User blog:Dj0z/Dj0z' Tank Lulu Guide

''Note: This guide assumes you follow the exact Rune, Mastery, and Item build. Play-Style may vary.''



Lulu was designed as a support. She can protect allies and disable enemies with CC, as every single one of her abilites (not couting her passive) is useful for both offense and defense. For those reasons I play Lulu as a full tank, allowing for deep, prolonged teamfight influence and extreme survivability. Thanks to TennStar for for presentation tips and her Guide which I'm using as a template, and to enemies i've beaten with this build.

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Overview
''Note: This guide is revolved around Classic Mode. Dominion mode may be similar, but results may not be the same.''

The key words for this build are Harass, Resistance, and most importantly Bait.

That's what you are if you play this build, a very surprisingly resistant tiny thing, always on the front line in teamfights, always helping your carries in alot of ways and harassing enemies. The harass is both to draw aggression on you instead of your carries, and to make enemies die easier to the rest of your team.

Lane
Take solo top or go with the carry as if you were a support, which you almost are.

Summoner Spells
TankLulu takes:


 * 1) Heal, because she's a "surprise" tank which means she has very deceptive survivability, and because it's one of the best and easiest to use (no targeting) teamfight support spells. With it you can survive a killing blow pretty often if ever your resistances, shield, speedbuff, slow, and ulti failed to keep you alive (As you can see it's very hard to kill TankLulu). What's even better however, you can save allies from death with it too. I've already been in a situation where i shielded our carry but they dived him, broke the shield and almost killed it, but heal saves the day and the carry turns back to finish them with his strong dps.

I don't recommend Smite because this build is not made for jungling, and other summoner spells may synergize less with this build. Exhaust is overkill since you already have your W ("Whimsy" a.k.a. Polymorph).
 * 1) Flash, because you don't want to die, it can be used agressively and defensively, and sometimes you may use it to join a teamfight earlier (like, some greedy ally started a fight behind that wall) to cast your protection things instantly on your allies.

Runes
Red: Magic Penetration, but honestly if you want to trade those for extra tankiness, go ahead.

Yellow: Flat Armor. I personally mix in a few Armor Per Lvl in there.

Blue: Magic Resist Per Lvl. With the rest of the build you can get 100+ MR very early in the game, making you immune to Leblanc's or Fizz's death comboes for example.

Quints: Gold per 10. This makes you more independent from cs count, which allows you to go bottom with carry. In that case, grabbing approximately 10 cs (preferably with approval of the carry) before the 2nd shop run will considerably speed up your build.

Masteries
Pretty straightforward: every resistance mastery.



Note that the CDR/Lvl is also taken, providing a nice 28.1% cooldown reduction at level 18 with full build.

Depending on your player skill, spend the last 4 points in the way it helps you the most. Summoner spells or the Initiator mastery are safe choices.

Build Order
The next step is adapting to your enemy and getting boots. This is where you decide what you get next: the Chain Vest for around 100 armor to really make their carry weak at damaging you, or the Chalice if most of the damage you take is magical. If because of a kill or something you can afford Giant Belt immediately however, go for it.

Extra benefits of this phase: NB: if you break their tower early, make sure to upgrade boots so you can quickly go annoy remaining lanes.
 * Chain Vest makes you more resistant to minions (for zoning enemies) and turrets too, incase jungler puts heavy pressure or you and your carry are almost towerdiving, which should only happen if you're absolutely sure it's safe. Also it may build into early Glacial Shroud for CDR.
 * Chalice pretty much gives you enless mana, starting the true harass party (Q+E spam on whatever enemy is lowest, so your carry can finish them off). Even without AP, the Q+E burst damage is serious on anything that's not a tank. Unfortunately for them, you're a tank so they can't hardly deal as much damage to you.
 * Chalice + Mercury Treads immediately take you to 100+ MR, essentially making their magic pointless.

Mid game
Adapt to whatever type of damage enemies deal the most. If it's pretty balanced or there's alot of pure damage, save for the Warmogs: it doesn't matter if you don't fill it, and it's the one item that will truely make your resistances pay for themselves. Even an empty Warmog is like 2 giant belts in 1 slot, not counting the regeneration. If the enemy damage is clearly physical however, rush Frozen Heart which puts you ~200 armor. If it's mostly magical damage, try finishing the warmog before selling Chalice for a Force of Nature (that's something that you should very rarely have to do).

Final build
NB: Trinity Force is pure luxury, for the extra pushing power and the phage proc which is even more CC. Usually games don't last that long, and if they do, you may aswell upgrade Philo into Shurelya instead of selling it for Triforce. In any case this build gives you very tanky stats as you can see: TankLulu Stats detail on LeagueCraft's champion builder



Make a habit of using Iron Solari's active, which means you have 2 shields which can both be used on your allies (unlike skarner's for example).

Key Selling Points
You're a Master of CC:
 * Q: strong AoE slow.
 * W: complete silence & blind, + weak slow.
 * R: Knockup, +7 seconds average/strong AoE slow!

You're extremely hard and annoying to kill:
 * 1) Strong resistances since early in the game, and every survival stat there is (tenacity etc, Defense masteries)
 * E: Shield which synergizes with your resistances.
 * R: Emergency deny of kills.
 * 1) Heal: Post-Emergency deny of kill surprise.
 * 2) Flash: Last resort survival spell.
 * 3) W yourself to get away faster (+35% MS).
 * 4) Q them to get away easier (80% decremental slow).

You're very good at protecting allies:
 * 1) You can shield them with E and Iron Solari.
 * 2) You can Heal them and R them.
 * 3) You can W whoever is attacking them, or W them so they run away faster than the chaser.
 * 4) You can Q their chasers, who usually give up the chase.

You're ultra annoying in teamfights, and that's probably the best part of this build.
 * 1) Q hits and slows almost every enemy if you cross-fire it by shielding/nuking someone with E first.
 * 2) You can apply the aforementioned protections on anyone they focus since you're always in range, because you're in the middle of the fight with your tankiness.
 * 3) Your R can purely and simply break most teamfights if used correctly. Because of tankiness, you can afford to be in range of all your allies to use it to the best effect. That same tankiness also makes it completely viable to use it on yourself and act like a solid AoE slow beacon in the middle of the enemies.

Standard Tactics
E+Q: Place your E (Pix) on a unit that's going closer to your target(s) than you can go. This can be a fleeing enemy, a chasing ally, one of your minions going under tower, Shaco/Annie/Morde's pet following his champion... then aim your Q since the second bolt will start from that unit. This might give you a surprise kill, or way more often, a surprise slow on a fleeing enemy, for an ally to finish it off.

Q+E: Slow them first with Q, so you can tranquilly increase the damage with E. Throwing a W inbetween often makes the E guaranteed to land, and you can add a couple AAs to the damage.

Q+E+Q: When you have enough CDR, for an extra surprise damage (total 3*280dmg).



Q (+AA if safe) +W +E +AAs: Standard harass combo in lane, or finish combo for enemies trying to flee from teamfight. Use it on the enemy Vayne for example. She can't really fight back, if she does she's wasting dps on the tank.



Q +AA +W +AA +E +R +AAs +repeat: Maximum damage combo, use it if in that teamfight you don't need to shield anyone, or to shut down a major threat before it causes too much drama. Note that to land the R knockup, you must be close enough, and to keep the slow active, you must move manually to stay close to your target between autoattacks.

Lulu_WickedLoading.jpgg Phase
Draw the agression on you because of your endless harass on them, shield whoever they focus, secure kills with Q and W. If any facecheck has to be done, Q that bush first, then shield yourself and do it (have W ready for quick escape) but never let the carry do it.

Midgame - Endgame
You are probably the best bait ever.

Some enemies will try to assassinate you because Lulu is usually squishy. When they find out you aren't, they'll still try to kill your ass because you annoy them.

Make sure it happens by provoking them in every key area (Buffs, Dragon, Baron, zones where both teams have wards) while you team is within a screen of distance at most. Your allies then proceed smash enemies into the ground when they're spent their slows etc trying to kill you.

If they still dont focus you yet, start pushing their turrets, they'll come 100% guaranteed. Because they don't know your allies are just around the corner waiting to jump on them while you purposefully take tower aggro to give your assassins a completely safe towerdive if necessary.

"The funny part compared to normal supports is that, well, they can't get quickly get rid of the major pain that you are ;-) and if they try to, you've done your job of drawing the aggro as a tank, watch your team jump on them for the win."

My ranked performance with this build proves its viability, no matter whatever some persons who think they know everything in the world without ever trying anything new may say.

Constructive criticism welcome, best try the build first so you know what you're talking about. PS: I'm on EU West for whoever wants an example play.