Hi my name is Salmon Kid, aka Sam.

I hit challenger OTPing Lillia last season, and I've been grinding ranked League for 4 years now. I am the best Lillia OTP in North America, reaching 837 LP challenger last season playing majority Lillia.


I created this guide because Lillia is a very difficult champion for players to pick up, both from a micro and macro sense. This build is a summary of my knowledge on Lillia and all of my insight for playing the champion.

If you have any questions feel free to come to my stream https://www.twitch.tv/salmonkid7 every day at 10 AM EST for 6 hours!

This is where I will explain how to 1v9 on Lillia consistently. We will explore all of Lillia's strengths, weaknesses, and in game goals in this section as a means to teach you how to win as frequently as possible. Let's start with the recent changes that have effected Lillia.

PATCH 25.6



Changes to Lillia's e are irrelevant unless you build her full AP. This will very minimally make her clear better early, besides that it will barely change how she feels.

PATCH 14.18

In the era where Lillia gets nerfed every patch, this is one of the more tame ones. The damage cap is felt in her early clears, but it goes away as soon as you get Fated Ashes. The ult changes are unfortunate, but they are oreinted towards her late game which is Lillia's strongest game point so it's not world altering.

PATCH 14.14

This was the change that significantly weakened Lillia in the current state of League. Lillia's biggest strength is kiting/weaving in damage, and the healing you received during that time allowed you to take greater risks in fights as you could sustain a larger amount of damage. The massive cut to her healing is felt, especially in the mid game, and forces you to need to itemize defensively more often. As for the nerfs to her E, both Lillia's E and W are not reliable abilities, and especially on a damage front nerfs to her E are arbitrary.

PATCH 14.13

Nerfs to Lillia's AP ratio's for sure suck, but very rarely will you be itemizing AP items past your third item unless you opt for a full carry build. Alongside her Q doing true damage when placed correctly, this nerf is unfortunate but not crippling like other recent nerfs have been.

CONCLUSIONS

Lillia has been nerfed a lot lately, and she is barely blindable in the current meta due to all of her bad matchups. However, with lots of practice, build optimization, and solid jungle fundamentals we can make Lillia work even in bad situations.

To always be up to date on Lillia changes and ask any questions, we are live at 10 AM EST every day at https://www.twitch.tv/salmonkid7

Lillia is in an okay spot right now, but she has specific situations that she's best. Here is what I've identified as her strong and weak points.

Pros
1. Great mid and late game scaling
2. Really high movement speed
3. Great at kiting/skill expressive movement
4. High build flexibility
5. Great full clear

Cons
1. Weak early ganks
2. Susceptible to early invades
3. Can have map split forced on her
4. Countered by point and click CC/activatable MS with high damage
5. Very easy to kill early

A lot of Lillia's cons can be lessened through good game awareness, defensive warding, and match up knowledge. However, as your skill increases some matchups are simply impossible in the current meta and it makes Lilia virtually unblindable. This makes having a good understanding of itemization and fighting on Lillia essential to play her in the meta.

Lillia has long evolved past the point of going Dark Harvest. The reason being that she is way too easy to neutralize in her full AP build, alongside her Conqueror page having a higher ability to 1v9 and compete in any given game. As we've elaborated on throughout this guide, Lillia is a spell cycling champion rather than a one shot champion, and while she can offer a lot of damage in a short amount of time when she all in's off her ult/CC, a majority of her damage will come from cycling Q's which synergizes with a Conqueror build compared to a Dark Harvest one.



Lillia used to run resolve secondary for revitalize and conditioning, but after repeated nerfs to both the runes themselves and Lillia's items/abilities that synergized with said runes, inspiration is the page that offers Lillia the most utility and makes games feel far more consistent. While it's okay to run a page with sorcery second, I wouldn't recommend it as celerity and nimbus cloak are easily replacable with blue smite and axiom arcanist is a placebo rune that invests strength into the wrong parts of Lillia's kit.

Itemization was discussed very thoroughly in the notes section at the beginning of the items section. However, I will briefly reiterate how to determine when to build Lillia's core items.

This section will not be used to discuss Lillia's core items, but rather specific items that have different context's in which they're needed.

NEW BOOTS

With the addition of Bloodletters, Lillia's core build has even more CDR than it's had in the past. Because of this, lucidity boots are less frequently a necessity on Lillia despite still being her best boot option. Because of her place in the current meta, oftentimes you will have to opt for weaker fighting boots in exchange for more survivability and resources.


SWIFTIES


New swifties are very strong however, it's tier 3 swifties that we are particularly interested in because they give a percentage buff to all MS sources by 4%. Because of this, I'd recommend building them more frequently when you win feats if you are going Lillia's core build compared to upgraded lucidities. Alternatively, building regular swifties is essential in games with a lot of slows over lucidity boots.


TABIS/MERCS


People oftentimes mistake the purpose of Mercs on Lillia. Lillia is very weak to CC, that is a fact. But Lillia's bigger problem is that she cannot survive when she gets CC'd. Against teams with a lot of CC that is impacted by tenacity, BUT also a high amount of auto attacking damage it's important to distinguish that tabi's is more important in these games. Barring the matchups with point and click CC, most hard CC is avoidable and the tankiness from tabis far outweighs the CC reduction from Mercs in these situations. This doesn't mean Mercs don't have their place, there are plenty of games with value for reducing CC but it's important to know when. Here are some examples and the types of boots I'd go in those situations.


Comp 1: Ksante, Vi, Ahri, Corki, Naut | Boots: Tabis

Comp 2: Garen, Fiddlesticks, Twisted Fate, Varus, Lulu | Boots: Mercs

Comp 3: Camille, Nocturne, Galio, Caitlyn, Lux | Boots: Tabis

Comp 4: Singed, Xin Zhao, Xerath, Kaisa, Karma | Boots: Mercs


LUCIDITIES


In all other situations, or if you are uncertain, Lucidity boots are always a great option on Lillia and offer plenty of utility to her gameplay.

FROZEN HEART

Lillia's most underrated item by far and away is frozen heart. In a meta full of auto attacking invade junglers, Frozen makes Lillia's mid game viability sky rocket by giving her significantly better survivability alongside CDR and being an extremely cheap item spike. In games with 3+ AD, I will religiously build this item, and I'll sometimes even build it over randuins in games verse a lot of crit strictly because of it's gold/resource viability. This can be built 2nd, 3rd, or 4th and be strong, but because of it's gold efficiency it is stronger the earlier you build it.

RYLAIS

Before the new season, I was building Rylai's second every game because of how difficult it was to get to Lillia's item spikes after her repated nerfs. I feel Rylais is an amazing item for newer Lillia players because it allows you to learn to kite on her under easier circumstances. Although the potential for carrying is lower, Rylais offers amazing utility to both Lillia and her team. It's both a great 2nd item, and 5th or 6th item to round out any build path you go and I'd recommend utilizing it if you're newer to Lillia.

Lillia is a full clear champion, so all of my clearing tutorials will instruct you on how to full clear. I will explain some nuance to your clearing options after the primary full clear guides, but outside of experience players I would highly recommend not discenting from the full clear.

LILLIA FULL CLEAR BLUE SIDE

Play Video

LILLIA FULL CLEAR RED SIDE

Play Video

ALTERNATIVE ROUTES

The following explanation will not come with video examples, but I will do my best to describe situations in which you should not full clear.

Firstly, in all potential invade matchups you have two adaptations. Firstly, make sure to ward the entrance of the opposite side of your jungle from where you are starting your clear while backing for sweeper.






This ward must be placed around 35 seconds before your buffs spawn because if it's placed to early it will not spot 1/2 camp invades on either side of the map. As for 3 camp invades, these are only reactable in the moment/with the assistance of laner vision. If you are clear starts from Blue, you can make enemy invades weaker if you believe/know you will get invaded by going from your chickens to your krugs around the back wall rather than going to your Red. This is less optimal, but it is very effective in stoping invades.

As for 1 camp same side invades, all you can really do is instantly back and farm your opposite side, then instantly farm your counter jungled camps on their respawn timer to deny them from the enemy. 1 camp invades on the opposite side will be spotted on the aformentioned ward, and in this case you have two options. You can attempt to play split map, but this process takes a lot of game knowledge of your lane matchups/ability to play the split. Lillia is not a good split map champion, so this process requires a lot of jungling/Lillia skill and I would not recommend it for beginners. Your second option is to call your lanes to deny the invade with you. This is a more reliable option if you are proactive, and it allows you to potentially pick up a kill while protecting your camps/ability to full clear.

Your last two options are 3 camp and 5 camp clears. These are both utilized to find disgused gank timers, and are sometimes needed in higher elo to catch people off guard as playing standard can be too predictable at the highest level. If you are newer to Lillia/lower elo, do not utilize either of these clears as they are very risky and will put you behind, but they also require a lot of game knowledge to implement properly. I won't elaborate on situations where you'd use these as I discourage it all together, but you can see example of times I opt for these clears in my games.

Lillia is not a one shot champion, she is a spell cycling AP bruiser. When fighting on Lillia, you should almost never use your W and E because they are extremely easy to miss/make you vulnerable to enemy engages. 90% of all your fighting on Lillia should be kiting and landing Q's. As you get into the mid/late game, finding good sleeps and kiting constantly is Lillia's goal.

Lillia is a champion that requires patience and discipline in fighting, especially with the continued nerfs to her and her items. You must learn to play at the absolute peak of your range, and the ranges of your opponents spells/primary damage. Keeping up your stacks and cycling Q's is your primary goal, I cannot emphasize this point enough.



Lillia is a deceptive champion because according to her Q radius breakdown, you will apply her true damage buff so long as the enemy is within the radius of the first and second ring. However, you do not want the enemy to be inside this space ever. You always want to keep the enemy right on the outside of the second ring. Your goal is to constantly inch in and out of that second ring to avoid taking damage as often as possible while taking risks entering range and cycling your Q's.

Lillia is unbelievably easy to kill in the early game, and she can be taken advantage of easily in the late game with bad positioning/a lack of understanding of her playstyle. In order of priority, you want to

1. maintain passive stacks and kite with Q's
2. land reliable sleeps
3. use E and W occasionally to confirm kills/increase your ability to kite

When played correctly, you will feel elusive and very hard to kill. Your damage won't be insanely high, but you will be a constant threat that has to be managed. You will always be maintaing your stacks off of anything you can (camps, enemies, minions) and you won't take unecessary damage staying inside the enemy attack ranges longer than necessary.

This guide will be updated every single patch so you are always up to date on the latest Lillia changes. Please come to me with any and all questions <3

Any tips or comments for me? Leave them in the comment section and please leave a like on the guide if this helped you!

Want more of me? Check me out at all my socials down below!

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