Me, Myself and I

I'm Hashtag Twerking, a player on the Oceanic server, and this build outlines my preferred method of playing Lissandra. I believe the build encompasses both the damage and survivability needed to complement Lissandra's heavy crowd-control kit; allowing her to get into a team-fight, do what she does best and survive while doing it. Hopefully whomever reads this finds it helpful, discovers they love using Lissandra as much as I do or just discovers something new about her that they hadn't considered before.

Lissandra

Lissandra... How do I begin to explain Lissandra? Lissandra is flawless. I hear her hair is insured for 10k gold. I hear she does summoner spell commercials... in Demacia. Her favourite song is "Here Comes Vi". One time she met Jayce on Summoner's Rift... - And he told her she was pretty. One time she threw an Ice Shard in my face... it was awesome!

In all seriousness, Lissandra is an AP mage who favours mobility and heavy crowd-control over raw burst damage. She has great kiting potential and her mana-efficient kit allows for an aggressive lane phase, while her long range mobility makes her a fantastic roamer throughout the entire match. Her ability to dive straight into the enemy lines and disrupt their team with enough crowd control to make your head spin, all while managing to mitigate any amount of counter aggression they can throw at her makes her an interesting and unorthodox mid-laner. She has managed to make herself one of my favourite champions to play due to her unusual skill-set and unconventional play-style - I hope you learn to love playing her as much as I do!

PROS Great sustained damage Mana-efficient if managed correctly High amounts of CC Great initiator High mobility Fantastic farmer

CONS Relatively high cooldowns Item dependent Damage is considered lower than other mages Short ranged

Sorcery and Inspiration provide the best tools for Lissandra to excel.

Arcane Comet provides a burst of damage and is suitable for Lissandra due to her crowd-control.
Manaflow Band allows for extra mana sustain in lane meaning you won't need to go back to base as often.
Transcendence gives some much needed CDR.
Gathering Storm keeps Lissandra's damage relevant all the way into the late game.

Perfect Timing gives Lissandra a free stopwatch and some extra CDR on Zhonya's Hourglass.
Cosmic Insight gives a little extra CDR across the board.

Other Options

Scorch gives a little extra burst if we need it.
Magical Footwear provides some potentially earlier boots and a touch extra movespeed which can be very useful.



This section takes a look at Lissandra's skill-kit. I won't write out full descriptions of each ability as you can easily just mouse-over each icon to read exactly what the ability does and all sorts of other interesting information about it. Instead I will be looking at how one might utilise her abilities to set up for harass and kill combos, engaging and escaping and the finer mechanics of her kit.

The most widely accepted skill order for Lissandra is R > Q > W > E.

• Ring of Frost and Frozen Tomb will reduce the cooldown on this by 1s for each individual enemy they hit.
• The crowd-control of the spell affected by Iceborn with reduce it's cooldown. For example, if Iceborn is available and you use your Ring of Frost to root 4 enemies, the cooldown will begin at 14 seconds (rather than 18).

• Your bread-and-butter skill to farm, push and harass. Short cooldown, mid range, fairly high damage and a shatter effect allowing it to damage multiple enemies.
• Interesting to note: while the range of this spell is listed at 725 units, this only includes the original hit. Once the shard shatters, the range is increased by ~150 units giving it a range of ~875 units.

The range of the shatter effect here is determined by how far the initial spell travels before it shatters. For example, if the initial shard hits an enemy at maximum range, the shatter will only travel 150 extra units. On the other hand, if the initial shard hits an enemy at say 200 units, the shatter will travel 675 extra units. This is illustrated below where the red is the path of the initial shard and blue is the length it shatters.

• Point-blank area of effect ability that roots all nearby enemies for a duration between 1-1.5s scaling with rank.
• Ring of frost has no cast time and thus can be used while being chased to root nearby enemies without disrupting Lissandra's own movement.
• Exceptionally useful to hold enemies in place while you cast Frozen Tomb, ensuring the maximum amount of enemies take the damage.

• A pass-through long-ranged skill shot and Lissandra's key mobility skill. This is what allows her to make those interesting ganks and amazing escapes!
• Has a visible range indicator that makes it extremely obvious what direction it is being used in.
• Two important things to note: The claw takes ~1.5s to travel to its end point and disappear, which means you have 1.5s to use the skill again and teleport. Also, Lissandra cannot use the secondary cast of the ability while under hard CC, meaning that if you cast the spell and get crowd-controlled, you will not be able to teleport.

• Single-target ability that can either be used on Lissandra herself or any enemy champion.
• On casting it spreads ice from targeted champion, causing nearby enemies to take large amounts of damage and slows them while standing on the ice. The ice persists for 3s.
• If self-cast it will put Lissandra into a 2.5s stasis, rendering her untargetable, invulnerable and unable to take any other action until it wears off and heals her for an increasing amount based on her missing health percentage.
• If cast on an enemy champion they will be stunned for 1.5s and take the spell's damage.
• The interesting part of this spell is its duality; you can either use it on yourself to devastate and disrupt the enemy team while keeping yourself out of harm's way or use it on an enemy to lock out a high priority target and allow your team to destroy them.

In this section I'll be taking a look at what items to use on Lissandra. I'll be focusing on my core final build and why I think it works well with Lissandra as well as looking at some other situational items that are also useful.
As with runes and masteries, use this section as a general guide. You'd be a fool to use the exact same build in every game you play on any champion; itemise to counter the enemy team!

Your go-to boots option for most casters; we want these for the extra magic penetration they provide, ensuring your spells do as much damage as they can. Not much else to say here.

Rod of Ages is a perfect starting item for any caster because it provides a good amount of everything - mana, health and AP.

Protobelt is a great item that provides us with some extra CDR and survivability but the active is what we really want here. It goves us a little extra reach if we lagging just a bit on an initiation and the damage packs a punch in its own right. It can even be used to disengage if you need to get out of a bad situation in a pinch.

This item is one of my favourites for Lissandra; combining magic penetration and AP for offence, health for defence and an amazing passive. As the majority of Lissandra's spells impair the movement of her enemies, the passive on this is twice as potent without needing to grab a Rylai's Crystal Scepter like a lot of other mages. Use this to increase our damage significantly. I would also not recommend using this item if you are going for a burst build. Liandry's Torment offers plenty in the way of sustained damage but is not suited to a burst build. Take Void Staff instead if you're playing as a burst mage.

Few things in League of Legends are as satisfying as combining a Zhonya's Hourglass active with a self-ult cast on Lissandra. 5 seconds of pure, blissful untouchability. Besides that, Zhonya's has a huge amount of AP to supplement our damage output and more importantly comes with a large armour boost; perfect for Lissandra's play style of teleporting into the enemy team and disrupting them while mitigating damage.

A huge boost to our damage output. Not much else to say on this one either, it's stock standard on most mages at some point in the match. Used to make our disruption even more deadly!

Luden's Echo is a great item if you're looking for a little extra CDR, burst damage and mana but offers nothing in the way of survivability.

If the opposing team seems to be staking magic resist, Void Staff is an essential item to keep the pressure on them. It's not as effective if your targets have relatively low magic resistance, your Liandry's and Sorcerer's Shoes should be sufficient to deal with them, but if a high priority target is stacking MR, grab a Void Staff.

Again I would like to stress that item choices and build orders are purely for informative purposes. If you're laning against an AD assassin such as Zed or Talon, go straight for Seeker's Armguard, build to each situation independently.






Lissandra has a fairly good early game, being an extremely capable farmer and pusher. From levels 1 through 4 you generally want to use only auto-attacks to last hit the minions for farm and some moderate auto-attack harass on the enemy laner. You generally don't want to use your abilities unless required to grab a minion kill, otherwise you will find yourself out of mana very quickly.

Once you hit level 4 the real fun can begin! Try and get a blue buff as early as possible and hold on to it for dear life, if you manage to lose it to your opponent you'll find yourself in a lot of trouble very quickly. Lissandra's main harass comes in the form of repeat Ice Shards and, when the time is right, Ring of Frost. With a blue buff (or at the very least a Chalice of Harmony) you should be able to keep up the pressure on your opponent without draining too much of your mana pool. I don't recommend using Glacial Path to harass or farm with, unless you're using it to push your lane while your opponent is at base. As it's Lissandra's only escape, you should have it up to escape from any opposing ganks. If you do find yourself in trouble and can't escape with Glacial Path, often a well time Ring of Frost is sufficient to escape.

Once you get Frozen Tomb and hopefully have your opponent on 50% health or less, you should be able to burst them down. Lissandra's burst combo involves using your Glacial Path to close the gap between yourself and the enemy (if you manage to damage them with it, even better!), opening with Frozen Tomb and unloading a quick Ice Shard and Ring of Frost on them. At this point, you can ignite them if available and continue to whittle them down with Ice Shard as needed until you get the kill.

Lissandra's early game roaming potential is also high; if your opponent has gone to base or has left lane, utilise her mobility to get to and gank either top or bottom lane. Again, her crowd-control allows the players in these lanes to capitalise, often ensuring a kill.

• Wards are your best friends to prevent you from getting ganked. I generally like to ward the river brush on both sides of the map (indicated by blue circles on the map below). This gives you a fair amount of vision, protecting you from any incoming river ganks. For extra protection, warding in the red circles below allow you to watch for ganks coming in from the opposing jungle. For this reason, beginning with a affords you some fairly useful protection. Place it in the river brush on only one side and while you're in lane stay towards the side of the lane where the ward is. This means that if you're going to get ganked from the warded side, you have more time to escape and if you're going to get ganked from the opposite side you have a headstart in an escape!

• It's useful to open with a Glacial Path from a place where your opponent will not be able to see you. While they will still see the range indicator, you might be able to buy yourself some time and surprise them. The location below is one of my favourites.

• Lissandra is fantastic at setting up great ganks for your jungler to jump in and help. Her crowd-control oriented kit allows her to lock down her target for a great gank, whereas many other mages require their jungler to open as they lack the CC Lissandra has.

the mid-game tends to begin when a few turrets have been destroyed and laners begin to roam the map much more often. Lissandra is considered at her best during this phase of the game. Hopefully you will have a couple of core items which will allow you to travel with your team and pick off squishier targets quickly (using your burst combo outlined above). If people are still sticking in their lanes for the most part, use your crowd-control and mobility to jump into these lanes and lock-down the high priority targets for the kill.

In the event of a team-fight you'll need to make a big choice with your Frozen Tomb: to self-cast or to cast it on an enemy. As a rule of thumb, I generally neglect self-casting if I am not in any trouble myself or if I have my Zhonya's active available for use. If you're able to use Glacial Path to get close enough to use your Frozen tomb on the enemy ADC or mid-laner then go for it. The damage and slow will be enough to disrupt the enemy team, allowing you some easy hits with with Ice Shard and Ring of Frost.

Basically you will want to use the phase of the game to farm creeps and push lanes, use your CC and some help from your team to kill high priority targets and, in the case of a team-fight, use your CC to disrupt and nuke the enemy team.






This point of the game mainly revolves around large scale team-fights and taking objectives (towers, inhibitors and Baron). Lissandra is still exceptionally useful and relevant during this part of the game, using her kit to initiate on and disrupt enemy teams during fights, usually enough to break the enemy team up. Winning team fights at this part of the game is crucial, as a win allows your team to push down multiple objectives and break into the opponent's base.

With a blue-buff you will be at 45% CDR, meaning your abilities are much more spammable and available for use during team-fights - make sure you have a blue buff as often as you possibly can. Stay towards the back of your team; you do not need to be in front as your Glacial Path allows you to get up close and personal with your opponents from a safe distance. Once a team fight breaks out, find a target, Glacial Path in and Frozen Tomb them. If you find yourself in danger or under fire, activate your Zhonya's Hourglass. If the enemy team isn't paying you much attention, unload your Ice Shards and Rings of Frost as often as their cooldowns allow. From this point, if the team fight was successful you might want to use your Glacial Path to catch up to and kill any runners, or, if the fight is looking bleak, use your Glacial Path to escape from the fray.

At this point of the game the objective is to simply win team-fights and push into the enemy base for the win.