This guide is going to explain how I think best to play Lulu. I'm not a high ELO player but I have had success many times against many good opponents playing many different Mid champs.

I prefer this build to other builds I have seen because it is a very safe build and all around strong build. Items keep you from being squishy, you can put out lots of damage very quickly, you can support your allies the entire game. It's very easy to win your lane with her skill set and out level your opponent.

[Passive]
This benefits from AS; your AS if Pix is following you or an enemy, or your allies if you have them shielded. You can also cast glitter lance from Pix when it is on an enemy or ally. This can be a very fun and interesting passive for getting creep kills, harassing, or sniping people running away.

[Q]
Your main source of damage. It's a SKILL shot that goes through and damages any enemy it comes in contact with and has a very nice range (925). You can really have fun with the casting mechanic as it will shoot one bolt from you and one bolt from Pix, if he is within a certain distance which I am not sure of. Even when Pix is just following you you can aim your cursor close to the two of you to make the bolts shoot off in greatly different directions.


[W]
This really benefits your DPS and gives you a lot of survivability early game as the speed increase helps in avoiding ganks / getting early kills. It also plays defensively very well as it completely disables enemies or help a fleeing ally or yourself. Throw on a shield with a glitterlance at chasing enemies and escape is almost assured.


[E]
This is a very fun spell to play around with using Glitterlance. You can really do some safe harassing / "tower diving" for kills and get away with it pretty easily. I like to target my allied canon minion and snipe enemies that like to camp by tower. You can do this from well outside of tower range.

[R]
This spell makes you pretty much ungankable early game, lets you win most 1v1s, and support your team SO well in team fights. It's a heal, AoE disable, and AoE slow all in one. So powerful.

My runes for Lulu are focused on early game laning, harassing, and killing. But they also play/scale well into her late game roll.

Greater Mark of Magic Penetration because her Glitterlance hit so much harder with it (AND it's so easy to hit with, whether it be "Help Pix!"ing an enemy and casting it or just clearing creeps, it's good for farming and harassing early. You can put out more damage than most every other mid WITH a disable (STRONG slow). If you hit an advancing Kennen with lightning rush or a morde trying to you Mace of spades you, you will stop them in their tracks.

Greater Seal of Replenishment because with a Meki pendant it can guarantee you enough mana to lane for quite some time. I've stayed in lane for 3k gold (not recommended as early catalyst / RoA will provide much lane sustain and anti-gank potential.)

Greater Glyph of Scaling Ability Power because it helps her scale well as support late game and your Magic Pen reds mean you don't NEED early AP to do damage.

Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed because it always helps to dodge brands, kennens, caits, OR any other skill shot mid's, skills. AND it helps you harass in combination with your W.

*ALTERNATE RUNES*

These are Runes I've tried using in the past for various reasons.

Greater Mark of Attack Speed - if you're into the AS/AP lulu. I tried and I don't personally think it's as viable as other builds.

Greater Seal of Armor - helps with harassing and tower diving for early kills, decreasing damage from creeps and certain mid opponents/most jungles. Useful but I feel not necessary as most jungles don't have a strong gank until level 6 which is when you should have your ult anyways which is a very good counter gank.

Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction - Helps with early harass and farming. Somewhat torn between these and the AP/lvl Glyphs but I find it pretty easy to get a blue buff late game, whether it's off a jungle or killing any enemy, which brings the CDR to 39% without the CDR Glyphs. But I'm no perfectionist.

To start off I'm only looking to get Swiftness in the utility tree. I like to get Good Hands because at any point it is highly beneficial to spend as little time as possible dead.

I then focus the rest into the Offense tree. Typical AP build mostly. I have been playing back and forth between getting Summoner's Wrath for the Ignite and Surge Bonuses. I know most everyone thinks Surge is lulzy bad but hear me out: 10-78 (11-85 with mastery) AP from Surge + 20-60 AP from Whimsy means 31-145 AP and if Ignite is on CD +5 baby! When you add in 30% from Rabadon's that's a bonus 188 AP for free. You can't deny that power.

Even though Flash has such Utility I feel it's hard to compare the two. They operate in different ways. So whatever suits your playstyle. Try them both out, see what you like.

Start with Meki Pendant and 2 Health Potion for early harass and lane sustain. With your Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed you should be able to dodge skill shots from other champs like Morgana, Cass, Lux, Nidalee, Ahri, and many others.


sight ward
Your first goal is to farm either 1.45k or so for a Catalyst of Aeons and random pots/wards or 1.75k or so for Catalyst of Aeons, boots and random pots/wards. Catalyst of Aeons is priority as it will give you much more mana capacity to harass and possibly kill (gaining gold), farm (gaining gold), and push lane (denying opponent CS) which all help level up (activating catalyst) as well as more health; ALL of which will decrease effectiveness of harass, and random ganks from jungle. Not getting ganked is good. it's easy to farm/harass from the back lines with Help, Pix! on allied minions and a well aimed glitterlance. But obviously we don't operate in a perfect world. I've been forced to go back / been killed before having enough to buy catalyst. In that case I usually buy whatever pieces I can of Catalyst of Aeons and the usual Pots+Wards.


sight ward
Next is Rod of Ages. This is priority two because it is so easily rushed with early farm and benefits so heavily from early acquisition. It will further solidify your roll as lane winner Mid, provide you the ability to participate quite heavily in team fights as a partial bait-tank and also allow you to win against the squishier carries 1v1 if played correctly.


sight ward
I used to get Morello's Evil Tome before the change and the addition of Athene's Unholy Grail but I now stick with the Grail. It gives a nice little bit of MR for laning against your opponent and you will always have mana to be saving and destroying. You could choose Morello's if they have a regen tank like Dr. Mundo, Volibear, or Singed.


Obviously at any point you should be able to change the build as necessary, if you feel more AP and CDR or better early on go for Fiendish first, if your jungle doesn't require blue and you know you can get it rush catalyst with sapphire crystal as first item. Play the game not the build; it's only a guide.

-*BUT*-


sight ward
From that point I usually like to build a Rabadons if my team and I are good at engaging teamfights and not getting me killed instantly. The immense increase in AP benefits not only your AP DPS roll but also your support roll. You will be able to pick away at enemies with your E + Q combo and keep your allies from dying all very well.

Good late game items for Lulu
Offense

AP Defense

AD Defense

Now admittedly there are stronger AP champs for mid than Lulu. The team needs to be built right because you generally fall into a hybrid Support/AP roll late game. You need another AP damage dealer. If you have an AD top, ADC bot with support and an tank Jungle you're going to be missing on a lot of AP damage in team fights. Not that this can't work and sometimes this can work to your advantage if your enemies are building armor.

Early Game
(1-11): Your main objective is first to farm catalyst ASAP. Depending on the lane, how well I'm CSing and if I've gotten kills/ed I will wait until I have 1675 gold to buy both Boots and Cataylst at the same time. You need to focus on out farming your opponent. In order to do this you need to be very smart with your spells.

The "GTFO Special"

An effective method of turning the tide of losing a lane is to harass as hard as possible when they push the lane. Usually around level 4 once you have all your spells and a 2nd level in glitterlance I like to Whimsy myself, cast Surge, depending on their position and health cast Glitterlance and wait for a "few moments" before casting Help, Pix! and Ignite to give Q time to CD and make sure you hit with it before Pix returns. If they have health pots they probably will have activated one of them and Ignite should be greatly diminishing the amount of healing. From this point it should be very easy to bully them out and force them to Blue Pill. Make sure you last hit EVERY creep during this free time and push the creeps to the tower but NEVER go past half-way unless you see all lanes and jungle elsewhere.


Glitterlance-Try to save them for when your enemy comes forward to poke you or last hit a creep and line them up so they do as much damage to creeps. As you level Glitterlance you will notice how easy it is to farm and push.

Whimsy-helps out a lot in this phase of the game for not only harassing easier but dodging any skill shots or avoiding ganks. If played right you should often be pushing the creep wave against their turret denying their CS. Unless you see their jungler ganking another lane don't engage the turret. Stay back and play defensively.

Help, Pix!-I mainly use this spell offensively as it's harassment potential is huge. If you hit with Glitterlance and cast Help, Pix! shortly thereafter Glitterlance should be off cool down before Pix returns to you allowing you to get another shot off. This can be really frustrating for enemies and they usually aren't expecting it. THOUGH this can be very useful for saving yourself from ignite deaths and any random DoTs your opponent might have.

TL;DR: Farm Catalyst, Stay Alive.

Mid Game
(11-18): Hopefully at this point you have 1 or 2 kills under your belt, a catalyst and boots. You should start buying wards and pots whenever you go back to base as it will further increase your survivability and help you out in the next roll you should start to fill: Ganker.

As any typical mid should do, help out your lanes if you have the opportunity. Lulu is a strong team fighter and can really turn the tides of any fight with the element of surprise.

Whimsy allows for a lot of map mobility with the flat 35% movement increase. Also very useful in ganking and counter-ganking.

Activate Surge, Whimsy in from the bushes, Cast your Glitterlance into Help, Pix! on the enemy with Ignite. If they don't die to that there's a good chance you can finish with another Glitterlance while Pix is following them.

It's not always that easy nor is that what you should always do. Save "Whimsy" for disabling them or the damage dealer, save "Help, Pix!" for shielding a squishy or buffing your AD's DPS with Pix, Faerie Companion.

You should really start to get a lot of kills and/or assists here. Really focus on getting the first towers down and aggressively warding their bushes. You can really start to contain them and take advantage of random roamers. As team fights start to become more frequent focus on supporting your team.

Late Game
(18>): Now you should really focus on making sure your team wins team fights, not necessarily getting kills (*The two are NOT mutually exclusive, however). Keep your team alive, kill theirs. Pretty simple but you really need to pay attention to each team member and where they are, what they're doing, and what enemies are near them. Try to save your ult for not only saving allies but getting as many enemies in the throwback effect, it's a very useful team fight disable and can really assist your Melee ADC to stick to enemies and focus them down. You can really mitigate TONS of damage in a team fight if you Wild Growth the right people, Help, Pix! the right people, and Whimsy the right enemies.

Examples of Lulu ingame.

Survive and Dive- Play Video
Can't Kill Lulu- Play Video
From Downtown- Play Video
How to Team fight Play Video

Not a meta-conforming build but it is extremely effective and fun.

And I'm definitely not perfect but here are some of my scores.