Sivir Build Guide by Berzerius

Introduction

Welcome to the Season 3 Sivir build. I started this build as a way to share my knowledge of Sivir to League players. This is a guide for players who are fairly familiar with Sivir. If you are new to Sivir or if you want to know more about Sivir in general, please refer to MeridianPrime's guide to Sivir which is the most in-depth guide you can find. This guide is an attempt to remedy the outdated aspects of his guide and to share my thoughts on it.

This is a new guide and I am open to any and all suggestions. You are welcome to comment and suggest improvements/updates. This guide follows my play style and i don't claim this to be the best possible build.

Is this build a good idea?
YES!! IF:

• If you are an aggressive Sivir player
• If you are trying to shut down the lanes early
• If you want to get the towers as early as possible
• If you want to be a roaming Sivir shoving all the lanes and build enormous pressure on the enemies.

This is NOT your kind of build IF

• If you like leisurely farming in the lane.
• If you want a late game focused Sivir.
• If you don't know how pressure works in the game.
• If you don't have the right team comp.

Pros / Cons

Sivir is not the typical AD carry you would expect to be. She differs a lot in her mechanics and itemization. She lacks special tools which scale up the DPS. Except her ultimate ability, On The Hunt she hardly has the ability to increase the damage. She is not a hypercarry like Kog'Maw, Vayne or Tristana who become unstoppable lategame. Sivir's role is to pressure the enemies and take objectives quickly. With her, you can put the enemy in a bad spot and prevent them from farming well.
How does Sivir differs from other ranged AD carries?
1.Sivir lacks any form of Crowd control(CC)
2.Sivir lacks spammable DPS boosting abilities
3.Sivir has a very low auto attack range and she needs to be very close to the enemies to auto-attack them.
4.Sivir is a very mana hungry champion. Her abilities cost a lot of mana (110,40,75 and 100)
These aspects make her a very challenging champion to play with. And yes, she is underpowered.

For example, Tristana's Rapid Fire ability allows her to concentrate on building damage while she gets attack speed for free. Her abilities Buster Shot and Rocket Jump allow for good escapes. Similarly, Draven with Blood Rush and Wicked Blades passive cause tons of damage while Stand Aside is a great way to avoid enemies. Vayne's Silver Bolts and Final Hour with a Condemn as a CC make her a slippery tankbuster. Caitlyn's Headshot boosts damage while 90 Caliber Net allows her to escape. Ezreal has Rising Spell Force passive for speed damage and Arcane Shift for escapes. Kog'Maw has Caustic Spittle and Bio-Arcane Barrage for insane damage and Void Ooze for escapes.

Team Work (section expansion pending)

Bottom lane is a Duo lane. What kind of support you have is as important as what items you build.
In general, the following champions work well with sivir:(this section is pending for expansion to include more champions)

Perfect supports

Nunu is a perfect partner for sivir. Blood Boil is like a free Phantom Dancer without the crit. chance.
A Nidalee support can help in poking enemies and zoning out the enemies while providing heal in the form of Primal Surge which also gives tons of attack speed.

Unusual lane partners

Since our default build has enough sustain and because we have Teleport, we can use this to our advantage by bringing extra damage to the team.
A tanky Garen can cause additional lane pressure and help in executing enemies.
A Cho'gath with Vorpal Spikes disabled is an excellent support who brings tons of CC through Rupture and Feral Scream. Feast is a good execute ability too. However, Cho'Gath has to build health regeneration early for the sustain and avoid getting harassed.

Traditional Supports


Taric is a good choice for supporting Sivir. He is tanky and has a great stun ability Dazzle along with a great healing ability, Imbue which makes him perfect among the traditional supports.


Aria of Perseverance and Astral Blessing provide some good heals which help you do better in lane and poke more aggressively. Soraka's Astral Blessing gives bonus armour while providing mana through Infuse which means you can build The Bloodthirster as your first damage item instead of Spirit of the Elder Lizard. Sona is better at poking enemies with Hymn of Valor and Power Chord. Her abilities are useful when poking enemies under turret. A dive with a Crescendo and a full Sivir combo hills enemies instantly if enemies are low enough.
Janna is a defensive support and does okay with sivir.

Mediocre laning choices

Though Lulu has a good poke and a slow, this does not work very well with Sivir this is because of two reasons: she does not boost your damage, she has no healing ability, her ultimate, Wild Growth has limited use for Sivir and she has no tankyiness to compensate for it.

Farming and general strategy

Farming is what makes or breaks a Sivir player. A farm starved Sivir is absolutely useless to the team. Sivir's abilities allow her to farm well extremely quickly and this should be exploited to the maximum potential. If you are not doing well in fights, stop worrying and start farming while staying out of trouble. With enough farming, you will bounce back and start getting those kills with upgraded items. If you see the jungler in your team spending too much time outside of your team's jungle, feel free to get those double golems for some extra gold. Clean out the jungle if you feel it is okay(depends on the team). But, remember that as a Sivir taking all the farm of the team, you HAVE TO PERFORM. With great farm comes great responsibility. Participate in teamfights and pushes and get those kills and towers. Don't be afraid to backdoor with Teleport.

If you are past 3 minutes after building your fully upgraded damage item and haven't got two towers. that means you failed


Remember that Sivir needs more gold than Tristana, Caitlyn, Draven or Vayne. You can never 1v1 an AD carry and come out alive unless you are very much ahead. The trick is to harass and then go in for that execute.

Runes and Masteries

Runes contribute for
+12 magic resist,
+8.2 armour
+9.6 damage
+7.7 Armor Penetration
and 3.7 Mana Regeneration/5s
This rune page build is not meant to be followed completely. It is up to your play style and what you have available. I am not focusing much on the runes. However, if you don't have the mana regeneration runes, try putting some points in utility tree of the masteries.
We took Summoner's Wrath for the extra attack damage and Destruction for bonus damage to turrets. Lethality is not recommended because the build does not focus on critical strike damage.

Summoner Spells

Sivir eats turrets for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Teleport enables you to sieze that opportunity to capitalize on enemy's bad positioning. You can farm a huge creep wave, defend friendly towers from unexpected pushes, get back to the lane quickly or win matches single-handedly by destroying the enemy base in roughly 10 seconds with an unexpected teleport. Champions can respawn but towers don't.


Flash is a very good spell on any champion and Sivir is no exception.

Alternative


A good tool for aggressive sivir to net those kills. Cripples the enemy's attempts to heal. Pop ignite for some extra true damage and enjoy a free +5 Attack damage until ignite comes back from cooldown if you have a point in Summoner's Wrath .

Spells

Get one point early and max last
Is a hard spell to master. It can save you from a lot of bad situations if you know how to use it correctly. Refer to refer to MeridianPrime's guide to Sivir which goes into great detail on which spells are blocked and which are not. This spell, if used correctly can be a very annoying ability that is bound to piss off the enemy team and bang their keyboard in frustration. Blocking Ashe's ultimate, Enchanted Crystal Arrow or Taric's Dazzle stun or Karthus's Requiem or Janna's Howling Gale, Teemo's Noxious Traps, Master Yi's Alpha Strike all of Caitlyn's abilities, Nidalee's abilities and a long list of other abilities makes playing sivir rewarding. However, you have to remember that certain abilities are not blocked by Spell Shield. Don't get yourself into an embarassing situation where you use it against damage over time abilities and end up wasting the precious mana.
Start with 1 point at level 1 and max this ability first
This is the main Damage tool for Sivir. Make sure you hit the enemy on the way forward and on the way back to maximize damage. you can use this for both farming and harass but remember that it does greatly reduced damage if it strikes multiple targets before it hits the enemy champion. Take advantage of this spell and zone out the enemies, preventing them from farming while you continue to farm. This spell also applies the item passive Incinerate to all the enemies it hits.
start with 1 point at level 2 or 3 and max this ability second
This is a great farming and harass tool early to mid game. This also gives Sivir a good burst damage early game because it refreshes the auto attack timer. if this is used immediately after the basic attack, it gives some extra damage instead of starting with ricochet. Your item Spirit of the Elder Lizard's passive Incinerate procs with Ricochet too making it a very good harass tool.
upgrade whenever you can
The ultimate ability for sivir. Boosts the attack and movement speed of all allies including minions. Use it to assist allies during a chase or at the start of teamfights or when you push turrets. You can also use it to escape from pursuing enemies. It has a moderately short cooldown which means that you can use it often.

Items

Why these items?
For Sivir, we need to pick carefully what we want to build on her. Her limitations on attack speed and critical chance mean we can't focus on all the three stats that make an AD carry: Damage, Attack speed and Critical chance. To maximize the efficiency, I pick damage and attack speed. Damage is absolutely essential for her abilities and without attack speed, she is useless at auto-attacking. Though critical chance can be built on Sivir and her On The Hunt works well with it, i feel that is not very gold efficient unless it is a very long match. Sivir is often the first to get focused in teamfights. She is good at chasing but not very good as a standard auto-attacking AD carry. That shifts the focus from Critical chance builds to Damage and Attack speed builds. Also, you can't crit the towers. If you really like the auto-attack damage focused builds, refer to other guides.

Starting items:
OR
Start with the standard boots and 3 health potions if your support has no healing abilities. If your support has a heal, go with a Doran's Blade for extra damage and health.

First recall purchase

Boots of Speed if you started out with Doran's blade.
Get Vampiric Scepter if you feel you lack sustain
Get Pickaxe if you have enough gold
Get Long Sword if you can spare only 400


Further purchases
You have to keep a close eye on how the game is progressing and how you are doing in the game. The right build varies greatly from one game to another.

First thing to do is to build a Spirit of the Elder Lizard which gives you that attack damage and Mana Regeneration which lets you spam those Boomerang Blades and Ricochets for farming quickly and harassing enemies under their towers. It's passive also works well with Ricochet as a free harass tool that does True Damage to anyone that gets hit. you can't go wrong with this item early game.


This is a must have item on sivir. Huge attack damage and lifesteal works well on Sivir. Stacking this item is good but remember that huge damage means nothing without Attack Speed and Cooldown Rediction. Don't buy second The Bloodthirster without first building a Youmuu's Ghostblade


This is a great item on Sivir for these reasons:
1. You don't need attack speed all the time on Sivir. You need it only when you are chasing/auto-attacking enemies and while taking down turrets. This item's active gives you the much needed needed second ultimate while On The Hunt is on cooldown.
2. The Avarice Blade is a good item to take early game for the extra gold while farming. But, don't put off upgrading for long.
3. Cooldown Reduction is good to have on Sivir and so is Armour penetration. This ensures that all your abilities are available more frequently and do more damage.
4. Youmuu's Ghostbladeis more gold efficient(2700g) than the The Black Cleaver

Other items

Zephyr gives a good passive Tenacity and extra movement speed with attack speed.
Infinity Edge is a good but more expensive alternative to The Bloodthirster
Blade of the Ruined King has all the stats you need but is a little more expensive for the stats it provides. Grab it if you want the passive and the active spell.

Situational items

Build Last Whisper when you see enemies stacking Armour. The percentage penetration stacks well with items like The Black Cleaver and Youmuu's Ghostblade because the percentage is applied before the flat armor penetration.

Build Hexdrinker and upgrade to Maw of Malmortius for increased durability against enemies with high magic damage.

Extra health never hurts. Warmog's Armor is a good item on Sivir.

End note

Thanks for reading my guide for Sivir. I wish you best of luck on Summoner's rift.