While Vi has fallen out of favor in recent patches, she still retains many of the strengths she had in the past. Her initiate is godlike, and she can even duel 1v1 with ease. Her only weaknesses are that her ult can land you in really bad situations if you're not careful against Flash and other escapes, and that her dash can get interrupted easily. Other than that, however, she is one of the few junglers with both an awesome initiate and dueling power.

Pros

1. High damage without damage items
2. Ult CC can't be interrupted by anything including QSS
3. Fast clear speed
4. Easy ganks post-6 with two CC

Cons

1. Q gets interrupted very easily
2. E attack reset is buggy
3. Hard ganks pre-6 without red buff
4. Ulti has travel time, so you follow flashes maokai style (this can be a pro too I guess)

9x 9x 5x 4x 3x

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Greater Mark of Attack Speed Greater Seal of Armor Greater Glyph of Magic Resist Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist Greater Quintessence of Life Steal

You get lifesteal quints to help your clear. The new jungle is unforgiving, and having these lets you stay out much longer.

Attack speed marks are standard on most junglers, but especially good on Vi because of denting blows.

Armor yellows are required for every jungler, period. Jungle monsters all deal physical damage, and these are the most efficient yellows already.

You can skip the MR blues if they don't have any magic damage and instead take attack speed. I prefer to take a mix as you will be taking magic damage when ganking mages or meeting some junglers, but you don't need to max it out early game since you are primarily taking physical damage.

We learn denting blows at level one for the ridiculously fast clear on the first buff. We aren't planning to engage the enemy at lvl 2 either so we don't need our utility spell - we can learn excessive force. E is our primary damage output early, so we'll max it first. Incidentally, leveling E also powers up W since we get to double-attack more often.

We max Q second since we need the lower CD for fights, and W scaling is pretty bad with levels.

Machete/5 is the standard jungle start. No reason to go any different on Vi - machete is just OP for jungling.



Try to get wriggles on first back, if not then you can just buy madred and a flask. After that, prioritize HP as in mid-game you are going to be initiating ganks and usually tanking the full brunt of enemy damage (note I say MID game here, not late game). Mallet is a core item on Vi - once you finish mallet your power jumps a huge amount, since you didn't have a good way to stick to enemies long term and now you do!

After that, the best way to maximize your W is with attack speed. And, you need to be some MR to go with your high HP (you have armor from wriggle). So - wit's end! Best possible item for long fights with enemy bruisers, which is what you're going for. You still need a little MR and cc reduction always helps so I like mercboots as well.

So, your core is mercboots/wriggles/mallet/wit's end. You can build whatever you want after that, but I have some suggestions:



GA is good for its stats and revive. After that, you can either go more DPS with black cleaver if their tanks are really big, or you can get tanky with Randuins. Mercurial scimitar is also reasonable if the enemy has some ridiculous CC (like Fiddle).

Standard start is to go wherever your ad/support lane is, since support can give you a smiteless leash without fear of missing creeps. So on purple side, you start blue - on blue side, you start red.

A standard route looks like:

(Blue side): Red->Blue->Wolf
(Purple side): Blue->Red->Wraith

From there, look for overextended lanes that you can gank. Don't force it, though - nothing is worse in season 3 jungle than ganking at the wrong time as you miss out on way too much farm.

If you're feeling YOLO, you can finish your first buff then run straight to the enemy jungler's second buff (ex: you start red on purple, they start blue. You finish your red then run to their red). Generally you should arrive just as they are finishing it, and you can smite steal if you got a smiteless leash. This is very risky however so I don't recommend it unless you're sure you will succeed.

After level 3, you win most skirmishes with enemy jungler so don't be afraid to trade. Make sure you don't get 2v1d when their lane responds and yours doesn't, however.

In the mid game, just look for free kills with your ult. Constantly ask if flashes are up, and if one's down then you can generally just kill them as long as you don't get counterganked. Flash ult - > Q -> double E means they get stunned for ~3s and you do ~50% of their health, so any follow up at all and they're done.

Also, you can look to do dragon early - Vi has extremely fast dragon slaying due to denting blows.

Late game is the teamfighting phase. Try to stay with your team as you have great initiation, and work best with allies (though you can solokill as well). There are two types of teamfights - teamfights you initiate, and teamfights they initiate, and you play them completely differently.

Teamfights you initiate: These only happen because someone on the other team is out of position. What does out of position mean? It means, if you ult them, they will die, and no one on your team will die before them. That simple! Make sure you take flash and AoE ults into consideration. Nothing's worse than baiting your team into a 5 man sona ult or something worse.

Teamfights they initiate: These are a lot easier to play. Always look to peel for your ADC - denting blows makes you an ideal bruiser-to-bruiser combatant. Ideally, use Q to peel their bruiser off then use R as a finishing blow, or to go on one of their squishes AFTER the bruiser is dead. You can use R if you have to to peel if you need to peel someone RIGHT NOW, though (ex: a riven just flash ult stunned your ADC. Yeah, time to use R =P)

Building tanky and peeling for your ADC will get you pretty far with Vi, as her kit is well designed for this task. However, you won't become the best Vi in the world just with these basic concepts. Improving your technique when using Vi is extremely important for high level play. Here are some tricks I have learned over the course of spamming Vi:


1) Attack - > E -> Move -> Attack -> E
This is your bread and butter. Most people know how to reset their attack animation with skills like E by now. However, something to keep in mind is that your E is bugged - the attack right after your E is always extremely slow. So, to maximize your damage/positioning, you have to move right after the attack reset, and then attack->reset AGAIN. Mastering this mechanic is extremely important on Vi.

2) Q -> Flash -> Q
People are familiar with your Q range by now. They know its range. What they don't know is that you can flash while charging it, and then release for a 300 range longer Q. This can be used to initiate a gank, finish off a low HP enemy, stun someone before they can flash, etc.

3) Q over wall
Not what you think of when you're brainstorming high skill techniques, but this is something important to learn with Vi as your Q range changes when you charge it. Knowing exactly how much you need to charge to get over a wall is very important and almost always means the difference between life and death. Remember that an instant charge Q is -NEVER- enough.

4) Q->Attack->E
Another important combination. This is your bread and butter for ganking, and doing it flawlessly is a necessity. It also procs your w, if you didn't notice.

5) Long range E
This one's pretty basic as well, but still extremely important to learn. Your E hits targets behind the one you attack. So, it's important to angle your position so that you're in line with both the person you're attacking and your target (the person behind it).

6) R->Hit->E->Move->Q->Hit->E
Your full skill combo. Takes advantage of your downtime between attacks with Q, and stunlocks target for 3 seconds. Also procs your w twice if you can sneak an extra hit in there. Also make sure you hit the Q in the right direction, since you have time to position it while they are stunned.

Well that's about all I've got about Vi. Vi is extremely powerful, having the CCs of a tank but the damage output of a bruiser. Also has badass background music. On top of that, she has really low win rate because people keep building her as an assassin so Riot will soon buff her! Hope you have enjoyed the guide.

If you're interested, you can check out my stream at www.twitch.tv/yodatv, my top 3 played are Vi, Lee Sin, and Shaco and I give commentary!