Let me start off this guide with a simple question:

Why are you on Mobafire?

The common answer would usually be "I came to MobaFire so I can find a build guide for a champion". Now, there are some exceptions, such as Laggermeister ("I came so I can downvote ****ty guides"), but this is generally the main reason why Mobafire even exists in the first place.

This is all fine and dandy, nothing wrong with wanting a quick, clean guide to build your champions with. However, there comes a point in every n00bs life where they want to become better players (also known as "Pros"), and one of the many first steps to doing that is learning how your items interact with your champion, and learning how to build a champion to fit your style of play.

This guide is intended to instruct players, both fully green and level 30, on how to properly construct an efficient, fully-working build for their favourite champion that fits within their playstyle and idea of that champions mechanics. We will be going over how to analyze items, champions, item-to-skill synergies, pure item synergies, and more.

Before you begin, there are a few important references you should keep in tabs.

I highly recommend reading theBMB's In-Depth Item Guide if you are not familiar with the many items in LoL and their associated terminology. You will have a difficult time with this guide if you dont understand what the word "CC" means or which boots give you swiftness (Hint: Boots of Swiftness).

LoLWiki Items Page is where I extrapolated a lot of my information from, and this will also be your biggest ally in analyzing different items and abilities. This is absolutely essential in working with this guide. You CAN also use Mobafire's own built-in wiki, but it isn't as in-depth as it should be.

Welcome to Part 1 of my guide. This section will outline how to analyze an item or champion skillset and have a full understanding of its mechanics. This is required to carry on with the guide.

Lets begin with items.

One of the very first steps to analyzing items is by reading the item description. I will be using the standard LoL Wiki format for the descriptions and efficiencies (which are not true efficiencies, but are close enough).

Example Item

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Name: Long Sword
Tier: Basic
Cost: 400 Gold (0)
Efficiency: Base


Stats: +10 Attack Damage

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Pretty easy, huh? Well, just for consistency, let's go over this description.

Name: This should be easy enough, shouldn't it?

Tier: An item tier is basically the trading card equivalent of "Commons" and "Rares". It represents where that item is in terms of stats and build ladder. As you can see, Long Sword is in the second-lowest tier, Basic, right above Consumables. In my opinion, this information isn't too important, but it's good to remember this just for reference.

Stats: In a nutshell, what this item gives you. Long Sword is quite a simple example, giving you just +10 additional Attack Damage. Some stats can be Active abilities, and others Passives, which are denoted as such.

Cost: How much gold it costs to purchase that item. This ties in with efficiency. The number in the brackets denotes the recipe cost, or how much it costs to "put everything together".

Efficiency: Now, this is a little difficult to describe. Efficiency is how much worth an item is for the amount of gold you spent on it. This is calculated by using the lowest Basic tier items as a point of reference. As a result, Long Sword has exactly 1:1 item efficiency. Remember that efficiency DOES NOT calculate Active and Passive abilities unless they are directly stat-based.

Hopefully this won't be too difficult to remember. Now, lets continue by analyzing a bigger item, namely the most expensive item in the game.

Example Item

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Name: Trinity Force
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 3843 Gold (3)
Efficiency: 5132 Gold (Eff w/o Passives)


Stats: +30 Ability Power
+30 Attack Damage
+30% Attack Speed
+10% Critical Strike Chance
+250 Health
+200 Mana
+8% Movement Speed

UNIQUE Passive - Icy: Your basic attacks have a 25% chance to slow your target's movement speed by 30% for 2 seconds (20% for ranged attacks).

UNIQUE Passive - Spellblade: After using an ability, your next basic attack deals bonus damage equal to 150% of your base attack damage as physical damage. (2 second cooldown).

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Wow, this is a LOT to swallow. Lets go over the stats first. Aside from the myriad of basic stats given to you, Trinity Force also offers two unique passive abilities. The first one is named "Icy", which gives you a chance to slow an enemy by 30% with your autoattacks. The second, and most iconic one, is named "Spellblade", which empowers your next autoattack upon using any abilities.

Now, remember that this "Spellblade" is actually a lot different from the other "Spellblade"'s given by items like Lich Bane and Iceborn Gauntlet. Be sure to closely read what those passives or actives actually are before you continue with your analysis.

Alright, so we have successfully analyzed an item! Well, no, not really. Item analysis is only helpful if you have something to compare that item to, something that you want to put that item on. Of course, this leads us into our next part: Champion Analysis.

LoL is a big, complex game. 100+ champions means around 400+ unique abilities, 100+ unique passives, and a lot of unique lore, design, etc. Now, whether or not these abilities, passives, lore, etc. are actually UNIQUE or not (I'm looking at YOUR backstory, Miss Fortune) are not that important. What IS important is how these abilities interact with your items, and how you can capitalize on that with your next build.

First things first, lets analyze a very basic champion ability.

Example Ability

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Name: Frost Shot
Champion: Ashe
Type: Toggle (Q), Modifier
Cooldown: N/A
Cost: 8 mana per hit w/ autoattacks

Description: Ashe's basic attacks slow her targets by 15/20/25/30/35% for 2 seconds.

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Alright, now lets go over this description.

Name: Didn't we go over this before?

Champion: Which champion the ability belongs to.

Type: Denotes whether this item requires a keypress, multiple keypresses, or no keypresses at all, and which key it is assigned to. Also denotes how the ability affects said champion, and how it functions. Since Frost Shot is toggleable, we press Q once to turn it on, and again to turn it off. Since it changes how Ashe's autoattacks work, it is classified as a Modifier.

Cooldown: The amount of time for the ability to be used again. Since Frost Shot is a Toggleable Modifier, it does not have any cooldown, although some Toggleable Modifiers do have cooldown.

Description: Equivalent of stats. The numbers in the brackets separated by slashes indicates that the effect is modified by every level point put into it.

Cost: How much mana/health/other variable is consumed upon using said ability, and what constitutes as "using" the ability.

Lets move on to a bigger ability. Nothing huge yet, but something a little more common amongst our 100+ champions.

Example Ability

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Name: Mystic Shot
Champion: Ezreal
Type: Active (Q), Skillshot
Cooldown: 6/5.5/5/4.5/4 seconds
Cost: 28/31/34/37/40 mana per use

Description: Ezreal fires a bolt of energy in a line that will deal 35/55/75/95/115 (+ 100% AD)(+ 20% AP) physical damage and apply on-hit effects to the first enemy it hits. If it strikes an enemy unit, all of Ezreal's cooldowns will be reduced by 1 second.

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Alright, lets go over this one. Firstly, this ability is classified as an Active Skillshot, meaning that activating it fires an untargeted, or "dumbfire", projectile. There are other variables to go over, such as range and projectile speed, but those are unnecessary for now (unless you are analyzing Nidalee).

Mystic Shot applies on-hit effects, which is a fancy way of saying that autoattack modifiers are applied to this ability as well. It also reduces the cooldown of all abilities on cooldown by 1 second, but only if it hits an enemy.

Another thing to go over is scaling. Mystic Shot deals 35/55/75/95/115 on hit, with (+ 100% AD)(+ 20% AP) scaling. This means that it scales 1:1 with Attack Damage, but only scales 20% of your Ability Power. Of course, it's good to keep in mind that Ability Power is a lot more easily attained than Attack Damage, but that still doesn't make up for its poor scaling...or does it? This leads us into our next section: Synergies.

Welcome to Part 2 of my guide. This section will outline how to compare analyzed items with analyzed abilities, how to find the synergies between them, and how to combine them with other items/abilities.

In our previous section, we did an analysis of Ezreal's Active Skillshot, named Mystic Shot. As we saw, it has 1:1 Attack Damage scaling, but very poor Ability Power scaling. Let's see if we can make up for this by analyzing another item, and I think I found the perfect one.

Example Item

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Name: Lich Bane
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 3000 Gold (940)
Efficiency: 2690 Gold (Passive effic. must be 310 min.)


Stats: +80 Ability Power
+250 Mana
+5% Movement Speed

UNIQUE Passive – Spellblade: After using an ability, your next basic attack deals bonus magic damage equal to 50 + 75% of your ability power. 2 second cooldown.

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So what does all of this mean? Well, lets look back at Mystic Shot's description, mainly that it applies on-hit effects. In other words, using Mystic Shot will also proc (activate) Spellblade on that ability. This means that, with this item, Mystic Shot has 95% Ability Power scaling and deals an additional 50 damage.

This is still below Mystic Shots Attack Damage scaling by a bit, but remember: getting Ability Power is a lot more easier than getting Attack Damage. In fact, where the highest attainable Attack Damage from items alone is only 610, the highest attainable Ability Power from items alone is 1014!

Before we get all caught up in this, however, we should remember that there also exists Trinity Force, the Attack Damage counterpart to Lich Bane, and it deals 150% of base attack damage.

Which one is the stronger item? Well, lets do some basic math.

Trinity Force Ezreal

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Lich Bane Ezreal

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Yes, Mystic Shot on Full AP Ezreal with a Lich Bane deals more damage than Full AD Ezreal with a Trinity Force. This is cool and all but we're still missing something...and that is the rest of Ezreal's kit.

You see, although one item and ability may synergize perfectly, you also have to take into account the rest of said champions kit. Reducing your champion to a one-trick pony is just shooting yourself in the foot, and you need to build according to your preferred roles, playstyle, and understanding of that champion. Every champion has a minimum of four abilities, every champion has one passive ability, and every champion has 6 item slots. This leads us into our third section...

Welcome to Part 3 of my guide. This section will outline how to properly build a champion from the ground up, utilizing every item slot available. It will also go over analyzing different builds, cross-item and cross-ability synergies, and will show some examples of good and bad builds/how to avoid them.

Playing LoL is an intricate dance. Every ability has a purpose, and it is our job as players to find those purposes and utilize them to the highest possible efficiency. As a result, to attain that highest efficiency, we must use the most efficient build for that champion.

We should start this section off by analyzing a fully completed build, champion abilities and all. Lets take one of the highest rated guides available now as an example.

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Abilities

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Name: Headshot
Type: Passive, Modifier
Cooldown: N/A (Based on Autoattacks)
Cost: N/A


Description: Every 8th/7th/6th basic attack deals 150% damage to a champion or 250% damage to a minion or monster. Attacks from brush increase the attack counter by two instead of one.



Name: Piltover Peacemaker
Type: Active (Q), Channeled, Skillshot
Cooldown: 10/9/8/7/6 seconds
Cost: 50/60/70/80/90 mana per use


Description: After a 1 second casting time, Caitlyn fires a projectile that deals 20/60/100/140/180 (+ 130% AD) physical damage to all targets it passes through. Each target hit after the first takes 10% less damage, down to a minimum of 50% of the original damage.



Name: Yordle Snap Trap
Type: Active (W), Placeable
Cooldown: 20/17/14/11/8 seconds
Cost: 50 mana per trap


Description: Caitlyn sets a trap at target location that activates after a brief delay. When an enemy champion comes within range of the trap, the trap snares and deals 80/130/180/230/280 (+ 60% AP) magic damage to the enemy over 1.5 seconds, also revealing the enemy for 9 seconds.
Caitlyn can set up to 3 traps and each lasts 4 minutes. Traps are visible to both allies and enemies. If she sets a trap when three are already placed, the oldest trap will deactivate itself.



Name: 90 Caliber Net
Type: Active (W), Skillshot
Cooldown: 18/16/14/12/10 seconds
Cost: 75 mana per use


Description: Caitlyn fires a net, knocking herself back in the opposite direction. The net will deal 80/130/180/230/280 (+ 80% AP) magic damage and slow the first enemy hit by 50%.



Name: Ace in the Hole
Type: Active (R), Targeted, Channeled
Cooldown: 90/75/60 seconds
Cost: 100 mana per use


Description: Caitlyn channels for 1 second, providing vision of target enemy champion. She then fires a homing projectile to the target, dealing 250/475/700 (+ 200% bonus AD) physical damage to the first enemy champion it hits. Other enemy champions can intercept the bullet.


Items

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Name: Berserker's Greaves
Tier: Advanced
Cost: 900 Gold (150)
Efficiency: N/A


Stats: +20% Attack Speed

UNIQUE Passive - Enhanced Movement: +45 Movement Speed



Name: Infinity Edge
Tier: Advanced
Cost: 3800 Gold (645)
Efficiency: 4050 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +70 Attack Damage
+25% Critical Strike Chance

UNIQUE Passive: +50% Critical Strike Damage



Name: Phantom Dancer
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 2800 Gold (495)
Efficiency: 3617 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +50% Attack Speed
+30% Critical Strike Chance
+5% Movement Speed

UNIQUE Passive: Your champion ignores unit collision.



Name: Last Whisper
Tier: Advanced
Cost: 2300 Gold (1025)
Efficiency: 1600 Gold (%ArPen effic. must be 700g min.)


Stats: +40 Attack Damage

UNIQUE Passive: +35% Armor Penetration



Name: Blade of the Ruined King
Tier: Mythical
Cost: 3200 Gold (1000)
Efficiency: 2933 Gold (Passive and Active effic. must have combined value of 267g min.)


Stats: +25 Attack Damage
+15% Life Steal
+40% Attack Speed

UNIQUE Passive: Your attacks deal 5% of the target's current health in physical damage (60 max vs minions and monsters).

UNIQUE Active: Drains target champion, dealing 15% of the champion's maximum Health in physical damage and healing you for the damage dealt. Additionally you steal 30% of their movement speed for 4 seconds - 60 second cooldown.



Name: Frozen Mallet
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 3300 Gold (835)
Efficiency: 3047 Gold (Passive effic. must be 253 min.)


Stats: +30 Attack Damage
+700 Health

UNIQUE Passive - Icy: Your basic attacks slow your target's Movement Speed by 40% for 1.5 seconds (30% slow for ranged attacks).

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When analyzing an entire build, the first thing we must understand is the role. We must first ask, "Does this build fit the guide/champion's designated role?" Yes. Next, we must ask "Does this role fit this champion, and is it both effective and practical?" The answer is, again, yes.

This build for Caitlyn is based on her being in the role of a DPS Carry, meaning she is built to cause a large, sustained amount of damage through autoattacking. We know that this is effective because we analyzed her abilities, such as Headshot. She has a good amount of utility, but most of them are used defensively rather than offensively. Now that we have established that, lets take a look at her items and how they interact with her abilities.

Many of these items are very common on DPS Carries, and for a good reason: they help push raw damage out at a surprising rate. Berserker's Greaves, Infinity Edge, and Phantom Dancer are basically the bread-and-butter DPS Carry items, especially since Infinity Edge's increased crit damage and Phantom Dancer's high critical strike chance and attack speed work beautifully together. The item we REALLY want to look at is Blade of the Ruined King.

In the build guides' item list, Bloodthirster is listed as situational. You may be asking yourself "Why is that? The Bloodthirster has the highest amount of Attack Damage to offer, and gives you life steal as well!". Although this is true and many other DPS champs will carry (teehee) this item with them, there is a specific synergy with Blade of the Ruined King and Caitlyn: Her passive.

Every autoattack, Caitlyn builds stacks on her passive. Once those stacks reach the maximum amount, her next attack deals additional damage. There is one thing that Bloodthirster doesn't have that Blade of the Ruined King does: Attack Speed.

Now, you may still be doubting this. Caitlyn's abilities scale greatly with Attack Damage, meaning that Bloodthirster is still a better item, right? This is where Caitlyn's role comes into play. Choosing stronger abilities over stronger autoattacks means that you lean more to a bursty role rather than a DPS role, and a lack of consistency is usually more detrimental than beneficial. For this same reason, Statikk Shiv is listed as situational as well, not providing enough raw DPS although giving a good amount of burst damage.

Of course, this is all dependent on your playstyle, which is why those items are "situational" in the first place. If you enjoy a more bursty Caitlyn, or are just better with a more bursty Caitlyn, you may want to build those items in place of Phantom Dancer and Blade of the Ruined King.

Her other items include Last Whisper, which is almost always essential if the enemy builds even a relatively small amount of armor, and Frozen Mallet, which provides lots of sustainability and chasing power. All in all, this build fits Caitlyn's role almost perfectly.

On Mobafire, there will always be good build guides, and there will always be bad build guides. Whether it is out of misinformation, bad calculations, or just pure ignorance, some people will put two and two together but still end up with five. Learning not to make the mistakes of these people will be very helpful, even though in the long (extremely long) run it wont make too much of a difference (more explaining in section 4).

Of course, there are also guides made to be humorous. Like this one. Which is funny. But still bad.

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Abilities

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Camouflage
Name: Camouflage
Type: Passive, Utility
Cooldown: 2 (Based on movement)
Cost: N/A


Description: If Teemo stands still and takes no action for 2 seconds, he becomes stealthed. Taking any action will break his camouflage, granting him 40% attack speed for 3 seconds.



Name: Blinding Dart
Type: Active (Q), Targeted
Cooldown: 8 seconds
Cost: 70/80/90/100/110 mana per use


Description: Teemo shoots a dart at an enemy, dealing 80/125/170/215/260 (+ 80% AP) magic damage and blinding them for 1.5/1.75/2/2.25/2.5 seconds.



Name: Move Quick
Type: Active (W), Passive, Modifier, Utility
Cooldown: 17 seconds
Cost: 40 mana per use


Description: PASSIVE: Teemo gains 10/14/18/22/26% increased movement speed. Damage from champions and structures will disable this bonus for 5 seconds.

ACTIVE: For 3 seconds, Teemo doubles his passive movement speed bonus. While active, Move Quick's bonus cannot be disabled via champion or structure damage.



Name: Toxic Shot
Type: Passive, Modifier, Damage over Time
Cooldown: N/A
Cost: N/A


Description: Teemo's auto-attacks deal 10/20/30/40/50 (+ 30% AP) bonus magic damage and poison his target, causing them to take 6/12/18/24/30(+ 10% AP) additional magic damage over 4 seconds. Subsequent attacks only refresh the duration.



Name: Noxious Trap
Type: Active (R), Placeable, Damage over Time
Cooldown: 1 second per place
Cost: 75/100/125 mana per trap


Description: Teemo places a mushroom trap on the ground, which stealths and arms after 1 second. While armed, the traps grant vision in a radius. If an enemy comes within range of the trap, it will detonate, slowing them by 30/40/50% and dealing 200/325/450 (+80% AP) magic damage over 4 seconds to nearby enemies within its radius. Each mushroom has 100 health and can only be destroyed by auto-attacks.
Noxious Traps have a 10 minute duration. Teemo generates a new trap periodically, affected by cooldown reduction, and can only store up to 3 traps at once.


Items

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Name: Boots of Mobility
Tier: Advanced
Cost: 1000 Gold (650)
Efficiency: N/A


Stats: UNIQUE Passive - Enhanced Movement: +45 Movement Speed. Increases to +105 movement speed when out of combat for 5 seconds.



Name: Ruby Sightstone
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 1550 Gold (125)
Efficiency: 950 Gold (Must place 8 wards min.)


Stats: +360 Health

UNIQUE Passive - Ward Refresh: Starts with 5 charges and refills each time you visit the shop.

UNIQUE Active - Ghost Ward: Consumes a charge to place an invisible Ghost Ward that reveals the surrounding area for 3 minutes. You may have a maximum of 3 wards placed from this item at once. 1 second cooldown.



Name: Wriggle's Lantern
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 1600 Gold (100)
Efficiency: 1600 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +30 Armor
+15 Attack Damage
+10% Life Steal

UNIQUE Passive - Maim: Your basic attacks against minions and monsters have a 25% chance to deal 500 additional magic damage.

UNIQUE Passive: Places a Sight Ward at target location. 3 minute cooldown.



Name: Twin Shadows
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 1900 Gold (735)
Efficiency: 2210 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +40 Ability Power
+40 Magic Resistance
+6% Movement Speed

UNIQUE Active - Hunt: Summons 2 invulnerable ghosts for 6 seconds to seek the two nearest enemy champions. If they touch an enemy champion, they slow their movement speed by 40% and reveal them for 2.5 seconds. 120 second cooldown.



Name: Athene's Unholy Grail
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 2600 Gold (900)
Efficiency: 3649 Gold (Eff w/o passives)


Stats: +60 Ability Power
+40 Magic Resistance
+15 Mana Regeneration
20% Cooldown Reduction

UNIQUE Passive - Mana Font: Increases your mana regeneration by 1% per 1% mana you are missing.
UNIQUE Passive: Restores 12% of your max mana on kill or assist.



Name: Zephyr
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 2850 Gold (725)
Efficiency: 3889 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +25 Attack Damage
+50% Attack Speed
+10% Movement Speed
+10% Cooldown Reduction

UNIQUE Passive - Tenacity: The duration of stuns, slows, taunts, fears, silences, blinds and immobilizes are reduced by 35%.



Name: Eleisa's Miracle
Tier: Legendary
Cost: 1100 Gold (400)
Efficiency: 1260 Gold (Eff w/o passive)


Stats: +10 Health Regeneration
+15 Mana Regeneration

UNIQUE Passive - Aid: Your Summoner Heal, Clarity and Clairvoyance cooldowns are reduced by 25%

UNIQUE Passive – Eleisa's Blessing: If you gain 3 levels with this item, you gain all the effects permanently and this item is consumed.

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Well, lets begin the analysis, shall we? Firstly, we need to ask the question: "Does this build fit the guide/champion's designated role?" to which we would answer "Kind of, yes."

However, a second question comes into light, "Does this role fit this champion, and is it both effective and practical?" Unfortunately, for this build, the answer is "No". It's practicality comes into question almost instantly, as well as it's effectiveness and how fitting the role is.

First, Teemo has several uses. He is made to poke enemies down with powerful Damage-over-Time and keep a good amount of map and movement control through the use of his mushrooms. This build does not at all utilize Teemo's poke ability, only focusing on his mushrooms, and in a way that does not synergize well enough (low ability power).

Second, although the amount of map control is absolutely exponential with the total amount of placeable wards in this build, it is not practical at all. The opposing team will actually benefit a lot just from buying an Oracle's Elixir, maybe even enough to pay it off. Also, you almost completely lose a damage dealer, making the game essentially a 4v5. Even if you know exactly when the enemy team is going to gank, where they will come from, and how, you will still be at a disadvantage for the most part.

Does that mean this build is 100% useless? No, but it is not at all efficient or practical enough to be used at a competitive standard. Although this might actually work with a skilled 5 man team, pretty much any build or comp can work with enough skill (again, more info in summary).

Of course, we already know that this guide is not viable since the author specifically said that at the start, classifying it as a humor guide. However, a lot of new guides come from authors that truly believe their build works, and a lot of times, those guides are not efficient or role-fitting, so be wary.

Welcome to Part 4 of my guide, which will be the last, and longest, section of this guide. Now that we have a good understanding on how champions are built for their roles, we're going to go ahead and create out own build from nothing but our minds!

Let's begin by selecting a champion to build on. I have decided to go with Draven, because he has both an awesome kit and an awesome moustache. First, we'll start by analyzing his abilities.

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Abilities

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Name: Wicked Blades
Type: Passive, Damage over Time
Cooldown: N/A (Based on ability/critical strike)
Cost: N/A


Description: Draven's critical strikes deal 30 + (4 × level) bonus physical damage over 4 seconds. Spinning Axe also causes this effect even if it does not critically strike. If Wicked Blades is re-applied to a target, its duration is reset to 4 seconds and any damage not yet dealt is carried forward, increasing the amount of each tick of damage.



Name: Spinning Axe
Type: Exotic (Q), Modifier
Cooldown: 12/11/10/9/8 seconds
Cost: 45 mana per activation


Description: Draven starts spinning his axe, making his next attack deal bonus physical damage equal to 45%/55%/65%/75%/85% of attack damage. Wicked Blades is also applied to the target.
This axe will ricochet off the target high up into the air, landing 2 seconds later at a location determined by Draven's current movement direction and speed. If Draven catches it, Spinning Axe will be applied to his next attack.
Draven can have up to two Spinning Axes readied at once.



Name: Blood Rush
Type: Active (W), Modifier, Utility
Cooldown: 12 seconds
Cost: 40 mana per use


Description: Draven gains 40%/45%/50%/55%/60% increased movement speed for 1.5 seconds and 20%/25%/30%/35%/40% increased attack speed for 3 seconds. The movement speed bonus decreases rapidly over its duration.
Catching a Spinning Axe will refresh Blood Rush's cooldown.



Name: Stand Aside
Type: Active (E), Utility, Skillshot
Cooldown: 18/17/16/15/14
Cost: 70 mana per use


Description: Draven throws his axes in a line. Enemies hit take 70/105/140/175/210 (+ 50% bonus AD) physical damage, are knocked aside, and are slowed by 20%/25%/30%/35%/40% for 2 seconds afterwards.



Name: Whirling Death
Type: Active (R), Global, Skillshot
Cooldown: 110/100/90
Cost: 120 mana per use


Description: Draven hurls two massive axes in a given direction, dealing 175/275/375 (+ 110% bonus AD) physical damage.
Upon reaching the edge of the map, striking an enemy champion or upon the reactivation of Whirling Death, the axes will slowly come to a stop before changing direction and returning to Draven, dealing the same damage to every enemy struck on the way back.
Whirling Death deals 8% less damage for each unit hit, down to a minimum of 40%. The damage reduction resets when the axes reverse direction.

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Now that we have a good understanding of Draven's abilities, lets compare some items to his abilities and see which ones have similar effects or synergize nicely.

Wicked Blades

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Description: Deals physical DoT, can psuedo-stack. Shares similarities with Liandry's Torment and Spirit of the Elder Lizard, synergizes with Black Cleaver.

First, we must remove anything that cannot fit with Draven's skillset. The obvious one here is Liandry's Torment, which is an Ability Power item.

Second, we must remove anything that does not fit our role as Bursty-DPS Carry. I have decided to remove Spirit of the Elder Lizard since it leans to a more poke-oriented role, and although it CAN work on Draven, it does not fit our role since the effect does not stack, just reapply.

What we are left with is Black Cleaver. Its passive does stack, and can be stacked by Wicked Blades too. Since Armor Penetration is also quite powerful (especially flat penetration, which is helpful regardless of how much armor the enemy has), and Black Cleaver offers both survivability, damage AND cooldown reduction, I think it's a great addition to Bursty-DPS Carry Draven.

Spinning Axe

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Description: Autoattack modifier that amplifies damage based on total Attack Damage. Shares similarities with Trinity Force, Lich Bane and Iceborn Gauntlet.

We remove Lich Bane because it does not fit our skillset, and then we remove Iceborn Gauntlet since it doesn't fit both our skillset or role. We are left with Trinity Force, and I like it too. It fits almost perfectly with our build of Draven, giving him an incredible amount of damage output from just a single modified autoattack, and all of the additional stats given by Trinity Force, aside from the Ability Power, is used effectively.

However, there is a problem. In order for Trinity Force's Spellblade passive to be used, we need to use an ability. Draven doesn't seem to have any spammable abilities, right? Wrong.

Blood Rush

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Description: Movement and attack speed modifier. Resets cooldown when a Spinning Axe is caught. Shares similarities with Sword of the Divine and Youmuu's Ghostblade, synergizes with Trinity Force.

THIS will be our spammable ability. Every time we catch a Spinning Axe, we can activate this and proc Trinity Force's Spellblade passive. Throw empowered axe, catch, activate ability, repeat.

There are also two other items on the list, and although they both fit Draven's role well enough, I've chosen not to select them for several reasons. Specifically regarding Youmuu's Ghostblade, it's unique passive has a collision with Black Cleaver. Specifically regarding Sword of the Divine, it's active ability is great, but even with the cooldown reduction, it has just too much cooldown and too little intermixed damage potential to be worth purchasing. Regarding both items, they just do not offer enough SUSTAINED damage to fit our role too.

Instead of Sword of the Divine, an item like Phantom Dancer would be much more effective overall. Not only that, but Phantom Dancer's passive will be exponentially helpful with catching Draven's Spinning Axes.

Stand Aside/ Whirling Death

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Stand Aside and Whirling Death are both special exceptions from the item selection process. Why? Mainly because Stand Aside is damaging utility with little additional use but chasing, escaping, and bush clearing. Whirling Death also has little item synergies, not having any ability attributes that have item similarities.

However, what both of these abilities DO have is Attack Damage scaling, and Whirling Death has 110% scaling at that. The best possible item choice for these abilities, and Spinning Axe ESPECIALLY, would be Bloodthirster.

Alright, we're nearly done! We have chosen to include Black Cleaver, Trinity Force, Phantom Dancer, and Bloodthirster. We have two item slots open. This is the part where we step away from Item-Ability synergies and go into Item-Item synergies. With one exception...

Boots are essential. It is almost always required to purchase boots, and it has been this way for a long, long time. In our role of a Bursty-DPS Carry, we have a small selection of boots: Berserker's Greaves, Mercury's Treads, and Ionian Boots of Lucidity.

Although Berserker's Greaves gives us additional DPS, which is always good, we need to remember that the entirety of Draven's damage output is based on catching and throwing his Spinning Axe's. If he fails to catch an axe due to crowd control, he can be caught in a very sticky situation. There are two ways to remedy this: Tenacity, which reduces the duration of CC, or Cooldown Reduction, which allows us to get another Spinning Axe up faster.

This is a situational pick. Sometimes, the enemy team doesn't have lots of CC, in which case you might want Berserker's Greaves or Ionian Boots of Lucidity. Other cases, the enemy team might have a LOT of CC, or is really AP reliant, in which case Mercury's Treads are the better choice.

Final Items

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We have one more item slot to go, and there are a lot of items we can choose from to fill this slot. Lets evaluate what we have right now:

Survivability: From Black Cleaver and Trinity Force, equaling 450 health, as well as 18% Lifesteal from Bloodthirster at full stacks.

Damage: 180 additional Attack Damage from Bloodthirster. Black Cleaver, and Trinity Force combined. Also, 164.25 additional damage when Trinity Force's Spellblade passive is applied. Critical Strikes not calculated.

Attack Speed: A good amount from our abilities, Trinity Force and Phantom Dancer, and possibly from our boots.

Mobility: From our boots, Trinity Force, and Phantom Dancer.

Penetration: A large amount at full stacks from Black Cleaver.

Since we pretty much have everything we need, we should build on more damage, since our damage output is a little bit puny right now for an almost-full build. I've chosen to grab Infinity Edge, since we have a lot of Critical Strike Chance built up from Phantom Dancer and Trinity Force, and that additional crit damage can be an incredible boost in both burst and sustained damage.

Build Order

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We finally have our build! Still, it is not 100% complete; we have yet to expand on the build order. Build order is quite an important part of an item build, since grabbing a Guardian Angel as your first item is a large mistake if you are a main damage dealer. Learning which items to buy first and when to buy them is an integral part of any build guide.

Since our Draven build has a lot of expensive items in it, we want to focus on a strong early/mid game so that we may snowball and expand on our late game. For this reason, our first item will be a Doran's Blade. Although we do not have much sustain with this item pick, it is very helpful in supplementing Draven's high-damage early game, giving him a good source of Attack Damage and enough health to win most early trades.

Boots are next, being essential in catching axes, dodging skillshots, avoiding ganks, etc.

Our next item is situational. For example, if we are going up against a Thresh, Graves, or Leona, started with a Long Sword, or just require cheaper early-game source of damage, you may want to pick up The Brutalizer instead of a B. F. Sword. If we wish to specifically focuse on our early game, The Brutalizer is a good pick.

Next, we'll buy a Sheen. At this point, your damage output should be very high for the level you're at. You should have at least one tower down, and should be going around the map pushing other lanes at this point. If you are not snowballing in your lane, or are losing somehow, just stay and farm a bit more, and try to finish your biggest item...

Your boots are a somewhat situational point of purchase. Generally, if you are buying Berserker's Greaves, this is a good point to buy them. If you are purchasing any of the other boots, you should get them after Bloodthirster, and while we're on that...

Bloodthirster. The highest source of attack damage in the game. This will be your first major item, and it's a good one. If you bought a B. F. Sword instead of The Brutalizer, you'll be getting this item quicker, meaning your midgame will be crazy. You remaining items are pretty straightforward, with your Trinity Force next and Black Cleaver after that.

At this point, you're rolling into the late game, and you'll be needing more DPS than Burst. Luckily enough, our final two items are DPS items, the Phantom Dancer and Infinity Edge.

And there we go! We have finished our item build. Here's how it looks:

Hopefully you have learned many things from this, mainly two things:

1. How to build a champion to your own playstyle/roles.
2. How to detect whether a build is good or bad.

This would be a good time to remind you that a lot of powerful item builds were found through trial and error, not just theorycrafting like we were just doing. A lot of the time, a build that sounds good in theory will not work at all in practice, and vice versa. Just remember that trial and error is a thing everyone goes through when trying out their builds.

I also want to say that I have completely put out masteries, runes, skill sequences, and summoner spells from this guide. Those things are not as important as the game progresses, but are very helpful at the start. I recommend you take the knowledge you gained from this guide and apply it to those fields in the same way.

As my very last note, I would like to remind you one final thing: Regardless of item build, enemy side and own, a player skilled enough to do so will be able to win any confrontation with any champion. An item build is nothing more than supporting a way to achieve those means. Having the perfect item build will not make a difference if you are unwilling to improve yourself first.

I would like to give thanks to Luther3000 and DKitten for letting me reference their build guides as examples.

I would like to thank Jhoijhoi for giving me a few readily usable templates (and helping me understand BBCoding in general). As good as I am at judging it, I am terrible at making a good looking guide, so this helped a lot albeit the guide still not having the best formatting.

I would also like to credit the LoLWiki for giving me the proper resources to write this guide. Of course, I also have Mobafire to thank for that as well.

Also, if you see any issues with the guide, please remind me. I am readily open to constructive criticism, and since I got into LoL just recently, I may still miss a few things here and there.

These are some few important tips to remember when building your champions.

1. Poor Scaling: A champion has low ability scaling but high base damage.

Solution: Instead of using raw damage items like Bloodthirster, try using items that have penetration ( Last Whisper), or DoT ( Spirit of the Elder Lizard).

Some champions that fit this description are Ahri, Katarina, and Elise (kinda).

Example: Ahri has quite poor scaling on her abilities, but high base damage.

Item Pool: Liandry's Torment, Void Staff, Abyssal Mask, Haunting Guise, Malady

Take out Malady (has no synergies), build Haunting Guise into Liandry's Torment.

Additional Items: Rylai's Crystal Scepter (works with Haunting Guise, gives survivability which is helpful with low-scaling, all-out champs)

Core Items: Sorcerer's Shoes (obvious)
Rabadon's Deathcap (also obvious)


2. AA Scaling on Non-DPS: Some champions may have abilities that scale with autoattacks, but they are tanky and/or don't have enough attack damage to justify purchasing attack speed.

Solution: Use items that offer both attack speed, damage and/or on-hit effects, such as Wit's End.

Some champions that fit this description are Shen, Irelia, and Skarner.

Example: Irelia has an ability that allows her to deal true damage with every autoattack.

Item Pool: Wit's End, Blade of the Ruined King, Zephyr

Keep Blade of the Ruined King as situational. Does not offer any tanky attributes, but can be useful in specific situations and works nicely alongside Spirit Visage.

Additional Items: Trinity Force (Synergizes with kit abilities nicely and offers both attack speed, attack damage, and an on-hit passive that slows).

Core Items: Berserker's Greaves ( Mercury's Treads are unneeded due to Ionian Fervor and Zephyr)
Warmog's Armor (only source of health in our entire build)
Spirit Visage (Amplifies healing from abilities and Warmog's Armor, gives Cooldown Reduction)

Feel free to ask me any questions in the comments, and I will gladly answer them!

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Question asked by: Myself :(

"Why are your icons for items/abilities so big? Srsly, they're huge!"

Answer: The reason why I made those icons so big is so that they can easily catch the readers eye, and in turn, make sure that they see the statistics for that item/ability. Analyzing champion skillsets and items are exponentially more important than people think it is; you may say "Oh, I use spam abilities a lot with Champion X, so I should buy Chalice of Harmony so I can spam more!" before you realize that your abilities use less mana the more you spam them and that the scaling on those abilities are high. I have fallen prey to these mistakes too, just because I thought I could "Skim over" the item/ability descriptions (I once thought Trinity Force scales with TOTAL AD, not BASE AD. How overpowered would that be?).