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Poppy Build Guide by

Harder,Better, Faster, Stronger

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Poppy Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (38) More Poppy Guides

Spells:

Flash

Exhaust

Ability Order

Poppy Passive Ability

More Poppy Counters

Introduction

Hi again everybody.
Upon completing my very 1st guide and realizing I'm now finally able to actually hyperlink skills and items I decided to move on and share what is definitively my best achievement in LoL.

My flawlessly perfect Poppy Build.

You might notice that I sound pretty confident on this, and I am, oh you have no idea how confident I am, I'm so confident that I'm more confident than the most confident guy you ever met, this is how confident I am.
Being this confident (so, so confident) I'ma tell you all less confident people that I really do understand how strong and yet beefy AP poppy is, but I prefer (or I should say that I am more confident) in my way.
This is a beefy DPS/offtank build that later in the game turns into the beefiest Carry you'll ever see.
Seriously at full build you'll feel like a goddess passing her divine judgment onto inferior beings.

important note:
Probably the worst part of this build is that you have but 1 path to walk; items, masteries, summoner spells, and runes are dogmas meaning you have to take my word that any attempt to improve the build or to adapt it to your playstyle will just make you weaker than you would be under my lead.

Now let's learn how to surgically implant your hammer into enemies faces.
/confident

Pros/cons

Pros
-hits harder
-better teamfighter than the most
-faster than the speed of love (credits to B. Griffin)
-Arguably stronger lategame character in LoL
-Recovers fast and is hard to kill
-Impossible to chase
-can nullify an enemy in teamfights

Cons
-Weak Early game
-probably impossible to get a pentakill
-Hevily dependent on player skill

Skills

Valiant Fighter

(passive)
One of those lovely passive when you have it and *******ed passive if the enemy has it, will save your life more time than you can possibly expect

Devastating Blow

Hits hard, cooldown is amazingly low, it wastes nearly no mana, procs , all in 1 skill, people will fear your hammer

Paragon of Demacia

Damage and armor for free? damn rite son. Plus a nice speed bonus; with incresed speed from and you'll be faster than someone using ghost.
Great tool for escaping, chasing and closing distances in a few sec (not to mention to proc some more)

Heroic Charge

How well you wield this skill makes the difference between good poppy and ****ty poppy.
you should never attempt to use this skill on a team chase unless you know you're gonna kill the enemy with your solitary chase.
When fighting in jungle you'll find fairly easy to slam people on walls and stun em.
The last but maybe most important use for this skill tho is set up ganks, you can forget about the stun if you can get behind the enemy and shoulder charge him into your team or at least closer to the team or to a teammate with the right CC move.

Diplomatic Immunity

(Ultimate)
Do never waste this skill, this ultimate will grant you powerful tower dives but it can also be a great escape tool, more enemies are chasing you? pick the right target to ult and run away with .
Picking the right champ to escape is easy
Priority goes to the one with no CC
if they all have CC get the one with less CC
In team fights instead you should either ult the most threatening enemy and single it OR ult the worst damage dealer/Crowd Controller and ignore it while nuking the hell out of enemy carry (you sacrifice your increased damage but you won't be harmed by the carry, meaning he can only flee you)

Masteries

Blink of an Eye

We're getting as summoner spell, so we're getting this

Cripple

We're using as summoner spell, gimme 1 good reason not to power it up

Runes

greater mark of desolation Greater Mark of Desolation
We're using AD, we're running armor pen, simple as that

Greater Seal of Clarity
These are vital, despite the low mana required to use you'll still burn your mana when fighting, having some good mana regen throughout game is vital to me.
If you prefer a more tanky/DPS rune orientation go for

_____

greater glyph of shielding
I kinda love these now, used to run because 5% CD from the start ain't so bad, but really, now is a coin flip to me, since I'm low on runepages I currently go scaling MR

greater quintessence of vigor Greater Quintessence of vigor
The earlygame sustain in lane is a must, these + will make you stay in lane for ages.
Greater Quintessence of desolation Can also be good and add some nice damage early game.

Summoner Spells

Let's be clear on this, I know damage is increased diplomatic immunity, but what you're gonna get with the combination of these 2 summoner spells is amazing.
"BAAAAW Serpe! I prefer having "
ok, 1st kill yourself (no seriously do it); 2nd your will make you faster that if you're following my build.

Flash

You can position yourself for a successful heroic charge (meaning you stun the guy or you take him back into your team)

_____
Exhaust

Is all part of a bigger plan! other than ridiculize enemy carries this spell can help you get into position for a stunning

The Poppy combo (a.k.a. the Bigger plan)

the best way to synergize your summoners and your skills is the following
to get into the right position (usually flashing out of a bush) for -> into a wall obtaining a nice stun -> hit -> -> -> hit -> (if you have ) -> hit
Then keep hitting and spamming , you should be able to use it around 3 times before is off CD again

The Mindset of Poppy

I hope you know a little about Chess either way it will be damn hard to understand the metaphor I'm trying to make.

Poppy is a pawn

Even if she gets very fed early game she cannot dominate till very late.
Your primary job ain't getting kills for yourself, your primary job is to make sure your team won't ever lose a teamfight, even tho it can cost your life.
Always focus on nullifying the stronger enemy when teamfights occur, is not important that you kill it, is important that you make so that he can't do **** for the fight.
If you have to either save your life or save your carry's life always save your carry.

Gank Gank Gank!

Poppy is a naturally strong ganker thx to high mobility, burst damage and a depositioning skill. Whenever you're offered the chance to leave your lane and gank do so; everytime you bluepill and there is no need for you to rush back to your lane look for a gank 1st.

Promotion

Being a pawn tho Poppy can get promoted, in chess a pawn gets promoted when he reaches the other end of the table, Poppy gets promoted when she reaches .
At this point you are the best char in you team, you have damage, survival, speed and crit, try to lay your hands on both buffs (or at least 1, golem will make you able to spam mindlessly in combat and use constantly to roam the map faster, while lizard makes sure that enemies don't run from you) and start beating the living **** out of your enemies, you can pretty much roflstomp on everything and get out relatively unharmed. And it gets even better when you have !!!!

Look mommy I'm solo! (gameplay tips)

Thanks to the metagame Poppy is now considered a solo top.
Due to her lack of farming she's not exactly the best solo top alive, but her kit gives her some good advantages.

Laning phase

1)Since you're going solo top turn your starting into a philosopher's stone as soon as you're given the chance.

2)It's highly unlikely for you to be pushing your lane as your main damage is a single target nuke, Focus on last hitting.

3)at lvl 5 you will have lvl 3 , poke your opponent with it every time you can do that safely, be sure to hit and then back immediately, you'll have to wear them down, they need to be scared of coming near you, if they aren't they will outfarm you.

4)Coordinate ganks with your jungler.
A nice trick is to use to tower dive your enemy with your jungler (be sure to pull turret aggro)

5)if the enemy gets to your tower him into turret or wall and then use

6)If your opponent is not in lane, your minions passed the river, and you have no need to B, ROAM!. Poppy moves very fast across the map, especially with this build, take that advantage.

Teamfights

1) is an anti-carry

2)If no one else can, initiate fights by using on enemy AP carry OR onto the less harmful enemy (low CCs r low damage, someone who can't stop you) to kill the AD carry (this if the enemy AP is not a huge threat to your teammates)

3)When running low on health retreat, recover enough HP through then go back in; Your proupose is to sting like a bee

4)always be aware of the duration of your ultimate when tower diving, if your ult ends and you're still under tower the enemy can CC you and focus you down in a matter of seconds.

5)once carries are gone take care of bruiser/tanks, does significant damage to high health chars

6)regardless of their roles remember than you can melt any fed opponent, so if you feel that someone should go down before the carries take care of that.

Item explaination

Since this guide has been up I've been facing some questions from readers about my itempath.
This section is aimed to clear any doubts you might have.

Regarding Force of Nature

The common critic here is about why I take this item so early, before even completing [Trinity force].
It's pretty simple, really; my playstyle with revolves more on speed than sheer damage, I actually get sheer damage late, but being quick is my 1st concern. will still deal tons of damage just with proc and its normal damage, so having some actual defense and sustain early is greater advantage

Regarding Youmuu's/Brutalizer

wrote:

why the ? Seems a really odd choice. All of Poppy's abilities are primarily magic damage - could you possibly swap it out for a hybrid item?

This question made me realize what of an unknown object really is.
Contrary to popular belief not all Poppy skill damage is magical.
damage formula does magic damage for:
1)the AP ratio damage
2)the enemy HP based damage
3)eventual / proc
Yet being an autoattack enhancer it does also you autoattack damage, and that's reduced by armor, not by magic resist (yes, now you understand why this skill does more damage the higher is )
Now, since getting mpen when you build so much AD is not exactly the smartest thing of the day at least we can rise the damage by exploiting the arpen.
It's also noticeable that you'll actually have a 55% crit chance chance and a nice active to exploit (crit and active are the reasons for I consider this item better on poppy than )

y so situational? dat 6th item

You will eventually gonna have to sell that philosopher stone
These are the possible last items and my opinion on them

ITEMS I LIKE

Banshee's veil

This is my favorite and as such was part of my build. Lategame with the items I suggested, Poppy is already pretty strong, at this point I love too boost what I think are her weaknesses. Mana-Health-defense against casters plus a spellshield that is really useful.

Hextech Gunblade

Quite frankly this is a very good option, it gives you more damage a lot of lifesteal/spellvamp that combine perfectly with your kind of char Yet lategame I prefer boosting my defensive stats so that I can be the last man standing.

_____

ITEMS I DO NOT LIKE

Phantom Dancer

Now seriously why would you? I don't get it, in my opinion getting aspd on a burst char is pointless, the crit and the movespeed will be good, but seriously redundant and not helping you survive.

guardian angel

Yeah I mean... it can be useful, and has some decent defensive stats, yet I think it does not add much to the table compared to others on this particular playstyle. if I'm really starving for armor I'd rather get

This is my point of view, quite frankly I used different 6th items, but in oh so many poppy games I found out that most of the time the item I need more is the veil.
I'm not telling you is 100% perfect, I'm telling you that is the most likely to be needed.
Disregard my liking these are all viable items in people opinion.

and in the end...

...the love you take is equal to the love you make
(great song)
I hope you like my guide, and I hope you're going to make my e-peen grow by voting.
I checked the comment requirement to vote since my 1st guide got downvoted as starter and I will never know why, so this time I'm defending myself.
I wanna thank my Friend matteo for grammar checking this **** at 3am.
I hope you all will enjoy playing my unique Poppy, and I hope your enemies will rage hard in /all

I do pretty much carnage everytime using this build, and I'm curious to see how will people do so feel free to send me screenshots of your scores, I consider myself quite a good player but I know there are many better, so I hope to see what this can do in the hands of a real pro.
So I can go like "I'm the Blacksmith that forged the stronger weapon for the stronger player" or something like that.

Go out there and make me proud people

Update history

october 9 2011
- changed glyphs as now I use scaling mres instead of flat CD and is working good
- added small chapter about dominion

October 16 2011
- fixed layout accordingly to SirSpankALot review

November 2 2011
- Huge layout remake following JhoiJhoi's review
- Guide adapted to Solo top playstyle to fit the current metagame
- item path changed
- swapped with greater quintessence of Vigor