Lillia league of legends runes

Being the newest champion released in League of Legends, players are eager to try her out.

Before you do, use this Lillia guide to learn more about her best runes, abilities, and how to build her.

Best Runes to Set

If you’re still trying out Lillia for the first time, we recommend going for the Dark Harvest as your primary rune tree. Dark Harvest is damage-focused and will benefit her in the later parts of the game.

This will allow her to benefit the most from CDR (cooldown reduction) without having to build her around core items with cooldown reduction.

Finally, the Dark Harvest keystone should help her escape from dire situations, allowing her to recover and sustain her health.

Lillia’s secondary rune tree depends on who you’re against and which spells you want to carry.

Going against high damage junglers like Lee Sin and Olaf, your secondary rune tree should run the sorcery tree with Nimbus Cloak and Waterwalking for a boost of extra movement speed.

This is especially useful and essential for all junglers. In addition, if you want to run a Smite-Ignite combo as your spells, this rune build will be perfect for Lillia.

For champions with high CC (crowd control) like Janna, Leona, and Alistar, Lillia should use Precision as her secondary rune tree with Tenacity and Triumph. You could also go for Presence of mind and Alacrity, which makes for a solid case with Lillia.

Last but not least, using Phase Rush as your primary keystone is an alternative option.

Phase Rush might help you escape easily during the early parts of the game from other junglers, but otherwise, I wouldn’t recommend using this keystone unless you’re still new to jungling.

Finally, using the Phase rush keystone can feel like overkill for experienced junglers since Lillia already has a lot of movement speed, so I recommend building other skills that boost her AOE, for example.

Core Items of Lillia

Runes are needed to enhance champions’ stats, statistics, and abilities overall. You can’t rely on just runes, though. You’ll also have to be proactive in-game and stack your ability power, damage, and speed through items.

Choosing the right items is crucial to winning the game and pushing forward in your lane, be it top, mid, or bot.

What is the best Lillia build then? First, we recommend starting with Runic Echos. From here, you can either buy Ninja Tabi or Sorcerer’s Boots as your second item, or you can take Chilling Smite to increase AP damage.

These items are great if you start the game in the jungle. If you play Lillia in a solo lane, though, it’s slightly different.

You can never go wrong with Luden’s Echo if you have low mana and want better passive damage. Next up, Liandry’s Torment and Rylai’s Crystal Scepter.

Both are a reliable duo that pairs well with Lillia. Once you have 3 or 4 of these items, you can move onto any situational item, depending on what you want to maximize.

If you want more armor, health, or better resistance overall, Dead Man’s Plate and Zhonya Hourglass are great options. Between the two, we suggest Dead Man’s Plate. If you want to deal more damage, Rabadon’s Deathcap or Void Staff are your best bet.

Some players might feel Zhonya’s Hourglass would be great for Lillia; however, this can backfire. Zhonya’s Hourglass does not synergize well with Lillia because Lillia’s main defense is centered around dodging abilities and moving around super fast.

With Zhonya’s Hourglass placing you in stasis, Lillia is far more vulnerable to damage and blows.

All in all, we recommend this core item build if you decide to play Lillia in this order:

1. Runic Echoes
2. Boots/Chilling Smite
3. Rylai Crystal Scepter
4. Liandry’s Full Face Mask

How to Play Lillia and Abilities

If it’s one factor that allows Lillia to dominate against her opponents, it’s her movement speed. This gives her an advantage over most junglers early game and is a critical factor to gain the upper hand.

If you know how to space Lillia, it becomes virtually impossible for any champion to latch onto her. Even Flash is no match for her speed.

Lillia can also dodge skill shots easily, especially if you’ve gotten the hang of how to space Lillia around other players; however, she isn’t all that elusive.

Any champion with high burst damage or lockdown abilities can obliterate her, so this will depend on the runes you choose to set.

Moving onto Lillia’s abilities, the battlemage deals a high amount of damage. Combined with her high movement speed make her one of the strongest battlemages in League of Legends.

Some players even mentioned that Riot Games gave Lillia the most inhibiting skill set in the League. Riot Games QA testers initially felt her passive ability was too strong at first.

That being said, let’s look at each ability in closer detail.

Passive Ability: Dream Laden Bough

Lillia’s passive, Dream Laden Bough, allows her to apply Dream Dust on her enemies, which deals max health as magic damage for 3 seconds.

Every time Lillia uses any of her abilities, Q, W, E, or R, this will apply Dream Dust and is actually linked to her R ability.

This ability does not stack and simply refreshes after every hit.

Q: Blooming Blows

Lillia’s Q ability is very similar to Darius’ Q ability, swinging her tree branch around her and dealing magic damage. Her Q ability, Blooming Blows, also doubles in damage if enemies are hit in the outer edge of the circle.

Finally, Lillia’s Q ability also comes with a passive effect, where every Q hit increases Lillia’s movement speed and can stack up to 5 times. Using Lillia’s Q ability is a vital factor to her success in-game too.

W: Watch Out! Eep!

Lillia’s W ability is a short-range skill shot where she smacks the ground with her tree branch, dealing damage. If enemies are hit at the center of the circle, it deals up to 3x damage!

E: Swirlseed

With E, Swirlseed is a bowling ball that damages and slows a champion down. What’s interesting about this ability is that if it misses its target, it will keep rolling until it hits a champion or crashes into a terrain.

R: Lilting Lullaby

Lilting Lullaby is linked directly to Lillia’s passive ability, where she applies Dream Dust on her opponents if she lands a hit using any of her abilities.

Here’s how this ability works: Lillia auto-targets any opponent who has her passive (Dream Dust) on them and puts them to sleep.

If you wake them up, you’ll be able to deal with a huge chunk of damage. Here’s the scary part. Remember the Swirlseed skill?

If that bowling ball happens to cross-map hit an enemy player like from mid lane to bot lane, for example, you can put them to sleep with Lillia’s R ability.

A Few Tips Before You Go

Before we end this Lillia guide, we’d like to share a few tips and tricks you can bring with you into the League of Legends game.

1. If you decide to go jungling, make sure to power-farm until you reach level 6 and acquire Runic Echos. Take full advantage of your Q ability by constantly moving around the jungle.
2. Use Lillia’s R ability followed by her W ability to land that center shot sweet spot and deal massive damage
3. You can combine your Q ability with Flash to catch enemies off-guard
4. Use your E ability to help you snipe a particular lane or even hit enemies who try to hide behind minions.
5. Learning Lillia on a FRESH account is always recommended, it allows you to learn her at your own pace.