Vi is an amazing top lane champion, with decent crowd control, epic mobility and the potential to do tons of damage with little help from items, she is truly a force to be...WRECK-oned with. Trollface. Her main function (at least the way I play her) is to initiate fights, and hunt down anyone that tries to escape. In Ability uses and combos section I explain how to initiate fights and use her combos for maximum damage and control.

RUNES

Vi Is an AD bruiser and should be treated as such. The runes I choose provide me with bonus armor pen, a decent starting AD boost, armor and magic resist. This should allow you to easily lane vs anyone, if not just survive. If engaged on you can survive long enough to get away and do enough damage to not be a waste of time for your jungler to gank your lane.

MASTERIES

Now I feel the need to say that this is not the ONLY way to play Vi, she is a versitile champion and has many different uses and can fit multiple roles. This is just how I build her, and wreck with her, top lane.

I go almost completely into the offensive tree with 4 points into bonus HP per level. this makes you hit like a truck and gives you a little extra beef. The way you build in game will determine your level of tankiness.

Vi is built like an AD bruiser, basic bruiser favorites such as trinity force and maw are fantastic on her. You build to hurt, you build to last, you build to hunt.

STARTING ITEMS
Start with the basic boots and 3 health pots, use them sparingly, you can farm extremely well on Vi, use it to your advantage to get ahead of your opponent.


FIRST BACK
On your first back, if you manage to sustain long enough and farm well enough, you should be able to buy a ruby crystal and long sword. If not both start with ruby crystal. If you can buy phage right out. You should. If you are constantly getting ganked dont be bad. Buy a ward and use your spidey senses to play more cautiously.

2nd Back
This should be to finish off your phage and either buy your brutalizer straight out or buy the components.

3rd BACK
Once you buy Phage and Brutalizer finish off your boots (Merc treads is pretty standard, however if you are against a team with little or no CC, you may prefer ninja tabi, if you get REALLY cocky go for Beserkers). Depending on how fast the enemy is choose your enchant. I typically go for Alacrity just for the flat movement speed; however furor is also good. If you're just dominating the game, go furor, if you need to occasionally escape sticky situations, go Alacrity.


OVERKILL
honestly the game will likely be over at this point. But now you grab T-force and Black cleaver. If the game continues buy maw, then GA if for the finishing touch. Aegis is a good choice if you have an empty slot at the end. Followed up to runic bulwark. But like I said I truly doubt the game will get this far.


IN CONCLUSION
This build provides you with mobility, health/magic resist/armor, damage, and armor pen. If you don't win by the time this build is over you are either really bad, or you should report your entire team for unskilled

VAULT BREAKER (Q)
This provides you with an initiate and an Escape, (NOTE: ONCE YOU START CHARGING YOU STOP MOVING, BE SURE TO RESUME MOVEMENT), using this in combination with Excessive Force allows amazing farming (explained below). This also applies denting blows to the target, so Q + auto attack + E = pain.

DENTING BLOWS (W)
This is somewhat like Vaynes silver bullet. You do a percentage of their MAX HEALTH every three hits. You also gain attack speed while using basic attacks on a target. You reduce armor by 20%. Yes this ability is in fact op as hell. But you still don't max it until you max Q and E.

EXCESSIVE FORCE (E)
This is a ranged harass and allows for excellent farming. The way this is intended for farming is you use your Q (fully charged) on an incoming minion wave, then use your E to finish them off. The Q puts them in a nice tight group so the E can damage as many enemies as possible.

ASSAULT AND BATTERY (R)
This is an amazing initiate, it is a great way to hone in on carries and disable them so your team can jump on them and finish them off (as if you couldn't own them alone) it pushes other champions aside and does damage to them also.


WOMBO COMBO

In an actual in game situation. You are faced with a team fight, the carry is generally in the back, or in the middle of the other champions. Making sure your team is close behind Use Excessive force E (so its used on first attack) then follow up with Assault and battery R, once you slam the carry begin charging your Vault Breaker, if you want to deal more damage and move further charge it for the full duration, for a quick disable while staying close use it quickly. Using E and Q when they are off cooldown and auto attacking in between will allow you to keep the target controlled and keep steady damage on them, applying Denting Blows as often as possible.

But what if it's like....and Ezreal...or a Tristana?

These two carries are difficult to handle simply because of their escape mechanisms. This also applies to Kassadin and katarina. One way to handle this is to charge a full Vault Breaker, then flash into them, releasing your Q once you are close enough, and having your E ready to do burst damage once you hit them. After the target flashes/arcane shifts/shunpos/rift walks you use your Assault and Battery (R) to hunt them down and quickly use your Q after to keep them bouncing for the longest time possible. Of course things can happen that prevent this from working, or make it easier and less complicated than I have explained. But basically this is how you will initiate fights.

Please know that your build should change with your play style and the flow of the game. Simply carbon copying a guide no matter what the situation is the definition of noobness. Sometimes you may need to rush pure defense. For example in one game I played with Vi had to go Merc treads, T-force, and then pure defense, including Frozen heart and Runic Bulwurk because Warwick and a very fed Tristana were wrecking me to death.

This is how the match ended. Not great, but I made due and adjusted, making the winning play by ulting the fed tristana who my team proceeded to blow up.