morde matchup is even because it only depends from you. You have 15 dashes, so on paper you have the ability to dodge EVERYTHING from his kit. So pre 6 you can just W the most important spell (which can be E or isolated Q depending on the situation) and then short trade, then bait/wait out his W shield and he can't play. Morde can survive this phase, that's why it's skill, but on paper you just win, and you have the upper hand on the lane. After 6 / first item nothing changes, depending on the build he might resist more to your poke or run you down easier if you mess up, but you can just R his R and he cannot kill you ever. In sidelane he is a stronger champ ofc if even so if he doesnt eat random spells from you you just hold him and he can never kill you. This matchup is a lot about mechanics and it reflects the korean advice "just dodge everything". Point is that your champ completely counters him, but he can statcheck you if you mess up. Think of it like an easier garen/darius. If your spacing is bad, they just run you down and it's gg, if you space well, they can't play, but against morde he's way more immobile than those two and you can dodge every spell with ease. Stats-wise, if you wanna talk about that, matchup winrate is awful low elo but gradually gets better the higher elo you go and emerald+ it's just winning. I put it in "skill" because it requires the ambessa to be good, know the matchup, and if she's careless the morde can snowball quite easily since he is a dumb statcheck champ with an omega telegraphed kit (lolalytics ambessa vs morde winrate patch 16.4 : bronze/silver/gold/plat/emerald/diamond/master/gm/chall 41/44/46/47/50/52/55/60/78% winrate, this linear upwards trend reflects very well what I'm talking about).
For ult as I said you can just R his R every time and respect if he has it and you don't (you don't have to perma 1v1 him btw you can just wait/give prio for a wave), you play around your cds and not his, that's why you want short trades and he wants long trades, and for rylais first of all you shouldn't get hit by anything in the first place second of all you still have a lot of dashes and a 99% slow to run away, so you are in no trouble as long as you space correctly, he shouldn't be allowed to gap close without using E.
I wouldn't focus too hard on numbers because they depend by a lot of factors. Lethality ambessa has a higher winrate because you only pick her in lethality ambessa games, it's a situational build so you only do it in good lethality games. Bruiser ambessa on the other hand is more solid and is therefore built in mid or bad ambessa games, where lethality ambessa would perform way worse. So these numbers don't show that lethality build is better, they show that lethality build is chosen mainly in good games for the build (and is therefore situational).

That's pretty much it for me, hope it helps!

Now, hear me out, I was a Riven enjoyer too before Ambessa came out, but in my opinion you shouldn't think of Ambessa as Riven 2.0, basic spells and the ability to dash are the similarities, but you play the lane quite differently, particuarly after 6. This just to remind you that Ambessa has way less all-in windows in lane (and almost never 100 to 0), but she scales like a fking monster. Lethality build late game is definitely worse I'd argue, cause you lack durability, but passive armor pen + your insane Q damage and ad scalings + all the lovely items that you can buy at the moment make you a monster later on. The difference that you feel is probably cause Ambessa after 3 items can't play very well on sides against a sidelane champion, almost any dueler beats her at 3+ items 1v1 if even. Your pick potential though, and you roams midlane, and your teamfighting, my god it skyrockets. With bruiser build you're just an unkillable raid boss, with lethality build you have to be more careful and wait for the fight to break out to ult the backline after the main spells are gone or find creative flank angles (buy sweeper if you do so pls, very important). Maybe you feel weaker at 3+ items cause you think that you are still this dumb 200 years champ that can just ult people on sidelanes on cd or cause you aren't patient enough in fights, in that case a short review might be helpful (or at least it has been for me). For bastion, the thing is that the passive is not that bad by itself, but I just think that you have objectively better options. Expecially with lethality Ambessa I've tried this item and I just feel like I oneshot towers anyway, like your damage with all that pen is crazy on towers too, if you find yourself in a splitpush situation for some reason, or are hitting the tower after a kill/chunk, you already have the tools to put a menacing pressure. I see the point of building it like a hybris, so when enemy is just a bozo and you know that you can punish (and kill) him on cd, and in that case I say fine, if you're confident that you're going to snowball in that situation and you like it just go for it, just remember to build it in volatile matchups that you snowballed not into brickwall gragas renekton (or any tank, or similar stuff) that can just stall the lane even if behind. For joat, honestly I never thought about playing it and it makes sense that you brought it from riven. On paper, if you're playing your lethality ambessa, it looks nice. You have quite a lot of good options in the inspiration tree atm (triple tonic, cashback, cosmic insight which reduces the cd of quest tp if you have flash + ignite, magical footwear which is like cashback but worse atm, and even cookies if you want to trade to the death) but joat makes perfect sense too for some extra lane power. I don't see anything wrong with lethality setup with triple tonic + joat, just standard to voltaic first, rush bastion only if you're really owning the matchup and you want to get the tower asap to roam around, maybe it's cause I'm used to it but voltaic passive every game that I play feels even better than the last time I built it, that's also why I stopped testing hydra quite soon. Oh and for tp+ignite, yes it's literally the same as before, any champion just takes the same summoners as last season, (on a general toplane champion, not ambessa specific) you don't really take ignite just because you get teleport later, laning phase still exists in league of legends and champs who took tp took it cause of this phase of the game and nothing has changed, so same summoners for everyone. Also tp ugrade is op and it's way shorter cd than quest tp, so no drawbacks

TLDR: You aren't weaker at 3+ items, you are very strong but your playstyle just shifts. Bastion makes sense if you build it like a hybris, but it's a situational snowball item not a default core. On lethality Ambessa, this joat tech looks nice, if it feels nice to you and MOST IMPORTANTLY if you enjoy it go for it with triple tonic and build brutalizer to finish voltaic or situationally to pivot to bastion. You take the exact same summoners as last season.

Hope this helps! Lemme know if there's anything else.

Hey, no I've never tried to seriously build crit on ambessa, and it doesn't work, here's why: crit items are too expensive, don't give you the stats that you want and most importantly crit only works on auto attacks, and you are NOT an auto attack champion. you deal your damage with spells. You are an ad scaling champion. Your auto attacks deal damage but it's not your main source and this is not the identity of the champ. If you're playing with your friends or just want to have fun, sure, why not; if you're trying to win or to learn the champ and get better, I definitely advise you not to build crit on ambessa.

Exhaust is a summoner that can be playable in some specific matchups, but I would not recommend to play it, here's why: first of all, as an aggressive summoner ignite is just straight up better, as a defensive summoner flash/tp is way better too. Exhaust is this weird middle ground but it doesn't excel in anything, it's mediocre at both. Most of toplane champions can just survive those 3 seconds and hold their big damage abilities, so you need them to have already committed fully to the fight. On top of that it deals no damage, and in lane you don't have the damage to oneshot the enemy in that time window. It's only playable into riven, kennen and these squishy champions with very obvious commit spells, but it's not good cause you really like your summs (flash+tp mostly)generally speaking. Exhaust is taken in botlane because it's 2v2 lane, so it's very easy to oneshot one champ 2v1, in toplane even if the champ is not that beefy (which is almost never the case) you just don't have the damage as a single player (and expecially as ambessa) to just blow him up at minute 5. The only reason exhaust (toplane) has been taken in proplay is to neutralize the champ in teamfights and reduce his burst (only against kennen and gwen vs rumble matchup), but in soloq you're just better off picking flash+tp or ignite+tp every time. Heal reduction value is kind of even (exhaust reduces damage dealt so it acts same of anti heal excluding some specific cases), but it lasts for 2 secs less, deals no damage, has longer cd, and you really don't need the slow with your 15 dashes. If perhaps you made this question after playing a matchup that in your opinion might have required exhaust, rember: fix the gameplay, not the setup, not the champ pool.

Hope it helps!

I've tried them a bit and here's my opinion about them atm. Endless Hunger is absolutely illegal, it feels very good with bruiser ambessa and in 3/4/5th slot paired with serylda and dd makes you an unstoppable raid boss. It also fits my playstyle very well and is not a troll/extremely unefficient item like BT (only choice for lifesteal last season, paired with the very slow and dubious rav hydra), recommended for sure if you don't need anything else last slots with serylda. Bastionbreaker on the other end feels very mediocre if you ask me, this item is more expensive than the other wonderful assassin items that we have atm and it doesn't really offer anything of our interest, like the true damage is very little and as lethality ambessa (if you play her you already know) you are already dealing true damage basically with your crazy pen and oneshot everything in one rotation, and you don't really want a demolish either, like it's for sure nice to have, but that's not what you do as lethality ambessa and I feel like if you can take a tower as ambessa you can take it anyway even without that demolish. While you're getting these meh buffs, you are losing on a TON of stats that like an opportunity would give you for 450 gold less, or even an axiom arc, serylda, and so on. Ambessa expecially lethality loves her items atm, and each one of them has a very specific and effective purpose and this new item is just not worth it atm imo.
Lemme know what you think or if there's anything else!

Hey! Honestly, I think I'll need some time to figure out how they perform since there have been quite a lot of changes and I want things to settle down to avoid spreading wrong or not accurate information. As soon as the patch is figured out tho, I will for sure update the guide!

It depends on the rune-item we're talking about. Your FIRST item and runes should ALWAYS be chosen based on enemy laner. Usually with electrocute you tend to go lethality (so voltaic or eclipse into voltaic or something like that) and grasp and expecially conqueror are a little bit more shaped towards the bruiser playstyle. After taking this in consideration tho there should be no relation between runes and items in your thought process: you are not "forced" by any means to go full lethality if you have electrocute, or eclipse shojin with grasp, or anything like that. Rune choices are based on experience on the champion, personal preference, matchup and matchup knowledge; FIRST Item choices (for ambessa) are based on matchup, matchup knowledge, and how well you're doing in lane (for example voltaic 1st is a great item if you're snowballing, while if you are behind eclipse might be the only way to not get owned in trades. This doesn't depend AT ALL on your runes). I highlighted "first" because second and other items should be thought of in a different way. There are a lot of shared factors as you can see that determine both runes and items, but they are just things that will happen and that shouldn't influence each other's thought process. For this reason, I recommend to think about your runes in champion select and about your items in loading screen / during game if there is something left to decide, and to not mix the two even tho they have something in common. A good example is matchups like sett or aatrox, some players like to go electrocute because they can abuse them early game and have the tools to dictate the trades without any issues, but they don't go voltaic or eclipse voltaic, or at least not because they picked electrocute. Maybe only exception I would argue is conqueror because that rune is op with eclipse shojin and bruiser playstyle in general.

I found your question a bit a bit ambiguous (idk if you just wanted a first item rundown, relationship between first item and runes, or both), so here's the answer to the first question ("how to choose the first item")

You have 2 main options: eclipse and voltaic

Eclipse is your evergreen, you can probably go this item every game every matchup and it will never be bad. Shines when even as you can often dictate the trades and chunck them hard time after time until you can ult them while being full hp thanks to eclipse shield.

Voltaic is your more aggressive and lethality option. Ambessa is a champion that already has crazy damage from her first item/lv9 and it doesn't ever fall off, but this item just makes you a oneshot machine. First of all the item passive (the slow) is very nice to chase/kite/space and it fits perfectly in your combos and playstyle. Moreover it gives you lethality, which combined with %max health damage from Q and %armor pen from R makes you oneshot everything from waves to enemy champions. It doesn't give you that shield for short trades, but it increases your damage output significantly (so you win the trades anyway if not even harder if you play well) and on top of that it makes you a constant menace cause if any squishy gets into your R range they are DEAD if you know what you're doing.

Shojin mega situational into very good renekton players that know how to make your eclipse shield useless (if they just W you for fun who cares go eclipse) and you can't go voltaic into renekton if you aren't 2 levels up because that guy's name is renekton, he has tabis and he will statcheck the **** out of you in lane, so you need some kind of beef early game.

Edge of night another mega situational into a good vayne and vayne only to deny her E because she doesn't have any other way to proc it.

Arguably there could be some other mega situational things you could do, but they are really 1 in 500 games things and even that going one of these is more than fine.

that's it for my explanation, hope it helps!

So, jax matchup has been very annoying for me at the beginning, but with a bit of expertise I can say that this is a skill matchup ambessa favoured or dead even if the jax is very good (which is almost never the case tho). This is because you have soo many tools to kite him in your kit. His Q is his only form of mobility, so if he Q's onto you you can just E away and he won't be able to aa you at all, he HAS TO lead with movement to hope for a good trade. If he activates E and then jumps to you to stun you, you can just block it with W, and he won't be able to do anything. The only way jax wins is if you **** up your spacing and he gets a long trades, cause you lose those very hard, but you can just get him lower and lower with short trades and spacing and he doesn't have much counterplay. So please make always sure that you don't let him extend the trades or take even all-ins cause he will bonk you to death, expecially if he goes lethal tempo short trades become twice as better and long trades become twice as bad. Don't randomly trade autos if he can extend the trade. If you just follow this pattern of E/W'ing his E, kiting his Q, and taking short trades abusing your dashes and range advantage, you will get a lead if you play correctly (not necessairly kills, cs and xp are very meaningful) and dominate the rest of the game. He is a better sidelaner than you, but if you continue to focus on spacing and W/dodge his E you will for sure hold him and maybe even win if you play around your rotation and he isn't careful and trolls positioning. So short trade, abuse your range, don't let him touch you, DON'T LET HIM GET LONG TRADES OR EVEN ALL-INS, and life will be very easy. You can look to kill/ult him if you have a big hp advantage and can just oneshot him with 1 rotation. You can also buffer your R in his E if needed.

Hope this helps!

I've played this matchup a couple of times and have seen Drututt (who knows briar top well) play the matchup from both sides multiple times. If, as briar, you just W in for fun expecially after first recall you ofc give her a free Q1 and then she can kite out with ease because your movement is very predictable, but that's not the matchup it's just briar trolling. Before first recall, Ambessa has 14s CD on her Q, 18s CD on her W(which is massive) and basically same CD on E. On Top of that she gets omega stachecked because she has extremely good ad scalings but it's only bonus ad, if you haven't bought any ad components you deal zero damage. This means that the matchup should be viewed like if Briar was Darius. Darius loses short trades against ambessa and most champions if they play well, but the reason why he's so oppressive (if you watch any darius vod from players like dariking or raider) is that they avoid random short trading and just focus on setting up a good wave on their side of the map. If they manage to do that, the first cs ambessa walks up to (even if lower hp it doesn't matter)they instantly ghost/engage on her and either trade ghost for flash (which is very good for the Darius) or straight up kill her beacuse he stachecks her extremely hard and Ambessa before 1/2 items is the most useless champion in the game at extended fights (even after that she plays a lot around her rotations if she isn't mega ahead or just stomps the 1v1). Both the darius and the briar CAN force prio with ease, but they refuse to because if the Darius/Briar gets prio, there is no way you can run her down because she will just poke you from under her tower, reason why ambessa wants to give push in this matchup. Also briar outscales in sidelane. I found a perfect example of this but honestly you can also watch Olaf/Darius vods (not only against ambessa but if she's your focus there are lots) and see how they play the lane against this type of champions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n06PLi5NiEY So here's the video, the whole replay is very informative for the matchup but let's just focus on the first waves. The Briar could fight way more for prio lv1 (Ambessa is very useless after her AA-Q-AA trade) but she INTENTIONALLY makes sure to give prio, while the clueless ambessa just hits the wave cause she's bad. Even when she starts to look for trades, thinking that she dominates the matchup, the Briar completely ignores her, even tho she could've fought back more. As soon as wave 3 arrives, she walks back again, not because she loses but because they hit lv3 roughly at the same time and she is very sure that ambessa will take another ego trade ignoring the matchup mechanics completely. Even when she hits lv3, she walks up a bit without using her spells, just to bait the ambessa to jump in. The only thing that's going through Briar's mind right now is: "If she wastes her spells, she's dead". As expected, the Ambessa uses her E, then after the Briar continues to bait she also uses her Q1. Briar keeps baiting cause ambessas love walking up to abuse the Q2 range. As soon as the ambessa throws Q2, boom, insta W Q and chuncks ambessa. Ambessa has ZERO sustain, while the briar will go back to full hp in just a second, the trade looks even but it's not. Then ambessa makes a fatal mistake: she wastes another of her CDs by W'ing in to make a short trade that is good, but not in this type of matchups. Briar keeps playing passive, inviting successfully the ambessa to use her Q, so now ambessa only has E while Briar has everything. Combo in, ignite, the ambessa flashes away but it doesn't matter, as I said ambessa is useless in extended trades and she just gets run down by these long trade bruisers. From now on it's just snowballing and making these lead bigger, and these champs are built just to do that. This that you have just seen is EXACTLY how you should play these matchups, the ambessa (if you exclude the matchup) played honestly well, the trades were all good, but the experienced ambessas just flip the switch and completely change mentality, because they have the knowledge. In the meantime the Briar knew her wincon (I lose short trades, I stomp long trades) and a small mistake by ambessa (hitting the wave lv1) led to an unevitable solo kill (even if she hadn't committed there, she wouldn't have been able to walk up for a single cs). Ambessa is a very safe champ in lane, so you can go even/slightly behind almost against everything but in these matchup a little slip = insta gg if your opponent knows what you're doing. The difference between darius and briar is that brair is less skilled and relies on leading with movement less (using your dashes when you need them to chase not to engage) AND she has a ton of sustain, while darius has still a bit more than ambessa but quite little. After first bases/eclipse you just sustain her short trades with ease and run her down even harder cause ambessa doesn't build any hp (she has to rush eclipse, if she buys tabis she has no damage and it's very easy life) and has just W shield for a short time and eclipse shield for a short time, which definitely don't help enough in long trades against briar. 2nd item doesn't really matter what ambessa buys you stomp 1v1 sidelane (even 1v2 if you have a small lead)

Riven matchup you play it out the same but she's stronger early game, has ignite, and her lv6 is ages better, also she has a stun instead of a slow which helps more in sidelane and WAAY less cd on shield, so she can spam it in fights

Sorry for the long answer, but I wanted to explain everything well because this is a very big misconception from ambessa players aswell

Btw here's an example of a darius (took darius because he plays lane exactly the same and has more data) doing the same thing at the highest level (Ambessa is TES 369, worlds class chinese player. The ambessa is way better here ofc, so she hits the wave way less but the darius still manages to trade ghost for flash, which I talked about above, without any trouble against a godlike player which understands toplane extremely well) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn3l5s3cATM


Hope this helps! Let me know if you get what I'm saying or if there's anything else

Of course! here you are. So ambessa vs urgot is a skill matchup ambessa favored (as you get more experience, this matchup just becomes free) because all of his important abilities (everything except for W) are skillshots, and ambessa has many dashes and ways to kite him. You win the lane as long as you dash to the side, always use your range, and play around his E. They only way he can go even or win a trade is by hitting his E, which has a long cast time and gives you all the time in the world to dash or not walk in any direction he's facing. Therefore his only real threat is E+Flash, but that's why you take flash: if you see him casting E from far away for no reason, if he knows what he's doing he's probably looking to E+Flash on you, so you can flash if you have no other choice or if you have enough time even dash to the side, or if you don't get oneshot or the urgot is faking an E+Flash to get your flash (but that's more advanced) you can also just buffer your W in his E and the trade will go at least even if not winning for you if you kite away. For runes you can go grasp if you're learning the matchup or ambessa, but after a bit of experience I started just going conqueror beacuse he can't play against your champion so you don't need any extra early game power if you know your limits. Other than that you win everything, short trades you always win and after eclipse you just oneshot him 100 to 0, all-ins you always win after a few bases (your cds are just too long in early levels so long trades don't make sense) as long as you dodge his E, and later on if you went bruiser builds he can even hit E and you will still probably win (you can also just buffer W, you have so many options), you outscale in teamfights, you heavily outscale in side, you're just better than him. The only part of the game where you don't stomp him is the first few levels, so expecially if he went ignite (and he also has pta, which is an early game aggressive rune because he needs to snowball as a champion to be useful) care for lv1 cheeses and weird stuff, then it's easy. Maybe you felt like you got outscaled because he got free gold/kills early game and he snowballed, which is the only way to not stomp this matchup, he didn't outscale you if he's just 3k gold and 2 levels up. Also check the "threats" section, I have everything covered there for the matchup. Build depends on enemy teamcomp but you can default to eclipse shojin if you are not conident as it leaves almost zero counterplay for him. Stat-wise (lolalytics) the matchup goes even in emerald+, where probably both players are unexperienced so the ambessa just gets hit by illegal E's, but if we look at master+, where ambessa players are better at least mechanically and urgot players are mostly otps (so they're very good with their champion), urgot has 46% winrate in this matchup, because the ambessas understand that their kit completely counters urgot, which as a juggernaut hates mobile champions and dashes, and the urgot mains even if they play well can't do anything about it.

hope this helps, Sorry for the essay ;)

You do! If you read the notes again you will notice that I recommend both conqueror and eclipse-> shojin (which is you tankier setup) in the same scenarios(when you can't oneshot enemies so the fights will inevitably be longer), so that's what you do most of the times.
Feel free to ask anything you want if you didn't understand my explanation.

Oh, and don't worry about your english, it's way better than mine xD