Hello everyone, my name is Azzapp and I'm a multi challenger player every season and most people know me by my Vel'Koz Guide. Ever since Vex release I've been interested in mastering this champion and learning all the intricacies. I really hope you enjoy the guide and maybe learn something new. It's too early for all the match ups as Vex has nearly 50% ban rate and there is way more testing to be done. If there are any specific questions that this guide doesn't cover feel free to join my stream and ask my any time, I try to be as interactive as possible. Anyway, enjoy!

Vex is a very unique champion that does many things but doesn't excel in any of them. She play as a control mage, assassin and disruptor. In her early stages she suffers from high mana cost and weak wave clear. So at the start of the game the main focus is the minimize the impact and try to mitigate those weaknesses. We do that through the choice of our runes, spells, early items and play style. Once the enemies are lower HP and/or you get ahead Vex easily assumes to role of an assassin and swoops in for the execution. One key thing to know on Vex is exactly how much damage you can do as there is a huge difference in just being shy of a kill and getting a reset and being able to fight again right away. She is played as a disruptor generally when your team has sufficient damage and hyper carries. In that case your primary focus is to engage fights, peel your teammates and lay down the crowd control.

Knowing how to manage your passive is the difference between good and great Vex players as it is your key ability. We already talked about how in the laning phase you want to keep your passive up as much as possible to reduce the windows of weakness. The optimal way to clear waves would be to land you E on as many minions as possible then proc it all with your Q almost instantly getting your passive back up. Vex is extremely weak when she doesn't have fear available but she is almost unkillable if she does. Choose carefully when to use your fear, make sure you think ahead and you know how to manage the situation after your fear is down. Also don't forget your fear will make enemies walk away from the place where your spell originated. In the cases of Q and W that will be away from you naturally but when it comes to E which has separate casting place it is incredibly useful. This allows you to use your E to make enemies walk towards you, your turret or your teammates.

There are few notable combos with Vex that you simply must know. The general way to play vs Melee characters is to activate your passive fear with your W which guarantees you will land E into Q right after. That way you maxed out your damage but you also lower the cooldown of your passive.
In the case when you are dealing with longer range characters which won't ever get hit by your W the combo goes like this. You will try to land your E onto them or behind them if possible which will proc fear allowing you to land Q or Q and W in case they are in range. This way you do a lot of damage, lower the passive and reduce the chance of counterplay as you gain the W shield.
And the third combo is the one when you go for executions. Make sure your passive is up, land your initial ultimate and you are basically done. The rest is all pretty much guaranteed as you will recast R to fly to the enemy, instantly W to fear then E+Q while they are feared. Hopefully this is enough to execute the enemy giving you a full ultimate reset. In case it's not we want to have zhonya's available and/or teammates following up.

Vex is a very interesting character which doesn't fall under the broken(too strong) category but she creates animosity within enemy players because a lot of them don't fully understand how her kit works. At the moment of writing this her ban rate is just bellow 50% while her win rate is 49% platinum+. She is a masterfully designed champion which rewards really good gameplay but also severely punishes even the simples of mistakes and I find that very thrilling. If you mismanage your passive, you die. If you miss your ultimate, you are worthless. If you go in with your ultimate at a bad time or you didn't account for all the enemy players you will die. All of this combined makes playing her extremely satisfying that one time you do everything exactly right.