Hello everybody, prandine here and I was wondering if you could help me out. The 3 champions I listed in the title are some of my personal favorites, and though I've been playing varus more than the other 2, I would still like some good tips/strategies to get better at playing them in dominion. Any help is appreciated, but please be respectful when offering advice.

Thank you for your time.

P.S. I mostly do co-op vs. AI.

Don't play Varus personally...he's a dumbed down Ashe with nothing good in his kit that some other champ can't already provide, and every team I've seen him on has lost. If you want to play Varus, you're better off playing Ashe.

That brings Ashe. If you're playing in Solo Queue, it's best you learn positioning. DO NOT GET BOOTS OF SWIFTNESS or BERZERKER GREAVES. THEY ARE NOOB TRAPS. Ashe's DPS is really subpar in early game, so if you want to be awesome, go for AD/CDR then build AS (Do not rush AS first. You want Damage). Also, learn positioning. In Blind Pick Solo, you chances are you won't have a team to protect you in early ELO, so at the minimum, if your team does not have a tank or tanky bruisers to stand behind, it's best to not play her.

Master Yi. He's a great character but falls out of the game once you begin to rise to higher ELO and people understand or are learning to counterbuild. In your case, if you're playing AD Yi, follow the way of Ashe and rush AD/Lifesteal/Crit (Not AS). Once you see the enemy team starting to build armor (more specifically, thornmail) immediately begin building something with Life Steal and a Last Whisper, also Magic Resist helps you. DO NOT BUILD BERZERKER'S GREAVES, Merc Treads or Ninja Tabi boots gives you all the speed you need with some extra well-needed defense. In your case, just get Merc Treads, trust me; when the enemy team builds Thornmail or has any AP/CC on their side, you'll thank me. AP Yi is another story that I can leave to someone else to explain.


The reason I'm telling you not to build Berserker's Greaves:
It's a definite noob trap. Unless you're playing a champ like Vayne and have godly skills at hitting the enemy without being touched (a.k.a. great positioning), 25% AS is mediocre, you won't need it early on as much as you would need defense (not to mention, AS doesn't really help without damage to back it up), and you can get better AS from other items. Most games won't last long enough for you to hit the 2.500 AS cap and build damage, so you won't need it as much as you would AD/Crit items.

Also...Boots of Swiftness. Just. no.

EDIT: Also, just for future warning, it's good to learn something than autoattack AD carry champs. If you like playing them, that's fine and dandy, however a lot of them can be easily shut down and are squishy in comparison to some of the others...

For varus, just because you've seen him on teams that happen to lose doesn't mean he's bad. I've had games as him where I've done pretty good and even gotten 0 deaths.

For the others, I can kinda see where you're going with it.

I just like playing champs that I've tried and had fun playing. I mostly play to have fun, I'm not really into super competitive gameplay.

Play AP yi bot. get DFG, Wizard hat and lichbane. Max out CDR early as possible.

Pray they don't have a fizz or kassadin.

Playing games at higher ELO and seeing Varus lose almost EVERY time means he's not as good as you may think. Not stating anything about your skill or whabut in those games where you had 0 deaths or done very good with him, how many of your enemies built Frozen Heart/Warden's Mail/Thornmail/Randuin's Omen?

And it's all good, but in terms of gameplay, sometimes you'll be counterpicked and won't have much of anything to do. In this particular case, there is one champ that would be the bane of your existence: Rammus. One item that would make you cry: Thornmail, and anybody with even soft CC: Your character implodes

AP yi bot is tons of fun, I cannot recommend it enough if you haven't tried it yet.

I've seen DuelPower do very well with Varuys on his stream, you might want to seek him out for tips regarding playing him.

Ashe is great with a good tank wall. She can kite forever with her arrows, pick up a Frozen Mallet for extra lulz if you want, but the tanky build doesn't work on her that well. Make sure to max out her CDR for lots of arrows and volleys, her CC is godly.

Since I mostly play co-op vs ai, they don't build stuff like that. However, another reason I've gotten 0 deaths is because I try not to go all out when engaging an enemy (that, and it's also thanks to my team and I've gotten away with just barely any health).

Kiting is really important to doing well with ranged attack damage carries like Ashe and Varus. All attack and spell cast animations have a junk portion that you can interrupt without stopping the ability or attack (generally you need to play half the animation for anything to happen, then the other half is mostly for aesthetics). Learning what parts you can cut out will make kiting easier, allowing you to attack then immediately move away, attack then immediately move away. Also, it's important to note most melee champions are capable of bursting down half your health once they engage in melee combat with you - so even if they have a sliver of health left it's better to keep your distance.

Beyond basic kiting, status bonuses provided by items and runes have vastly different costs for accomplishing the same thing. Raw Attack Damage is by far the most affordable attribute of the physical damage stats. Most attack damage carries have a little over 100 damage and 1.0 attacks per second at level 18, were a 100 attack damage boost gives a very real 100% DPS bump - you'd need 100% critical strike chance, 100 armor penetration, ~167% attack speed, 200% critical strike damage (at 100% critical strike chance), 75% armor penetration (against 200 armor), or 100 armor penetration (against 100 armor) to gain the same 100% to DPS bonus. Attack speed generally only benefits your DPS by ~67% of it's listed % value at level 18 because it only uses your level 1 attack speed - all other level up bonuses are simply added to the item bonuses rather than used as a base, and you generally start off with 0.667 attacks per second. Anyways, all these will grant a % bonus to your DPS and stack multiplicativly with each other, which is nice - and at a certain point makes stacking raw AD less cost-efficient than applying different stats. Generally the best ADC build right now is still Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, Last Whsiper, and Sanguine Blade. Which sort of makes building attack damage carries a little boring. If you want a solid chunk of life-steal Exacutioner's Calling isn't bad either, even if you stack them.

For Yi, most Dominion matches barely skirt the point were building Ability Power makes him less viable end-game, so I'd highly recommend going the Ability Power rotue with him. If you go Attack Damage I'd recommend building Youmuu's Ghostblade, Black Cleaver, and stack Exacutioner's Callings.

As for general strategies, if you are winning try to defend the points you have, if you are loosing to an enemy team's pack of doom sneak to the other side of the map and try neutralizing a point. Doing so forces them to spread out if nothing else, and allows your suicidal allies to start 1 vs. 1ing or 2 vs. 2ing rather than 1 vs. 4ing upon respawning, the latter of which will almost certainly lead to a loss.

Also, if you're finding yourself out of position and getting killed by yourself I'd highly recommend picking up Boots of Mobility until you figure out exactly were your champion needs to be, they allow you to escape bad situations relatively unscathed and are pretty good for learning were you need to be. Even in team fights it's nice to be able to get out of a cool hiding spot that is pointless to be in faster. Once you figure out were you need to be, pick up Merc treads or Ninja Tabi

Don't pick Ashe into assassins like Fizz. Wait for the right time to auto attack and poke with W until it is safe to commit. Max W first. Be able to orb walk/animation cancel.

Eiks some of us are not Elo Saiyans at a 2400 Power level, Some of us are sitting between 900-1200 and Varus is perfectly viable down here even more so than Ashe. and if you cant get swiftness or zerker's on her what should he get? Mercs? because i doubt Lucidity does something toa ctually help Ashe, Volley spam is never a good idea, not even in Dominion.