Lulu Build Guide by VaunnShallal

Introduction

This is my first foray into writing guides for League of Legends. In the case of this Lulu Guide, this is the way in which I build and play her, I've had quite a bit of success playing her in this way.

Runes

Greater Quintessence of Gold are an obvious choice, as they will help make up for Lulu's lack of farm.

Greater Mark of Armor are important to Lulu's laning phase, as she is a support who relies on harassing the opposing lane, she is left open to being hit in return, and the increased armor from flat armor runes provides more help in the early game.

Greater Seal of Health provide a similar effect as the marks in this build, as they help Lulu in the early game, to keep pressure on the opposing AD carry, and keep them from farming as easily.

Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction are used to help Lulu keep using more abilities, Lulu is a champion that if played correctly can outplay a lot of other supports or AD carries, especially when she can cast more abilities, these runes also help provide Lulu with an easier time refreshing her shield on her AD carry or keeping damage output in fights.

Masteries

Lulu benefits greatly from Utility masteries.

Speicifically the Meditation mastery, this mastery provides helpful Mana Regeneration which helps out quite a bit along with Intelligence mastery, Lulu's role as a support is largely to harass and cooldown reduction provided from this master is helps out quite a bit.

Along with those Lulu, the combination of Wanderer and Nimble helps Lulu when harassing, as she is able to get in and out, and able to lay some damage in with a poke, and avoid cc from the opposing support.

The Greed , Wealth , and Pickpocket masteries are all picked with the intention of increasing gold revenue without the need for farm, as Lulu is going to harassing it becomes important to land the occasional auto-attack to make use of Pickpocket

I choose not to use Explorer or Biscuiteer as I do not feel either of them are worth the mastery point.
Explorer's Ward is a one time use, and only provides a minute of vision, usually extremely early in the game, and the Total Biscuit of Rejuvenation only heals about one auto-attack worth of damage, and one spell worth of mana, and is again only a one time use. These points are better spent on Meditation , and Strength of Spirit which provide a benefit for the whole game

Items

Starting Items

Since a support starts with 525 gold, it offers a bit more freedom with consumables, thus opening with; a Vision Ward, 2 sight wards, and 2 Health Potions. You also want to open with a Faerie Charm as it will help provide more mana regeneration, which will keep Lulu effective in lane, without needing to recall.

First Trip Back

By making use of your increased movement speed, and your poking, along with gold generation, Lulu can usually make quite a bit of money before needing to return. In some situations you'll be able to return relatively early in a match, coming off of a kill or your opponents recalling, and you'll be able to buy the philosopher's stone early on.
Once your opponents return with boots, you'll want to get your own Boots of Speed to be able to continue to harass effectively, followed by a Sightstone, the amount of money saved by not needing to buy more wards, along with some health to help with scaling to the opponent's damage

Main Boots In the case of Lulu, I feel that getting Ionian Boots of Lucidity has been the most successful for me, as she benefits greatly from casting more spells, because Lulu's combo requires her to use her Help, Pix! ability, she loses a lot of auto-attack damage she might have had. Making her abilities more important, and getting a quicker refresh on these is the most important thing for her in a fight. Enchantment: Homeguard is a helpful enchantment to obtain on her boots, as it helps her get back out into the map faster, which is especially helpful when you need to go into the jungle and ward quickly after a push, since this is often when the opposing team will push for a dragon or baron nashor . Instead of Enchantment: Homeguard, you could instead buy Enchantment: Alacrity as it will provide a persistent movement speed buff which will help will all of your general moving about the map.

Mercury Treads In most matches boots can be a bit situational, as such it becomes important to notice whether or not an opposing team is cc heavy. If the opposing team has champions like Amumu, or Thresh or other champions with Area of Effect crowd control it can be a good idea to build Mercury's Treads

Toughen Up

As the game progresses, usually nearing or after laning has ended, you'll need to get more health and some cooldown reduction, to continue to scale with the rest of the team and your opponent. By buying a Kindlegem you'll be able to get more health, and eventually build it into a shurelya's reverie both items which will provide cooldown reduction. This is the time where finishing the Ruby Sightstone can be very beneficial, as it will help you keep vision over more of the map, which becomes more important in the middle to late game, along with providing some more health.

Team Fight and Late Game

Depending on how the game is progressing it can be important to either increase the mobility of your team, or increase the teamfighting potential.
While I recommend avoiding building shurelya's reverie as it takes away from gold revenue, it can be extremely important if your team is having a hard time winning standard teamfights. By increasing the mobility of your team, you'll be able to engage or disengage more effectively, which can help pick off one of your opponents, giving you the advantage in a team fight.

If your team seems to be winning in teamfights, then it is important to finish an Aegis of the Legion before shurelya's reverie as it will help your team keep winning teamfights, and allow for you to maintain pressure on the opposing team, keeping them from coming back.

End Game

While most matches will have ended before this point, there are occasions where an opposing team with the turtling, or the match will simply be very close, that you'll reach this late into a game. At this point you'll be wanting to finish off more items, and make sure you're prepared to put the opposing team away, a good way to do this is to finish off a Runic Bulwark to increase your teamfighting potential.

Afterward building a kage's lucky pick if the match is dragging on to make up for the gold revenue lost from building a shurelya's reverie. Your final item should be finishing a shard of true ice from the kage's. I've never had a match progress any further than this.

Skill Sequence

Glitterlance
A lot of guides recommend focusing your skill points into Glitterlance for it's increased damage output, along with a longer slow, however I recommend leveling it second, as it doesn't actually provide much more damage, and Lulu's ability to harass has less to do with her damage output, and more to do with it's presistance, and leaving the opposing carry open to attacks from your allied carry, making the slow's length and damage somewhat irrelevant.

Whimsy
I recommend putting your first point into Whimsy as it provides a speed buff, and it becomes very helpful as an escape or way to disrupt opposing champion's ability to chase or attack your carry. I often find that opposing bot lanes will look for an opening as soon as you arrive in lane, which can be effectively stopped by obtaining Whimsy first. However, Whimsy's usage as a disruption isn't aided much by leveling it further, so, it should be leveled last.

Help, Pix!
Help, Pix!, in my opinion is the most important ability in Lulu's arsenal, as it allows her to deal a massive amount of damage consistently, or provide a helpful shield from damage for her carry. By using Help, Pix! effectively, you can shield your carry from damage in a trade-off, as well as increase their damage output by applying your passive to their attacks. Help, Pix! can also be used on an feeling enemy champion, followed by a Glitterlance which will fire from where pix is orbiting them, allowing you to slow them at virtually any range.

By applying Help, Pix! to an enemy or allied minion, Lulu can increase her poke range extremely far, and allow her to harass enemies on turret safely.

Leveling Help, Pix! first will allow Lulu to be able to be more versatile in lane, and provide protection and damage for her carry.

Wild Growth
Using Lulu's ultimate effectively can have a major effect on teamfights, Wild Growth provides a huge boost to health, along with a pop-up to all enemies in the area. When an enemy champion is using a channeled ability, it can be extremely effective to cast Wild Growth on the allied champion closest to them.

Lulu's ultimate can also be used in conjunction with champions like Amumu, Skarner, or Yorick, any other tank champion that rushes into the middle of the enemy team. When the tank does this, you use your ultimate on them, and rush into the enemy team as they are popped up.

By applying Wild Growth to a champion like Cho'Gath or Nasus, you can have the effect of making them nearly indestructible, while also making a teamfight a bit difficult for the opposing team, as it becomes hard to maneuver and focus your carries when such a large target is in the middle of the fray.

Lastly, Wild Growth can be saved until the final moments of a fight to prolong the life of an AD carry, or any other carry who might be able to clean up the enemy team if they have a bit more health.

Spells

Exhaust is important for Lulu in most lanes are you will be able to use it in combination with Help, Pix! to keep the opposing carry from getting damage on your carry. By applying the shield to your carry, you can keep them from taking damage, and as it wears off you can apply Exhaust which will continue to stop the damage output of the opposing carry, and help your carry win the trade off.

Flash is an obvious choice as it will allow for easier escapes when something goes wrong, or a gank occurs. Due to Lulu's long ranged abilities, and Help, Pix! being able to provide vision, Lulu can be very effective at kiting an opponent away from a fight, while still maintaining vision well enough to be able to get away without dying, this combines with Whimsy's speed buff makes Lulu very elusive.

Heal can be effective in some situations, as Lulu lacks the ability to heal her carry, as such if you're with a carry like Kog'Maw or Ashe that don't have an effective escape it can be helpful. However, Heal can be countered very easily by the opposing carry's Ignite which will often be used nearing the end of a fight, which would also be near the time you'd be trying to use Heal

Summary (a.k.a tl;dr)

The main points of this guide are:

• Lulu is focused on combining Help, Pix! and Glitterlance to poke and harass in lane
• Mix in auto-attacks when poking to make use of Pickpocket
• As the game progresses Lulu should be focused on either increasing mobility or providing support auras
• Keep philosopher's stone as long as possible to keep gold revenue
• Make use of shurelya's reverie when your team is behind to make opportunities
• If your team is ahead focus on a Aegis of the Legion to provide opportunity to push after a fight

Things to keep in mind

Early Laning:
Lulu's focus on poking and harassment early on can leave you vulnerable to opposing crowd control from champions like Taric and Blitzcrank, which means you have to be very careful about when and how you attack the opposing carry. Making good use of your range you can usually keep from being attacked too easily, but some champions like Amumu will be able to close the gap you try to keep quickly, so, quick escapes using Whimsy as disruption are extremely important.

Closing out Laning:
Nearing the end of the laning phase, whether you're winning or losing, Lulu's Glitterlance can be used effectively to help push a lane forward and keep pressure on a tower, however using any more of her abilities can leave you vulnerable to being caught if the opposing team decides to engage during a push.

If you're having a hard time in lane it's likely due to being in a lane against a Blitzcrank or a Nautilus, this is because you'll be unable to poke or apply pressure to your oppenents.

Midgame to Late-game
By finishing your Ruby Sightstone you'll be able to keep more vision over the parts of the map that are important as you push warding river bush behind you as you push a lane up, while keeping vision over baron nashor and/or dragon .

When your team is being pressured and needs to be able to engage and disengage quickly finishing a shurelya's reverie can be extremely effective, however it lowers gold income and should be followed by a kage's lucky pick to help bring that back up.

If your team is on the offensive (winning) it's a good plan to finish a Aegis of the Legion which will help win more team fights, and end the teamfights with more of your team intact, allowing for you to follow up the teamfights by taking objectives.

Synergy

Works well with:

can be quite effective when playing with Lulu, especially if playing AP Teemo, however this isn't exactly a commonly used strategy.

works well with Lulu as they both have the ability to poke and since Ezreal has mixed damage the AP buff from Whimsy helps increase his damage output along with speeding him up to help start a fight

benefits from having long range and an escape, which work really well with Lulu, when trying to get in and out of the opposing champions in lane. Tristana's Rocket Jump, Explosive Shot, and Buster Shot all scale off of AP, which means the AP provided by Whimsy will increase her damage in a fight, and help her engage more easily.

Ineffective Against:

tends to cause a lot of problems with his pull, and size, because Nautilus plays support through disruption and will often be between you and the opposing carry, it can be difficult to harass without being caught, in this situation it's best to simply keep Nautilus focused on you, and make sure your carry won't have to deal with him

because of her healing, your poke becomes less effective on top of her ability to return with her Hymn of Valor which you cannot heal from. Sona also has her Crescendo which if you get caught by it, will likely result in death as Lulu needs to be casting abilities to be survivable against heavy damage, since she lacks a lot of tankiness.

Warding Tips

Yellow Line & Wards
This is a situation where you'll be pushed up against your turret, this is likely because the opposing lane composition is more aggressive. In this situation, you should have a ward in the yellow ward position. Warding in that lane bush will help make sure the opposing jungler isn't waiting there which could cause a major problem for your jungler if the need to come help you.

Blue Line & Wards
In this situation the lane isn't particularly pushed however you're not pressuring too hard. In this situation against most junglers you'll be able to have wards in the two blue ward locations, which will be able to cover ganks and the opposing support hiding in the bush, keep a presence in the yellow ward bush.

Red Line & Wards
If you find yourself pushed up this far in lane, and are keeping the opposing lane on tower the red wards would be the most effective locations. This type of play can be risky but effective if you can maintain vision, by keeping vision that far up, you'll be able to keep the opposing jungler from providing support easily without you first being able to retreat or counter-gank.



Yellow Line & Wards
When you`re pushed close to your turret or just off of it, the opposing support will likely be pressuring from the yellow ward bush, so getting vision here can relieve some of the pressure.

Blue Line & Wards
When you find yourself about balanced with the other lane, the opposing support will be spending a lot of time in the blue ward bush in lane, so, providing vision there can make things easier. As a lot of junglers like Lee Sin and Amumu have a gap closer, keeping a ward in the blue ward location in river can keep that from happening when transitioning toward the red line or even when your carry is farming.

Red Line & Wards
If you're pushing the opposing lane onto turret it's important to keep wards in the red locations as it will provide you with enough time to keep from getting ganked, or allow your own jungler enough time to come and provide support for a 3v3 engagement.


**General Blue Line Tip**
The Vision Ward placement can be replaced with a sight ward however it is nice to place a vision ward there when possible especially when coming out of the yellow ward position as there is usually a ward you can destroy there.

If you find yourself against a jungler with an extremely long range initiate like Hecarim, Vi, and Rengar it might be helpful to place ward in one or both of the red ward positions whenever possible, as they may be able to gank even with your advanced notice.