Heya everyone, local Samira OTP here. Name's Moth, and I for some reason am psychopathic enough to like diving into the enemy 1v5 and surviving. If this sounds enticing to you then you should be playing Katarina and not Samira. But if you have high enough standards to play Samira instead, then I shall do my best to teach you how to play this abomination of a champion.

For context, I'm a silver II who has a nick for champions that make all 9 other players suffer, specifically in the ADC category.

Samira's playstyle is usually about showing off, going in on the enemy team and deleting all 5 of them while flashing your m7, pretty neat huh? Your abilities scale well with lifesteal, crit and AD, which is why you're mainly built to be a glass cannon that survives by killing everyone else before they kill you. If that isn't enticing, I don't know what is.

Here's a semi-thorough rundown of Samira's abilities

Samira's passive defines her playstyle as a quick in and out pseudo assasin.
Whenever you attack a champion, you gain a style stack, going from E to S. You don't get a stack of your passive if you use the same attack more than once in a row, thus, you should weave in auto attacks within abilities to stack this quickly. Each stack grants you 3.5% movement speed and at S rank you can cast your R, which we'll cover in a bit.

As another 2 mini-boosts, when in melee range your attacks apply a small portion of bonus magic damage on-hit, scaling with missing health. Sounds cool and all but, are you really going to get in melee range for that Garen? And finally, whenever an enemy is cc'd within range, you can dash in and deal one Auto Attack's worth of damage over 6 attacks, if the enemy is knocked up however, you extend it by 0.5 seconds.

Samira's Q is a simple skillshot that deals damage, can crit and applies lifesteal at 66% effectiveness. In melee range however, it becomes an AoE slash that has the same properties and applies your passive on-hit damage (Even though it doesn't say it anywhere in the ability description).

W is a 360 degree slash that destroys any and all projectiles for 0.75 seconds. It slashes once on startup and again on end, use it to block important abilities and/or level up your style rank. Remember that you cannot AA or cast Q during this ability's animation BUT your R can cancel it entirely and you can cast E or EQ during it. It also applies your passive on-hit in melee range.

E is a point and click dash that can only target enemies, allowing you to dash to them and deal damage, increasing your attack speed for 3 seconds, additionally resetting on champion takedown. Also, if you cast Q while dashing you apply both abilities' damage and style stacks by throwing a small set of grenades along the trajectory, also applying your passive damage. Note that the grenades do not apply lifesteal unlike your Q. And finally, the ability resets on champion takedown. Use this to quickly position around teamfights or dive opponents.

Finally, Samira's R can only be used while you have max style stacks. When casted, it slows you down while you begin attacking ALL enemies, including invisible/out of sight ones, for 2 seconds, 5 times a second. You need to have an enemy of any kind, wether neutral monster or minion to be able to cast this ability, afterwards it will attack anything in range, dealing a lot of DPS and applying 66% of lifesteal. Reminder that you can E and EQ during your R, allowing you to reposition really easily and dealing bonus damage.

A quick list of combos here for you nerds out there:

AA > Q > AA
Standard in-lane trading pattern.

P3 > AA > EQ > AA
Your all-in combo after your support engages, you can instead save E for dodging skillshots or chasing flash.

AA > Q > AA > E > AA > W > R
One of the fastest ways to get your ultimate up in a teamfight post level 9.

AA > W1 > EQ > W2 > AA
Can get you all style stacks if you're in melee range and need to instantly block a point-blank skillshot

Now here's an explanation of the items and runes you should run.
Conqueror is the main keystone for Samira as it's the one that sucks the least. The healing doesn't matter as much as you think, as it's practically 1% from Q and R, you take it for the AD it gives as it's practically a free BF Sword.

PoM and Last Stand are heavily flexible depending on the comp and your playstyle, Triumph is really good for the kill gold and extra 2v2 kill pressure in botlane, while overheal makes it harder for you to be bursted down. Coup de Grace and Cut down are both also viable options. CdG is good when you are confident you're going to snowball hard or against comps where the other 2 won't work and Cut Down is amazing against tank comps. You can also go either of these against comps with executes, such as Pyke, Urgot or Cho'gath in which last stand value would be hard to get.

As your secondary runes ToB and Ravenous are the most consistent, due to the lane sustain both combined give, while you can sometimes opt for ingenious hunter instead so your shieldbow is up for more skirmishes.

You can instead use literally whatever you want as your secondary runes. Gathering storm/Nimbus Cloak, Overgrowth/Bone Plating, Magical Footwear/Biscuits, all good and viable examples, it's up to your preference.

Now for items, to explain them per category:

For your core items, Shieldbow, Collector, IE and Bloodthirster
These 4 items are your best bet at doing anything as Samira.

Shieldbow gives you everything you want, survivability, AD, lifesteal, damage, health, etc.

Collector second is especially good for snowballing, its damage is an amazing powerspike for you, not to mention that being able to KS and take gold from your team to carry is the main reason to get this (I do not condone funnel strats please).

Infinity edge third cause you're an ADC and Bloodthirster 4th cause building it early game isn't really viable, cause you don't exactly have the damage to use it.

In terms of situational-ish items, rushing an LDR second item against comps with 3+ tanks will save you a couple of table smashing, trust me. LDR can also slightly outdamage IE against tanky comps if you want to opt for that instead.

Mortal Reminder and QSS are standard ADC situational items, you know when to build them.

GA is for when you need armor but are carrying hard enough that death's dance isn't as appealing. Death's dance is for those of you who honestly think that the item is better than a GA.

Now as for Spirit Visage, it looks like a terrible idea at first, but when going against heavy magic damage comps that don't really have enough meaningful cc, it can be pretty disgusting considering the heal amp plus the HP it provides.

And to give some insight on some items that you'd think would work in theory, here are some items that I'm going to into detail on wether or not they're good or terrible, please only read this one at your own risk.

First off, the attack speed crit items are something you should never build, Kraken Slayer, Runaan's, RFC and berserker boots are absolute garbage on Samira. Attack speed is practically a dump stat, since you rely on your abilities for damage, at best you'd only get one, maybe two Kraken slayer procs in a teamfight given how volatile of a character you are, opt in for defensive boots instead. RFC is terrible due to how it works with your passive, making your dash bring you to RFC range and not your actual AA range, leaving you at around 150 units away from your target.

Here's one where you're gonna have to take my word for it, lethality items aren't even useable on Samira. Duskblade allows you to deal slightly less DPS than a shieldbow without its survivability in exchange for lethality and CDR, and no, you can't go invisible during your ult.

Manamune is a strange case, I've tried to make it work A LOT of times. I've tried it with lethality, building it first, building it last, etc. I have found only 2 niche uses in which the item is useable, but outclassed. The first use being mana sustain, for 400 tear gold you can easily run triumph instead of PoM and not have to worry about mana. The second being in anti-dive comps, where going in 1v5 is a terrible idea, so you'd gain value from manamune damage on your Q and play like a scuffed Ezreal, in this case essence reaver would be much better though.

Blade of the Ruined King, AKA Viego's sword is terrible for the same reasons as Kraken Slayer, I know the lifesteal is tempting, but please, just build a Bloodthirster

Black Cleaver and Serylda's Grudge are both decent items, for different reasons. Black Cleaver shredding the entire enemy team's armor during your ult, making 4-1 AD comps use you as a sort of utility, not to mention it makes you tankier. Serylda's fills the same purpose, utility + armor pen, it's slow proccing on your R makes it so that it can be better than LDR in certain scenarios.

And finally, as for boots, you should go for defensive boots due to your AS being a meh stat on Samira.

Steelcaps against heavy AD/AA comps, merc-treads against CC/Magic damage comps and Swifities against very specific champs, like Nasus/Ashe. Swifties don't affect your ult, due to your R being a negative MS boost instead of an actual slow.

Lucidity boots are weak in my opinion, the CDR isn't as useful on you as on other ADCs, and every single time I built them I always thought "I'm taking way more damage than I should be", it's up to preference, but here's my thoughts.