Vayne is one of the most popular League of Legends champions, with an extremely high pick rate. She is often seen as a very explosive marksman that can bully the lane and force fights. However, players in the higher ELOs understand that this champion has many weaknesses brought about by her extremely short range. These Vayne tips and tricks will help players get a better idea of how to play this champion by overcoming said weaknesses.
The Best Vayne Tips and Tricks
Vayne is a versatile AD Carry that can come off as an extremely scary champion to face off in all three lanes. However, players who understand how this champion works know that, like all AD Carries, all you have to do is get in melee range of Vayne and burst her down. One of the best Vayne tips that players take in mind is ensuring that she can maintain the distance between her and the enemy as much as possible to give her room to burst down her target.
Vayne is often a popular pick if the enemy team is running a lot of tanky champions. Unlike a lot of AD Carries, Vayne is proficient at taking down the enemy frontline since she deals true damage that practically negates the enemy’s armor values. However, it’s also easy for tank champions to lock down a careless Vayne player and easily take her down even if they build 0 damage items. These Vayne tips and tricks are designed to prevent that from happening.
Mobility is Key to Proper Positioning
Mobility is Vayne’s biggest strength as she can dance around the battlefield and easily maintain a relatively safe distance between her and the enemy. Unfortunately, Vayne’s short range makes it easy for the enemy to close the distance which means that she can easily be taken down. This is why you often see advanced Vayne players constantly moving around the battlefield after every auto since they are trying to adjust their position to allow them to easily escape while keeping in range with their primary target.
Vayne has two abilities that allow her to position well in a fight. The first is her passive which gives her bonus movement speed while facing an enemy champion. This means that you should avoid turning your back on the enemy while fighting as much as possible. The second mobility tool that Vayne can take advantage of is her Q – Tumble – ability which allows her to dash a short distance. Use this ability wisely and don’t simply spam it for the sake of bonus damage.
Condemn into the Wall!
Vayne’s signature ability – Condemn – allows her to fire a heavy bolt at an enemy which knocks them back a short distance. It’s a great ability at keeping enemies away, especially in teamfights where most of the enemy champions will try to jump at you to take you down. In fights where the threat of the enemy team can instantly kill you, it’s better to save your condemn defensively rather than using it offensively by condemning the enemy into a wall.
The best time to use your condemn ability offensively is when you have an obvious advantage over the opponent. If the enemy doesn’t have any dash abilities or has no threat of heavy burst damage, you can attempt to condemn them into a wall. You can also use it if you have defensive tools off cooldown such as Flash and Cleanse which prevents the enemy team from successfully taking you down easily in fights.
Auto-Attack Resetting
One of the most common tips for auto-attack-reliant champions is learning how to reset your basic attacks. For Vayne, the most common way to reset your auto-attack is by using the Tumble ability immediately after the attack animation goes off. This will allow you to cheat an extra auto attack which is necessary for maximizing your damage output since every drop of damage can determine the success of a fight.
Vayne’s Silver Bolts passive ability allows her to deal bonus true damage after every third attack. Being able to reach that third attack as often as possible will make her a massive threat in teamfights. Remember that when you are using your Tumble ability, don’t mindlessly use it just for resetting your auto-attacks. We mentioned in one of our previous Vayne tips that you should also keep your overall positioning in mind so that the enemy can’t launch a counter-attack.
Stacking On-Hits on Vayne
Despite being an AD Carry marksman, Vayne doesn’t benefit too much from crit stacking like the rest of the champions. Instead, she relies heavily on stacking on-hit effects from her Silver Bolts and Legendary items like Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Wit’s End. Since Rageblade is Vayne’s key item, this item converts all of her crit into bonus damage on-hit. This means that she requires to land more auto-attacks than other ADCs to be more effective in fights.
Buying the recommended items might feel like the easiest route to achieving this goal but it’s always a good idea to understand how proper itemization works. Riot Games already introduced a system that gives useful recommendations when buying items in the shop. However, you should always read up on the stats and effects of the item and determine if that will fit your build path with the enemy comp in mind.
Maximize Your Ultimate
Vayne has one of the most impactful ultimate abilities among all AD Carries. Her ultimate triples the movement speed bonus of her passive ability and empowers her tumble ability to make her stealthed upon usage and reduce its overall cooldown. Additionally, she gains bonus attack damage, and the duration of this ability is increased whenever she scores a takedown on an enemy champion.
When using this ability, it’s a good idea to play aggressively and use your tumble as often as possible while resetting your auto-attack. Remember that you remain stealthed after using Tumble so if you think you might be in danger, use the stealth duration to reposition yourself in an area the enemy will have difficulty targeting you. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to get a kill to extend the duration as long as you manage to contribute to the takedown.