Enchanters have been growing in popularity in solo lanes in competitive play. They see some play in both mid and top lane, and this guide will particularly focus on the top lane aspect of these champions.

In particular, this guide will be looking at Lulu and Karma for the picks you should look at, as they are the two most viable Enchanter picks in top lane at the moment. There are other enchanters that are pickable into the top lane as well, such as Soraka and Seraphine. For example, Soraka works well as a counter into Ornn, because she is able to remove the kill pressure that he would have over her with Call of the Forge God, and she also scales quite well alongside him. However, these are more niche picks that work mostly as counterpicks, unlike Lulu and Karma who can be fairly easily blind picked and flexed into multiple roles, which can cause some trouble for the enemy team in champion select since they won’t know what role you are going into, which can give your team the edge before you even get into game.

Additionally, champions such as Seraphine and Soraka are better to pick up once you get some experience playing ranged top laners such as Lulu and Karma, as Raka and Sera lack the same lane safety as the latter two. Lulu and Karma both possess a lot of safety tools such as their shielding, CC, mobility, and healing that champions like Seraphine and Soraka lack or do to a lesser extent compared to those two champions.

With all that said, this guide will address what the value is of these picks, and how you should play them both in and out of lane.

Why play an Enchanter?

Truthfully, I think this is the hardest part to get over when considering these champions. It can be tough if you’re playing solo and you want to play an Enchanter, as there is some pressure you will feel because you will have to rely on your teammates to some extent once laning phase finishes.

However, one huge benefit of these champions in top lane is that they are incredibly powerful laners due to their range and high base damages, combined with low cost build paths which allow them for much faster Mythic item spikes; Moonstone Renewer and Shurelya’s Battlesong are both only 2500 gold, whereas most Mythics you will run into are somewhere in the 3000+ gold area, with some Mythics costing 900 more gold. That’s a fairly sizable difference in the early game, especially if you’re able to get an early kill or two over your opponent. This also is not bad for solo queue, since people will often like to skirmish each other rather often in the first 15 or so minutes of the game, so having these quick to complete items gives not only you an advantage in the the top/jungle 2v2, but also in larger skirmishes and teamfights over early objectives such as Dragon and Rift Herald.

Another nice benefit is that these champions are generally more forgiving to play than other ranged top laners such as AD Carries, since you aren’t very gold reliant, it’s not as bad if you struggle with concepts such as last hitting minions. Most Enchanters that are picked in top lane also have very solid defensive tools for themselves, which allows you to play more aggressively since if you are playing your range correctly, you will be pretty hard to kill even in a hard forced gank. This is especially true for Lulu, since you have polymorph, a shield, a slow, and an ultimate that gives you hp, slows melee range, and also functions as a knockup to cancel movement abilities such as dashes.

To summarize, Enchanters' biggest benefits in top lane include: Solid early laning pressure, quick to complete itemization, and safety in lane that allows for a slightly wider margin of error.

Okay, so how do I play an Enchanter in Top Lane?

Thankfully, playing Enchanters in lane isn’t too difficult. You mainly want to use your high early game damage to poke your opponents out and focus on trying to get as much farm early as you can. An easy way to think about this is that any time the enemy laner walks up to try to clear the minions, that is your time to focus trading onto them, but make sure to balance that with also farming properly and not taking too much damage from minions. This is easier in top lane since often times what you can do if you are the strong side of the map - meaning that your team’s jungler is on your side of the map - is constantly duck in and out of the three bushes on the upper half of the lane while harassing the enemy with your auto attacks and spells. Since Lulu and Karma often take Aery as their keystone, even just auto-attacking the enemy has some enhanced damage to it.

When playing Enchanters during the early game, your main job is to play around your jungler to help them secure objectives such as the scuttle crab, Rift Herald, and the enemy’s jungle. Champions like Xin Zhao and Kindred are extremely potent with Lulu or Karma supporting them and can oftentimes carry 2v2 fights if played properly. Make sure that you’re constantly keeping track of where your jungler is pathing and letting them know when you have control/priority in your lane so that they can look to secure these objectives easily. At the end of the day, you are a support champion, so it’s important that you play off your teammates as much as you are able.

What about sidelaning and teamfights? Any tips?

Fortunately, playing Enchanters once laning phase ends is actually pretty straightforward. For side laning, you mainly just want to push the waves out and then group with your team. You aren’t looking to pressure towers on your own like you would as a Camille or Irelia, rather, you want to overwhelm the enemy with a numbers advantage before the other enemy side laner can even finish clearing their waves. Some players may also feel pressured by you shoving and then grouping and try to group up with their team as well, which can play away from their strengths and thus give your team a big advantage in fights since they aren’t getting the same gold and experience you may have.

As for teamfights themselves, you mainly want to look to buff the critical members on your team while making sure that the enemy cannot get to the important carries on your team and kill them. Your poke isn’t very valuable when setting up for objectives or in fights themselves, so for example when you play Karma and you get out of laning phase, you don’t want to use Mantra with Inner Flame as much, because your damage isn’t really useful. Rather, you want to try to use Mantra with Inspire as much as you can so that you can shield multiple members on your team and help them either reposition/disengage or help them engage/go aggressive in fights.

Lulu is a bit more challenging than Karma since she has multiple buffs rather than just a shield to either give her allies or use on her enemies. The easiest ability in teamfights is Glitterlance and Help, Pix! since you want to use Glitterlance on cooldown to slow enemies, and Help, Pix! Is something you generally save for your AD Carry or whoever may be getting off a lot of auto attacks during a fight. It can be useful on your tankline as well, but generally you want to give someone the buff from Pix to enhance their auto damage more than you want to give a tank a small extra shield.

Whimsy is a spell that actually has a bit of skill involved in regard to how you use it. A good polymorph can make the difference between winning and losing a team fight, and there are a few different ways you can use it. In terms of buffing your teammates, you may want to use it to help someone engage in a fight such as Xin Zhao who could use the extra speed. Another usage of the ability is the attack speed increase, which is very valuable on Marksman champions who want to auto attack a lot to get their damage off, such as Vayne or Twitch, which can make them melt either a single target or an entire team’s health bars in a matter of seconds. It is also very useful in shutting the enemy down in fights as well. One of my favorite answers into Viego is Lulu, because what you can do is if he becomes a champion that is easy to kill like an AD Carry or a mage, you can use Whimsy on Viego and burst him down before he can use Heartbreaker to escape. This is true as well for most assassins, and if you can interrupt an assassin’s combo with Whimsy and allow your team to turn around and take them down before they can finish off their target, it will make a huge difference in a fight if there are no other threats to your important carries on your team.

Finally, in terms of Wild Growth usage, it’s not quite as intense as Whimsy is in terms of skill expression, although there are a few cool usages of it with the knock-up you can use. Wild Growth generally either will want to go onto a target that’s being dove like an AD Carry, but you can also use it on your frontline to disrupt a fight with the combination of the knock-up and the slow aura that lasts a few seconds afterwards. You can also sometimes use Wild Growth to cancel key dashes, such as Lee Sin’s Resonating Strike, or if you’re really good at timing, you can even cancel important reposition tools such as Thresh’s Dark Passage, although generally opportunities to do that are rare in fights since you’ll want to save it for just the right moment to bail a teammate out over an aggressive ultimate.

Itemization

To cap this guide off, I’ll briefly talk about itemization. Generally you want to adapt your builds a lot when playing an Enchanter based on the enemy threats and how your teammates want to play out fights. If you want to be fast in your engages or to help your team disengage/reposition, Shurelya’s Battlesong is an excellent option for this purpose. Moonstone is your other option you want to consider for a Mythic item, and generally you will want this item more if your fights are going to be dragged out, such as if the enemy team and your team both have multiple tanky champions and can’t quickly end fights based off of picks. After one of these two options, Chemtech Putrifier is generally your next best choice since it allows your team to not worry as much about Grievous Wounds (especially your Marksman!), so you can generally never go wrong with this as your second item choice.

From there, you want to think about what your teammates need to succeed in fights. If the enemy has a key CC ability like Varus’ Chain of Corruption, a Mikael’s Blessing is an excellent choice, whereas if you are fighting these longer fights or your team plays in and out of fights a lot, Redemption is a really solid choice to help heal your whole team and reset the fights. Be sure to experiment a bit and figure out what items work best in which situations, but generally you want to focus on building support items over AP items like Deathcap. Sometimes items such as Zhonya’s can be valuable however, so don’t completely discount building mage items either.

Conclusion

They may be tougher to pull off in solo queue, but Enchanters can be incredibly valuable to your team, especially if you are duo queued with a jungle main, as they can become vital in helping you and your friend succeed and carry games. And while they may not be as flashy as most other top laners, they are solid lane picks as well, especially against melee champions, so don’t underestimate them whenever you go against one.

Best of luck on the Rift, and stay safe out there!