About the author

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Hey guys my name is Sean or Elixr and welcome to my first Vayne guide. I have been playing League of Legends for about a year now, as well as my knowledge of the game I have been exclusively playing Vayne for a little on three months. This has given me suitable time to test different item builds and apply various mechanics to my Vayne play.

What does Vayne bring to a team

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Vayne is prominently recognised as a hyper carry with the ability to kite enemies with a lack of a gap closer such as; Singed, Aatrox and Darius. Vayne's ability to kite comes from her abilities with Tumble and Condemn allowing her to create distance between her and the enemy. Vayne has insane damage generated from her Silver Bolts true damage passive and with this build her damage and kiting ability is amplified ten fold.

What will this guide cover?

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This guide will cover the summoner spells, items, ability sequence, masteries and runes all new Vayne players should at least try out. The guide will also go into detail regarding the general play style of a Vayne including: team fights, laning and mechanics. I will also explore the difference between the common Bloodthirster vayne as opposed to the revamped Blade of the Ruined King build.

Last edited 16/7/2013

As with all champions in the League Vayne has her strengths and weaknesses. Vayne is an ideal pick if your team composition is in need of damage. Vayne's damage comes largely from her Silver Bolts ability.

Pros Vayne's kit is very multi purpose allowing her to kite effectively with use of her Tumble and Condemn. Vayne can also use her kit to produce a high amounts of damage through her Silver Bolts true damage and Final Hour's attack damage. Vayne can stun enemies by Condemning an enemy against a wall, following this up with her other abilities will almost always be a sure kill against a squishy enemy such as Ashe in the late game phase due to her high attack and true damage. Vayne also has a stealth mechanic which is activated upon using Tumble while Final Hour is active, this adds to her ability to kite. This also gives Vayne the ability to surprise her enemies quite easily and in most cases give her a kill. If Vayne is played right it can be very rewarding to you and your team allowing enemies to be under constant DPS from her.

Cons Vayne is has a short range of 550 forcing her to be played with a passive support such as Sona to negate the high amount of poke she will most likely take from ADCs with a higher range than her like Caitlyn. Because of her short range she is forced to have exceptional positioning throughout the laning phase of every game because without it you will take a lot of unavoidable damage early game. As well as having to be weary of positioning the whole game due to her low range all Vayne's are expected to be played to a very high level because of the standard set by professional players such as DoubleLift of CLG and WildTurtle of TSM. This is possibly her biggest con as you will get flamed if you are not seen juking and dodging all of the enemies skill shots while firing back at them.

Play Video

You typically want to take these masteries on most ADC's in the game for Season 3, it gives attack damage, armor penetration, more shield when using Barrier, health and armor. These are very standard masteries and if you can position yourself in the laning phase well enough these masteries should be just fine.

These runes will give Vayne a considerable amount of early game sustain through her Quintessence of Life Steal and damage from her Greater Mark of Attack Damage. She will also gain much needed armor and magic resistance benefiting her all around early game trading with the enemy support and ADC. I have chosen only two quints of lifesteal and one attack damage quint so Vayne can trade early game more effectively while still being able to lifesteal some damage she takes.

The first thing to remember when choosing your summoner spell is to remember that it is all personal preference. If you prefer Ignite over Barrier than by all means do it. My personal preference and in my opinion the best combination for summoner spells for Vayne would be Barrier and Flash. These two summoners give Vayne two options in dueling or escaping. She can use Barrier to win trades and with most ADCs opting for Barrier it creates a fair playing field. Since Vayne is usually very highly prioritised Flash is a great option for escaping the enemies grasp. I would only ever take Cleanse if the enemy team had a lot of CC with champions like Malphite, Malzahar, Taric and Janna

I max Silver Bolts over Tumble because it gives you excellent early game trading potential. It is also very mana efficient because Silver Bolts is a passive costing zero mana. I take early point in all three abilities because I believe it is vital to have a level three Condemn. It gives the opportunity for an early lane kill by a stun, if Vayne has a Leona in lane the double stun combination is very deadly.

Early Game

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Early game as Vayne is the most difficult phase in the whole game. Her range is low leaving her susceptible to harassment from the enemy botlane. However if you have superior positioning and stay out of the way (by using Tumble) of the enemy you can farm in ease. Positioning in the early game phase is difficult to say the least with Vayne, you have to find a happy medium where you can farm and not take too much poke from the enemy support but at the same time not be so out of the way of the support that you have difficulty farming because the enemy ADC continuously hits you with auto attacks and abilities. Harassing the enemy botlane is also very difficult early game because you have to be weary of the minion damage since you have very little initial HP. If you clear the melee minions before the enemy ADC you can try and get some shots off because they will have less minions and take more damage if they try and trade back.

Mid Game

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In the mid game you should have your Blade of the Ruined King and Zeal. These two items will give you a huge amount of kill potential due to the high attack speed, life steal and critical strike chance. You should be looking to trade more often with the enemy if you did not die too many times early, you should rack up kills here if you and your support synergise and coordinate your attacks effectively. You should also be looking to start taking towers and dragons to build map control and a gold lead. However if you did die a lot of times in the early laning phase than you should look to freeze the lane at your tower or near one so you are more likely to survive a gank.

Late Game

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Vayne's power is greatly emphasised at the end of the game due to her Silver Bolts. By this time you should have your full build and look to assasinate the enemy squishies, these are champions with not much health like Ashe. This can easily be achieved by using the stealth from Final Hour and using Condemn to stun them and kill them. You should always stay with your team during a push or a Baron attempt since you have so much damage.

Teamfights

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During teamfights as Vayne you should predominately stay towards the back of your frontline. This makes it harder for the enemy tanks to use their crowd control on you and you can overall avoid poke and damage in the pre teamfight. When the fight erupts you generally do not want to Tumble straight in because this will most likely get you killed. What you want to do is wait for every champion to blow their CC and hopefully avoid it yourself. After this has occured you want to try and get shots off at anyone you possibly can. As an ADC it is your job to do as much damage as you can to the enemy team. A common misconecption is that the ADC needs to dive straight for the enemy ADC. This will get you killed and is not beneficial overall. After the team fight you should look to kite the remaining enemies.

Play Video

This video basically shows how to kite as a ranged chamption and if you have a spare 8 minutes and want to improve in League I would highly recommend you watch it.

Korean Build

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The Asian League of Legends scene has improved the North American and European scenes and has given an entirely new outlook on the way to play the game in general and the way to play specific champions. With the introduction of the Korean LoL scene we have seen many new and innovative builds been made. The one I obviously want to focus on is Vayne. Koreans have started rushing Blade of the Ruined King in Season 3 as opposed to Bloodthirster which was/is preferred by many NA players. But why? The answer is simple, the Blade gives Vayne more versatility when fighting. She can split push and use the Blade active to easily out skill someone or run away faster than them.

Traditional Build

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The traditional Vayne build sees players rush the Bloodthirster and max her Tumble as opposed to her Silver Bolts. This gives you a lot more burst damage with the tumble proc but not a lot of sustained damage, this is where the BoTRK and maxing silver bolts is so much more beneficial it gives Vayne players much more sustained damage and this does better when trying to win a lane or kill someone late game. Bloodthirster build was considered the best way to build Vayne for all of Season 2 and the early part of Season 3. This was because Vayne did ridiculous amounts of burst damage when she used Tumble and had over over 150 attack damage at level 9. Many players saw that as too good to pass up in the laning phase and it was considered the only way to build Vayne.

Vayne is an incredibly fun, high DPS champion that brings a tonne of damage to any team composition if played correctly and if you can get past her difficult early game to make it to her magnificent late game. Thank you very much for taking the time out of your day to read my guide and I hope that I can make many more for you all :)