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Poppy Build Guide by

[14.2] Poppy Support: New Season New Items (Riot please change unflinching it's so bad)

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Poppy Build Guide By Updated on

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Poppy Support
READ ME

Runes: Phase rush (favorite)

1 2 3 4 5 6

Sorcery

Phase Rush

Nimbus Cloak

Transcendence

Waterwalking

Inspiration

Hextech Flashtraption

Cosmic Insight

Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+10-180 Bonus Health
+10% Tenacity/Slow Resist

Spells:

1 2

Usual

Flash

Ignite

Items

Start

First back

The support bag

Boots

Current preferred builds

Favorite (SEE NOTE)

low eco

Ability Order E max (pref)

1 2 3

Poppy Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Karma

Extreme

Horribly annoying, Faster than you and has more shields than you and has spellvamp. It's hard but just try and make it to lvl 4 without getting poked out of lane.

Jhin

Ideal

His early damage, follow up root, they make laning phase unplayable for the other team.

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

Jhin

Ideal

His early damage, follow up root, they make laning phase unplayable for the other team.

Champion Build Guide

recent patches

SEASON 13

13.10

Lots of changes especially to support items.
Poppy is doing okay, but she must build support items to not fall behind now.
Thankfully, most of the items feel a lot better to build now.

13.17

Evenshroud is out, enchanter items are in.
Using font of life is great for procing enchanter items consistently.
Radiant is less consistent but can buff your entire team at once.
Radiant healing is also affected by the heal and shield power from them.

13.20

The starter item buffs made it significantly harder to oneshot people without the help of your ADC

14.1

The new suppot items have givven Poppy more damage, or preferably, more movespeed and most importantly, mana regen.
However, they have changed unflinching
actual garbage rune now

14.2

The new lack of resistance rune shards makes Poppy's W even more powerful than it already was, and now her Q will be dealing more damage as well.

IMPORTANT MECHANICS

READ THIS IF NOTHING ELSE

YOU CAN FLASH DURING POPPY ULT

Don't be like Closer, you can flash during R charge up. Had he known this simple mechanic it would have made watching him so much more bearable.
You can also flash during the charge to knock up enemies if you're fast enough. To do this start your ult and then flash before you release it. If you release it before flashing you will buffer your flash, miss your ult, and then flash like a fool.

YOUR SHIELD DOES NOT FALL RANDOMLY

It falls in a pattern I'm sure you noticed if you've played Poppy enough. It falls toward a wall an equal distance from both you and your target. Once you have this basic idea, it should become natural.

Who?

My name is AscorbicAcids, famed NA Bronze player.
I haven't played long (only since preseason 11), but have a majority of my games played on Poppy. I started as a jungler and was obsessed with offmeta picks, and as a result picked up Poppy. Eventually I wandered out of the jungle after 5 camp clears fell out of meta and tried her Support. The playstyle took time to get used to but I learned to use every part of her kit to it's greatest potential in the role and can say it's not nearly as situational as it's made out to be.

Pros/Cons

Pros

High base stats
Great base AD
Surprisingly tanky early game
Unique and powerful utility
Early tower dives
LVL 2 all in
AD support

Cons

Some really bad matchups
XP reliant
Lack of "real supportive utility"
AD support

Abilities

Full AD Poppy

I was going to talk about this in the items chapter, but I think the idea behind it is based heavily on her kit.
Don't build it in ranked, but the main idea behind it is Poppy's ridiculous AD ratios on Q() and E()
Q has a ratio of effectively 180% on about a 3 second cooldown by max rank and her E having a 100% ratio along with its 2 second stun.
As a support you shouldn't be getting enough gold to abuse these ratios

PASSIVE: IRON AMBASSADOR

Poppy will occasionally throw her shield dealing bonus damage, this is her main source of poke in lane. If the target is killed the shield will automatically bounce back giving her a 13-18% max health shield. If the target is not killed, the shield will land next to a nearby wall equidistant from Poppy and the target. This will seem random at first but eventually you will be able to predict where it will land as soon as you throw it.

Q: HAMMER SHOCK

is Poppy's main abilty to spam. It's a shortrange AOE damaging ability with a slow. The slow doesn't seem like much but it definitely hurts to play against. To maximize this ability's effectiveness you need to land the initial and the aftershock. Either through good placement or you can guaruntee they get hit by both parts.

W: STEADFAST PRESENCE

Passively, give 12% bonus resistances. Actively it creates a field around Poppy that when dashed through by an enemy will knock them up for .5 seconds, and then ground and slow them for 2 seconds. It is best used to peel from assassins or lock down mobile targets by using the ability on top of them. Flash W has gotten me plenty of kills on cocky players. Steadfast Presence can be activated in reaction to a dash due to its lack of a cast time. Because of this, save it for the middle of a fight rather than to engage the fight.

Stubborn to a Fault

Stubborn to a Fault is the secondary Passive of which doubles the Passive resistances given when below 40% health. This extra tankiness can add up later on when building full tank and is extremely good at baiting out flashes.

E: HEROIC CHARGE

is a unit targeted dash that will carry the target dealing double damage and stunning if they collide with a wall. After the charge Poppy is issued an Auto command on the unit. This ability can also be used to escape by dashing through minions or jungle camps. This can also be used over walls given the target is in range.
Additional note, both champion size and movespeed lowers the window to dodge for enemies.

R: KEEPER'S VERDICT

is an ability that can be charged up to 4 seconds to knockback enemies toward their fountain, the direction is not changed by what direction you hit them from.
If you release the button less than .5 seconds of charging, you will instead knock up enemies 500 units in the targeted direction as well as 180 units around Poppy.
Cancelling this ability, via death,cc, recall, or not releasing after 4 seconds will put the ability on a 15 second cooldown.
Use this ability to peel your team or turn a fight.

Gameplay

General

My build changes nearly every game, I build for whatever is killing me and then I decide if I can trust my team to deal enough damage.
Stacking health early is my priority. Typically prioritize over unless vs double AD bot.
Against a poke mage you should build to avoid damage rather than mitigate it.
If you have several high mobility threats on a team you should build , If ther is a fed lifestealer/enchanter you should build rather than after the changes.
If their team has no threatening champions you can instead look to buy AD or directly supportive items if you have a fed hypercarry.(, etc.)

Hybrid

Turning into a tank hybrid is one of Poppy's strongsuits
Late game you can build to give a lot of penetration and complete your .

thanks

Thanks for reading if you got this far, and good luck in your climb from Challenger to Bronze

Other Runes

Predator

Predator is difficult to make work without any survivability in your runes, you're stuck waiting for your boots to have a the ability to go in.

Glacial Augment

Glacial is passable, still not my preffered page though.

Guardian

I used to take it into poke mage matchups, but I don't think it's worth it anymore after the nerfs.

OLD GUIDE

Past here is older information, still useful if you're starting out.
This info is based on my old playstyle heavily emphasising hexflash.

Pardon the strange/duplicate titles the save is bugged

Playing lane is mostly brush camping

Original:u/Totobean
Here are some common wallstuns that you will often use. Depending on what side of the map you are playing on(Top/Bottom), these change. Most stuns will be more effective with the use of flash/hexflash
These will always result in a good chunk of damage or a kill.
From topside you can walk through river because you are guarunteed to win most level 1 fights. If the other laners try to follow you to lane through river you can wallstun and maybe even kill.
The most active part of you laning phase will be the first few levels. You won't be camping in brushes and instead need to focus on the race for level 2. You and your ADC get level 2 after the first wave and 3 melee minions. As such, save support item stacks for 2 of them and the 3rd for canon in the wave after. After level 2 is secure you can zone the othe laners and gain control of the brushes. There you will sit and be a threat, wallstunning anyone who dares to disrespect your damage.

Recent patches

Losing Lane

In some games, you may lose lane. This can happen if you die early against a poke mage, Morgana, Blitzcrank, or Pyke. Depending on how far behind you fall you likely will have a chance to get back into the game. Playing passively in lane you should be ducking in and out of brushes to bait abilities and make space for your ADC to farm. Your goal should be to get tanky so you can frontline for your team in the mid and late game.

Unplayable Lane

Any lane where you can be dove without trading a kill. There are few matchups that you will be unplayable from the start. Doesn't matter how you got behind, you just need to stop giving up gold. Roam with your jungler until your tower falls.

Playable w/o brush control

Most notably into Maokai. You won't have any opening to kill. Play to shove and then roam.

IMPORTANT MECHANICS

Poppy's mid game consists of looking for wallstuns. If your team didn't secure a great enough lead the chances are you're gonna be stuck waiting around for late game. Trading your life for a kill and objectives is usually the best option if this is the case. Just make sure you don't have a bounty from laning phase. The mid game begins to bring out her team reliance and how badly she needs a team to follow up on her cc and upfront damage. If you can't end here you will be at the mercy of your team to deal damage unless you plan on selling support item(don't).

Who?

Late game you should focus on not getting caught, you are impossibly hard to engage on and should lock down anyone who tries to engage. Buy your elixir of Iron, stick to your team, and play frontline.

Pro/Cons

12.10

The durability patch definitely hurt Poppy's agressive one shot potential early. With an adc with good synergy a level 2 or 3 all in should still kill.

12.11

Tank items got some crazy buffs, making Knight's Vow actually useable, Randuin's is an option to replace frozen heart, and more health on tank mythics.

12.15

Been a while
After recent patches the resolve tree got nerfed, so I've taken a more aggreessive approach.
Domination with chemtank is very powerful right now and likeley won't be changed until the end of LCS season.