Lillia’s abilities
Riot have designed Lillia’s kit primarily for damage. Her abilities synergize with each other, offering bonus damage after weaving them into each other together. The purpose of this build is to issue consistent damage with her Q, followed up with burst damage from her W and R after effect while maneuvering in and out of combat with her Q stacks.
Passive – Dream-laden Bough.
Lillia’s abilities apply a Dream Dust effect. Enemies affected by Dream Dust will take five percentage max health damage over three seconds.
Q – Blooming Blows
She swings her branch and deals magic damage to nearby enemies and true damage at the outer edges. If the ability hits successfully, she gains bonus movement speed, stacking up to five times.
W- Watch Out! Eep!
Lillia slams down her branch, which deals damage to enemies in a circle. Those in the center take more damage.
E – Swirlseed
She summons a seed that travels in a straight line. Enemies hit take magic damage and are slowed. The ability will continue to roll until it collides with a champion or collides with the terrain.
R – Lilting Lullaby
Her Ultimate adds an extra effect to her Dream Dust passive. Enemies affected by the passive will be slowed until they fall asleep for a duration of time. When they awaken from damage, they take additional magic damage.
Positions
You can play Lillia either as a top laner or jungler. Solo queue players are finding that Lillia top is a cheesy but can contest against melee champions and burn down tanks with her passive. In the jungle, Lillia is a kite clearing jungler that has the potential to exit the jungle and gank at speed. Both roles are viable, but the jungler position is the main role that Lillia excels at.
In both positions, Lillia plays the game in a relatively similar way. Both positions place Lillia as an AP bruiser that will weave in and out of the enemy team, hurling true damage and trying to get as many crucial targets asleep as possible. This factor is vital to understand as this playstyle is the best way to play Lillia. Lillia has apparent weaknesses in both roles, which we will go into detail on.
Top Lane tips
Lillia’s role in the top lane is to be a lane bully capable of dodging skill shots and pushing the lane in. She excels in lanes versus tanks that are not capable of locking down Lillia, champs that are punished by being pushed in or poked, or champions that only offer burst that rely on skill shots to land. Therefore, Lillia performs well against Mordekaiser, Tryndamere, Ornn and more. On the other hand, she suffers against champs like Akali, Irelia, Renekton, Darius etc. These champions are strong duelists and can challenge any laner they play against.
One other thing to note is that Riot designed Lillia to compete as a teamfighter and secondary engage. Because of this playstyle, Lillia in the top lane will eventually lose to split push champions, as she will be unable to put out as much single target damage or will be stunned and shut down consistently.
While playing top lane, Lillia’s runes should aim to either punish and do damage against their opposition, or to get external sustain. Keystones like Conqueror and Electrocute are two solid choices for bursting opposition in lane or gaining HP back in sustained fights. From there it’s about dealing more damage or getting HP back from other runes.
One other general tip is to use Lillia’s E when you base. Aiming it in the right position can send the Swirlseed zooming through a lane. Maybe there’s even a chance it can tag an opponent and help that lane set up a fight. Just be careful not to ruin a frozen lane as that will only annoy an ally.
Jungle tips
Jungle Lillia seems to be the best option of the two positions. The champion is designed for the jungle and excels at the ability to clear camps and roam. It is even possible for Lilla to full clear the jungle within three and a half minutes. So Lillia is more than capable of getting a full clear, level four and contest Scuttle Crab with a smite still in hand. Please note that this is just demonstrating a solo clear with no help. Most games Lillia will have a laner help leash the starting buff, making her clear even easier.
Players that can get this going, alongside the movement speed stacks will feel the advantages of this champion. This will allow her to be a level higher than her opponent around the time junglers typically contest top side Scuttle Crab.
However, as mentioned, Lillia is a squishy champion in the early game. Junglers that can invade or put out strong early game damage are a direct counter to Lillia. It is wise to get wards set up throughout the map in hopes of tracking the enemy jungler in these instances.
Otherwise, Lillia may fall behind to being out jungled by an enemy jungler that can abuse her early game.
On another note, Lillia seems to work best if there is an engage support in the bot lane or a dive or tank champion in the top lane. This is because Lillia is considered a secondary engage champion. She should ideally focus on applying her Q onto several targets and then using her R. Another possible initiation option is using her E to pop on several targets then pressing R to initiate a teamfight. Either of those situations are fine to tell her team to get in there and do damage. This is necessary for Lillia as she needs someone else to be on the front line with her. Even when she has more HP and AP, Lillia is still subject to dropping low hp in a quick stun lock or dive, so this helps alleviate pressure from Lillia.
As for her rune page, Lillia junglers tend to take Phase Rush as the keystone. Hitting three champions with three different abilities or auto attacks grants the user bonus movement speed. Combine this with Nimbus Cloak, Celerity and Water Walking and Lillia can move around the map fast. Her second rune tree should go into Domination for the healing runes as this gives her some sustain as she naturally does not have healing in her kit. With all this combined with Lillia’s kit, she becomes much quicker in combat, which only boosts her ability to prance around the fight dealing lots of damage.
Players may also take Dark Harvest if they see they are against a very squishy team. Dark Harvest is all about snowballing, so the more Lillia gets fed, the more likely this Dark Harvest will pay off in that situation. Although, Phase Rush is still the preferred rune for pros.
The LCK seems to really understand how Lillia works as she has 10 wins and 0 losses in the LCK so far. During the pro play moment below, Lillia manages to survive and kite, while her team sets up the fight and peels for her to become the second biggest damage threat in the fight, only falling short by a few hundred damage.
Build
No matter what position Lillia is in, she needs to build Liandry’s Torment and Rylais Crystal Sceptre. Lillias passive keeps the Liandry’s stacks increasing, while the Rylais increases the damage of the Liandry’s Torment. Furthermore, Runic Echoes is a must build with blue smite if Lillia is in the jungle. Both top and jungle can build whatever boots are necessary for the game. The final few items can use a mix of Deadman’s’ Plate, Zhonyas Hourglass, or Morellonomicon.
With that said, Lillia is a solid jungler right now, with an added layer of alternative strategy playing her in the top planer. While the top lane certainly has strengths and weaknesses, Lillia jungler is great. She only gets even better when played in the right team comp and played by a great kiting player.
