Aphelios, the 200 years MEME

Welcome to my Aphelios guide. I have been in love with this champion ever since he was released. There is something amazing about him and he has a very unique kit for an ADC. He was the beginning of the 200 years meme. I am by no means a challenger or master player. In fact, I peaked D2 in Season 9 but I still believe I have enough experience on this underplayed champion. As you might be aware, Aphelios is sitting on a 45%ish winrate at the moment. This is because Riot wants to keep him that way so he doesn't become a monster in pro play (which he was many times since release). Still, I think he is one of the most rewarding ADCs if played properly and he's a ton of fun. I hope you will enjoy this guide!

NOTE

The guide is still in progress. You are free to look up my builds and explanations. I will go super in-depth with this guide so stay tuned for it.

Update 1: Updated some typos and added/removed a few things. Also added boots to the build paths.

Update 2: Explained the passive ability and set the general look of the guide. This is my first one so it's probably not going to look very pretty. I'm open for suggestions on how I can improve the aesthetic.

IMPORTANT:

CURRENT PATCH IS 12.15

ALL PHOTOS/ABILITY DESCRIPTIONS TAKEN FROM OFFICIAL RIOT WEBSITE AND LEAGUE WIKIPEDIA

Quoted:

BLESSINGS OF THE MOON

Passive

The Hitman and the Seer

INNATE:

Aphelios has access to an arsenal of 5 Moonstone Weapons, created by his sister Alune. He equips two weapons at any one time, one as his main weapon and one as his off-hand. Each weapon has a unique basic attack and passive effect.
Aphelios begins the game with Calibrum (sniper, gives extra range on autos) as his main weapon and Severum(life gain) in his off-hand, with Gravitum(slow and root), Infernum (AOE flamethrower) , and Crescendum (high attackspeed boomerang that works best at short range) queued in reserve. The queue order can be rearranged based on weapon usage.

INNATE - MOONLIGHT:

Weapons spawn with 50 Moonlight for ammunition, which is consumed on basic attacks, or to cast his abilities. Abilities that cause Aphelios to attack do not cost additional Moonlight on top of their ability cost. Once his main weapon is exhausted of Moonlight, it is moved to the end of the queue and Aphelios assembles his next available weapon over 1 second to equip it from his reserve, with its Q ability being placed on a 1.5-second Cooldown before that time. Aphelios cannot cast Phase during the assembly.

INNATE - WEAPON MASTER:

Aphelios cannot improve his abilities with skill points. He starts the game with Phase and gains access to abilities at level 2 and Moonlight Vigil at level 6, with the latter improving automatically at levels 11 and 16. Instead, Aphelios may spend his skill points to gain AD,AS or Lethality.

Alright let's go through the passive because there's a lot to unpack here. First of all, remember that Aphelios effectively has 2 abilities at any time, 3 if his ult is up. This can be changed to 5 with a certain condition which I will talk about in the gameplay section. He can auto attack with each weapon 50 times, and his abilities take 10 moonlight (ammo in further text) so you have to manage these.

Your available ammo is visible on the unique HUD Aphelios has, as well as on the side of your screen when you drop below 11. Using abilities below 11 will automatically swap the weapon but mind that you can use abilities even if you have less than 10 available. As mentioned in the ability description, you cannot level up any abilities. They scale up with levels. You instead levelup stats such as AD, AS and Lethality.

The way the weapon queue works is simple. The weapon you first spend ammo on goes at the end of the queue. So, for example, if you spend Severum first, and then Calibrum at the start of the game, the queue will look like this:

GRAVITUM
INFERNUM
CRESCENDUM
SEVERUM
CALIBRUM


You can rearrange this queue in whichever way you want, the most important thing to remember is that once you spend a weapon, it always goes to the very end of the queue.

The queue that I prefer the most is: Severum+ Crescendum > Crescendum+ Calibrum > Calibrum+ Gravitum > Gravitum+ Infernum > Infernum+ Severum . Spend left to right, rinse and repeat. Obviously there are multiple combinations but we'll talk about it more later. Also, it's really important to understand that the weapon you're using for actively for autos and abilities is the Main-hand weapon, regardless of which one has more ammo or which one came later. I think that his passive is 60% of what people don't understand about his abilities, so I thought it's quite important to talk about.

Aphelios doesn't have a W (this one is used to switch main and off-hand weapon with Phase) or E ability so let's talk about his weapons and his Qs.

Calibrum

Aphelios gains 100 bonus attack range while Calibrum is his main weapon. Enemies damaged by Calibrum through an ability are marked for 4.5 seconds, revealing them for the duration(does not reveal invisible invisible units!). Aphelios' next basic attack against a marked target uses the current off-hand weapon and has 1800 range, increased missile speed, and a brief cast time that lasts shorter based on Aphelios' proximity to the target.

The empowered attack will consume the marks from all targets, dealing 15 (+ 20% bonus AD) bonus physical damage to the main target for each mark consumed. If Calibrum is the current off-hand weapon, the main weapon is used for the attack instead.