Hey there, I'm Zianni. I'm a challenger mid laner and Vex is one of my favorite champions. She's been one of my best champions since release and I'm glad to make a guide for this flying nuke. Vex is a really fun champion because she's extremely aggressive and has a large impact on any game. I pick Vex into any team that has squishy champions or my jungler picks something aggressive so we can snowball. Vex is currently one of the BEST champions in the game and has at best two losing match ups that are always banned anyways. This champ is a LITERAL ELO INFLATION champion. Check out my livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/zianni so you can become a challenger Vex too!

Vex is the personification of aggression, your entire existence is flinging yourself into the enemy team and EXPLODING their backline. That's pretty metal.

If you want to be the 1v9 carry that leads your team to victory then Vex is for you. If you like passive gameplay then please PLEASE do not pick this champion. Her entire design is around ramming your fist through the enemy jungle's stomach and their carries.

Electrocute is currently the best in slot rune for Vex as it offers additional laning power and giving us access to ultimate CDR. Ultimate Hunter and Cheap Shot Due to Vex's skirmishing power, it's important to supplement her her low base damage with Electrocute so that you can take advantage of the heavy skirmish solo q meta. If you win early, it's nearly impossible to match Vex in the 2v2.

ELECTROCUTE

Electrocute awards us for doing short trade windows to set up a kill window, keep your trades short and concise based around your cooldowns until ultimate is available. Alternatively, take advantage of poke damage to ensure a kill combo using the bonus damage.

Cheap Shot is great for trading in lane and helps with creating kill windows through optimal fear placement with Looming Darkness You can also just add the damage in along with your Personal Space off your ultimate Shadow Surge

Eyeball Collection What better than another source of stacking damage on an early game aggressive champion, Vex gets a lot of value out of raw AP since her build rewards early tier two boots.

Ultimate Hunter solves all of Vex's problems which is not being able to press R more. Your entire playstyle resolves around finding picks with wall bangs and then deleting carries, you can't do this if you're waiting on Shadow Surge all the time. Get early stacks and reward yourself with Dark Seal stacks :)

Biscuit Delivery is our first inspiration rune to top off our mana pool and regeneration for a fun wave clear experience.

Maximize the value of your Corrupting Potion and Biscuit Delivery by making them instantly heal + give you more resources over time. This is ideal for wave clear along with sustaining through heavy trades with Electrocute

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AP/AP and Armor/Magic Resist shards based on match up.

Items are always going to be situational and based on the game state.

Mythics all have a corresponding bonus stat system which rewards you for completing legendary items.

The two most valuable mythics to us in that regard are Luden's Tempest and Everfrost.

Tempest is our direct flat penetration approach which rewards us against squishy teams or snowball match ups. This is the only way to cap flat penetration on Vex now. This goes extremely well with Electrocute.

Everfrost is the go to item if you lost in draft and you have absolutely no hope of playing the game at all into things like Zed It gives you survivability through the HP and protection from melees through the root. It also gives you a 100% combo if you're able to find the snare along with fear.

Sorcerer's Shoes is extremely important to the build because it reduces the enemy's magic resistance increasing our base damage by a hefty amount for 800g. It's also important to recognize that purchasing Luden's Tempest will bring your total magic penetration up to 24, most carries have a base magic resist of 30 meaning you'll be doing nearly 100% tool-tip damage if the enemy doesn't buy a Null-Magic Mantle. (It's pretty nice to just add up the numbers in your skill descriptions and know when you can one-shot someone.)

Once you finish a Legendary item, the Mythic bonus will put you up to 29.

Most low elo players even up until masters will ego and refuse to buy early magic resist making double Magic Pen an extremely strong combination. (Due to the magic pen formula, flat pen can never bring MR below 0.)

If you're running you'll get raw AP which helps with damage and to be honest, most of our damage comes from Sorcerer's Shoes so it doesn't really matter if we lose out on the penetration from Ludens since we can tech into a Void Staff if we need it.

Once our core is completed, we're essentially purchasing items based on the situation. If the enemy is building MR you can instead opt to build % Magic pen in a Void Staff, a survivability item ( Banshee's Veil/ Zhonya's Hourglass), or raw damage ([ShadowFlame]] / Rabadon's Deathcap). ShadowFlame is more optimal since it has an additional mpen damage built into it and good health. This is ideal for Vex because of her nature as a skirmish champion early on.

If you're playing into heavy AP nukes like LeBlanc I recommend purchasing a Banshee's Veil or just purchasing a Null Mantle component early on.

Zhonya's Hourglass is one of the best items on Vex because it enables aggression as much as it enables defensive gameplay. You are QUITE LITERALLY throwing yourself into the enemy, so why not make that play extremely safe for you as well?

To be impactful, you need a strong foundation.

Nothing in history has been achieved without the necessary conditions, League of Legends is no different. To carry a game, you need to make an impact. There are many ways you can do this, but it all begins in the same spot. Everything in the game can be traced back to the beginning, every decision you make will change the course of the game. This can be described as the flow, the flow can be influenced by every player and controlling the flow is your objective.

Before you worry about things outside your sphere of influence, your primary focus should be setting yourself up for success. Before anything else, we must identify our match up, our composition, and finally our win condition. While the game starts with champion select, the reality is that you’re only capable of defining your own actions. There is no value in putting emphasis on variables we can’t control; therefore, we must also pursue a playstyle that enables any possibility.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the match up, this can be broken down into three categories.

The Champion

Keystone + Runes

Summoner Spells

While the champion is self-explanatory, we must ask ourselves what contributes to the champion. It’s strengths and it’s weaknesses. The most common things we take notice of are the difference between ranged and melee. This is valuable information that will change the way you trade depending on your champion. A ranged champion will always have the advantage over melee in the early levels, often this will be your only window to create an advantage vs an assassin.

The next step is their keystone, players will typically enhance their champions strengths or make up for weaknesses with their keystone. This can drastically change a lane as there is a big difference between Arcane Comet and Electrocute. Your goal is to identify what their plan is and play around it.

A burst mage will often take Electrocute; the benefit is larger trades at the cost of being infrequent. You can choose to either avoid trading in small skirmishes, poke, or extend trades to take advantage of their cooldowns.

While keystones have less variety for mid than other roles like Press the Attack, Lethal Tempo or Conqueror, it’s still something to keep in mind. The second portion of keystones are the supporting runes that accompany it.

The secondary tree is used to augment your strength or to cover your weaknesses. An example would be the difference between taking domination second to improve your damage potential or taking insight for extra lane sustain. While most champions are locked into some keystones, secondary trees are extremely flexible and should be changed depending on the match up. Identify where you struggle and take precautions to solve it. Biscuit Delivery is a popular rune because it can help with difficult match ups, whereas Eyeball Collection will give you a stronger spike. Make a decision based on your match up.

Remember to check armor/mr to see if they're weaker than usual, not taking the right defensive stats can change a match up!

Summoner spells are often disregarded until they fuck us over. I’m sure we’ve all had that moment where we tower dive someone and we didn’t realize they had barrier.
Mid lane has three dominant summoner spells.

SUMMONER SPELLS All three are extremely valuable and can change the flow of a game. - FLASH is a must include because it’s both a playmaking tool and a defensive tool. The cooldown should always be tracked so you can take advantage of its absence or play around its availability. (I.E Flash ult) IGNITE at this given moment Ignite is one of the most powerful game changing tools, it can single handedly win lanes or secure kills you’d otherwise miss out on. There is almost no situation where you wouldn’t want to play around or take advantage of this spell. TELEPORT while typically inferior in lane for Solo Q has incredible application and a lot more variety to it. You can use it to avoid an unwinnable match up, join team fights, or simply get back to lane faster. While the application of this spell is more difficult than Ignite, it has a lot more influence than Ignite if you can control the flow. Teleport can be considered your second safety-net, if you get poked out of lane you have another try or you can use it to force an enemy out of lane with the unexpected item advantage. While it isn’t as straight forward as Ignite, you’re creating a situation where the enemy must fight you with an item disadvantage or resource disadvantage (Mana usually.) A common scenario is poking the enemy out of lane only for them to Teleport back and zone you off the wave because your mana bar is low. If the enemy has Ignite, there is no way for them to play around this outside of resetting at the cost of their minion wave crashing. In this scenario, we directly controlled the flow of the game by giving them only two options to respond to; both bad options.

Consider the summoner spells of your enemy and consider where you have an advantage. Do you benefit from trading to look for a kill opportunity with Ignite, or do you benefit more from scaling with the safety of Teleport?
To properly identify the conditions of our victory, is to identify our win condition. While this term is often used on a larger scope (I.E Winning the game) we can apply this to both the laning phase and the macro phase.

We’ve considered the aspects of our lane and our win condition. All that remains is ensuring our ability to have an impact on the game. There are core tenets that I advise for any mid lane player.

Build your domain

If you want to control the game, you always start from the middle lane. Your sphere of influence will expand as you grow stronger and enable more opportunities around the map. To grow stronger, we must ensure our survival and that our gold generation is adequate.

Survival

The middle lane is your base of operations, your Fortress. You must properly defend your Fortress by setting up Ward Control to prevent enemy ganks and gain vision of your lands. Your wards will act as a spy network keeping you, The General, informed. This will allow you to keep your Fortress safe and use its strategic positioning to punish troops trespassing in your lands. Acting without vision puts you at the mercy of your enemies.

While dying is acceptable, each death comes at the cost of valuable resources. (Gold and experience) No matter the match up or circumstances, your primary objective is to be consistent. To be undying is to exert pressure on the entire map.

Gold Generation

To carry, you need resources. The most important building block of your game starts with last hitting, games are won by item advantages and the easiest way to build a lead without putting yourself at risk is by this basic mechanic. A gold lead translates to an item lead, and an item lead translates to presence on the map. This basic interaction is overlooked by many players but is the core of gameplay. For newer players, your goal is 7-8 cs per minute and for experienced players leaning towards 9 in solo Q.

Lane phase is a battle for resources.

Once you have secured your foundation in the middle lane, you can begin to extend your influence. Your wards that were originally defensive will begin to move into enemy lines and feed you information. Objective control and jungle skirmishes are yours to decide. While you can continue to stay mid lane and farm up safely, if you can’t translate your early game pressure into a lead it has no value.









I will be honest with you, Vex is COMPLETELY broken right now. She has nearly 0 losing match ups and has incredible game impact. Therefor there is no excuse to ever lose laning phase, it's extremely important that you identify your match up correctly and understand what you need to do to succeed.

It is perfectly acceptable to just play for wave clear until 6 then win off of that.

Otherwise, I think Vex has one of the most satisfying early game aggression tools available. Fear is both an offensive and defensive tool, but with your innate range advantage along with minimal mana costs you can essentially pressure every single minion.

The easiest way to play is take Electrocute

Start with Looming Darkness and when the enemy goes up to farm their first minion. You will auto them and then follow with Looming Darkness this will proc the Doom 'n Gloom effect which adds even more damage to your combination.

BUT THIS WILL ALSO FEAR THEM ALONG WITH THE MINION WAVE, MEANING YOU ARE NOT TAKING ANY DAMAGE BACK AT ALL.

Auto with the gloom effect and it'll proc Electrocute which is essentially a free 150 damage ON COOLDOWN. (Which is 24 seconds - 25% CD for every gloom application)

Once you hit level two, this lane becomes even more unbearable because you can take any trade that you want without risk due to Corrupting Potion sustain. Every time you have your Doom 'n Gloom available, you'll look to pressure for another auto or Looming Darkness combo into Mistral Bolt

If it's sketchy, I recommend just playing around E/Q combo + a singular auto to proc Doom 'n Gloom

As opposed to the original AUTO / E / Q / AUTO combo since this gives you a little bit more space to work with while steering clear of more risky champions.

It's important to understand how your passive affects lane because of the application of fear is what determines how safe you need to play while it is on cooldown in certain match up.

In most melee match ups, as long as you have wave control you can easily stand next to them with Personal Space and lead with a W / Auto / E / Q Auto combo before disengaging. Weaving autos into your trades is the best way to maximize damage, but can always be dropped if it takes too long to execute.

Slowing down or speeding up your combo is always dependent on context.

If none of the above applies,

you are going to Mistral Bolt the wave over and over at max range until you hit level 6.

At this point, Shadow Surge and Ignite should give you enough damage potential to kill anyone in the 700-900 hp range.

HOWEVER, that is obviously a coin flip because they will have access to summoner spells as well. So what you want to do is play towards Vex conditions which is create poke using your range advantage until the enemy is at around 50-60% hp and then proceed with an all in combo off the fear or from Fog of War.

Realistically though, if you have Lost Chapter or Sorcerer's Shoes you can technically just one shot people off ignite combo if their champion doesn't have magic resist.

The last trick is if you're expecting a gank or need access to FEAR on your Personal Space or next Looming Darkness you'll want to use Looming Darkness and Mistral Bolt on the raptor camp to proc Doom 'n Gloom since each consumption charge reduces the fear cooldown.

It's really important to properly cycle gloom charges

Friendly remember

Q and W consume gloom

E applies gloom

Blinks/dashes apply gloom

I'll be honest with you guys, my only issue with Vex is the fact that farming feels so unproductive because you're constantly looking for roam opportunities to one shot an unexpecting enemy.

The best way to play League is to properly allocate resources by farming all three waves, but going to a side lane means you can only get one kill whereas being mid gives you up to 5 kills...

But yes, side laning is important but it's also important to recognize that your IDENTITY as a champion is about skirmishing or team fighting. You should be AT EVERY SINGLE dragon fight, EVERY SINGLE rift herald fight and EVERY SINGLE baron.

Shadow Surge gives you the ability to INSTANTLY turn any fight into a 4v5 while resetting your nuke. This versatility is what makes Vex one of the best champions in the game right now. You create pockets of vision using pink wards and boom an unexpecting ult over the wall leaves the enemy team's ankles broken.

However, I think the hardest part about Vex is not wasting your fear before possible fights break out which makes your mid-game wave clear is extremely awful.

This is why my farm on Vex is the lowest out of all my champions haha. Zhonya's Hourglass changes the way you angle for fights, but ultimately you need to make a decision between playing for flanks or just directly front lining into it. You can also play as a backline mage then ulting in after the initial skirmish, I typically always play for flank since it's my preference as a player.

It's just coin flipping Shadow Surge has the potential to lose you fights if you miss it. If you play consistently and around CC Shadow Surge will be a lot more relevant.

However, Shadow Surge into the backline can also just instantly win you the gam if you're strong enough.

If you have questions, you can find me at Twitch.tv/Zianni

Thanks.