Views: 8441 Tips for Playing As Vayne
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EDIT: I made this into a Complete Guide for Vayne: http://www.lolking.net/guides/241152
The champion Vayne has been hotly contested in the past. At a certain point, we saw a change from riot to make it so that Vayne's auto attack primed before casting her E, would no longer go off as the target is being moved away. This did two things. It nerfed Vayne's trading in lane significantly and it slowed down her best combo of Ult + q, attack, wall stun, attack. It took some time to get used to this change, but most Vayne players were still playing her a lot after this and abusing the game as it was prior to s4. More emphasis needed to be put on outplaying your opponent as Vayne now, not just winning trades in lane with her free true damage proc. Vayne needed this counterplay to be introduced as her mid to late game more than makes up for a presumably weak laning phase. I welcome nerfs to champions, as it levels the playing field when playing against them, and makes it more likely I will be able to pick my favorite champions when they fall back out of flavor/favor.
Fast forward to preseason 4, and you see the rise of heros like Jinx, Lucian, Sivir, and of course, the ever present Caitlyn. Knowing these picks were to become more common, I decided as an ad carry main, I should at the very least pick up 1 of them and make sure to be able to play 2 other heros as well. My decision to drop Ezreal from my top picked was not an easy one. I have mained Ezreal and Vayne since early s2, but it seems like there are too many heros that can simply stand behind the creep wave and abuse you now. This is not to say Ezreal isn't still good, he is always going to be good, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like there are stronger, more consistent picks available.
Now on to Vayne in Season 4. Knowing that she can actually outscale your enemy, you should not be getting down on yourself when falling behind early. It's not exactly the easiest thing to do in the world to lane with vayne, but your assessment and decision making are probably the most important part to focus on. I have been playing exclusively Vayne and Lucian since the reset and I have to say, it seems harder, but your ability to carry may even be higher than before when you consider the other ad carries damage application. Jinx is a non escape ad that can even carry in solo queue. Sivir of course has high burst and a ton of utility with her ultimate. Vayne and Lucian simply seem to have more tools at their disposal in a solo queue setting than a lot of the other picks with their high damage and if ahead, become very slippery.
Now let's move on to some general strategy:
Surely, if you get 5 man dove, and your mid and top lane are just farming it out while you lose map control and objectives, you're going to lose that as most any ad carry. Identify this and back off. It's much worse to give up kills, a tower, and a dragon than to give up just a tower and a dragon. (You may even be able to turn the dragon fight with quick regrouping).
Some games are just not going to go well, but if you focus on playing your absolute best in order to carry games that you can have a bigger impact on, you should see more success. I can't stress enough mechanical practice and cs drills.
Vayne just needs 2 items to be effective, and I usually start forcing extended trades as soon as I have 1 completed item. Identifying when the laning phase ends is important, as you get outpressured if you are farming while your enemy is pushing down other lanes. It's okay to split as Vayne, but make sure you are aggressively taking farm and towers, or you may find yourself a non issue. Force the enemy ad back to his lane and outduel anyone that you can catch in rotations. There is no way to get better at this style of play. It's merely an extension of how well you cs and micromanage. Try to know when you can pick a fight and when you can't, and don't get baited without knowing that is possible. You want to take calculated risks, but not so many that you are going to lose strictly because you tower dove too many times.
My biggest enemy when playing as Vayne is the jungler and support. The ad carry usually gets baited by his own playstyle against Vayne. He's going to want to keep you down, but that plays right into Vayne's kit (ult, tumble, condemn). You win 1v1's all day as Vayne. Force them whenever possible. If you repeatedly get ganked, it may be a sign you are overextending. As it's so hard to gauge this in solo queue, you really only have trial and error to fall back on. There is a caveat to everything in League, and being honest with yourself is probably the most important thing to learn.
So here's where your assessment comes in. If you notice that you are laning against champions that can turn on you very quickly, you try especially hard to skirt the enemy range, so as to not overcommit. As soon as they use major cooldowns, you can get yourself in a better position to outplay. That is not to say you can't be aggressive at times, but the most correct way to play vayne is probably passive/aggressive. Staging your all ins when you want, and not when the enemy wants, is the biggest piece of advice I can give for Vayne players. If you see an opening, take it. Don't be surprised when you get flash annie tibbered, but you won't snowball if you don't ever try. (Again, I would wait for a completed item or 2 unless they made some obvious mistakes)
A few more tips for laning phase. If you are in a pushing pattern against most matchups, you actually should have an easy time. Caitlyn, Jinx, Lucian and in fact Sivir, all do extremely well on the enemy tower, but not so well on their own (unless they get ganks all day or something). Take farm when you can get it and always be sure to push the wave all the way into tower. If they are trying to freeze, and all you manage to do is make them tank some of your creeps for a while as you run away, that will probably still be enough to push the wave into tower. You absolutely never want to allow them to freeze against you. Know how to read the waves, and know when it is going to push back to you. Going up for that 1 cs that gets you killed is going to cost you at least 15 cs in the long run (as well as give them a couple hundred gold and experience for free). If you can't land the cs safely, try to get in range of experience and look for a trade with the support or ad carry. If you play it well enough, you can make an all in off of a few good trades, and indeed, if they are trying to freeze, you will heavily outdamage them with your minion wave stacked up.
A good tip I generally give to people is to go to lane and throw out two auto attacks immediately. This will throw the cs timing off. If you succeed, you will get an auto attack off on the enemy when he is trying to creep, and fall back when you are trying to creep. Since Vayne has her q, you can usually even out trades that involve 1 or 2 auto attacks and it is much easier to win trades if you force different timing on cs. It also makes it harder for them to tell when they are pushing. If you fail, you will get hit for free every cs by the enemy ad and support (so you play passive from here, possibly get forced out and pick up another dorans blade).
So if you play this tactic effectively, you will secure a free lane for vayne and have kill potential on your enemy all game with your free harass. They will get mad at some point and probably try to all in you, so you use this to your advantage because vayne is an ALL IN ad carry/assassin. You don't want to play a poke game (unless you have sustain and they don't), you want to bait them into extended trades when you hit your power spike. When is this power spike? Generally after 1 or 2 completed items (not including boots, with boots it would be 3)or at level 6. This is not to say you can't just go ham, or follow up on your support/jungler, but you need to know when you are likely to die and avoid that if at all possible. If it's not, you simply micro your *** off doing as much dmg as possible and taking as much gold home with you as you can.
If you can escape laning phase down 10-20 cs, you can consider it an even game. If they get a kill or dragon on you, they are a bit ahead. If you are down in cs by 30 and a dragon, you are REALLY far behind. If you somehow manage to be ahead in cs (this does happen actually because some people don't pressure vayne hard enough), you are way ahead, but a few kills will quickly catch your enemy back up. Consider that you also are ahead in gold if you are behind 10 cs and up 2 dragons (I think you get the idea here, figure out how to keep track of global gold and know how that plays into your build. Pay attention to items. Don't be afraid to build a negatron for your third item, whether it be for a GA or qss).
Know when to go for kills (probably not a good idea to trade more than 1 kill to the enemy ad for 1 kill for you as you will get denied in lane if you do this too often or too early).
Safe dps on vayne, while not as flashy, may be more consistent. I like bork a lot on vayne, but I don't always find myself building it first item or at all. If you can chase down your enemy, rush bork, if the game is relatively even in gold, just go with bt statik.
This build will allow vayne to switch targets as needed in fights, and you don't feel like you have to proc your silver bolts as much. I always max q (even if i go bork first), because the damage is very consistent. In a fight where you kite in and out, 2 hits from bt statik does massively more damage than 2 hits from bork, statik. More to this end, you can build a bork afterward, if you don't feel you can build IE comfortably as well as building a last whisper.
Bt, statik shiv is a very good build and oddly enough, vayne is an exception to a common rule for ad carry builds: You typically look at what the enemy ad builds first, if you are behind, and try to complete a three item build before he completes his three item build (or two items if you should actually catch up somehow). The idea is that if your enemy goes ie, you would go bt, zeal, lw. You will reach last whisper faster than him (unless he's really far ahead), and at this point you will look to force fights in order to take advantage of your itemization power spike.
If you are extremely far behind, you are always going to want to go for ie, unless you are playing someone like Vayne who is an exception to this rule. Vayne outscales most ad carries at mid to late game, so with good micromanagement and decision making, you can make better use of the same items as the enemy carry and is perfectly acceptable to build the same items as them. In addition to this, Vayne can actually follow this rule by building bork, statik, and last whisper when she is behind (because its a cheap 3 item build), but generally builds these items more effectively when ahead. The bork, statik, last whisper build is exceptionally good at taking down the enemy front line, as well as giving good damage against everyone. Compensate for whatever build you went with, with your decision making.
If you ever find yourself behind on other ad carries (when not playing as Vayne), I would still recommend you find a three or four item build you can complete before the enemy ad. (note, kills and objectives make it even harder to catch up sometimes)
In Summation, Vayne has more itemization options than other ad carries. I wouldn't go for phantom dancer over statik shiv. It's actually acceptable to build both items on vayne in a six item build, but not exactly the best. Vayne can have bt and bork in a six item build, and doesn't need infinity's edge, but benefits from it a lot should you be able to comfortably build it.
Two defensive items are not that uncommon on vayne either due to the need of the enemy team to focus her. Only go two defensive items in a game you really need it because it will lower your dps considerably. GA, scimitar is about all I would build on her, although some prefer banshee's veil when facing tons of magic damage. An alternative to banshees is probably hexdrinker (to try to force a mid game victory), but you want to sell this for IE or BT late game. It's not uncommon for me to build bt, bork, greaves, last whisper, statik, GA. It's all preference, really. Oddly enough, bt, bork used to be criticized as a bronze build, but as bronze usually does, they are either 6 months behind or 6 months ahead. They are never current.
Media
If you want to practice your last hits, you can check out my Last Hitting Drill #1 (over 11k views) here: http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry/c/2130557
Follow me on twitch here: http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry
Or check out Last Hitting Drill #3 on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzlc06cVPE
lolking: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/40776022
lolking2: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/37096335
reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/summoners/comments/1wl692/tips_for_playing_as_vayne/
reddit thread2: http://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/1wl918/vayne_tips/
The champion Vayne has been hotly contested in the past. At a certain point, we saw a change from riot to make it so that Vayne's auto attack primed before casting her E, would no longer go off as the target is being moved away. This did two things. It nerfed Vayne's trading in lane significantly and it slowed down her best combo of Ult + q, attack, wall stun, attack. It took some time to get used to this change, but most Vayne players were still playing her a lot after this and abusing the game as it was prior to s4. More emphasis needed to be put on outplaying your opponent as Vayne now, not just winning trades in lane with her free true damage proc. Vayne needed this counterplay to be introduced as her mid to late game more than makes up for a presumably weak laning phase. I welcome nerfs to champions, as it levels the playing field when playing against them, and makes it more likely I will be able to pick my favorite champions when they fall back out of flavor/favor.
Fast forward to preseason 4, and you see the rise of heros like Jinx, Lucian, Sivir, and of course, the ever present Caitlyn. Knowing these picks were to become more common, I decided as an ad carry main, I should at the very least pick up 1 of them and make sure to be able to play 2 other heros as well. My decision to drop Ezreal from my top picked was not an easy one. I have mained Ezreal and Vayne since early s2, but it seems like there are too many heros that can simply stand behind the creep wave and abuse you now. This is not to say Ezreal isn't still good, he is always going to be good, but for the first time in a long time, I feel like there are stronger, more consistent picks available.
Now on to Vayne in Season 4. Knowing that she can actually outscale your enemy, you should not be getting down on yourself when falling behind early. It's not exactly the easiest thing to do in the world to lane with vayne, but your assessment and decision making are probably the most important part to focus on. I have been playing exclusively Vayne and Lucian since the reset and I have to say, it seems harder, but your ability to carry may even be higher than before when you consider the other ad carries damage application. Jinx is a non escape ad that can even carry in solo queue. Sivir of course has high burst and a ton of utility with her ultimate. Vayne and Lucian simply seem to have more tools at their disposal in a solo queue setting than a lot of the other picks with their high damage and if ahead, become very slippery.
Now let's move on to some general strategy:
Surely, if you get 5 man dove, and your mid and top lane are just farming it out while you lose map control and objectives, you're going to lose that as most any ad carry. Identify this and back off. It's much worse to give up kills, a tower, and a dragon than to give up just a tower and a dragon. (You may even be able to turn the dragon fight with quick regrouping).
Some games are just not going to go well, but if you focus on playing your absolute best in order to carry games that you can have a bigger impact on, you should see more success. I can't stress enough mechanical practice and cs drills.
Vayne just needs 2 items to be effective, and I usually start forcing extended trades as soon as I have 1 completed item. Identifying when the laning phase ends is important, as you get outpressured if you are farming while your enemy is pushing down other lanes. It's okay to split as Vayne, but make sure you are aggressively taking farm and towers, or you may find yourself a non issue. Force the enemy ad back to his lane and outduel anyone that you can catch in rotations. There is no way to get better at this style of play. It's merely an extension of how well you cs and micromanage. Try to know when you can pick a fight and when you can't, and don't get baited without knowing that is possible. You want to take calculated risks, but not so many that you are going to lose strictly because you tower dove too many times.
My biggest enemy when playing as Vayne is the jungler and support. The ad carry usually gets baited by his own playstyle against Vayne. He's going to want to keep you down, but that plays right into Vayne's kit (ult, tumble, condemn). You win 1v1's all day as Vayne. Force them whenever possible. If you repeatedly get ganked, it may be a sign you are overextending. As it's so hard to gauge this in solo queue, you really only have trial and error to fall back on. There is a caveat to everything in League, and being honest with yourself is probably the most important thing to learn.
So here's where your assessment comes in. If you notice that you are laning against champions that can turn on you very quickly, you try especially hard to skirt the enemy range, so as to not overcommit. As soon as they use major cooldowns, you can get yourself in a better position to outplay. That is not to say you can't be aggressive at times, but the most correct way to play vayne is probably passive/aggressive. Staging your all ins when you want, and not when the enemy wants, is the biggest piece of advice I can give for Vayne players. If you see an opening, take it. Don't be surprised when you get flash annie tibbered, but you won't snowball if you don't ever try. (Again, I would wait for a completed item or 2 unless they made some obvious mistakes)
A few more tips for laning phase. If you are in a pushing pattern against most matchups, you actually should have an easy time. Caitlyn, Jinx, Lucian and in fact Sivir, all do extremely well on the enemy tower, but not so well on their own (unless they get ganks all day or something). Take farm when you can get it and always be sure to push the wave all the way into tower. If they are trying to freeze, and all you manage to do is make them tank some of your creeps for a while as you run away, that will probably still be enough to push the wave into tower. You absolutely never want to allow them to freeze against you. Know how to read the waves, and know when it is going to push back to you. Going up for that 1 cs that gets you killed is going to cost you at least 15 cs in the long run (as well as give them a couple hundred gold and experience for free). If you can't land the cs safely, try to get in range of experience and look for a trade with the support or ad carry. If you play it well enough, you can make an all in off of a few good trades, and indeed, if they are trying to freeze, you will heavily outdamage them with your minion wave stacked up.
A good tip I generally give to people is to go to lane and throw out two auto attacks immediately. This will throw the cs timing off. If you succeed, you will get an auto attack off on the enemy when he is trying to creep, and fall back when you are trying to creep. Since Vayne has her q, you can usually even out trades that involve 1 or 2 auto attacks and it is much easier to win trades if you force different timing on cs. It also makes it harder for them to tell when they are pushing. If you fail, you will get hit for free every cs by the enemy ad and support (so you play passive from here, possibly get forced out and pick up another dorans blade).
So if you play this tactic effectively, you will secure a free lane for vayne and have kill potential on your enemy all game with your free harass. They will get mad at some point and probably try to all in you, so you use this to your advantage because vayne is an ALL IN ad carry/assassin. You don't want to play a poke game (unless you have sustain and they don't), you want to bait them into extended trades when you hit your power spike. When is this power spike? Generally after 1 or 2 completed items (not including boots, with boots it would be 3)or at level 6. This is not to say you can't just go ham, or follow up on your support/jungler, but you need to know when you are likely to die and avoid that if at all possible. If it's not, you simply micro your *** off doing as much dmg as possible and taking as much gold home with you as you can.
If you can escape laning phase down 10-20 cs, you can consider it an even game. If they get a kill or dragon on you, they are a bit ahead. If you are down in cs by 30 and a dragon, you are REALLY far behind. If you somehow manage to be ahead in cs (this does happen actually because some people don't pressure vayne hard enough), you are way ahead, but a few kills will quickly catch your enemy back up. Consider that you also are ahead in gold if you are behind 10 cs and up 2 dragons (I think you get the idea here, figure out how to keep track of global gold and know how that plays into your build. Pay attention to items. Don't be afraid to build a negatron for your third item, whether it be for a GA or qss).
Know when to go for kills (probably not a good idea to trade more than 1 kill to the enemy ad for 1 kill for you as you will get denied in lane if you do this too often or too early).
Safe dps on vayne, while not as flashy, may be more consistent. I like bork a lot on vayne, but I don't always find myself building it first item or at all. If you can chase down your enemy, rush bork, if the game is relatively even in gold, just go with bt statik.
This build will allow vayne to switch targets as needed in fights, and you don't feel like you have to proc your silver bolts as much. I always max q (even if i go bork first), because the damage is very consistent. In a fight where you kite in and out, 2 hits from bt statik does massively more damage than 2 hits from bork, statik. More to this end, you can build a bork afterward, if you don't feel you can build IE comfortably as well as building a last whisper.
Bt, statik shiv is a very good build and oddly enough, vayne is an exception to a common rule for ad carry builds: You typically look at what the enemy ad builds first, if you are behind, and try to complete a three item build before he completes his three item build (or two items if you should actually catch up somehow). The idea is that if your enemy goes ie, you would go bt, zeal, lw. You will reach last whisper faster than him (unless he's really far ahead), and at this point you will look to force fights in order to take advantage of your itemization power spike.
If you are extremely far behind, you are always going to want to go for ie, unless you are playing someone like Vayne who is an exception to this rule. Vayne outscales most ad carries at mid to late game, so with good micromanagement and decision making, you can make better use of the same items as the enemy carry and is perfectly acceptable to build the same items as them. In addition to this, Vayne can actually follow this rule by building bork, statik, and last whisper when she is behind (because its a cheap 3 item build), but generally builds these items more effectively when ahead. The bork, statik, last whisper build is exceptionally good at taking down the enemy front line, as well as giving good damage against everyone. Compensate for whatever build you went with, with your decision making.
If you ever find yourself behind on other ad carries (when not playing as Vayne), I would still recommend you find a three or four item build you can complete before the enemy ad. (note, kills and objectives make it even harder to catch up sometimes)
In Summation, Vayne has more itemization options than other ad carries. I wouldn't go for phantom dancer over statik shiv. It's actually acceptable to build both items on vayne in a six item build, but not exactly the best. Vayne can have bt and bork in a six item build, and doesn't need infinity's edge, but benefits from it a lot should you be able to comfortably build it.
Two defensive items are not that uncommon on vayne either due to the need of the enemy team to focus her. Only go two defensive items in a game you really need it because it will lower your dps considerably. GA, scimitar is about all I would build on her, although some prefer banshee's veil when facing tons of magic damage. An alternative to banshees is probably hexdrinker (to try to force a mid game victory), but you want to sell this for IE or BT late game. It's not uncommon for me to build bt, bork, greaves, last whisper, statik, GA. It's all preference, really. Oddly enough, bt, bork used to be criticized as a bronze build, but as bronze usually does, they are either 6 months behind or 6 months ahead. They are never current.
Media
If you want to practice your last hits, you can check out my Last Hitting Drill #1 (over 11k views) here: http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry/c/2130557
Follow me on twitch here: http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry
Or check out Last Hitting Drill #3 on Youtube!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djzlc06cVPE
lolking: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/40776022
lolking2: http://www.lolking.net/summoner/na/37096335
reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/summoners/comments/1wl692/tips_for_playing_as_vayne/
reddit thread2: http://www.reddit.com/r/summonerschool/comments/1wl918/vayne_tips/
A
Definitely. I think the deciding factor is if you are going to be able to make use of the attack speed or not. If not, bt is much better and seems to be more teamfight oriented, but both are good in 1v1 or teamfighting scenarios.
I like both of them together sometimes, but it has it's weaknesses.