Hey there, I'm Zianni. I'm a challenger mid laner and Lux is one of my favorite champions. She's been one of my best champions since Season 9 and I'm glad to finally get around to making a guide for her! Lux is a very interesting champion because she is considered bad but usually has very good results. She has a higher end WR along with extremely good damage + a fun playstyle. The only issue with Lux is her inconsistent match ups and struggle against current meta champions like Katarina. Check out my livestream at https://www.twitch.tv/zianni so you can become a challenger Lux too!

Arcane Comet is the best keystone on Lux due to it's versatility and synergy with her core kit. Things like Electrocute and Aery are situational keystones that are reliant on specific conditions... Arcane Comet rewards you for basic poking and supplements your total damage with your combo.

Vs Electrocute which requires you to either full combo or weave in autos with your trading which can be dangerous. Aery is the correct keystone if you're running Moonstone Renewer due to the increased shielding power.

Arcane Comet

Arcane Comet is a fantastic tool for trading due to it's consistency making it the optimal selection for Lux. Everything else has too many requirements that force you into one playstyle, whereas Comet is the versatile allowing you to play into both directions.

Manaflow Band is a great selection for Lux because it helps supplement her mana pool making it easier to wave clear for priority. Her Lucent Singularity is extremely expensive making it costly to continuously clear waves, the mana pool + regeneration from Manaflow Band will help immensely.

Transcendence rewards us for scaling by giving us haste and making it easier to create opportunities VIA CC/Shields. This is a great tool for versatility.

Scorch offers us additional bullying power to go with our range advantage and makes it easier to control easier match ups. If you plan on scaling regardless of match up, Gathering Storm is a more optimal choice.

Eyeball Collection is purely for additional Ability Power to increase our overall damage output. Lux has good AP Ratios that we can take advantage of.

Ultimate Hunter is specifically for an aggressive Lux playstyle, I also think its just more fun regardless of rank. In higher elos, you'll find inspiration secondary more valuable but it's basically min-maxing at that point.

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

Alternatively -

You can opt for Ability Haste if playing for scaling.

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

There are two variations to Lux mid currently, the standard Magic Pen build and recently nerfed Moonstone Renewer build.

Magic Penetration is the best build if you need to itemize for damage to carry your teammates, I highly recommend this version of the build because it is more self-reliant and better for solo Q.

Moonstone Renewer build is if you truly believe in your teammates and you're lacking utility. If your team has lots of bruisers or an abundance of damage, you can consider opting for this build to supplement that with increased healing/shielding.

Luden's 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.

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 build Void Staff you'll receive another 5 flat magic pen from your mythic bonus which puts you at 29. Against 40 MR targets you'll receive an additional 16 Magic Penetration putting you at a grand total of 45 magic penetration.

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.)

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IN TERMS OF SURVIVABILITY, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS BUILD

Zhonya's Hourglass into AD assassins

or Verdant Barrier into AP assassins

You can get away with going full damage, but you'll be risking your life with every play you make vs the consistent option of just itemizing against them.

If you don't need survivability items, you'll want to round your build out with Rabadon's Deathcap.

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Moonstone Variant is very simple

Ionian Boots of Lucidity for extra haste

Moonstone Renewer for healing

Staff of Flowing Water for additional AP/movespeed + amped healing.

Zhonya's Hourglass for survivability

Rabadon's Deathcap for AP ratios for increased shielding

Void Staff for additional penetration and more valuable on your damage skills.

You can also substitute one of the last two items for Banshee's Veil if you need more survivability.

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 **** 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.

Lux is very simple, you'll want to abuse your maximum range. The easiest way to apply this is to utilize the cooldown of your Manaflow Band, poke when it's available or whenever your Arcane Comet is available.

To take advantage of your range, you'll want to play towards last hit windows and make sure you're consistently punishing people during their telegraphed movements. This is the only way to make sure you are going to land your E + Passive combination.

If you're playing against a bad match up, it's completely acceptable to just farm at max range with E only and avoid death. Lux will spike extremely hard in the mid game as long as you avoid unnecessary deaths since you only need two items to succeed, one of which is boots.

Linked at the top is my Lux guide which has a visual representation of what lane phase should like with adequate trading techniques.

Once you've completed your core items of Mythic + Boots, you'll be extremely dangerous as landing a Q will guarantee the rest of your combo. As long as they aren't a MR tank or bruiser, your combo will instantly kill them.

The concept is to now create situations where you can reliably land your combination... The easiest way to do this is by taking advantage of Fog of War and utilizing vision control.

If you are consistently forcing the enemy to move into your side of the map, you are going to be at an advantage because they have to move into your range. This makes it easy to find opportunities in team fights. This is why Lux is extremely good at front to back fights where you're lightly disengaging.

If you are playing aggressively, it can be hard to find combo opportunities because they'll be moving away from your skills but your range is still very oppressive.

To create these windows you'll need to position forward enough to find picks without exposing yourself to the enemy engage. You either need to play around wards or slightly next to the front line as opposed to staying in the back.

Once again, there will be a visual representation in the video linked at the top if you're interested.