Vayne is known for scaling extremely well into lategame even if she does not snowball early on, but what people tend to overlook is her early game burst potential that can force opponents out of lane if not outright murder them, even against matchups that supposedly counter her. To be clear Vayne's burst damage is not supposed reach the same level of nuclear annihilation as a dedicated AD/AP caster, rather it is meant to be delivered incrementally, instead of one big nuke she hits you with 2-3 tactical warheads, repositioning each time she does. Many crit-heads are drawn to the Merciless killing sprees that mid to late game vaynes are known for, but fail to hold their own in the early game when their opponents are not deleted in under three seconds. This guide will elucidate on the mistakes that result in these failures, and how to rectify them while providing the crit-heads with an optimized full crit build (that they really should not use because it is obscenely overpowered), as well as a Jungle build, and surprise offtank build, for those of you who like see vayne perform in a variety of different positions.

Often times you see glass cannon builds pop off early. They get fed early and decide to roam through the mid game collecting more heads/eyes. If the enemy team is not demoralized to the point of surrendering early then these early bloomers tend to wilt and die in the late game because they don't know the fine points of playing a glass cannon in a teamfight, and they are the number one target priority. Not only does the enemy team build to counter the strengths of their fed opponent but focus them down with chain CC and burst damage. This lategame performance dropoff is a result of what I call the crackhead playstyle.

The problem with crackheads is that they are too impulsive. They see an immediate opportunity and jump on it without considering the imminent consequences of their actions. Maybe you kill the enemy jungler, but then you get double teamed by alistar and malzahar because you didn't look at the map and as a result you fed malzahar that shutdown bounty. These mistakes are what allow your opponents to buy back into the game and prevent your own team from finishing them off. The open secrets of the High Octain playstyle are delaying gratification, placing wards, looking at the map, letting tankier champions initiate teamfights, and knowing how to position yourself so that you don't get caught out and deleted by burst damage.

These tips are all common sense, but the problem with crackheads is that they lose touch with common sense because they are not relaxed. Don't play like a chimpanzee, play like a chill orangutan. When a chimp finds itself in a risky situation it becomes anxious and agressive. The chill orangutan keeps a level head and knows how to respond because it has exercised forethought, and understands that all it risks is the outcome of a game. The chimp does not hesitate to engage even under poor circumstance, the orangutan does not hesitate to take right action, he has nothing to prove. Play Video

It has come to my attention that the Kraken Slayer Is Absurdly overtuned, and I cannot in good conscience recommend using it in my guides. To elaborate, the Kraken Slayer passive ability does 310 bonus physical damage every third auto-attack at level 18. This effectively boosts the Item's bonus AD from 40 to 143, but it doesn't stop there. Every sixth attack doubles this bonus for 620AD making the Slayer's bonus AD after six strikes 195AD Which is about three to four legendary Items worth of AD on a single Item, in addition to the attack speed and crit stats that it gives. I don't know how this managed to slip by the community and balancing team for so long, but it is absolutley busted and can only be seen as a crutch as it is essentially a one item dps build. All you have to do is rush this Item and then stack health and resistances with a little armor penetration thrown in, to steamroll the other team. They should either smash this item with a nerf hammer or rename it to Malignance, because thats what it is, malignant. Please propagate this PSA to raise awareness. This concludes the Public Service Announcement.

Lethality has to be the single most overrated stat in this game. It bewilders me to see so many cracked up chimps stacking lethality on their builds when it is not the least bit cost effective. If an enemy beefcake stacks 100 armor on top of his base 100 AV at level 18, then the 25% reduction from Black Cleaver will reduce that AV rating by 50, this is roughly the equivalent of three lethality items. The 35% peneration of Lord Dominik's Regards, or Mortal Reminder, will negate 70 armor under the same circumstances, which is almost the equivalent to a fully stacked leathality build. You could combine all three of these items to nullify 95% of your target's armor, but at this point you would just be doing it to troll Rammus. All it takes to counter the lethality of a 3000g legendary is a 300g cloth armor. STOP prioritizing lethality in your builds over stats that your champion actually needs so that you can stop feeding shutdown gold to people who know how to deal with a glass-cannon.

There are a lot of Vayne builds that recommend maxing Silver Bolts first. This is an error. Silver Bolts deal a percentage true damage based on the target's maximum health. This ability is more suitable for mid to late game dps than early game engagements as you will not have as much attack speed, and they will not have as much health or armor for this ability to counter.

It is a much better idea to max out Tumble as it provides burst damage and positional play. They made it scale with AP, which doesn't make any sense because there is only one hybrid item I know of that actually provides AP scaling and that is Guinsoo's Rageblade because they took away my precious gunblade. The AP bonus from rageblade is too insignificant to justify using it on a Vayne build and I am certainly not building full AP just to boost one ability with 50% scaling. Fortunately base damage of Tumble is sufficient for early game burst, its primary function is repositioning anyway. When maxxed out at level five it only has a two second cooldown and can be combined with certain items to effect surprising amounts of burst damage that can catch lane opponents off guard, as well as more easily last hit creeps. Combine this with one point in Condemn and you can flank your opponents and impale them against a wall, or even your own tower for early takedowns. Is Caitlyn annoying you with constant pokes? buy a sheen and then up the ante on her. You know she can't outrun Vayne. (Use Tumble to dodge the net.)

The most common summoner spells you see people running on Vayne are the ever meta flash/ignite combo. If you are playing a glasscannon build then Flash is an appropriate choice, as even a small positional misplay can result in you being eradicated. Flash is often used to secure kills and as a way of surviving positional blunders, but it is not as neccessary as people commonly think. If you play correctly and build correctly, then you can get a lot more out of other summoner spells and not rely on flash.

Ignite is often used to secure kills, but with good strategy and Vayne's proficiency at hunting down her enemies, I find it uneccessary. I may select it when opposing a champion that can cast heals or lifesteal.

Exhaust is my preffered summoner pick for Vayne as it will swing an otherwise uncertain fight in her favor. Cast this on your enemy before they can execute their burst combo and you can mitigate thirtyfive percent of that nuke. It can also be used to good advantage during a ganking situation or jungle altercation. Would you rather flash away from Udyr and allow him to farm your jungle, or would you rather exhaust him and kite him to death?(he may claw your face off either way. It's Udyr, he does what he wants.)

Teleport is a spell I like to take whenever I'm playing in a solo lane as it allows me to maintain pressure and make plays across the map. If your teamates place down wards then it can almost be like having a second jungler. A single cast of this spell can change the outcome of an entire game.

For Items I typically start with Boots and health potions rather than dorans. The boots provide mobility for good positioning and early kills and the potions provide sustain against enemy harassment so that I prefferably don't have to port back until its time to buy the items I want. I usually buy tier two boots after buying my first legendary item and my default pick is Boots of Swiftness, as mobility and positioning are of utmost importance. These may seem like overkill when taking Vayne's passive into consideration, but you need to keep in mind that her passive is only active while moving towards an enemy champion, and tactical retreats are often neccessary to avoid feeding that shutdown gold. The speed of her Tumble ability also scales on MS. It feels good being a speed demon anyways. I'm sure the crackheads can relate.

Other boot selections are situational. If laning against a Xin Zhao or other ad champ that can all in you then the Plated Steelcaps will be a logical choice. Against a mage with strong harass and CC Mercury's Treads will be a viable option, though I find it better to build health and resistances to deal with CC rather than rely on tenacity as there are many situations where it simply won't be effective enough unless you stack it with other sources of tenacity, it won't work on knockups at all either. Berserker's Greaves Give you extra AS but I preffer other options as there are other ways to acuire this stat when it is needed and AS will have diminishing returns in many situations.

WARNINGThis build is busted.
When I threw this together I hadn't worked out the precise numbers until after I was finished. Critical hits are overtuned and a full crit build is abominable. Don't use this build unless you want to ruin everyone's fun. The novelty of deleteing everyone instantly will wear off when you realize that taking something to it's logical extreme is not neccessarily a good idea. Play the Heavy Metal Queen build instead. I'm leaving this up for Scientific purposes.

This is a glass cannon build for all you crit-heads out there. I don't often go full crit, but when I do, I'm playing ranged dps or Tryndamere. If you want the most dps out of your ranged dps then you of course need a crit build. For this build we run Hail of Blades for the burst potential that synergizes with her Silver Bolts. we also take Sudden Impact for its synergy with her tumble and stealth mechanics and because there really aren't any better options for that slot than a meager 9 lethality. Ghost Poro is preffered over Eyeball Collection because in addition to granting adaptive damage, it enhances the effectiveness of the wards that you should be making use of. Ultimate Hunter allows you to spam her ult more often which is always a desireable option. We then take Legend: Bloodline and Cut Down to make her even more formidable lategame.

for this build that first item is either Sheen or Essence Reaver depending on how much gold Vayne has in her purse. I prioritize these items because of how they synergize with Vayne's Tumble ability, granting you early game burst potential that you would not otherwise have. this provides a very strong lane harass and killing potential. Essence Reaver also provides mana on proc granting you more sustain.

After Farming with the Reaver for awhile I can then return and get tier two boots and or the Immortal Shieldbow. I pick the Shieldbow as it is one of the strongest items in the game for a dps champion, providing not only a sizeable damage increase, but twelve percent lifesteal for sustain, and an emergency shield to help you survive clutch situations and positional mishaps.

As a third Item pick I find Runaan's Hurricane to be appropriate. By this point in the game Vayne will benefit more from the fourty percent attack speed buff it provides as her silver bolts will be upgraded and used againt champions with larger health pools. The passive ability of the Hurricane will allow you to push lanes out faster which is typically not what you want to do until midgame starts. This ability also amplifies Vayne's dps in teamfights by allowing her to strike multiple opponents at once which is why I would pick this over Phantom Dancer for this build.

The fourth Item pick Is Infinity Edge. With this Item every crit is even more critical than it already would be. Standard Crit damage is 175% This weapon makes it 225%. I'm wondering if using this thing should count as a war crime now actually.

The Fifth and final major item pick this mainline crit build is Lord Dominik's Regards. This provides much needed late game armor penetration and up to fifteen percent more damage against champions with substantially greater maximum health than you, which should be most of them if you're running a glass cannon build like this. This synergizes with the cutdown rune for a thirty percent total damage boost against beefcakes. If the game lasts long enough to complete this build then go ahead and buy the Elixir of Wrath for even more lifesteal and damage, it wont take up a slot if they are all full.

With the complete build minus the elixir and the 30 magick damage from the Hurricane, one auto-attack following a tumble will deal 1775 physical damage. The full three hit combo with hail of blades will deal 3193 Flat AD boosted by 30% against a target with at least 2000 more hp than Vayne, making the total amount 4151AD with the silver bolts proc dealing an extra 10% true damage on top of that which would be around 400-600 depending on how beefy the tank is and I'm not sure if that is affected by the 30% boost, not that it matters at this point. This is pre-mitigation damage, but I don't care how much armor you stack, even if you survive one salvo, there will be another right behind it.

Having just gotten around to making those precise calculations after having intuitively thrown this build together, I have to say I feel a bit like Oppenhiemer. I just constructed a superweapon and have already unleashed the death star plans on the ineternet. I didn't even factor in the bonus AD from her ult. You know that analogy with the tactical missiles I used at the beginning of this guide? Thats how vayne is supposed to play in theory. All I did was try to make an optimized build. What have I done?...

Our Phantom Fatale runes are the same as our critical darling runes except we pick Zombie Ward instead of ghost poro because we want to use oracle lense to purge enemy wards.

For our Phantom Fatale it is best to start with scorchclaw pup and a potion. You can grab boots and start building towards the shieldbow after farming jungle. If a gank opportunity presents itself you should take it. If the enemy jungler shows himself in top lane you can potentially invade bottom jungle. If you think that you can beat the enemy jungler in a duel then go ahead and invade early regardless, just don't overstay and be ready to bail out if enemy players vansih from their lanes because you walked by a ward. As a jungler you find more potential opportunities to make plays than you typically find in a lane. Be sure to seize as many as you practically can so you can scale up faster at the expense of your adversaries.

My first Legendary pick for Jungle vayne is the Shieldbow for the added sustain and protection during unexpected jungle altercations. With blue buff the mana return of Essence Reaver really is not needed. I suggest buying tier two boots after this.

My second Item pick is Runaan's Hurricane because when farming in the jungle we don't have to worry about pushing out the lanes too early. This allows for faster clearing of monster camps and greater mobility which is even more important for Jungle vayne than lane vayne.

The next pick used to be phantom dancers but now it's the Experimental Hexplate, because I felt is neccessary to remove some of the crit from this build after what happened with the Darling, and because it's a good Item that isn't totally overtuned. Combine this With Ultimate Hunter in your runebook and you get 61 ultimate haste.

The Final item pick is again Lord Dominick's Regards because you can't get 35% armor penetraion without also buying crit chance. If you want more survivability or just feel dirty using crit items then go ahead and buy Black Cleaver instead.

This Is the build I recommend for any team composition. I would even say that this build is probably better than the critical darling build. If I was to pit the two vaynes against each other, I would bet on this one. Why is that? Because it can withstand immense burst damage and then recover from it in the same fight, while providing enough burst and sustained dps to shatter a glass cannon after a single condemn.(I would switch black cleaver for Randuins in a Vayne mirror match.) NEVERMIND, I have to eat crow. I just went back and did the numbers, Crit builds are busted. It comes down to who get's the drop on who. The darling will exterminate anything short of a well fed beefcake in one salvo and even then it won't survive more than three seconds. The Crit builds turn this game into a third person CoD clone because everyone dies to a three shot burst.

Unlike the Critical Darling, the Heavy Metal Queen is a dominatrix that can take as much punishment as she can give. Another advantage to this build is that your opponents won't have much reason to suspect that you are building such a tanky Vayne until you buy your fourth Legendary.(unless they read this guide.) An opponent bound by the meta mindset won't know what to think of this surprise offtank build. To me it seems that the best builds are offensively defensive and defensively offensive.(Balanced, as all things should be...)

For this build I recommend getting Lethal Tempo or Conqueror to enhance Vayne's performance during lengthier altercations and help bully her adversaries in lane. Then take Overheal because it allows her to gain a shield from extra lifesteal. Then take bloodline for more lifesteal, and Last Stand to increase her dps after getting hit with burst damage. Ghost Poro and Ultimate Hunter are taken For Added utility.

As usual I recommend starting with boots and potions. I then recommend you rush Trinity Force as this provides you with burst potetnial similar to what you would get building Essence Reaver while also providing a balance of other stats which make synergize with Vayne's abilities. Next I suggest buying tier two boots and Immortal Shieldbow. Buying Experimental Hexplate after this provides another balanced lump of stats and an ability that synergizes with your ultimate.

The Next Item pick is the one that is most apt to take your enemy by surprise, and that is Sterak's Gage. It provides health, tenacity, attack damage, and most importantly an emergency shield that scales off your bonus health by eighty percent, which synergizes with the shieldbow. With the full build, excluding the elixer, Vayne will have 4031 maximum health with 2030 being bonus health. This means that the gauge proc at thirty percent health will grant a shield of 1624 in addition to the 530 from the shieldbow for a total shield strength of 2154. This gives you ample time to get revenge on the AP caster that just nuked you before they can reload.

The final pick Is Black cleaver. It provides more health and damage along with some armor reduction against the Garen who is stacking Randuin's Omen and Thornmail, because he is sick of being bullied by you in lane. You didn't build full crit though so You don't really need to feel guilty about it.

With 353 AD at level 18 along with the 200% base AD proc from Tri-Force an AA following a Tumble does 977 physical damage. A condemn will do 318PD with an addition 477PD if the target collides with terrain while also stunning them for 1.75s. With her Ult active she gains 55 bonus AD, but more importantly halves the cooldown of Tumble, allowing her to spam it every second, and vanishing momentarily each time she does. This is faster than the bonus AD proc from Tri-force which is 1.5s, so every other Tumble will deal an additional 207PD for a total of 1084PD.