Hi my name is Raver and i'l be writing my first guide on Lulu, the Fae Sorceress.

In this guide i'l be discuss a support build for Lulu. I will discuss masteries, runes and items that I think will fit Lulu the best and give her the best team presence in the game.

Some info about me

I started playing this game two years ago because I had four friends who played and they needed a fifth. Naturally, they gave me the support position because none of them wanted to play that role and I was still learning at the time. At first I thought supporting was incredibly easy but as I progressed, I learned that support is one of the harder roles to learn. Fast forward to now and I'm still playing support (though I have learned to play other roles). My knowledge of supporting as a role is pretty comprehensive and watching some of the pro support players offering their insight validates my ideas because often, we'd have the same views on how to play. Before Lulu came out, the support pool was incredibly small (come to think of it, it still is). There were the healing trio: Soraka, Sona, and Taric. There was the cc tanks: Alistar, Leona, Blitzcrank and sometimes Taric. Then there were oddball champions like Janna who had lots of utility. I learned how to play almost all the support champions fairly well and I mained Sona for the longest time. But Riot felt that she was incredibly OP and gave her a series of nerfs that placed her at the bottom. Lulu came in around that time and I figured it was worth playing a new support champion to replace Sona.

Released March 20, 2012

Lulu is designed with the current support meta in mind whereas the previous riot designated support champion, Karma, was not. Lulu is innovative and fun as she is the first to have access to a polymorph ability. She also has a host of utility spells that allow her to control battle the way she sees fit. In the hands of a good pilot, you have a support character that can absolutely dominate battles, in the hands of a bad pilot you will get a squishy support that is more likely to feed than help.

Pros
-Fun to play
-Turns enemy champions into squirrels
-Variety of utility spells for a variety of situations
-Spammable spells
-flexible builds
-Decent kiting abilities
-Duh, Yordle power

Cons
-Must have good map awareness
-Gets less gold in game than teammates
-Know when and where to ward
-Must have extensive knowledge of other champions to prioritize correctly
-Must know when to cast your spells
-Needs to have perfect positioning at all stages of the game

TL;DR

Lulu brings good utility to the team. She can adapt to different situations in terms of skilling order and items. The problem is that both her learning curve and the general demands of a support role can be alot to take in at once. It requires a very sensitive pilot with a good intuitive feel of the support role and Lulu's abilities.

A great harassing tool, rewards you for auto attacking the enemy champions and can sneak in quite a bit of damage if left unchecked.

Tips
-Get yourself into position if you're trying to harass with this. The homing beams can be blocked by creeps.


It's a great ccing tool and can pack quite a punch if maxed first, the fact that you and pix can both fire it allows for good coverage.

Tips
-Since Pix fires Glitterlance when you cast it. Casting Help, Pix! on a creep or champion can extend the range of glitterlance.
-Maxing this first lets you hit harder in lane by yourself. Consider this when you're leveling up your skills


Things just got dirty with this spell, the polymorph ability is insane when casted on an enemy. It is so useful I hardly cast it on myself or my teammates in the late game. At 40% CDR and max level of Whimsy, a person becomes a squirrel every 4-5 seconds for a total duration of 2.5 seconds. Team fights become incredibly one sided with this ability. They can't attack and they can't cast spells making this spell a silence and charm combined...a spammable silence and charm. When used on a teammate, it boosts AP and gives a nice speed buff, its great disengage spell and on a rare occasion, can really give that extra juice to an already or soon to be fed ap carry

Tips
-Use this on a enemy champion diving your carry so that your team can take the polymorphed champion out of the fight quickly
-Whimsy acts as a silence so you can use it on anyone channeling an ult to end it (Galio, Nunu, etc)
-Self cast this when going back to lane. You get there faster
-Max this when your lane is stalled and you and your lane partner have good communication to coordinate harass
-Alternatively, if your ap mid laner/ap jungler comes down often, maxing Whimsy gives an AP boost which can help


Allows for some neat tricks, you can cast this on your opponent in your harass sequence for some extra damage and extra reach with Glitterlance (pix follows your enemy if casted on them and Pix also casts glitterlance potentially tripling your range of glitterlance), or you can put it on your friend and have him harass (pix will attack the target similar to following your attack). The ability gives sight which is useful with stealth champions and bush huggers. The shield is the cherry on top. A true utility spell

Tips
-cast it on a champion that can go invisible early on in the fight so that even when they do try to go stealth mode, your team can still see them
-Max this if the other team is trying for the aggressive laning strategy, the shield lets your adc farm under harass and lets you stay behind the lines and use your partner as an extension for your Glitterlance (See Glitterlance tips)
-Alternatively, you can max Help, Pix! for offense by letting you and your adc out trade harass skirmishes


A great ult, this kinda acts like Alistar's knock up, except it can target any ally for it's effect. It's a great secondary initiator after your tank jumps in for the teamfight. It also provides a health bonus so you can save a teammate (or yourself) from a sticky situation. Putting this on a offtank with a good initiation (like Hecarim) will benefit them the best as the surround aura slows anyone that gets near it.

Tips
-Great secondary initiator. Stay close to your main initiator if you want to use this as soon as they go in.
-You can "bait" teammates with low health with your ult. The ult gives them extra health and you can easily turn that chase around
-If by any chance you get caught with your team close by. Cast this on yourself and you can potentially be the "initiator" of that fight. Not exactly recommended but its better than just dying. Don't worry about saving the ult, the CD is low enough as is without taking into consideration the CDR you're getting.

My personal skill sequence is support/utility oriented, maxing her Whimsy and Help, Pix! whenever possible but taking one level of Glitterlance in the beginning to help your harassing combo. Taking Wild Growth whenever possible. Straightforward skill sequence honestly.

I do not believe maxing Glitterlance first because I believe it's primary goal is to slow. If you are in Bot lane, it means you are with another person, you guys are working together as a team. So your job would be to slow them and disable them from casting then have your laning partner (usually an AD carry go in for damage). Yes this is a team effort and requires coordination but I firmly believe that you are a utlity champion similiar to Janna and not damage oriented like Sona. Your Glitterlance is spammable even at level 1 whereas your Whimsy has a 18 second cooldown at level 1 with a polymorph duration of 1.5 seconds.

So TL;DR this is what you need to know when you're on a pre-made or your team has good communication

> = >

However, I understand that not everyone has good communication, and not everyone gets on skype (especially true if you solo queue) I will concede that at this point, maxing Glitterlance has it's benefits because it gives you lane presence without depending on your potentially unskilled/uncommunicative ad carry.

In this situation, you'd probably have better luck with this sequence

> > >

Bear in mind, you are a support. Your job is to protect and enable your AD carry. Your unique kit is only beneficial if used correctly. But first lets discuss in depth what your job entails.

Supporting is a different job and requires a different mindset as such. Not only are you protecting your AD carry, you are providing him with space to grow. You have no reason to take any CS from him, you have enough gold coming in from your quints, masteries, and items. And your core build is relatively inexpensive even for a support. With that in mind you have to give him all the gold possible.

You aren't sitting around doing nothing either, one of your goals is to zone the enemy AD carry and support. Zoning is described as creating an area of which the enemy will not want to walk into. You have to play aggressively and not allow them near the creeps to deny both gold and experience. In order to zone, you have to harass which is covered even more in the sections below.

Supporting requires you to have a good sense of map awareness. In many games, I've seen careless laners get caught up in what they're doing and get eaten up by the junglers. Your job is to keep an eye out on them through a combination of warding, intuition, and Clairvoyance if you chose it. Knowing the different jungle routes will certainly help you out in this endeavour but more importantly knowing when and where to ward. Warding is a unique part supporting, you are tasked with providing visual information on where the enemy is (and isn't by that extension) So it is your job to put them down in the places that will benefit the team the most. In general, you lay them in choke points where they will most likely see someone as oppose to no one. Dumping a ward on the neutral buffs will tell you when they respawn and when someone comes to take them. Throughout the game you will need to ward so it is advisable to pick up a Ruby Sightstone ASAP along with some spare wards.

Some generally good spots to ward throughout the game

Big creeps - Dragon and Baron
Buffs - Both yours and the enemies golems and wraiths
Choke points - locations that is more likely to see movement because of access to other key locations

Lulu is unique in the sense that she has a combo that can harass like Leona or Maokai, her sequence is

Whimsy enemy Glitterlance followed by Auto attack

You can throw in Help, Pix! on either the person you're harassing or your teammate depending on the situation.

This is a fairly effective method of harassment, by staying in the bush and maintaining control of it, you can get in for some serious deceptive damage each time you pull this off. Keeping a ward in the other bush might be helpful in keeping track of the opponent's movements. Otherwise, starting off with Help, Pix! on the enemy will provide vision enabling you to pull off the rest of your combo. Be sure to coordinate your harass with your ADC, whimsy turns 2v2 skirmishes into 1v2 which can force recalls, burn health potions or drain mana for supports with heals. All of which are favourable for you and your laning partner

Bear in mind that her passive can be blocked by creeps so you have to position yourself correctly so that the champion you're harassing will take all the damage instead of the opponent's creeps which will push the lane and could possibly take cs away from your AD carry

- the most obvious choice of the runes, feed that mana hungry lulu

- Penetration is useful at bot lane because taking MR in runes and masteries is not always preferred and it lets you have harass presence in lane with your passive and potentially your Glitterlance if you choose to max it first

- Early CDR lets Lulu spam her spells more and eases your need for more CDR in the form of items

- Extra Gold throughout the game is great to get extra wards and reach core items faster

Offensive
Sorcery - A big reason why I'm in the offensive tree in the first place. Having CDR in the beginning is crucial to Lulu as she shouldn't pick up her CDR item until she finishes her Sightstone and level two boots

Expose Weakness - Rewards you for coordinating harass. Works well in an aggressive lane.

Mental Force - A little extra ability power is good since all your skills scale with AP.

Arcane Knowledge - This mastery for magic penetration combined with your magic penetration marks will be felt by the enemy laners in the early game. A good round out for the offensive tree

Utility
Fleet of Foot - Just an extra point in this to get to the next stage in the tree. Doesn't take anyway from this since it gives you movement speed which any squishy support would like more of.

Meditation - Mana regen is a must for the early game

Scout - Really self explanatory. Gives you even more bang for your buck for your already free trinket.

Summoner's Insight - Flash more often, Exhaust more often, Ignite more often. Worth sinking 3 points into because 10% adds up as the game goes on.

Strength of Spirit - A quaint little mastery. Gives bonus health regen and combos well with Expanded Mind

Greed - Yep, 2 extra gold per 10. This combined with Nomad's Medallion/ Ancient Coin combined with the money saved by buying Ruby Sightstone/ Sightstone lets you buy nice things

Scavenger - More gold. You can never go wrong with more gold. Trust me.

Wealth - A crucial mastery. Getting this raises your starting gold to 525 which lets you buy 2 sight wards and the Ancient Coin. This starting build lets you stay in lane longer without having to go back for wards and leave your ad by himself which is by far the worst thing you can do as a support. This mastery is the reason why I don't get the Biscuiteer and Explorer's Ward mastery

Expanded Mind - More mana for harass and utility. Combos well with Strength of Spirit . Lets you stay in lane longer. Good overall mastery

Bandit - A cool mastery that rewards you for harassing your enemies. It's worth taking because you can easily accumulate money just by waiting for the AD to hit a creep and you then walk up and hit him for some gold. It's even better when they have a melee support like Alistar, in which case go crazy.

Intelligence - Yay, even more CDR. With this, your CDR from the offensive tree and the CDR from your runes gives you a whopping 17.5% CDR AT LEVEL 1! So even if you're behind and can't afford the Talisman of Ascension and have to continue buying wards, don't worry. CDR is covered very well for the early-mid game

Wanderer - I like extra movespeed especially when combined with your self casted Whimsy and Mobility Boots. Let's you scurry around the map; warding the objectives, sweeping wards, help gank mid or help your invading jungler who got caught.

Summary of Masteries because TL;DR
My mastery choices benefit Lulu in the early game alot. Giving extra CDR and mana regen to let her protect her AD and harass often. I also include some extra movement speed boosts and gold gen so that she can reach her core items faster to make up for the lack of masteries benefiting her late game.

The best choices

/ - New Season 4 support items. These are a god send for a support like Lulu. Unlike Philosopher's stone, you can pick up the ancient coin at the fountain spawn and start generating gold immediately. The health/mana regen is really just icing on the cake. Hint: Rush the Medallion ASAP

Talisman of Ascension - Builds out of the above two but it deserve's its own section. Seriously, look at this item. 20% CDR, Speed boost active, health/mana regen and STILL generates more gold. This is THE item for supports by far. You can easily hit this item with lulu by 15 minutes without taking any CS from your lane partner. You will literally sit at 37.5% CDR once you get this and Lulu absolutely thrives on having more access to her abilities.

- Lesser version of Ruby Sightstone. Try to hit this the same time you can get level 1 boots but if you had to choose, prioritize boots over this item. See Ruby sightstone for detailed explanation

- S3/S4 Item and one of the best items for support. With heart of gold taken out at the end of S2, and lucky pick being a mediocre item choice, we're left very gold hungry. Luckily, Ruby sightstone has come to save the day. Building off a regular sightstone, we get an item that gives free wards. You get 5 charges and they replenish when you go back to the fountain. The restriction being you can only have out 3 wards at a time and placing down the fourth will replace the first one you put down. Once you have this item, it is time to switch to the Sweeping Lens for trinkets as having an extra totem ward is pointless.

- Default boots for many champions. The tenacity is the main reason to grab these, when faced against a cc aggro bot lane combo, the tenacity can get you out of the sticky sitation. The MR is decent addition but doesn't usually do much.

- My personal boots of choice. If you're extremely good at positioning and know that you won't get caught, these can amazing boots. The enhanced movespeed can really get you places fast, whether it be sweeping wards before enemies come or running to help a teammate in distress.

- With Boots of mobility's nerf in 4.3, boots of mobility isn't as amazing because it really sucks in teamfights. It still is amazing in getting back to lane and reaching teammates faster but in fights. Boots of swiftness offers a balance of increased speed in and out of combat but at a slower pace than boots of mobility. When deciding which boots to get, I default to boots of mobility but if I notice a lot of slows on the enemy team, it wouldn't be a bad idea to grab boots of swiftness.

Consumables

Sight ward - You don't need to get as much now because of ruby sightstone. But taking a couple in the beginning or picking one or two with sightstone allows you to have even better ward coverage

- S4 changes make Vision ward meh. On one hand, they can last literally for the entire game, the downside is that they're visible and the enemy can kill them without their own vision ward. Buy these sparingly and place them in locations where your enemy is least likely to check.

Optional Items or Situational items

- 3.10 patch changed locket. It's no longer a mid game item. It's now the replacement for runic bulwark with the original locket's active tacked on. Like Bulwark, it's worth getting if no one else on your team is going to get it, so be sure to communicate that with your team.

- Quite a solid buy for Lulu if you have the gold to burn. Every stat benefits her and especially the S4 changes to AP scaling utility skills means you get more out of her abilities. The active is very useful for catching people out of positioning and revealing the pesky invisible champions.

- If you constantly find yourself low on mana and unable to go back to the fountain often, the Chalice of Harmony does help out and the crucible is a good utility item to build off of the chalice. But the real reason to buy this item is the active which is a Cleanse and a small heal. Definitely worth taking against a cc heavy team or a dive oriented cc champion

Zeke's Herald - The passive is the main reason to buy this item and it rewards a team with multiple AD DPS champions. This also gets you to 40% CDR.

Enchantment choices

Enchantment: Alacrity - General movespeed boost. If the game is going your way, you'd want this over homeguard

Enchantment: Distortion - Even more CDR on flash. If you think you're going to be making a lot of clutch plays. You'd probably want access to flash more often and hence, this enchantment

Enchantment: Homeguard - If the enemy is pushed to your inner turrets, it might wise to consider buying this item. If they get to your inhibitors, it is definitely a good choice as it allows for you and your team (provided that they get homeguard) to make plays out of nowhere and swing the game back in your favor.

Trinket Choices

- Good trinket for mid-late game. Lets you sweep wards and acts as an oracle once upgraded. Self explanatory applications

- More preferred at spawn. Lets you have a total of 3 starting wards and more vision coverage. Switch once you get Sightstone/ Ruby Sightstone. It might be worth keeping if you want the extra vision ward, but the sweeping lens family is stronger for the end game.

Preferred

- The standard offensive summoner spell for supports. Exhaust is useful from start to finish and can really shut down a champion in a fight

- Pretty universal summoner spell. It does it all, escape, close gaps, etc. Auto include

Alternatives

- If for whatever reason, your ADC wants you to get this while he gets barrier/cleanse. Go for it. Just be careful not to take his kill, meaning ignite early on the fight.

- Riot rebuffed heal and made it viable again. Instead of AoE heal, it heals you and the nearest ally to your cursor while also granting movement speed. You can no longer stack heals at bot lane so it s advisable for only one of you guys to grab heal. If your adc doesn't want to get heal for whatever reason, this is a solid pick up for baits and sustainability.


Everything else is not as viable or outright useless compared to the aforementioned ones, spells such as Clarity and Teleport are subpar and not for you.

Thank you for reading this, criticism is always helpful alongside of a rating and i'l do my best to edit this to correct any mistakes and account for any nerfs/buffs that may come up.

Hope you enjoy playing Lulu!