This is a revised version of another guide I wrote for Lux. This guide is intended for ranked play. As with any other champ you should pick someone who compliments not only your playstyle, but one that matches your team setup and counters your opponents picks as well. This guide will focus on Lux as being an offensive support champion. This is not the only way to build her, but this is the most effective one I have found so far.

Please keep in mind ALL of her moves are skillshots, so please do not play her unless you are confident in your abilities. I think this has to be one of the most rewarding aspects to her play however, is that it's not something everyone can be successful at.

- Runes -
Quints - Movement speed, Success with Lux is hugely dependant on you being faster than your opponent and every little bit helps.
Magic Pen, Cooldown Reduction, and Mana regen - Pretty basic setup here

- Masteries -
9/0/21 - Another basic setup, ensuring you are getting the buffs for each of the summoner spells, movement speed, cooldown reduction as well.

- Summoner Spells -
Clairvoyance - Clair is very useful to your entire team and you should be using it all the time. Its also invaluable to lux as a tool to see where champions are so you can use your ult on them. Anytime an enemy decides to go 'B' on the map after barely escaping a team fight you should be netting yourself a free kill with your ult and this spell.
Ghost - Offensive and defensive, need I say more.

- Skill Order -
R>E>W>Q - Obviously your ult is king, your slow is pretty useful, shield is next for your support. Q... one point is really all that is needed. It's primary use is CC not damage.

- Items -
Items are situational, these are what I suggest for many games, but change them as needed. I shouldn't have to say this...

Starting Items - Dorans Ring

Boots 1 + Mejis - I know lux isn't a carry, but you should have very few deaths while playing her. This item is valuable.

Sorc Boots + Build towards Morellos Tome - This is your third purchase in the game, it gets you the much needed mana regen.

Final Items - Zonyas Ring, Archangels Staff, Lich Bane - I know people may have an issue with Lich bane but when your AP is 600 + and your passive is active, you will find you hit like a truck and you become a very scary champ. Few people will be able to stand toe to toe with you unless they have a cleanse on hand.

Other items to swap in and out - RoA, Void Staff

Do NOT take Abyssal Scepter - You should NEVER get close enough to a team fight for this to be useful.

- Gameplay -
Overview - From my experience Lux is strong early game and end game. Mid game is where she really suffers. When you are playing Lux, please do not stand face to face with a champ and try to use a move, auto attack, use a move, auto attack... you will get destroyed like this. You need to be constantly running away from them and keeping your distance while fighting them. Think Kiting. Anyone that can close the distance between you and them is a HUGE threat to you. Xin, Irelia, Vlad, tryn, all are champs that will give you a huge headache.

Early Game - You can take mid if needed, but this should go to your carry. There are far better mid champs available. You should NOT 1v2. Ideally you should lane with a very bursty champ that has a stun or some sort of cc. Panth, annie, xin, ryze, ect.. Irelia and garen are also nice as well.

Your job early game is to use your E to zone control and XP/Gold deny. Try controlling the reeds. Your Q should be used anytime you want to try to kill your enemies or at least bring down their hp. Anytime a small fight occurs you need to be shielding your teammate (as they will be the one taking damage). You should be sitting behind them dealing damage with your spells and auto attacks to the enemy.

Mid Game - As I mentioned before this is where Lux suffers the most. This is really due to your ult not being strong enough to finish most people. I find until lvl 11 (and even sometimes a bit later) anyone that I can kill with my ult has already died. In team fights you will see that you really offer very little. Your shield blocks almost no damage, your dps is laughable, you have 1 real cc and a slow. All in all you really should be trying not to die mid game and doing whatever you can to help your team out. Just try and make it to end game.

End Game - You should now be an absolute shining force on your team. Your opponents will be hating on you, saying how overpowered and all around annoying you are. In team fights your CC should lock down champs trying to flee or save your allies as they run. Use your E at the center of team fights to slow enemy champs trying to close the gap between your carries.

Here in lies the support part of your job. You should be shielding anyone taking damage, using your Q on champs that either threaten your carries or are being/should be focused by them and using your E as zone control and AOE damage.

You should NOT be moving in to auto attack until the team fight has died down and it is safe for you to do so. Yes I know what your passive does, but you are worthless dead, so stay alive.

Your ult should be up every 26 seconds doing 1100 + damage, and you should be using it for everything. To clear creap waves, before a fight, during a fight, after a fight, as someoen tries to run, you should use and abuse that move.

Your shield should be blocking around 500 damage to everyone on your team it hits and it should be hitting them twice. No it does not stack, but it does refresh, so if used at the right time, you will block nearly 1000 damage to anyone who is being focused... That is literally a game changer. Use it to counter a karthus ult or a morde ult. You may not block all the damage but some is better than none.

Hope this helps out a bit. I'm always open for constructive critism so please let me know what you think. I think Lux can be much more viable in Ranked play than most people think. I know this was a long post, but if you made it this far I appreciate your patience and the time you took to read it.... No you do not get a cookie...

But YOU are AWESOME anyway.

Thank you

I play lux a lot and i'd say this is a good general guide (though I'm still not high enough to do ranked play, so that might affect my opinion). It is worth noting, though, that by the time you have >600 AP, the game will pretty much be over, unless you managed to get early stacks on meji's. Unless your team is getting rolled, get meji's as early as possible and try to get in on every kill you can. Lich bane also makes a huge difference.

Good general guide, but I find Tear to be a weak choice for Lux--her abilities have long enough cooldowns that it's not terribly easy to build the Tear up to a good level. I feel that, like any support, Lux is at her best when she can support her team as long as possible, and her strong pushing ability even further emphasizes this; I feel that Innervating Locket would be an ideal replacement, as it also provides a large bonus to HP, a helpful regeneration aura, and ever-important cooldown reduction.

Her W should always be leveled last. It's just too unreliable for what it does. Anyone getting hammered on who needs a shield usually won't be standing still to get both passes, and you're not going to be getting the full benefit until large late team fights anyway while extra damage on Q does help you earlier on.

Her spells don't spam fast enough for a tear to be worth it.

If you say abyssal isn't worth it because you shouldn't be getting that close, why do you recommend a lich bane for auto attack?

You should be getting SOME form of magic penetration. Against enemies hovering around the 30 MR mark, getting a single 20 penetration item (in conjunction with your penetration runes) means an 19% boost in damage. That is a far better value than AP will give you.

I would personally prioritize cooldown over AP. Your spells are more useful as CC utility than raw damage. CDR helps the utilizty while AP does not.

Her W is better to level than her Q for a few reasons, again it should be leveled second to last. First some people do stand there getting 'hammered' on. Tanks are a good example of this. Melee carries as well (they also chase opposing carries). Ranged carries getting attacked don't usually run left and right (unless juking) they will run backwards. When someone is running in straight line, back and forward, its very easy to shield them. Also, it has a boomerang effect, you can move with your allies to hit them a second time.

Tear of the goddess -> archangels staff provides a significant amount of AP and mana, yes it is costly but it takes up one item slot.

I do say abyssal isn't worth it and yes you should get lich bane. I apologize for not going into detail for the reasons before. Lich bane provides more AP, provides mana (stacks with AA), gives you movement speed which is very important for kiting, and gives your auto attacks a huge damage boost.

Lets look at what moves are benefited by abyssal...
Ultimate - Almost always used for its range so no...
E - The blast can be detonated at a very far range, and because of its slow is usually detonated as you are fleeing (out of abyssals range)... again a no...
W - doesn't do dmg, so nope there as well...
Q - not really used for your dps, but abyssal would benefit this move yes.

You will notice I provide 5 items in my build, leaving an open slot, I even suggest void staff as an option. I do also say to build to your opponents team. So yes get some magic pen, its a good idea.

Cooldown reduction is very nice, I agree. If you do get cooldown runes and get cooldowns from the masteries I suggest thats 14.1% cooldown reduction (yes i use per level, yes I know it doesn't get better until after lvl 15, but i like em)... grabbing golem buff will get you to 34%, is that extra 6% really worth buying another item? Don't want take your blue from your teams, its very easy to buff steal as lux, very easy. Meji's at 20 stacks, you are at 34% without the buff.

So yes I agree Cooldown Reduction is important, but you have enough reduction in this build.

I have to disagree here.

Her W has saved me so many times. It will save you early game if you are on the run and they are auto-attacking to try to finish you. Same goes for your allies. I think it is worth it, at least early on. Maybe I should experiment with getting a few levels of W, then maxing out Q before finishing W, since W get less useful in mid game (before you get a ton of AP).

All I can say about the Tear is that I don't run out of mana when I have it, and I do run out when I don't. This always seems to hold true for me, so it must be worth something. Just because it takes a bit longer to max doesn't make it a bad choice, and it is good for the staff later on.

I would replace the Archangel by a Frozen Heart. The Glacial shroud is easy to buy (instead of the tear) and will give you a small mana boost anyway. You will findyourself less useless mid game and more epic end game.
I would also buy a small haunting guise to help your mid as well.

With your setup, i would only change the items to this:
Mana Cristal + 2xPots
Boots 1
Glacial Shroud
Merc Treads
Haunting Guise
Sheen
Zonya
Frozen Heart
Lich Bane
Free Slot.

And... I'm gonna try it myself in few minutes.

i think a single rank of w isn't a bad idea (because the 100 damage soak can save your life), but it's not worthwhile to pick up more until later on when you have enough AP to make the scaling worth it

It's just far easier to hit with her Q than it is to hit everyone you want twice with her W. Like someone said, I might put one point into W but then leave the rest for last. Why boost a questionable shield when you can increase your easy to land snare? Instead of shielding a buddy for a little bit more, just kill the enemy threatening him faster.


Packing maximum value into a single item slot isn't that imporant outside of the 5% of games that stretch out to an hour. Like someone else said, glacial shroud gives you more immediate mana for the vital caster mid-game while giving great CDR, which I consider more important on Lux.

I wouldn't get abyssal on her either due to her ult, but it was just odd that you ruled it out because "you should never get that close in fights" yet then you talk about doing lots of auto attack damage with lich bane.

This is starting to get risky. You can't always count on the golem buff, and no way would I risk 20 Meji stacks on regularly raiding the other team's golem.

I also think you place a little too much importance on move speed. Lux already has a slow plus one of the best snares in the game. Getting move runes + ghost + lichbane is going overkill. I know you say it's to maintian 20 meji stacks, but honestly no guide should count on that, no matter how much escape you have.

meki pendant, and move quints are my biggest concern with this guide.

both playing lux and laning vs lux. A 450 base hp lux is a dead lux vs anyone that isn't completely terrible.
I used to run move quints over hp. Lux made me switch. And I also always get dorins on her. Makes me much stronger early.


I wouldn't really agree that shes bad 2v1 either. Esp after her recent buff.
She does have good range with skills, even if her AA isn't that great. She can farm with singularity pretty safely, as well as harass. Pluck away, then even get a kill on careless opponents. Worst case, can outfarm most, and do it fairly safely.
This also gives her the advantage of a solo farm lane, as well as exp advantage. As you said, shes weak mid game. But when she has 2-3 levels and 1k gold early, she can keep her advantage and run into end game faster. While in a lane, unless you get fed, you will get stuck in that mid game doldrums(where you have tear, but not AA. maybe mejais, but no cdr) for quite a while.