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Recommended Items
Runes: Standard page
+8 ability haste
+6 Armor
+8 Magic Resist
Spells:
Flash
Ignite
Items
Ability Order
Fury of the Dragonborn (PASSIVE)
Shyvana Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Ahri
Ahri is currently the most popular, worst matchup. Ban her. Skilled players will auto-shove you in and hard deny you under turret. Her Q is dodgeable, but that charm is quite quick and is the truly threatening part of her kit. If you do happen to get charmed, you’ll take a brutal amount of damage. This means that you can't get a single caster creep for the entire lane phase. Pretty unplayable. Triple demat the casters to get to the one-shot breakpoint faster. Shove back hard any chance you get, since you can only step up to the wave while your creeps yet live. Position so she has to choose between trying to Q you or shoving/lifestealing off of your wave. Mind your spacing; if your W is down and you’re at her maximum Q range, you can get double hit by it very easily. At 6, NEVER just ult at her out of the blue, even if she doesn’t have vision and you’ll catch her by surprise. She will land a guaranteed charm and kill you with her full combo; you won’t be able to run away from her ult. Wait for her to Q the wave or whiff charm then ult on her. She will always retreat without her E and Q both available. Wait for her to ult back once, then E after her before she can dash again. You only have 1 second to shoot. Don’t let her dodge your fireball.
Malphite
He presses R. You press E. Triple kill. It's very hard to reflex flash a Malphite ult. One of the best setups you can ask for.
Malphite
He presses R. You press E. Triple kill. It's very hard to reflex flash a Malphite ult. One of the best setups you can ask for.
Champion Build Guide
Drem Yol Lok. Greetings. |
I go by Veralion and I’ve played



Then Riot took it away from me. Funnel



It was over. I was forced to jungle for a few years and was not particularly happy about it. Playing jungle in this game is basically scapegoat simulator, starring you. You have 4 idiots who all have main character syndrome and no concept of wave management screaming for ganks from a champion that is useless until level 6. It's miserable and I hate it.
Season 13 is a whole new level of misery, though. Riot Games, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to ruin jungle again. XP and gold was substantially nerfed, bringing back low-econ perma-gank meta, everyone's favorite. Jungle

So, I gave mid another look-see. And what do you know? I'm excited to say that both problems have now been solved! The durability patch made surviving lane phase possible again, and the buff to


AP


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So read on, fellow dragon, and learn well the art of flame! |
+ Capable of very early 100-0 burst potential through ![]() + Manaless, can stay on the map indefinitely + Very high base health regeneration, can outlast early mana pools + Absolutely absurd roams, converts winning lanes into kills risk-free + Unbelievably fast with AP, ![]() + Extremely strong, safe siege with empowered ![]() + Insane structure damage through AP scaling and ![]() + Significant splitpush and backdoor threat + Can stop enemy pushes safely by nuking the creep wave from afar + Snowballs LUDICROUSLY hard and is downright unfair if significantly ahead + Dark horse effect (Particularly regarding roams) + Is a motherf***ing dragon. |
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- Pathetic levels 1-5, easily abused and zoned by several matchups - Complete lack of early priority, cannot defend early invades - Reliant on ![]() - Very matchup and composition dependent (Need CC and squishy targets) - Extremely weak to MR stacking, tanks, and bruisers. - Hard countered by ![]() - Almost useless if behind, brings damage to the team and nothing else - Off-meta pick gives psychotic teammates an easy scapegoat and excuse to give up. |
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1. Your composition: strong front line, reliable initiation, AoE CC, reset mechanics |
Since you're going to be very squishy and









Look at your damage profile, too. No more than one other teammate should do a lot of magic damage. Success becomes much harder when every enemy builds


2. Enemy composition: As squishy as possible |
You want to be shooting soft, squishy, immobile champions who can’t stand up to your firepower. While a single hit will take a carry out of the fight, you have very little in the way of sustained damage for beefy targets. A bruiser or tank will shrug off your one big chunk and proceed to make life very difficult for you if your team can't cover that weakness. If there are 3 or more very tanky bois on the enemy team (for example





3. A good lane matchup |
For mid, your matchup is even more important than team comp. Burst mages are exceptionally good matchups. These champions were dumpstered on by the durability patch and you will have little difficulty outlasting their mana pools.



Certain control mages that have spells jukeable with




Many popular fighters and assassins can be farmed into, but are too dangerous to challenge without help. They'll need to play badly to give you an opening.





Don’t pick her into famously abusive mids or things which have a similarly bad early game but outscale you. The very worst lanes include






I've got pages of notes on how to handle every common matchup under the threats section above.
4. An aggressive, unfair jungler |
You also really want a strong early-game ganker in the jungle. I’d advise duoing with one if possible. The more aggressive and unfair, the better. Stealth champions as well as those who move too fast to react to are great, like






Alternatively, powerful early game bruisers like



Post 6, your gank assist with


You do NOT want a powerfarmer like




5. A strong, winning bottom lane |
Lastly, you want a winning bot lane to enable roam opportunities. High pressure poke lanes like






Roaming engage supports like





Scaling ADC/enchanter pairings make these opportunities few and far between.




Again, you only need 3 of the above in order to make the build work. If you've got all 5,

You'll bait their weak, immobile mid too deep while trying to deny you, get fed and farmed by spam ganking them repeatedly, get all 5 plates in 2 pushes, roam down to slaughter their crippled bot lane under their own turret with no possible escape, and turn all of that gold into pressing

It's seriously disgusting how hard she can snowball a game under the right circumstances. There's actually no counterplay. She just hits

Off-meta, indeed.
Terrible passive in all honesty. AP builds don't really feel the 20% increase, especially since her

Auto reset which hits twice and synergizes with the on-hit damage from her



If your target dies on the first hit, you only get 2 fury. That sounds trivial and not worth paying attention to until the first time you die at 99 fury, which I can promise is ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING. Spare no effort to get




Be very careful about using this in a teamfight. Going in for a little extra damge only to get locked down and turned into paste is how you throw leads and lose games. You should only be meleeing once the fight is clearly already won.
AoE damage and speed buff. Early on it is indispensable for dodging skillshots and taking quick moments to dart forward, last hit a creep, and retreat. This is also how you prepare caster creeps to last hit under turret. Two ticks of the ability will do enough damage. Three or four ticks is risky. Five ticks is too much and will ruin the entire stack. Move in and out of range as necessary to get as much farm as possible. The first tick is also applied instantly, so this ability is your only option to kill 1 hp creeps before your minions finish them off.


With access to this much speed, catching you is an absolute nightmare so long as you position respectfully. Kiting back from threats and chasing down crippled targets for that last

But it does literally nothing special in dragon form.
God forbid it do something useful and exciting like the rest of her kit, like grant slow immunity, or at the very least not decay over the duration.
I miss my fire trail. Give me back my fire trail at least, Rito.
Basic medium speed skillshot which passes through creeps and stops on the first champion hit. Though initially on a long cooldown, it enables



Some key things to remember about dragon form





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Practically speaking, this spaghetti creates a small dead zone. Never try to hit a target that’s directly under you unless you are in a do-or-die moment. Remember this when you go to tackle someone with

Besides that, if you land



Patience is key; with the unfair range and area that



Second, do NOT press E at all while you are flying in


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There's a bug that's been in the game since her release in 2011 which will reset the cooldown if you cast it at the very instant

Definitely don't intentionally go for it and risk not getting your empowered


Objectively the coolest ult in the game. Unstoppable dash with a 1.3 ratio limited only by fury generation, having an extremely low effective cooldown. You are half a champion without it, so it's a damn good thing it's so accessible. Managing fury to make sure you always have it when you need it is crucial, as is properly extending it through frequent auto attacks and


Never use

Though it hits like a truck, it is fairly slow and hard to land on someone with a working mouse. Get close before pressing R if you need a hit for lethal.



DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO HIT

Instead, use


In order to use

After reverting to human form, gaining fury is your first, last, and only priority. If action is likely in the near future, go straight to the closest available minion wave or jungle camp and begin hitting it. Do not use



The knockback effect behaves strangely; along most of its path it will knock targets back a short way as intended, but for whatever reason at the very end of her travel path it pulls back and clumps all enemies in front of her. It's basically a vortex effect like


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Oh, and make sure to buy Championship Shyvana and spam recall every free moment you get. It's, uh, required to do well. Honest.
I don't need to tell you this, but








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First Strike This rune is just straight-up busted. It's a miniature ![]() ![]() ![]() Look to proc it in lane as much as you can for a cheeky 5G here and there, but not at the cost of last hitting or messing up your wave position. Don't even think about going in to make more money at any point. Greed can kill even dragons. Just collect your safe payout from your initial chunks. I promise you, that's more than enough. |
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Free *** boots Can't go wrong with these. Saves you 300G and gives you an extra 10 MS, which is the most valuable and criminally under-appreciated stat in the game. If your plan is to build ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Free Space: Your choice This doesn't happen often, but all three runes in this slot are defensible choices. My default is ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Cosmic Insight This shaves ~45 seconds off of your ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Go-to: Second wind/Demolish![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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For Easy Lanes: Transcendence/Gathering Storm Once you get better at laning, you may choose to drop ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
For stat shards, take haste and double resistances depending on your matchup. 8 haste shaves nearly a second off of your

Core build |
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Start: Doran's Shield + pot Health regeneration go brr. This is the only viable starting choice. ![]() ![]() |
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First recall: Codex + Refillable Look to take your first recall at 1050G. With decent farm, this will be at around level 5.5. Your opponent should also recall at about this time. ![]() ![]() |
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If popping off: Dark Seal![]() ![]() ![]() If the game is going well and you ever find yourself with an extra 350G to spare on a recall, just go ahead and grab one. Why not? It's a small investment for a potentially huge payoff down the line. Stacks only go up. Always keep it in mind! |
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Mythic: Night Harvester Build toward spooky axe. Being manaless, our mythic options are limited, but this baby works just fine. An extra 125+15% AP damage on your first chunk will terrify your enemies from very early in the game. Don't sell the MS component short, either, which makes staying in range for follow up nukes or escaping back to safety a breeze. Its real standout feature, though, is its whopping 25 haste, more than any other mythic and only surpassed by ![]() |
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Boots: Sorc shoes![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Organic Artillery: Horizon Focus I'm a firm believer that your second item should also have haste on it. The difference between a 5 and 6 second ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() You may build ![]() ![]() |
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To ruin people: Deathcap![]() ![]() ![]() |
You will be building these items in this order in every game. After you have your hat, it’s time to begin specializing for the situation.
For Inflection Points |
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Maximum power: Blue Elixir If the game hasn't ended already, chances are that it's about to. Elixirs should now be purchased before every major objective. The blue soda has quite a kick. Not only is 50 AP nothing to sneeze at with your crazy ratios (probably even more because of Infernals and Deathcap), it adds 25 true damage to every hit on a small per-target cooldown. And that cooldown is... 5 seconds, perfectly matching ![]() |
Situational items (in order of preference) |
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When popping off: Mejai's Grab yourself a ![]() ![]() ![]() You get a very nice 10% movespeed buff while at 10 stacks and above, so just being able to take advantage of that for one outing on the map pays for itself in my mind. If you have a fully stacked book, a ![]() ![]() If things start heading south and you lose the stacks, sell it to grab your next big item. It’s not a big deal. I vehemently despise players who stubbornly sit on 0 stack Mejai's for the entire game. Don't be one of them. |
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To delete carries: Shadowflame This is your first choice. If you can build this item, you're in a fantastic spot. Penetration becomes exponentially more valuable the more you have, so another 10-20 pen will get you very close to literally one-shotting those stubborn carries who think that they can "just outplay" ![]() One does not simply outplay ![]() Champions like ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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For MR: Void Staff You’ll need to pick up a ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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For beef: Demonic Demonic has always been ridiculously strong on ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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To frustrate bruisers: Rylai's Bruisers and fighters absolutely HATE being slowed by 30%. If one of these champions becomes a problem and your team lacks sufficient peel to keep them under control, ![]() ![]() |
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If being giga-focused: Hourglass If you're hard carrying and have a target painted squarely between your wings, you may need ![]() ![]() This item pairs quite nicely with a fully stacked ![]() |
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If against heavy AP and high threat spells: Banshee's The problem with this item is that the on-demand stasis from ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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If your teammates are griefing: Morellonomicon Let me make one thing clear. I do not think you should ever have to buy this item. Healcut should not be your responsibility since others can more reliably and efficiently apply it. The probelm is that sometimes, your support and ADC simply do not want to win and refuse to purchase grievous wounds despite red ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Level 1 fiestas |
Invades happen more often than not in solo queue, and they happen because they frequently work. Hook and snare champions in particular love to invade. If you have one, go fishing. If they have one, ping to 5 man stack in a bush and wait.



If neither team has a particularly strong invade, keep watch of a jungle entrance that your team doesn't have covered and provide vision until at least 1:10. It seriously triggers me to watch people just AFK at their turret being useless while creeps run to lane. Don't be one of those idiots.
Early playstyle: be patient and defensive |
Your goal for the first few levels is just to farm up and soak experience. The biggest thing about early laning is learning what farm you can get away with walking up for and when you should concede CS to preserve health. This varies greatly depending on matchup. Here's a good rule of thumb: if you will take more than 100 damage to get that creep, concede it. Your real mission is to hit 6 smoothly, not necessarily to get there with a full purse. Don’t be afraid to go 10, 20, even 30 CS behind if it means you can safely stay in lane. You can always make up a CSD later on in the game once you're more powerful and start scaling into a true dragoness, but if you get chunked for no reason, are forced to back, and miss a big wave, that experience is gone forever and you are now unavoidably behind the curve of the game.
Always prioritize farming with


Use potions once your health drops under 25% in order to get maximum value from


Wave management and last hitting |
Ideally, you want the wave to push into you just past the river and freeze it there with precise last hitting. Don’t shove at all in the early game and be very careful how you





Your opponent will not like being stuck this far forward, however, and will likely shove you in. You'll need to get very proficient at last hitting under tower. To last hit full health melee creeps, hit them after 2 tower shots. Caster creeps die in 2 shots, so you’ll need to tickle them a little bit before they get hit. 2 ticks of


The tower will always target cannons first, then melees, then casters, and go from closest to furthest away. You've got the tools to get nearly everything, so make the effort. Missing a few is unavoidable, especially if you're also taking harass while doing so. Make sure to always last hit cannons with



You are very weak, skirmish with care |

When your opponent goes for a back, stay and shove the wave in while they’re not there; you do so pretty quickly. You don't need to match their recall right away with how quickly you shove in and how fast you run back to mid lane with


Ideally, you want to take your first back at 1050G.


Starting at level 6, look to all in |
The second you hit 6, look to dive onto your lane opponent and vore them. You should only need to land one or two pokes against most champions to have serious all in potential. Put your wards down and once you have proof that their jungler isn’t waiting around the corner, wait for them to cast on the creep wave and GO RAWR. Your burst is absurd; a full combo with

If they escape and back off, cleave the wave with your empowered




Don't forget to put all of your wards down first. There’s nothing more tilting than seeing an opportunity only to int because their jungler just happened to be right there and you didn’t check first. If your opponent has been playing passive then suddenly starts to toe into range, you should think to yourself that it's too good to be true. Watch for sudden changes in playstyle; bad players frequently telegraph their jungler's proximity. Don't get baited into a 1v2 situation that you cannot win.
If you’re getting destroyed and slow pushed on in lane, don’t be afraid to expend

Once you climb high enough and start facing decent players, opportunities for solo kills become rare. Being a mechanically simple champion, it's very hard for


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If you can't make a play on their mid, you will need to gain leads off of early skirmishes. While transformed, you are the strongest thing on the map, so look to fight whenever that bar is full. Shove in and shadow your jungler around the map. Look to invade, take an objective, or dive a sidelane together. You'll almost certainly win.
The winning team is always the one that can gang up on the enemy more quickly and efficiently. Mid lane gives quick access to the entire map, and you need to rotate properly to create numbers advantages for your team and unwinnable situations for the enemy.
One random note that I don't know where else to put: dragons are natural predators of chickens, and the raptor camp will be your best friend for extending dragon form.

Punish roams |
Sometimes, your opponent may leave lane to roam while your ult is down, or they're a particularly dangerous champion that can turn on and murder you if you follow them into fog. You may have thought that they went back, only to see them walk over a ward running to bot lane, making it too late to follow. Remember that you're useless without an ult, that a turret plate is worth half a kill, and that we took



You’ll probably regain

The bot lane roam |
Speaking of killing bot lane, this is where that winning bot that I mentioned earlier comes into play. The absolute fastest way to catapult yourself into the lead is to find a good moment to roam bot and kill two crippled targets who are stuck farming under turret.


First, check for pinks in the bushes, especially the pixel bush. That's a very popular spot. If their mid warded his bot side river bush, go around it. You can always expect both teams to have the bot lane river bush warded, so don't go near it unless they've just committed to a fight.
The path to gank red side bot lane is extremely convenient. Just head up and ward over the wall to give vision of Gromp. There may even be a blast cone there for you to escape if you need to. They will certainly have the tri bush warded too if they're pushed in and hurt though, since junglers love to set up there and go for dives. So you're just going to




Ganking the blue bot lane is a little trickier, though. You must facecheck 3 bushes on the way down and there's no perfect place to put your ward to watch for flanks. Blast cone or

If you're ganking the blue team bot lane and they're just farming away in the middle of the lane, ulting over the drake pit into their tribush to approach works very well. Spam ping beforehand and hopefully your support will get the message and engage.
Maintain drake control |
You must have


The first drake is oftentimes soloed while laners are still busy occupying each other. You will usually hit level 6 while junglers are level 4-5 and this enters their minds. As stated previously, if you're against a jungler who can solo it effectively like





Though you don't have a jungle item, you're still

If a 2v2 fight breaks out topside and you aren't pinned mid, you may even





Your time to shine: late-game teamfighting |
Once lanes end and the death balls start roaming, it’s time to gib some carries. You almost always want to play fights by using





Alternatively, if your ADC is hyper fed, stick by them and look to use






Generally, you want to identify the biggest and squishiest threat and immediately take them out of the game.
With this healthy amount of haste,

Most of the time you want to aim for the marksman; they almost never build defensively and have huge amounts of reliable, sustained damage. You will also absolutely obliterate squishy enchanter supports, who like to huddle right next to the marksman to juice them up and peel for them. Look for those double hits. If you're properly fed, you have a very real chance of killing them in one hit, or at the very least taking them completely out of the fight.
Always ask yourself as you and your team are jockeying for position on the map: “How does this go bad for me?”. Who don’t you see? What abilities do you need to watch out for? Which bushes are unwarded? How many are missing? Where are they most likely? What if you’re wrong? What is everybody doing right now? Can I be flanked and killed here? What is behind that tasty looking target? Is that target really alone? What if they’re not?
Remember that you are a priority target and must stay safe. Play behind your team and wait for your moment. Against nearly every composition, if someone manages to even touch you, it’s because you screwed up and let them. Intelligent positioning that takes full advantage of


Knowing when to use

Ult availability is your number one priority in the lategame. Spam ping your teamaway from creeps when you need to hit them and tell them to leave at least one jungle camp up for you. Spam danger ping when you have no ult and it looks like someone wants to engage. They may not listen, but you need to try. If it looks like they aren't getting it, find a few seconds to spell it out for them in chat.
If your team loses a fight and you’re left standing, try to

Ambush predator |
If possible, you want your team to engage in the jungle. Fighting in the jungle compresses the enemy backline, allowing you to easily fire extremely high-value



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Though you can almost never get away with trying to land


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ALWAYS contest and discourage Baron attempts |
You are one of the best picks in the game for contesting Baron. The enemy team is NOT ALLOWED to do it while you are alive with a full bar of fury. You have free access to the backline while their meatballs are tanking the worm. On top of that, the geography of the pit forces said backline to clump together. This is absolutely ideal for you. If they try, you stop them. One massive chunk onto that grouped backline should immediately force them to retreat if you are alone or make them concede it to your team entirely in a 5v5 setting. If they don’t respect you, keep shooting and kill them all. If your team just got picked or lost a fight and you have to go it alone, approach from a direction that they are unlikely to have warded for best results.
At higher ranks, they will have someone threatening running interference most of the time, so it may be hard or impossible to find a good angle onto the soft targets. In those cases, or if you arrive too late to discourage through kill pressure, it may be worth orbiting around the area and finding an opportunity for a steal attempt, especially if you have enough AP to realistically contest or simply outhit the smite. Fire at 1500-2500 health depending on their DPS.
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If your team has set up vision properly and goes for a sneak attempt, always use your ult to help burn the baron down. Your fire patch will usually do over 2000 damage to it by itself and could be the difference between securing it cleanly and getting aced.
Draconic artillery |
Once your team sets up a siege, wait patiently as usual for a good setup, then fire away on whoever was dumb enough to get caught. If your team lacks such initiation, then you can just ult in place and look to chunk a carry. Very few champions can effectively waveclear from outside of your


Don't get cocky, though. Take them apart methodically, piece by piece, by the book. While objectives are down, ult, chunk, get a turret, and go splitpush to get your ult back and move waves forward. Group, ult, chunk, push, split, and repeat until all 3 inhibitors are down, you have Baron, you have Soul, maybe even Elder, and close in for the kill when there's no chance of anything possibly going wrong.
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And I think that about covers it! |
I hope you enjoyed the read and learned a thing or two! This guide is my pride and joy and you can bet I'll be keeping it up to date and improving/reiterating upon it constantly. I want to add a lot more clips, teamfight examples, videos of entire lane phases for each common mid laner, all sorts of stuff. It's still a long way from perfect. I'm sure I'll be making improvements for quite a while. If ya liked what I've got so far, throw me a rating and gimme feedback in the comments. Ask questions, let me know what worked well for you vs x champion, point out typos and inconsistencies, critique wording or formatting, just meme, whatever. Pick those nits, man. I really appreciate it all and i'll be reading, promise. Or drop by my stream and do the same (https://www.twitch.tv/veralion/)! Keep checking back every so often; I promise this guide will look better and be more comprehensive every time!
May you be blessed! |
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