mana runes:
Greater Seal of replenishment
Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration
(either about 10 mana per 5 @ lvl 18 or about 3 mana per 5):
You are taking up 9 rune slots to do something that can be done effectively in 3 Mastery points or you are taking up 9 mana slots. You are also missing too many boomerang blades if you really need 10 mana per 5 seconds. Learn to use mana on sivir more wisely.

The Runes:

The Defensive Runes:
Greater Seal of Armor
Greater Glyph of Armor
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
If you take into account the masteries, there is enough armor to imitate someone with all armor seals. Going all armor seals means that you get about [1.41 x 9 = 13] armor. With the way the runes an build is set up, there is [6(masteries) + 4.2 (3 x 1.41 seals) + 2.8 (4 x 0.7 glyphs)] Same thing with the Magic Resist: Going all Magic Resist: [1.34 x 9 = 12.06] magic resist. Going with my set up: [6.7 (1.34 x 5) + 6 (masteries) = 13 (the game rounds up)] magic resist.

The Gold runes:
Greater Quintessence of Gold
Greater Seal of Gold
The standard rate of gold per 10 is 13 gold per 10. My build has a total of +6.5 gold per 5 increasing the income per 10 by 50% this means that by 7 minutes into the game, you would have an additional 200 gold, by 12 min, 400, and by 17 min, 600. by the time the average game is over, (35 min) you would have ammassed about an additional 1200 gold. This kind of gold comes in very advantageous very quickly. Sivir can very quickly get an early bf sword in the beginning of the game if she takes bot with a support. This will most certainly make up for the lack of damage provided by the runes. Plus, with the armor and magic resist seals, sivir can manage to take a couple of hits more than she normally can and play passively until she gets the upper hand with the sudden increase in ad.

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

The masteries are here to more or less supplement the runes.

The full 21 offensive mastery tree can be imitated through gaining items faster than your enemy. Also, havoc's 1.5% increase in damage ends up being 1.5 AD per 100 AD you have, the 6 armor pen and the +6 ad per 100 AD if your opponent is under 40% can be also be redeemed through faster items, therefore shutting down your opponent faster and zoning them more often.

The ultility mastery tree is pointed towards gaining 2 more gold per 10, gaining levels faster than your opponnent, and most importaintly, mana. having 3 mana per 5 from the bat is pretty strong considering sivir's spell sheild gives back mana.

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

Flash:

Sivir's problem most of the time in team fights is that she gets focused early. Heal isnt gonna help you much when you get slowed and get focused. Flashing to the outer edges of the team fight gives your team more time to hold off the enemies till you get get them down low. Also, this can be used in more situations than heal and its cooldown is shorter, chasing, escaping, not to mention that becoming untargetable by jumping over a wall is far more effective than merely gaining hp when escaping from a bad position.

Ignite:

The additional 5 ad sivir gains from it's cooldown lets sivir gain back some of the missing AD lost from the lack of Greater Quintessence of Strength. Also, invaluable when dueling against champions with heals/lifesteal/spellvamp/health regen effects. Low cooldown is worth it too.

Other summoners spells:

Exhaust:
Exaust
Although it gives sivir her needed cc, an enemy can nullify a good chunk of its duration by flashing out of sight. Also, it will not help when fighting a champion that heals back damage(ie, irelia, mundo, swain)

Ghost:

although it's boosted speed is nice to stick onto enemies, you already have your ultimate and your passive to help you.

Heal:

As I said, Flash is more versatile and has shorter cooldown than it.

Revive:

Why?

Smite:

Jungle Sivir is doable. She just doesnt come anywhere near as good as the normal junglers

Surge:

The attack speed is nice but if its only attack speed, your ultimate can do that for you. Also, the extra ap is kinda a waste, you can only get its benifit only from one or two boomerang blades.

Teleport:

The effect is nice, but then you lose out on an escape or risk not having edge to your attacks.

Cleanse:

Again, its nice but you need an escape and some offensive summoners to make sivir somewhat threatening in lane to prevent tower dives.

Clarity:

If you are having to resort to this even with a support and you still arent getting your opponents low on hp, you're most likely being wasteful of your mana.

Promote:

In theory, a mini super minoion that gets gold for you sounds apealing. however, in reality, most of it's kills gets stolen by other minions and it gets killed and doesnt focus on enemy champs in range when you are. The long cooldown also makes it not worth getting.

Clairvoyance:

Learn to get wards.
...
Then learn to place them.

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

These will take practice. So practice.

Fleet of foot-

Sivir gains 50 movement speed upon attacking a champion with an auto attack. This lasts 2 seconds.

This can be used for chasing a champion down or for kiting. (Kiting = attacking a champion and then running away without getting hit over and over.)
Also, this passive allows you to attack a champion once while they stand in directly in front of turret or further than that. If done right, you can get away without getting hit by the turret so that essentially, they need more caution about going to front of the turret to even last hit minions.

Boomerang Blade:

Her most noticeable source of damage early/mid game. It has a huge reduction for each target it hits. Make sure you make each throw count at low levels. Also, its almost never a good idea to using it on minion waves early game. only use it on minion waves when you either purposely want to clear it faster or you have a soraka to infuse mana into you/have way more mana than health.

Ricochet:

It's main use is to deal additional damage to enemy champions and to use it to reset your auto attack timer. The way that works is that if you use ricochet immediately after she lets go of her blade during an auto attack, she will quickly dish out the ricochet attack regardless of Sivir's attack speed. The purpose to doing this is to imitate a higher attack speed.

Ricochet also has two other uses. One is to clear minions faster. The second use is to stop an opponent's "in/out of combat" skills like garen's passive (He reegns HP pretty fast if he doesnt recive damage for 7 seconds) or like miss fortune's passive, (she gains up to 70 additional movement speed after not taking damage for 7 seconds). By using ricochet, you can simply hit an enemy minion near them and have one of the bounces catch them to stop their passive.

Note that the bounces dont apply any on hit effects and do not pop any spell sheild nor do they count as auto attacks (meaning that bounces dont make chainmail return damage back to you)

Spell Shield:

Sivir blocks an ABILITY and gets 150 mana if the shield is popped.

There is a reason why you get this at level two. 1) refunds mana partially for the heavy cost of boomerang blade and sustain in lane 2) to win exchanges between you and your opponent. 3) to make them waste mana This spell shield requires you to be relatively familiar with the enemies' skill sets so that you know which skills you want to spell shield if they have low cooldowns or if a specific skill does not pop spell shield. This skill is also why you need to be able to keep alert at all times when playing sivir. The main way to not get your spell shield baited to its 20+ second cooldown during early game is to spell shield skills that you want to the instant they are going to hit you rather than using the 3 second duration they give you. If you do, most good players will just use a different spell THEN use the big attack skill they want to hit u with. A general rule of thumb for people fairly confident in their spell shielding skills is to not use any skills other than spell shield when you have close to 120 mana and the enemy isnt close to dying. the amount of mana you gain back from a successful block will refund you to a decent amount of mana to the point where you dont really need to recall.

Note: It works exactly like a banshee's, whatever a banshee can and can't block applies to sivir's spell shield.

On the Hunt:

Sivir's ultimate increases movement speed by 20% and attack speed including allies around her for ten seconds.

This skill is on a relatively low cooldown use it for chasing enemies and running away or for dueling.

Note that if minions leave the radius of her ulti, they lose the buff but if champions ever gain the buff, they gain it for the rest of the remaining time reguardless if they are inside her radius or not. Using this skill also grants assists if allied champion had the buff on when the enemy was slain.


Date of entry: 4/20/2012

Doran's blade is pretty standard if you plan on staying in lane for a pretty long time with its +attk, +hp and +lifesteal.

With a doran's blade, sivir can stay in lane for a relatively long time, long enough to at least get 350 gold for the boots or bezerker's greaves if you are being that pressured for an item. And then maybe a vamperic scepter if things are going really bad. Otherwise, sivir can get really close to 1650 gold pretty fast (about 5-6 minutes if things are going smoothly, if not, then may take up to 11ish minutes if things are rough) you will want to purchase a bf sword for a nice big AD boost in the beginning. getting 350 gold for the boots is nothing after getting a bf sword. last hitting will become very easy after gaining the bf sword.

From there, i would advise considering getting a second vamperic scepter. people say getting a second doran's blade for survivability. I disagree. the hp boost (+80 hp +3% Life steal) can easilly gained back in fights after a few auto attacks plus, you waste gold from not being able to build the dorans blade into anything. Its faster to build you items to a better one.

After getting your second vamperic scepter, there are different ways you can go around this set up depending on the situation. you can either choose to build up an infinity edge or finish a blood thirster and start on a phantom dancer. I still have to test out different builds of items myself but my end game items always end up to be 3 bloodthirsters, 1 infinity edge, and two phantom dancers. This is the build I have been favoring recently since armor penetration during final end game seems to be a bit lacking versus the opposing team's dps. I would rather take out the opposing team's ranged ad/ap who probably has little to no armor items and take them out in 2-3 hits. and then let the rest of my team focus down the remaining tank.

Possible alternative item:

Trinity Force:

I know many players say good things about this item. It's true that this erases sivir's weakness of lacking cc. However, I would probably only take this if your team lacks more cc than the enemy.

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

This section is for players new to Sivir.

You need to be good at/get better at these basic skills if you want to play a good sivir.
All of these skills need to be trained over time by playing matches in LoL.
-Extreme map awareness
-A good escaping judgement
-reacting to skills in less than a half a second
-a good judgment in the flow of a duel
-the ability to control you champion's movement really precisely
-the ability to guess what your opponent is thinking

---

Extreme map awareness:

This skill is important for most champions but especially important for sivir. As the game's best pusher, you will find yourself taking alot of minions for your self during mid game to late game. When this happens, it is very easy for the opponent to gang up on you and end your farming right there. You need a sense of where your enemies are at all times when you are doing this alone. you also need to know which enemy champions you can handle with the current amount of hp and mana u have. Know when to gtfo. Without this skill, you will end up getting a couple of minions before getting shut down by good teams.

A good escaping judgement:

Know when to use your flash and when to use your ultimate, know when to trick your opponents by running away in a direction that they shouldnt be able to expect.

Reacting to skills in less than a half a second:

This is mainly for your spell shield. know what skills do what an what effects they will have if you let the spell hit and know if its a skill shot or a targeting skill. prepare to recognize the which skill for that enemy champion's skill set the skill comes from and make the decision to spell shield it or save it for something worse.

A good judgment in the flow of a duel:

As a sivir, your laning depends heavily on knowing when you can beat a champion and when you can't. You need to know what the enemy is capable of and be able to read the speed that they can dish out damage and be able to compare that with the damage you are capable of inflicting on them. assessing the damage they can dish out should not take over two seconds of trading blows with each other. preferably, the faster you can judge this, the better.

The ability to control you champion's movement really precisely:

When sivir can't spell shield, she needs to dodge skill shots. When Sivir is making a risky harass to the enemy under their turret, she has to know their range of their skills and be able to stop right before entering their range sometimes. Also, you sometimes want to stay just inside of exp range for minions sometimes or at least be able to run into the zone just as the minion dies and get out immediately after. Needless to say, sivir is serious business.

The ability to guess what your opponent is thinking:

This is probably the most important thing of all. Knowing this will help with spell shielding, escaping, and harassing.

---

Mana Management:
-With sivir, try to restrict the number of boomerang blades you toss out until you are sure you can deal a good chunk of their hp with it.
-Never drop below 120 mana during laning phase, use your auto attacks and start trying to catch enemy abilities for your spell shield with reasonable judgement the resoning behind this is that you still have enough mana for another spell shield if your opponent tricks you into using it without popping it. if you miss catching an ability on the second try, you kinda just failed. go recall if ur low on hp too.
-traps are basically free mana, just make sure your opponent isnt baiting ur spell shield by purposely placing a trap for your spell shield

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

This will be tips tricks for people who know the basics well enough.

Laning:
-this part is mostly a game of zoning. Zoning is being stronger than your enemy and putting yourself between them and your minions so that they cant receive any exp or gold from last hitting minions. try doing this if possible but be extremely wary of junglers or mia champions.
- Zoning tutorial (credits for this vid go to shurelia): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kxGQ3gWdrM
-The way zoning initiates usually is both sides of the lane meet up and do battle for little while to test each other. if either side feels like they can get a kill, they will immediately go for it. At the end of this little conflict, the winning side will usually start zoning the losing side to gain a bigger advantage. they will most likely keep doing this until they feel like your allies out side of the losing sides lane will come to gank them or until the losing side regains equal footing with the winning side. The purpose of my gold per 10 runes and the exp bonus masteries is built for this zoning phase no matter which side you are on.
If you are on the winning side, your advantage will go up even faster than normal which means you wont require as much farm or kills to keep up at what you normally have to do for the gold and exp you are getting.
However, if you happen to be on the losing side of the zoning phase, the gold and exp bonuses will help soften the effects of zoning and make it manageable for you to recover from a bad laning phase. If you are ever on the losing side, make sure you get as much minions as possible when the minions come into your reach while you are under the protection of your turret. That is probably the best way to hopefully regain footing. [TIP: it takes only two turret shots onto a full hp melee minion for you to be able to kill it with one auto attack when you have about 70ish AD, one turret shot onto a full hp caster minion for you to last hit it with 70ish AD]

Minion pushing/farming/traveling:
-If you want to clear a minion wave really fast when you have above 110 attack, then use ricochet and then boomerang blade while the enemy minions are still in a straight line.
-during mid game to late game, when your jungler isnt using the jungle and its too danageous to push a lane and your jungle is pretty safe, take some of the jungle monsters just for the gold.
-in fact, you should try killing everything thats not a champion that you can get your hands on as long as you know that the enemy isnt going for you.
-also try not to stay too far away from your team when they kinda group up or all lean towards one side of the map. a team fight might break out when you least expect it.
-If you ever encounter an enemy wandering around while traveling alone, IMMEDIATELY try to access the positions of the enemies on the map. if you cant take on the enemy or if there are any enemies missing, always assume that the missing ones will come to gang up on you, run away to a safe place or regroup with your team if they are in a good position to fight.
-remember, sivir isnt invincible especially when you fight against multiple enemies. better avoid teamfights if you are going to arrive too late or if your team stupidly runs into one where you WILL be outnumbered
-also, never chase an enemy too far when there are many enemies missing from the map, they might be leading right into an ambush

Mana tips:
-sivir can attack baron once and then gtfo while spell shielding to gain back mana without losing HP

Jungle monster tips:
-Sivir can start to take on blue buff by her self by the time she has at least 1 dorans blade, 1 bezerker greaves and 1 vamperic scepter
-Sivir can get dragon by her self when she has two vamperic scepters and at least 160ish+ AD (without the ultimate) she will be lower than half hp though if you go at dragon with bare minimum requirements
-Sivir can basically 3 man barron while she tanks baron herself with most decent teams if she has her ultimate up, decent mana to use, and about 275+ ad, 1.75 attackspeed, and about 40%+ crit chance and 30%+ lifesteal. She will need to use spell sheild to block barron's attacks, especially his one that knocks up the person it's targeting.

Date of entry: 4/20/2012

Feedback will be appreciated.

I'm also willing to make changes to this guide if I see them as reasonable.

I also dont care much for illustrations.

I wanna make a tutorial vid for sivir but I dont know how to get recordings from Lolreplay.

Your time to read this guide is much appreciated too.