Aphelios Guide by War Greymon (aka Nendo)

Hello everyone, my name's War Greymon or Nendo, whichever you prefer. I'm a master tier ADC and a sub support player on EUNE. I have been playing league on and off since season 1 and I'm versed in many ADCs. Today I wanna talk about Aphelios.

Aphelios is a hypercarry that sits somewhere between a caster and an auto attacker. He is very complex and requires a lot of game knowledge to pilot competently, and as such, will punish bad decisions or misplays much more than a lot of champions. That being said, he rewards players that put the time into him and truly shines when played correctly.

Strenghts

Strong early game presence.
Strong pick potential.
Versatility.
Great scaling into late game.
High skill ceiling.
Heavy snowball potential.
Absurd amounts of AOE damage.
One of the ADCs with most agency in the game.

Weaknesses

Squishy.
Next to no mobility.
Somewhat mediocre mid game.
Heavily countered by certain matchups.
High skill floor.
Damage gated by items.

Laning Phase

In general, you want to play it safe during laning phase, but depending on the matchup, you can play a bit more aggressively. Aphelios has strong jungle gank/support all in setup early in the game due to Gravitum slow/root so you wanna spend you early Severum first to guarantee Calibrum/Gravitum combo.
As you approach level 6 you want to have Crescendum/Calibrum or Severum combination to all in/fight for drake control or another objective.

Mid Game

This is where good Aphelios players are separated from great Aphelios players. Unless you're fed, this part is the easiest to mess up and where Aphelios is the weakest, at 2-3 items in. At this stage most hypercarries are going to hit faster than you because Aphelios goes for crit and damage without AS. Try to avoid unnecessary fights unless it's obviously free and make sure to keep your CS up and not die for no reason. Aphelios spikes very hard on 4 items where he tears up entire teams so you should aim for that as soon as possible.

Late Game

During late game you want to pay special attention to your guns as some lose value in late game. If I had to order it, this would be the priority of guns (again, in very general terms, since Aphelios is so flexible, your game may require a different set up):

Infernum
Severum
Crescendum
Calibrum
Gravitum


If you play correctly, you will delete entire teams by yourself with absurd amounts of AOE damage Aphelios can provide. This requires discipline and general knowledge on other champions. More on gun combinations in next section.

Here I will give my tier list on some of the best gun combos and explain how to set them up.



So before I tell you the best order, I want to explain how they work. Whenever you use your primary gun which is the one you currently hold, and fire an ability, the effects of that gun will apply the secondary. What I mean by that, let's say I have Infernum and Calibrum. If I fire Infernum Q and I hit 4 targets, all of those 4 targets will be Marked with Calibrum. The only exception to this is Gravitum, which doest apply any other gun but has it's own root. I suggest doing a bit of testing yourself as they all interact with each other in their own way, use the tier list I made up there to test them but in general, late game you wanna get rid of Gravitum quickly unless you really need the CC with your ult because it has the lowest missile speed, it slows down your DPS by a lot. The highest missile speed is on Severum because it's instant and not blocked by windwall-like effects.

In general this is the rotation you want to have. Mind that Phel has 50 ammo in each gun and transition to new guns will lock you out of attacking. Each spell cast costs 10 ammo while an auto costs 1 per shot.

You start with Calibrum and Severum.

Spend Severum first so you get Gravitum. You can use Severum to trade aggressively and quickly proc PTA or to run away as it gives movement speed while it lasts as a channel ability. Gravitum and Calibrum combo allows for gank set ups as Calibrum Q (which is a line skillshot that marks the target and gives you extended auto attack range) will allow a long range shot that applies Gravitum and you can use it's root to set up your Thresh hook for example or a jungle gank. After that you spend Calibrum and you will have Gravitum and Infernum. Use this to clear waves and potentially catch enemies that stand in waves as the AoE root is really strong. Infernum Q (the flamethrower) will apply secondary hit of Gravitum which is extremely powerful as an AoE CC ability.
After that spend Gravitum and you will gain Crescendum. Crescendum and Infernum are a decent combination but not what we're looking for. Still, if you can hit a few targets with Infernum Q you will get chakrams for Crescendum which increases it's DPS quite a lot. Remember that you cannot auto with Crescendum while it's flying back to you so you gotta get close and personal to get the most out of it's DPS. Spend Infernum which will give you Crescendum and Calibrum. This combination is one of the most powerful ones because of Crescendum ability. It places a turret that will fire the secondary gun effects and is inactive until the enemy gets in range of it. It's attack speed is directly correlated to Phel's own attack speed and level.This means a turret with Calibrum will fire marking shots at enemies and give you chakram stacks whenever you auto off of it. In late game this can be devastating against a squishy target as you can kill them from a range where you cannot be punished. All of this said, your rotation should look like this if you follow this guide (although feel free to experiment if you have a better idea in a match).

Calibrum > Gravitum > Infernum > Severum > Crescendum.

Aphelios ulti works in a very simple way but most people don't seem to understand what it does exactly.. Aphelios fires an AoE skillshot that hits enemies in an area. Although it's AoE it's very easily body blocked as the radius is not that big. After the intial damage from that hit, Aphelios technically, for all intents and purposes auto attacks and it will apply all modifiers, crits, red buffs and so on, and then APPLIES the effect of his PRIMARY gun. So if he ults with Calibrum all enemies hit will be marked with it and he will be able to attack like he hit Calibrum Q with the exact properties of his secondary gun. All ultis have different effects and you can distinguish them with colors.

Calibrum marks all the targets as if he hit Q.

Severum gives a flat heal.

Infernum splashes damage from all targets hit but with a modifier (due to the 200 years incidents).

Gravitum hits all enemies with a slow and will allow a multiroot if you hit a lot of people (think of a mini Varus ult) although the missile is extremely slow so remember that.

Crescendum gives you extra chakrams.


How you use your ult depends on the situation which makes it one of the most versatile abilities in the entire game. Use your imagination and situation to make the most of it. I could talk about fringe cases here but this is best gained through experience.

Thanks for reading my guide. I will update and improve it as patches go, or at least I'll try to as much as possible. I hope you have fun and pick up Aphelios as he's one of the most unique characters across all esports style games, and especially in MOBAs. Take care and may the moon be with you!