Quinn Build Guide by Generally Break

Preseason is upon us; I'll be trying to figure out the new builds and meta and updating the guide as we develop.

I won't pretend to be the best Quinn player, but I've gotten Platinum playing mostly Quinn and enjoy the puzzle of figuring out all the options her kit gives us and how to use them.

I will however pretend QuinnAD is the best Quinn player. He's the #1 Quinn NA and we have talked a lot about these builds. He has reviewed the guide for oversights and errors, and has had the good grace to test many of the builds I suggest here.

I made a very extensive spreadsheet for calculating build damages you can see here. Feel free to clone it and experiment for yourself. League is too complex for me to account for every variable, but this is a very close approximation. I try to update it on patch day any time any of the math changes. A lot of my build recommendations are based on experimenting and using this calculator.

Why Quinn?

You're fast!

Quinn's memeiest attribute is she's fast.

Behind Enemy Lines gives you 70-130% total move speed, so you can make very fast rotations and chases.

Besides that Heightened Senses has a 20-40% movement speed boost on a very low cooldown. This makes Quinn exceptionally good at kiting in combat.

You do damage!

Quinn is an ADC. You attack a lot, and your attacks hurt.

If you use all your abilities in rapid succession you have unusually high burst for an ADC with the ability damages and Harrier

If you spread your abilities out you have unusually high DPS with Heightened Senses giving you an 80% attack speed steroid that you can have up almost constantly.

You're flexible!

Quinn has a very wide variety of viable builds. You can take from Press the Attack to Grasp of the Undying to Glacial Augment, and almost every item that improves your basic attacks is viable. Change your runes and items to suit the situation.

You're Justice!

Quinn is the most Kamen Rider champion on the rift. No one else will let you do a Rider Kick.

Abilities

This sounds really basic. Enemy gets marked, you can do extra damage. The stats you get from this with Heightened Senses Make it one of the strongest ADC passives in the game. Note that the cooldown scales with your critical strike chance, so crit items mean more harrier procs, meaning more attack and move speed. You can take advantage of how it picks targets. If you are unseen in a bush, harrier will only mark enemy champions. Harrier will prioritize the champion you're fighting, so begin a trade right before harrier comes off cooldown to make it target your enemy to maximize the trade. Also remember all your damaging abilities trigger a Harrier mark. Try to auto between every ability to maximize Harrrier procs. Finally, remember that the stats from harrier last 2 seconds. Try to space out your harrier procs to 2 seconds apart to get the most of the bonus stats. You also gain vision of your marked target even in fog of war or bushes.

Linear skill shot that does AOE damage. Simple, right? The important thing to remember is the harrier proc and the 1.5 second Nearsight it applies to the primary target. Nearsight disables a lot of abilities, including targeted abilities and auto attacks. If you can land this versus another ADC you should win the fight. It also applies to jungle monsters, preventing them from attacking. This gives you nice leash and nice kiting against jungle camps. Versus tankier champions you probably want to hold this for the Harrier move speed.

Gives you vision nearby. Boring! Actually, this is your most important ability; I recommend you max it first always. The cool down reduction is nice, but what really matters is the massive stats this gives you every time you proc Harrier. The stats go up substantially with each rank of Heightened Senses; each rank gives you 15% attack speed for 2 seconds, which translates into about .2 auto attacks. Doesn't sound like enough? Another way to think of it is Based on your critical chance, this effectively increases the AD scaling of every other ability by 20-45% AD.

Jump to a targeted enemy, briefly knock them back and slow, and land at roughly your maximum attack range from them. There's a lot you can do with this. The jump range is longer than your attack range, so you can use this to gap close. The knockback is a displacement effect; each displacement effect cancels the last one. In other words, This lets you cancel an enemy dash, including abilities like Dark Passage. The hit box is decently favorable, meaning you can cancel abilities like Aegis of Zeonia if you time this right. You can also use this to create space between you and a point blank enemy. If you are against a wall, you can vault off an enemy to go over a wall to escape or fight from across the wall. If an enemy is at the edge of your vault range over a wall, you can use it to land on their side of the wall. You can use this with Blinding Assault to get smoother jungle pathing. Vault is also the easiest way to proc harrier, allowing you to start strong trades even across minion waves. However, because this is your best escape be very careful about activating it greedily. Finally, if you flash during your vault it will cancel your vault movement. In other words, if you vault at a target and flash behind them during the movement you can more than double your effective flash range.

You go fast. This ability is primarily macro focused. You can roam very cheaply, you can base very quickly, you can be at the team fights and still catch the big minion waves. Use this ability to get lots of CS, and be at the important team fights. This is also a strong chase ability. When chasing an enemy, you usually want to get as close as possible before attacking so that you can keep chasing even if they Flash. Note that Skystrike marks all enemies with Harrier. This usually just gets you one extra proc, but if you are able to position aggressively you can turn into Katarina killing each enemy and feeding on the Harrier marks to chase them down.

Early Game - Top

You can bully most matchups. Try not to miss any minions and aim for fairly long trades not letting the enemy hit back. Try not to fight without Vault. Your power spike will be at level 3 when you get your Heightened Senses move speed and multiple ways to trigger it.

At the start of the game, tell your jungler that you'll have priority at 3:15 to make it easy for them to get top scuttle. Scuttle crabs are very valuable and you should be able to win a fight if it breaks out.

Vision is extremely important. You are very likely to be camped by the enemy jungler as you're squishy and don't have the greatest escapes. Always be aware of where the enemy jungler could come from and have a plan to deal with it. If they come from in front of you you can probably run away. If they come from behind, you might be able to kill your laner before they reach you and make it simpler. If not you have Vault Flash for your emergency escape. If you know the enemy jungler is not nearby or have a very strong lead, punish your laner as harshly as you can.

Against tanks you want to try to get an early lead. Their 1 item spike will make them much harder to kill and if you aren't well ahead then you'll likely have a hard time killing them. If it gets to this point, try to keep up on farm and focus on roaming to get your team ahead. Once you get to about 3 items you should have enough damage to be a serious threat again.

Against juggernauts and bruisers you shouldn't lose kill pressure, but neither will they. Try to be as aggressive as you can without letting them fight back. Be very cautious when Vault is on cooldown as it is your main defense. For the same reasons try not to Vault offensively unless you are very confident you will win the all in. Glacial Augment helps this style a lot.

In ranged matchups you generally can't guarantee the same one-sided trades. In these lanes Blinding Assault is your trump card. If you land this you should be able to get several auto attacks in. Be ready to back off when it wears out to ensure a winning trade. Pay close attention to the minion waves on both sides as most ranged top laners are less inhibited by minions than you are.

Early Game - Bot

Because your CC is single target and your range is below average you need to be more cautious in bot lane. You are very good at punishing mistakes with your CC and move speed. If an enemy over extends or you get a jungle gank Vault can slow the target to enable an easy all in.

Because Quinn is often regarded as an assassin people commonly assume you need to snowball early. This isn't really true; your late scaling is very good. Against ADCs that are lane bullies it might be smarter to focus on safe farming. Against more late focused ADCs you can punish mistakes sharply to get a lead, but if you don't find any opportunities don't get an inferiority complex about your scaling.

Mid Game

Get farm, be where your team needs pressure. Catch big waves. Counter-jungle when you can. If there's a siege you can either split push or join depending on if your team needs you. Be on hand for dragon fights. If you're strong, get deep vision and fish for picks. Your big goal here is to get a strong gold lead.

Late Game

You can either split push or team fight. Or, maybe do both if you're lucky.

If you are confident you can 1v1 anyone, splitting is solid but have good map awareness. Heightened Senses or Behind Enemy Lines should allow you to get away from an unfavorable fight.

For team fights, you have basically two modes. You can play like a 'normal ADC' and DPS down the safest target. Or you can play more like Master Yi or Katarina, letting your team soften up the enemies then using your high mobility to do cleanup. Which is better depends on team comps and strengths, so be comfortable with both so you can adjust as needed.

Find Me a Path!

Deep breath here, Quinn has A LOT of viable runes. I'm going to try to cover all the keystones and any non-obvious minor runes. I recommend choosing your runes each match based on the team compositions.

The Basics

Your utility isn't high enough to justify many defensive items, but almost every item that gives Attack Damage or Attack Speed is viable. I highly recommend playing with the calculator to get a feel for how different builds affect your burst and sustained damage.

The general rule is:
All your abilities scale with AD, and harrier scales with critical chance. Attack speed still is very nice but because of the large amount you have built in it doesn't have as much oomph as the other two.