Hi! I go by Delta eGirl online (usually just Delta), though my summoner name changes often. I've been playing Aphelios since his release, with around 240k mastery on him. No one said I'm the best Aphelios, but I think I'm confident enough to share the knowledge I've acquired by playing him. He's my favorite champion in the game ever since his announcement. I've always had a problem of not sticking to mains, because it tends to get boring to do the same thing over and over. The beauty of Aphelios is that that never happens, he's constantly changing. He'll probably be my favorite champion until this game dies.

He's also hot. That helps.

As everyone knows by now, Aphelios has 5 different guns that he can swap to, each with different effects and different abilities. There's just one caveat, though, that being that he can only use two at a time. Additionally, the guns he has aren't in his control. They come in a set order, meaning he doesn't get to choose when he uses which gun. There are ways to control when a gun comes, but how fast will never change. It's also impossible to hold onto one gun forever, he must cycle his guns after he runs out of ammo.

This means that Aphelios becomes more about management of resources in order to create powerful combinations. Questions often come up about whether or not you should have this gun or another gun for a team fight, or whether you should save your ammo for one big combo. Managing your ammo and gun cycle is the key to doing good on Aphelios.

The guns Aphelios has are Calibrum, Severum, Gravitum, Infernum, and Crescendum. At the start of the game he has Calibrum in the main hand and Severum in the off hand. Guns in the main hand are your main gun - your Q is its ability, your ultimate has additional effects based on it, and auto attacking expends its ammo, and apply its additional passive effect. The only thing the off hand gun does is apply its additional passive effect when you use your main hand's Q ability. For the Calibrum/Severum example, Severum will heal you (because that's its passive effect) whenever you use land Calibrum's Q.

You can swap your main hand gun and off hand gun with W. Doing so replaces your Q with the new gun's Q, as well as replacing the Ultimate and passive effect with the new gun's effect. Each gun has its own Q cooldown, meaning that swapping guns lets you use the other gun's Q right away assuming it isn't on cooldown. The off hand gun's Q will cool down when not equipped.

Each gun has 50 ammo, known as moonlight. Auto attacks cost 1 ammo, and using Q costs 10. You can see your remaining ammo in multiple places - below his health bar, on his HUD, and on the right side of your screen when you're below 10. When you run out of ammo, the gun you have is destroyed and replaced with the next one in the Sequence. By default, the sequence is Calibrum, Severum, Gravitum, Infernum, and Crescendum. This means that after breaking your first gun, you will always get Gravitum. The gun you break will be sent to the back of the line, meaning it will be the gun you get after Crescendum. This means the order you break guns matters, as that determines the order you get them back. This idea of breaking guns in a certain order is what is referred to as a gun cycle.

Aphelios's ultimate causes him to throw a linear skillshot, which explodes upon hitting an enemy. After a very brief delay, Aphelios then auto attacks every target hit, and applies his main hand weapon's passive effect. The follow up attack can crit, but for massively reduced damage. The ultimate gains additional effects based on the main hand weapon. The ultimate's uses range from team wide CC to quick burst healing, and is very helpful.

Finally, because Aphelios has far too many skills, he learns all of the naturally without skill points. Instead, he uses skill points on stats, those being Attack Damage (Q), Attack Speed (W), and Lethality (E). He starts with the ability to switch his weapon at level 1 (W), gains the ability to use his Q at level 2, and ultimate at level 6. His ultimate gets stronger at the regular intervals of 6/11/16, while his Q "ranks up" at 1/3/5/7/9/11/13.

Aphelios's Q does not actually gain ranks like his ultimate, but functions identically to as if it did. Don't think too much into it.

🟢 Calibrum

Calibrum, the Sniper Rifle, is a weapon with great reach. It's passive is that landing abilities will mark a target, letting you auto attack them from greatly increased range. The mark itself will apply the off hand weapon's effect, or the main hand's if the off hand weapon is Calibrum itself. Additionally, when wielding the weapon, you have extra attack range.

Consuming the mark costs no ammo.

Calibrum's Q is a long range linear skillshot that marks the first target hit, allowing for a follow up hit with your off hand weapon.

Calibrum's Ultimate effect is that the marks that are applied by the ultimate do more damage.

A lot of quick burst can be gained by using his ultimate and Q very close to each other. Q, AA, R, AA deals a very large amount of damage from very far away, which lets you finish off stragglers.

🔴 Severum

Severum, the Scythe Pistol, is all about lifesteal and kiting. It's passive is lifesteal. Healing over your max health will let you overheal, gaining a shield for 30 seconds.

Severum's attacks are not a projectile, and are not blocked by projectile destroying effects.

Severum's Q puts Aphelios into a channel, causing him to fire both of his guns rapidly at the nearest target (prioritizing champions) while gaining 20% movement speed. The gun the fires switches every other shot, meaning that it will fire Severum, then your off hand gun, then Severum again, until the channel is over. The amount of shots is based on your attack speed, and the shots themselves apply on hit effects at a reduced rate.

Calibrum will mark the target with each shot, but will not activate the mark.

Severum's Ultimate effect causes Aphelios to heal an additional flat amount of health, in addition to the health he would heal with the follow up attack.

Severum's main purpose is to set up other guns. It provides healing while using Infernum, and gives the DPS increase of phantom chakrams (with your Q, as it gives a phantom chakram for every time Crescendum attacks) for Crescendum.

🟣 Gravitum

Gravitum, the Gravity Cannon, is about CC. It's passive applies a 30% slow on auto attack, which diminishes to 10% after .7 seconds, lingering for 3.5 seconds total. If you auto attack fast enough, you can keep the 30% slow on someone permanently.

Gravitum's Q roots all targets affected by it's slow for 1 second. The range is global and the amount of targets is infinite, as long as they have Gravitum's slow on them. Unlike other abilities, this ability does not function with off hand weapons.

Gravitum's Ultimate effect causes all targets hit to have the Gravitum's initial .7 second slow increased to 99%. It diminishes back to 10% afterwards like normal. Additionally, the root's duration for targets affected by the ultimate's slow is increased by 35%, for a total of 1.35 seconds.

The numbers are important here - if you can attack every .7 seconds, you will get much more out of the gun's passive. You should also try to root after the .7 seconds to maximize CC. This is especially true for your ultimate.

While the gun isn't very exciting, it's one of the stronger ones, as it allows you to engage or kite, making it an extremely powerful secondary gun. A standard combo with this gun is to land your main hand's weapon, switch to Gravitum, and root them. It might take some time to get used to switch just to root someone, so try to practice it.

🔵 Infernum

Infernum, the Flamethrower, is all about mass AOE damage. It's passive causes all attacks with this weapon to deal 10% more damage and hit targets in a cone behind the target, as well as targets the projectile passes through. When you crit, the cone is bigger.

The cone wont deal the full damage of the attack until level 9. Reduced damage to minions. Hurricane bolts are smaller, and do not deal damage to targets they pass through.

Infernum's Q deals damage in a cone in front of Aphelios, followed by an auto attack with the off hand gun for each target hit.

The follow up attack costs no ammo.

Infernum's Ultimate effect causes the follow up attack to explode in a circle instead of a cone. The circles can overlap for even more damage, with the damage being reduced by 10% for each one after the first.

Infernum is one of your two big heavy hitting guns. Especially with Hurricane (because the multiple cones can overlap, and the damage stacks), the sheer amount of damage you can pump out in team fights in insane.

Casting Ult, AA, and Q can overlap a lot of AOEs at once, confusing the enemies as their health bars disappear. If you're wondering how an Aphelios Ultimate one shots you, this is how.

⚫ Crescendum

Crescendum, the Chakram, is all about MASSIVE single target damage. When you attack with Crescendum, the Chakram flies towards the target, and you are unable to basic attack until it returns. When it does return, your attack is reset, letting you attack immediately afterwards. The speed it travels is based on attack speed (increased if you crit). In layman's terms this means that the closer you are to the target, the less distance the Chakram needs to travel, meaning you can attack faster. The difference between point blank range and maximum range is around a 75% DPS increase.

Crescendum's passive effect is whenever an ability wants to use Crescendum as an off hand effect, it throws a spectral chakram, unaffected by the previous rules of the normal chakram. It then returns to you, giving you a damage boost whenever you use Crescendum to attack for 5 seconds (refreshing when attacking a champion). You can have up to 20 of them. The damage has diminishing returns, meaning that the damage for each new chakram gets lower the more you have. After 6 chakrams they reach their lowest point, giving only 5% increased damage for each additional chakram. The damage can also crit.

Attacking a target marked with Calibrum will throw a spectral Chakram AND all stacked spectral Chakrams, unlike every other ability.

Crescendum's Q places an inactivated turret down which uses your off hand gun to attack, applying the effect with every attack. The turret benefits from your attack damage, attack speed, and crit chance. The inactivated turret lasts 20 seconds and is untargetable. When an enemy gets in range the turret activates for 4 seconds, becomes targetable, and causes it to start attacking the nearest enemy (prioritizing champions). The turret has 6 health, taking 3 damage from a basic attack and 4 from AOE abilities.

A Calibrum turret will continually mark enemies. It will not detonate marks. A Severum turret will heal Aphelios and not itself.

Crescendum's Ultimate effect causes you to get 5 additional phantom chakram, not including the phantom chakram you get for hitting an ability normally. This means that the amount of phantom chakram generated by this ability is 6-10, depending on how many people you hit.

Crescendum does an absurd amount of damage, especially if someone is diving you. The gun takes bravery, but if you're willing to go in the amount of damage this gun will do for you will win games. Many fights that seem bad suddenly are a lot more winnable. It's not far fetched to be able to kill junglers when they gank you simply because they don't respect your damage.

The phantom chakram cause you to deal as much damage as a crit (+75%) with only 4 of them. The soft cap for chakrams is 6, but your damage will still scale up by 5% for each one afterwards. Thankfully, one cast of your ultimate will guarantee the soft cap, as you will always get at least 6 from an ultimate cast.

Certain guns synergize much better with each other than others. Because of this, many Aphelios players opt for a standard gun rotation in order to maximize the effectiveness of each gun. While the order is never set in stone, this order has proven time and again that it works.

Calibrum, Gravitum, Infernum, Severum, Crescendum.

Achieving this order is rather simple, only requiring you to change the way you destroy guns twice. First, you need to destroy Severum first instead of Calibrum. Doing this will put Severum right next to Crescendum, which is one of your most powerful combinations. From there, destroy the oldest gun you have until you get back to Severum again. Then, destroy Severum first once again. Then you're in order. From there, simply destroy the oldest gun first.

If you happen to make a mistake in a fight and destroy the wrong gun (it happens), don't panic. Doing so may ruin the order even further causing even more mishaps. Instead, wait until you cycle all the way back to the two guns, being extra sure to destroy the oldest first. Then, fix the mistake by destroying the guns in the correct order. You're back in order. From there, carry on like the mistake didn't happen.

Another order to consider is swapping Gravitum and Infernum in the previous order. To do this, destroy Infernum first when you first receive it in the first rotation. This rotation focuses more on the burst from Infernum and
Calibrum. If you bring PTA, using Infernum Q on an enemy champion will automatically auto attack them and mark them for the second PTA stack. Landing a Calibrum Q will finish PTA granting even more damage. When practiced it can be a quick combo to do a lot of damage to someone with. However, it misses out on the utility of the previous combo so this is often overlooked for the other rotation.

🟢🟣 Calibrum + Gravitum

This focuses on long range roots and poking from afar. It's not perfect for team fights, usually resorting to a more supportive role, but the amount of CC you can pump out from many units away is very much a good thing. Additionally, with Hurricane the bolts will hit targets nearby the marked target, which can cause the single skillshot to root multiple people.

🟣🔵 Gravitum + Infernum

Instead of rooting people from far away, this roots a lot of people up close. Infernum can catch entire team's in it's AOE if they aren't careful, which can lead to massive team wide CCs. Additionally Infernum can be used to deal a lot of damage here, but just be careful not to accidentally destroy it in the process.

🔵🔴 Infernum + Severum

This phase completely relies on Infernum. Severum is mainly there to make Infernum Q slightly better, but otherwise is useless. Think of this as the time to go crazy with Infernum.

🔴⚫ Severum + Crescendum

Use Severum to stack phantom chakrams, then go wild as you do a ton of damage to the entire team. It's very easy to get greedy and over commit to a lot, so be sure to know your windows of power so you can go in and delete everyone.

⚫🟢 Crescendum + Calibrum

Using your marking turrets in order to deal a lot of damage from far away is why this phase is so great. I recommend button mashing in this phase in order to keep Crescendum phantom chakram chains going, as all your abilities will keep refreshing the timer.

Sometimes losing a gun mid combat is exactly what you want, because you can use it's effects right away. While these look scary, they are by far the most important thing you can learn. Especially in a solo queue environment, unexpected burst is extremely powerful and can often win you the lane with just one cheese kill.

🔴🟢 → 🟣🟢 Severum + Calibrum into Gravitum + Calibrum

If there is one thing you can learn from this guide, it's this. This combo can only be executed in your very first gun destruction, so timing is key. When you're about to break Severum for the first time, it's very important to go in and use your Severum Q. Doing this applies Calibrum mark and destroys Severum. With the newly equipped Gravitum, attack the mark, causing them to get slowed by you. Follow up with a Gravitum Q to root them, letting you land a Calibrum Q for free, which gives you another Calibrum mark to attack as well. Using all three of the spells back to back usually can burn a flash or more often than not result in a kill due to just how much damage that is at level 3-4. To do this effectively though, it's important to communicate with your support to go in at this level.

Entire games can be won if you snowball your lane with this combo, and there's no reason to not do it. You're destroying Severum anyways, so you're not even wasting any resources.

If you really want to ruin someone's day, get both of your guns to 10 ammo when you do this. This means that when you use Calibrum Q you destroy it as well and get Infernum, which is just another Q to add onto the damage pile. Doing this usually isn't advised not because it isn't stronger but because you'd be wasting time not executing the triple gun combo instead. It is very flashy, however.

🔴⚫ → 🟢⚫ Severum + Crescendum into Calibrum + Crescendum

It's important you have spare Crescendum ammo before doing this. The combo itself is easy to understand - use Severum Q to gain a bunch of phantom chakram, and carry those phantom chakram into Calibrum + Crescendum. When you do this combo, you need to commit to the fight right then and there, or at least have nearby minions to keep the chain of phantom chakrams going, so you don't drop the phantom chakram gained from Severum.

Turns out there a lot to Aphelios (over 45,000 characters worth!), but hopefully this guide will help you get even a basic graph of what it's like to play him. Remember that information on the build and matchups can be found at the top of the guide, although a more in depth explanation may be added in the future!

If you have anything to request to be added to the guide, remember to ask! It's impossible to improve without being told what's wrong.

If I catch anyone destroying Calibrum first I swear to god...

Version 12.14.A

> Changed some wording around after abandoning the guide for a year.
> Changed some matchups.
> Changed recommended items.

Version 11.11.A

> Changed Bard synergy as I forgot to mention that a good Bard wins games anyways.
> Changed version numbers to better represent the time it was changed. Now the first two numbers are the patch (Season 11, Patch 11) and the letter is how many edits were done during the patch.
> All information for 11.10 remains the same for 11.11. Nothing else has changed.

Version 11.10.B

> Braum, Jhin, and Sivir match ups changed.

Version 11.10.A

> Release version.