Hello everyone, my name is Aixion, this is my Top Poppy guide for Ranked Gameplay or as I like to say, Toppy. Poppy is a very effective champion that in my opinion is highly underrated compared to other melee champions. I would really appreciate your feedback as this is my first guide.

Poppy is a very powerful champion that is extremely fun. Her ability to burst down opponents with her Devastating Blow while surviving with Diplomatic Immunity makes a very big threat in team fights if not dealt with properly. However, if not handled properly, she can be a big blunder to her team if not played to her full potential.

Poppy however is weak early on and relies on lots of gold for her core items and her Diplomatic Immunity is her defining ability. I play Poppy as an anti-carry/off-tank. That is the reason for the large amounts of armor and high mobility this build has. She in my opinion is best used taking the enemy AD Carry out of the fight and making it a 4v5.

Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here. Without this guide, my guide for you guys would of been a complete mess, and using his guide makes me feel 100x more confident in my own work. Thank you again.

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Pros + Very dangerous late game. + Extremely high burst potential. + Extremely versatile in the build. + Very resilient, especially at low HP. + Almost impossible to kill if played properly. + Did I mention her hammer is just an extension of YOUR awesomeness.

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Cons - Very weak early game. - Focused 90% of the time, even if not fed. - Can be harassed very easily. - Lack of AOE for farming. - Kited very easily before fully built. - Many strong counters.

My masteries are quite different than your normal masteries, they are specially built for the type of Poppy that this build is aiming for. The Offensive masteries supply the extra "oomph" to your late and early game with the penetration, cdr, and extra AD. The Defensive masteries are geared towards the wide assortment of AD champions that seem to be the norm for solo top these days; the armor helps you take the hits, the MS helps with chasing people down, and the MR and HP help you later in the game against the nasty AP Bursties.

• Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage: These are here to help you achieve early game dominance and help you farm easier.
  
• Greater Mark of Attack Damage: More AD, why not?
  
• Greater Glyph of Armor: Armor to help you take on those big bad AD champions that are the majority of your competition on top.
  
• Greater Seal of Armor: See reasoning for Glyphs.

Flash: This is a MUST HAVE spell in my opinion. It allows for perfect setups for your Heroic Charge stun. And it allows for the neat little trick I call the "Flash and Wham Bam You Are Dead!" which I will explain later.

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Ignite: More AD when on cooldown, and it provides a lot of damage when your Diplomatic Immunity is on your target, and allows you to burst down, and run out of tower range before taking damage if you are good at gauging your damage output.

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Ghost: When you find that Flash won't give you enough mobility. I find Flash more helpful since you already have a Ghost in the form of your Paragon of Demacia.

• Valiant Fighter: This is probably one of the most overlooked passives in the game. For those of you that aren't into the math behind it, basically, when you are lower on HP you take less overall damage. However, for those of you that are interested in the math, say you have 500 HP and take 300 damage, it take 50% off the 300 and than you only take 150 damage instead of 300.
  
• Devastating Blow (Q): This ability is your bread and butter. It can hit up to 1300-1400 damage on a good day, and that is every few seconds in a team fight. It is a glorious ability that makes Poppy one of the strongest bruisers in the game. You MUST always max this first.
  
• Paragon of Demacia (W): This ability is what makes you so resilient and powerful at the same time. The passive gives you extra AD and Armor to go up against those AD champions on top. While the active gives you basically a free ghost. This ability is always maxed second. I grab two early points for better farm and allows you to take a few more hits.
  
• Heroic Charge (E): This is the ability that gives you your utility and great team fighting tools. In combination with your Devastating Blow, this your second most powerful ability. However, you max it last after your Diplomatic Immunity because it is a highly situational skill also.
  
• Diplomatic Immunity (R): This ability is what makes you almost unkillable in team fights. Basically, throw this on the enemy support, focus the AD Carry, and you have two free kills. And if you have to use this to escape, throw it on someone who burned all their CC within the past few seconds and run like hell.

Against an AD Bruiser Top:
Against an AP or someone w/ True damage( Irelia):

OR if against an AP Top. or CC heavy team.
philosopher's stone and are key components to your end game build and provide the GP5 that you will need to fund your extremely high cost build.
This item is your bread and butter, there are very few situations in any game that you should build this item after your GP5 and boots. This item is your bread and butter against any sort high damage AP Top or team comp. If you don't get this item early, you will be destroyed as it turns into your best item against a high AP damage team.


These items provide the mobility you need to chase down the enemy AD Carry, the damage to kill them, and the tankiness to survive the encounter.

Trinity Force is your bread and butter item. No item in the game synergies better with Poppy. And in only in VERY VERY few situation should you ever buy Zeal or Phage before your Sheen.
Phage should only be bought if you are going against an enemy champion that can kite you or that can do true damage( Olaf and Irelia.) The HP is going to be needed to be able to take the true damage to the face as it rips right through your small amounts of HP at low levels. Champions like Singed love to kite you, but Phage makes them a little more cautious about engaging you because you can slow them and than knock them around a lot more.

Against a heavy AP and/or CC Team:
Against a heavy AD Team:
Standard:
Pubstomping:

Choosing your next item has to come with experience, you have to figure out what the enemy team has and what it is lacking, build to counter their strengths and build to exploit their weaknesses.

As the solo top for your team, you should be three things:

• Reliable
• Powerful
• Be able to hold your own lane(and than some.)

Now lets go through some of the champions you are extremely powerful against and those that just you wanna sit in a corner and want to cry.

The Good Tryndamere Lee Sin(On a good day) Leona Gragas Shen Wukong

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The Bad Fiora Nasus Lee Sin(On an average day) Renekton Dr. Mundo Cho'Gath Udyr Nidalee Jax Volibear Warwick Yorick Xin Zhao

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The Really Ugly Pantheon Gangplank Garen Lee Sin(On a bad day) Kennen Vladimir Irelia Mordekaiser Singed Rumble Malphite

Now lets run a scenario with one from each category.

Tryndamere is actually one of the easiest champions you can fight. If he uses his spin to engage, you can take him further away from his tower than he wanted to be and can wail on him as he realizes he is over extended. And if he spins onto you at your tower, you can stun him into a wall with Heroic Charge and run around the tower till he ulti's, than you can chase em down and get a free kill almost scratch free. And exchanging with a low level Tryndamere is a joke, you have your Devastating Blow and he has 1 maybe 2 auto attacks?

Synopsis: Any champion that can close distances with a charge of sorts are very susceptible to your stun up against a tower or wall, just stand near one and you get a **** load of free damage.

Nasus is one of those champions that I have had most fun playing against. At lower levels you can definitely win the exchange, but if he gets his farm up with his Siphoning Strike than bad news Poppy. And since most of your damage doesn't come from auto attacks early on his slow won't do much to you. Your best bet is to smash him with Devastating Blow on cool down, but always save enough for a Flash + Heroic Charge stun into your tower if he decides to dive which many Nasus' do at level 6 because they think their ulti makes them some sort of demigod.

Synopsis: The strong bruiser that can trade blows and regen as fast or faster than you always makes things a challenge, and the whole point of this game is to win, but who likes winning if it is too easy? Play passive, farm up and let them feel like they are winning lane, when they dive you, stun them and show them the extension of YOUR awesomeness.

Pantheon is one the most irritating champions Toppy can go against. He has great harass and great poking abilities. He will throw his spear, it is inevitable. This is one of those champions that you will lose your lane to if you don't get a lot of ganks. Befriend your jungler, they like over extending aggressive champions ripe for the harvest.

Synopsis: Play extremely passive against any champion that can poke and harass like no tomorrow. Your jungler is your best friend. Hope you have a good one. If you don't just play passive and this is where your gold per 5 items start to help you keep up with them. Try and minimize the farm they can get to your best capabilities, and try and get atleast 4/6 per creep wave, because if they are constantly pushing, most likely you will end up w/ more farm than them.

As Poppy you should be a great asset to your team. Your main goal is to instantaneously obliterate the living hell out of the enemy AD Carry. You are their worst nightmare, be one with the inner nightmare, and show them what happens when your hammer becomes of the extension of YOUR awesomeness.

You constantly want to be moving around during the team fights, you are the reason AD Carries build a Guardian Angel, without it you basically make team fights a 4v5 within a matter of seconds. And if the AD Carry isn't the scariest one on the team, use Diplomatic Immunity on the support or the person with the least amount of CC, and than smash the dangerous ones in the face.

A good example of this would be a fed Kennen. His ultimate, Slicing Maelstrom, stuns your entire team and does a **** load of damage and can easily 1v5 if fed enough. So why not Diplomatic Immunity the Soraka and show him the true meaning of pain?

This is just a list of cool tips, techniques, and random advice I have learned from playing Poppy as my main solo top.

• If you are pushed to tower, this build allows for the exact amount of damage needed to let the tower hit melee minions twice, than one auto attack and dead. One for caster minions, and for siege minions, just wait till they are about 25-30% and use Devastating Blow, I'd rather waste the little mana to secure that precious gold on something that is hard to judge.
  
• Something I like to call the "Flash and Bam" is the ability to quickly flash behind an opponent if they poke you at tower or almost all the creeps are dead and Heroic Charge them into a wall and you at 90% of the time guaranteed a kill.
  
• If you are being dived by two individual opponents and they have a very high chance to kill you, run past the tower, and as they are both past it, turn and slam one of them into the tower, one will be stunned and one will have to react to you being behind them. A cool trick to add to this is to Diplomatic Immunity the one who has to turn around. I only recommend if you know you can kill one or both with towers help.
  
• A common thing that is not often done by the Poppys that I see is using Diplomatic Immunity on the support, focusing the AD Carry, than turning onto the support once the carry is dead. You basically eliminate two of the enemy champs for your team.

Well I hope you enjoyed reading my guide as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have seen a lot of Poppy guides, but nothing to my likes and I took knowledge from other champions I play as solo top and compiled, did a lot of testing and reworking. So please test and comment on ways I can improve.

I will be adding more as time goes even if the guide is poorly rated. People that do find it helpful will enjoy the small updates. Until next time my Poppy cohorts!

Credits to jhoijhoi for the template, which you can find here. Without this guide, my guide for you guys would of been a complete mess, and using his guide makes me feel 100x more confident in my own work. Thank you again.

4/17 - Guide was created.

4/18 - Guide was updated. Fixed 6 points in Paragon of Demacia, added Solo Top Match Ups, added Item Variation based on situation. Also added a note that recognizes the unorthodoxity(yes I can make up words like Dr. Seuss too!) of the build and acknowledges and explains the reasoning behind the build.

4/28 - Teamfights and Item sections were updated. Add more in depth explanation of your role in a team fight. Also! The bugs seemed to sort themselves out!

5/8 - Did a huge overhaul to almost every aspect of the guide.