Dear readers of my guide, i need to protect you from wasting youre preciouse time, if you are looking for one of the following things!

- your are new to the game and want something easy to play with
- stats are more important to you then actually ... winning the game
- backdooring is cheap in you're eyes and a true damacian wouldn't do that!
- you prefer watching the main screen, where all this beatyfull graphik and lights appear instead of the broing minimap
- u catch yourself thinking while playing: "oh that looks like a nice champ, i wonder what he can do!"
- you are searching for a guide to follow 1 to 1

This guide is actually for people, well quite the opposite of things mentioned above!
- you know the game mechanics
- you know that stats can be an indicator for s.th. but winning is by far more important then having a good k/d ratio!
- You know about the importance of the minimap and you are watching her continuesly
- you know all heroes and their abilitys and what is even more important, you know what a hero can do and what he simply can't
- you know that it's important to understand the playstyle/theme/idea behind a guide

Hello everyone!

Some years past now but still i remember my favouritve Tv Serie "Xena, the warrior Princess" - and even today i wake up at nights and have hear battle cry in my ears tingeling "AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI!". Ah good old times, specially when this innocent love between Xena and Gabriel started to develop, ahhhh yeah (well i remember how i got red when they kissed first time, haha)

Well so far to my memories and what i associate with our Battle Princess "Sivir", but this isnt actually the reason for this guide, its just the reason i started to play the champion itself.

Well now back to the present:
There aren't many out there actually playing Sivir, instead there are a lot guys like this:

XY picked Sivir
Flamer1: OMG NOOB!
Flamer2: OMG GG!
Flamer3: SIVIR IS USELESS!!
Player4: *silent* (he is busy by having his finger in his noise, but he is THIKNING "yeah totaly!")

So game goes on and then suddenly an important thing happens:

In the middle of the screen the word "victory" pops up... Mission accomplished!

In order to answer this question i need to explain a little bit more about my brainstorming of the last days. If u incest on an easy one sentence answer, i'll give u this:

I want to raise my rating!
How do we accomplish this? The answer is quite easy to give: We need to win games!

How do u win a league of legends game? - Destroy the enemy Nexus!

I think this isn't a suprise at all for anyone playing the game, yet so many games are lost because ppl dont focus just on this! How many games got lost, where it should be just a clear victory, because ppl where more interested in farming the jungle, killing Dragon or Roshan, instead of just pushing and killing Nexus?

So the mission is clear!

We want to kill the enemy Nexus! The next step ofc is to think about how to do it :)

And because simple things are in most time the easiest way and actually often enough the most efficient way, we try to keep things.... simple (as long as possible ;))

In the following sheme i'll start with our goal and continue by the step which leads us to it:


I) Nexus < II) Inhibitor < III) T3 Tower, T2 Tower, T1 Tower
This means nothing else, then in order to achieve I) we need to succed accomplishing II) and III)!

At this point in our Brainstorming we realize that actually the Basic of winning a LoL Game is to destroy Buildings! Which is achieved by simple Backdooring, or pushing a lane!

And now guess the title and theme of the next chapter ;)

Backdooring and pushing Lanes have the same consequences: Destroying buildings.

The following are factors, which influence the approach to kill a building.

a) Enemy Champion(s) resistance
b) Friendly Creep support
c) Enemy Creep wave

The best scenario is if u have only b) and if only c) occurs its the Backdooring Princip.

So our task now is to find a hero who can deal in the best way with the three factors which can occur with the aim of destroying the tower.

At the edge of picking a champion, which fits our above mention potentiell, u can basicly choose from all Heroes which have a "pusher" in their description.

In order to save me some work and u a lot of reading i'am going to list u the top qualifications a champion needs to fullfill in order to become the #1 choice for our purpose:

1) Great Pushing Abilitys
2) Defense Abilitys to ensure success under resistance
3) Farming potential
4) Low cost of Basic item build
5) Teamfight Contribution
6) Cd independence (as much as this can be possible)
7) Very low risk of being picked/banned (mucho important!)

Sivir is in my opinion the Champion who fits this requirements in the best way! If u guys have different ideas pls tell me :).

The next logical step is to think a little more precisely about the strength of Sivir and how we even push her abilitys and strengthen her weaknesses!

1) Great Pushing Abilitys
Well there isn't rly much to say about it, i think everyone knows that her Ricochet (#1) and her Boomerang (#2) is clearing Creep waves like nothing else. Her Ultimate gives her the attack speed to tear down a tower like from paper AND accelerates friendly creep waves to reach and destroy a tower (ofc friendly Champions too).

2) Defense Abilitys
Sivir's passive gives her an increased chance of dodge chance (25% at max lvl), her shild can negate any Skill thrown at her and her Ulti gives her the movement speed to get in and out, whenever and however she wants.

3) Farming Potential
Well its allready mentioned above :)

4) Low cost of Basic Item Build
Sivir basic Item build will be around 5K. But i will talk about it a later chapter.

5) Teamfight Contribution
Ad AoE Damage and an Ultimate which give benefits to the whole team. Attack Speed bonus is gr8 for all Chars who depend on Autoattacks and Movement Speed is beneficial for all Champs!

6) Cooldown Independence
Accomplished! (yay!)

7) Low risk of being picked/banned
[x] Yes
[ ] No ;)


In the following chapters i will talk about possibilitys to improve Sivir's strength.

We want her to make what she is best at - Pushing! So the next chapters will deal with the question "what do we need to enhance Sivir's abilitys"! The next chapters will cover Masteries, Summoner Spells, Runes and Items

Masteries

The chosen Mastery Setup includes the most important Points which should be selected when playing Sivir.

Most important is "Evasion" (Defense) and "Nimbless" (Defense). There for we need to spend 4 Points in T1 Masteries and we favour "Resistance" oder "Hardiness", because with a high evade we won't need armor and magic resist comes very handy to keep pushing longer.

"((Alacrity))" is important for getting a good basic attackspeed in order to built up ure "Ricochet" fast enough and to tear down tower in the early stages of the game faster. But to be honest i need to check first how much attack speed bonus we need to achieve sivirs cap with active ultimate and yoummus - so update in future.

In order to know where to put the left over points i need more ingame experience. This means to make a decision, which second summoner spell to take, the specific item build and ofc the composition of the own team, along with the choosen enemy team!

Summoner Spells
The most important spell is "Teleport" for Sivir, it enables u to nearly instant switch lanes and use her gr8 pushing abilitys.

I'am not quite sure which second spell to pick: Rally, Flash, Ghost, Fortify, Revive and Cv are the one to choose from.
Smite, Heal, Cleanse, Clarity, Exhaust and Ignite are my secondary choice.

Let's start with the summoner spells we don't want to pick and the reason behind it.

Smite
This spell is good for jungling and in general farming - Sivir doesn't need both.

Heal
Well a nice defensive Spell and good to be used for ure team too, but our build is constructed around her abilitys to prevent damage (dodge+shild) not to counter heal!

Cleanse
Same as heal. We do want to avoid stuns and slows by a proper usuage of her shield ability.

Clarity
Mana reg items are so sheap that it's not worth it.

Exhaust
Well this one is actually a decent spell, and in order to understand why it's in my secondary choices, let's discuss what it can do and in which situations it will help u.
This Summoner Spell basicely makes ad enemys not hit u (blind) and slows them. So it could be used to win a 1v1 fight, escape someone who is hunting u or just prevent an ad champ dealing damage to u, while hitting enemy tower.
Well with such a high evade chance like Sivir's we don't rly need a blind and slow can be inflicted on enemy champions in enough different ways!
The armor pen and magic pen which this spell gives, can't be used on towers and there for not rly important for sivir.

Ignite
I mentioned it in one of the above chapters allready - we do not play Sivir as a hero killer, we play her as a pusher -> no ignite needed!


After we discussed now what we don't need we gonna have a harder time to discover which summoner Spell we actually need! Let's talk about each first choice summoner spell and talk about the benefits they will provide!

Flash
In general one of the best summoner spells in the game! It give u the possibility to jump over Cliffs, to sudden initiate and ofc the opposite to get out of the enemy control zone. It is a defensive spell and it doesn't rly help us pushing towers, but because of sivir's short attack range it will pretty often save our ***, to get the distance to the enemys which u need in an engage situation desperatly.

Ghost
Well i listened it here because i agree that ppl can make good use of it. It gives mapmobility and another escape/hunt spell, but Sivir's ulti and her both core items (yoummus and shurelyas) give her some kind of "mini" ghosts and i just belive that it's on the one hand kinda of an overkill and on the other hand this slot can be used for bigger beneficial spells.

Revive
You don't see this spell being taken at all and ofc there are good reasons behind it. Why should u take a spell which helps u when ure dead, when u can take spells, which provides u some defense against... well duying? The reason that this spell is in our first choice section is that, with you're main job of pushing towers, sooner or later u will get into the situation, that u push a tower and will be killed in a consequence of it. Second situation is that in a teamfight Sivir has to commit completely, which means no retreat ("THIS IS SPARTAAAAA") at all in order to do as much damage to the enemy team as possible. wih revive and teleport this can open the possiblity of immidiatly porting and pushing/backdooring a lane, with no resistance. With the same reason i do actually consider -death time quints. More about this later.

Fortify
Among Sivir's duty to push towers, she has to ensure that our towers aren't destroyed by the enemy team (more about this in chapter "the advantage gap"). Enemy champions approach our towers or towerdiving enemy heroes are the perfect moment to fire "fortify". Either it gets you kills/assists, or they retreat which protects youre teammember or they get so low that they will be forced to blue pill back (line gets open to push), or it helps youre teammates to stand a 4v5 fight (you are somewhere else pushing), or just buys you time. Sounds like a pretty good choice for the second summoner spell, right? Before we make our decision though its important to analyse all consequences of choosing it.
The downside of choosing fortify is that u have to commit to the defensive masterys tree.

Rally
Attack Speed, Ap Bonus (if Rally is skilled) does sound pretty awesome! It will help us to push towers more easy and will help to win teamfights. Sadly enough it won't help us by holding enemy pushes back, but there might be another possibility to use wards/rally..., but ill need to test it first :)

Clairvoyance
Many of u will think now "wtf", but this spell is actually far more awesome then most of u appreachiate!
It revelas an Area of the map (global). Ok, i think i put it wrong, lets try again:
IT REVEALS AN AREA OF THE MAP!!!! Yeah that sounds better ;)
The advantages are that it gives u the possibility to move around the map secured (aside of potentiell invis heros), it allows ure team to set up gangs and to see incoming threats. It will allow u to push a lane till the last moment, when u either need to commit or just grab youre shoes and run! It will enable u to watch into brushes and to scout dragon and roshan kill attempts. The downside of this is that it takes one summoner spell slot and actually wards will provide u with the same information gain (if u think in advance and wards are placed). I believe that in solo ranked queue this summoner spell is always a good choice!


Conclusion
So till now my choice is "fortify" directly followed by "Rally" and "Clairvoyance". Final decision will be made after the Chapter "Solo Queue and how not to rage".

Rune Setup
Remember? We do want to strengthen Sivir abilitys and one of the best thing about her is the high dodge chance. With Ninja, 9 x Greater Seal of Evasion, 3 x Greater Quintessence of Evasion, the masteries and her maxed passive, Sivir has an Evasion of 50%. Thats pretty awesome!

There is still the idea in my head of maybe taking -time death Quints, but still its more reasonable to get something to prefend youre death instead of decreasing the time spend dead.

Now, we need to make a decision about our choices, which marks and which glyphs to decide for.
Here are our favourites:
Greater Mark of Attack Speed
Greater Mark of Desolation

Greater Glyph of Attack Speed
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist
Greater Glyph of Armor

But in order to make a choice we need to discover, how much attack speed we need before hitting our cap at 2,5 with ulti and yoummus. Second thoughts will be - do we need more armor or magic resist, well asuming that most likely tower will hit us more then anything else, we actually can give armor the favour. Armor penetration on the other hand is a no brainer i believe and should be taken (if we don't need the attack speed boost).

Item Setup
To make things short i will name you, the core items and justify my decision and explain how to make adjustement to the item build in case the game doesn't run as smoothly as we could wish:

Ninja Tabi

Power our dodge chance, yay!

Mercury's Treads
Four out of five enemy heroes deal, Ap Damage or have strong CC abilitys

Youmuu's Ghostblade

Cd-Reduction, Armor Pen, Attackspeed Burst, Movement Speed burst - exactly what a Sivir needs! There will be ppl out there who will ask me, why i dont get items which provide me with a static speed bonus and movement speed like "Zeal". The answer to this is, that on the one hand yoummus is a pretty nice package and is built from little to achieve subparts (which makes it easy to farm and more important that every trip back to the fountain u return a little bit stronger, which will lead to an advantage over other players) and on the other hand in most cases a speed boost instead of constant bonus. In teamfights u most likely have between 3-5 seconds (if timed well ofc) to do anything without being disturbed and thats in most cases enough to build up ure ricocht bounces and deal the damage u want to deal. Against towers u want the burst (and the package yoummus provide) to take them down fast and effectivly, chasing or being chased the burst is what changes the tides of war and where the enemy needs to adjust within a second and this time is what u have as an advantage - e.g. an enemy who knows ahead that u will outrun him, won't tower dive u!
Of course the downside of this item is his cd, which means that you need to know when to use it! More about this in the Gameplay sections

Shurelya's Battlesong

Cd-Reduction, Health and Health regen, Movement Speed burst and mana regen - gr8 stuff! Another very important advantage of this item, is that the components it is build from immidiatly boost Sivir's defensive and lanestaying power abilitys!

It won't get easier from here to make decisions! In fact in the first version of the guide i catched myself (ofc after writting this part) later, that i made the mistake to cover a lot of items which seem to be so interesting and usefull while playing.
The truth is that we do want to be as straight forward (destroying Nexus) as possible. Thats why i reworte this part and the result can be seen right below :)

After covering our core items the next logical step is to increase our damage output and the secondary item choices will contain items which will raise our defensive potential in case we encounter heavy resistance and need to adapt our gameplay to it.

However you will decide in future games, pls have one thing always in youre mind:
"A strong offense is better then a strong defense"
This means, that if u can kill (or at least do heavy damage) the enemy team before they can actually kill you, youre offensive potential covers youre defense!

Bloodthirster

Very nice damage and pretty easy to get it to full stacks with sivir. Combined with the lifeleech it provides (and this means higher defense) the roundhousekick #1 choice!

Hexdrinker
Purchase it for the same reason as Mercury's and be happy about the fact that it is build by cheap parts

Phantom Dancer

Attack Speed and Movement speed bonus make this item the number 1 choice in games, where things follow our masterplan!

Trinity Force
Mixed enemy setup and more resistance that we asked for -> This package contains a nice combination of offence, defense and utility = get it!

Wit's End
DAMN CASTERS FFS! I think that i should mention this item, but pls remember, that our Ricochet doesn't benefit from it - this item is suggested because of his attackspeed bonus and the magic resist it provides us!


The reason why i only mention 6 items is that no matter at which stage in the game you are, the last spot is reserved for wards - but again, more about this in a later chapter!

At this point the game should be over, but often enough it isn't. In this stages of late game you will be moving around with youre team or grabbing Fortuna's Boobs and backdooring an Inhibitor (or even finishing the game). Here a choice you may consider to do;

Exchange

Shurelya's Battlesong into Banshee's Veil or Guardian Angel

I think i don't need to mention that if u do the above mentioned u should exchange youre Hexdrinker into a Bloodthirster ;)

I decided to publish this guide, although it is not ready yet, because with the chapters above i cover the essentiell basics.

Chapters which i do want to add will cover the following points:

Minimap and Mapcontrol
Warding
How to: Creating an advantage gap
Solo Queue - How to not rage!
Be my friend - Who to solo queue with
Gameplay tactics
Gameplay Walkthrough

And of course improvements of this guide upon youre suggestions :)