Bel’Veth is League of Legends’ newest Champion and has given the vast majority of players a weird feeling in their stomach. Is she strong? Is she easy? Why can’t I use her ultimate? We will dive into all of this and more in this guide to get you situated and start building your skills with, and against this new Champion.

Abilities

Passive - Death in Lavender

Bel’Veth’s passive provides her with a permanent boost in Attack Speed for each large monster or Champion take down. Additionally, she gains temporary bonus Attack Speed after using abilities. To help grasp this passive, think of Nasus stacks that result in a boost of Attack Speed rather than damage, and for the second part of her passive, think of Lee Sin’s passive!

Q - Void Surge

This ability causes Bel’Veth to dash in a selected direction dealing damage to enemies she contacts while dashing. Almost like Fiora’s Vitals that can be activated in four different directions, Bel’Veth can dash in those four same directions each independently of the others. Each of the four directions that Bel’Veth can dash in has a unique cooldown that scales with her Attack Speed (decreasing as she gains Attack Speed like Yasuo’s Steel Tempest).

W - Above and Below

Casting this ability causes Bel’Veth to slam her tail in a skillshot - around the size of Illaoi’s Tentacle Smash - that deals magic damage, knocks up all enemies hit, and slows them when they land. When Bel’Veth hits an enemy Champion with Above and Below, the cooldown of Void Surge in the direction of the enemy is automatically refreshed off its cooldown!

E - Royal Maelstrom

While Bel’Veth channels this ability, she deals damage to the lowest health enemy in the ability’s radius (switching targets when the first target dies or leaves the range) and gains a massive damage reduction buff and bonus Life Steal.

R - Endless Banquet

The passive of this ability causes every other basic attack against the same target to deal true damage. When getting a takedown on an enemy Champion or epic monster, a Void Coral is left behind in its place.

When activating her ultimate ability on this Void Coral, Bel’Veth gains additional Death in Lavender stacks and returns to her true form, dealing damage after a short duration to all enemies within the radius. While in this temporary true form, Bel’Veth gains health, out of combat movement speed, attack range, Attack Speed, and her Void Surge allows Bel’Veth to pass through terrain!

Runes

While it’s still early in Bel’Veth’s journey on Summoner’s Rift, there is more and more of a consensus as the days pass as to the optimal rune setup for Bel’Veth to take into the jungle. The Keystone you’ll want to take is Conqueror under the Precision tree. The reason to choose Conqueror is because her scaling attack speed and rapid ability usage can quickly stack it and immediately start putting in some serious work! Under the same Precision tree, you’ll want to take Triumph, Legend: Alacrity, and Last Stand. Last Stand is very important because Bel’Veth’s kit is designed to regain control of the battle even when she’s low and seemingly being defeated. Being low on health as Bel’Veth acts more in her favour than most players realize because of her powerful healing from two of her abilities.

As for the Secondary tree, the best option is the Inspiration tree with points in Magical Footwear and Cosmic Insight. There’s not much specifically to point out about these two runes other than the fact that they are very valuable for junglers in general for reducing Smite’s cooldown, providing free boots and rewarding proactively impacting the map. As for the rune stats, despite Bel’Veth having a unique capacity to stack Attack Speed endlessly, it’s better to take Adaptive Force to help more with the early game clear in both the Offense and Flex categories, and then Armor for the Defensive option.

The alternative option that some players are still favouring is Lethal Tempo with the remainder of the Rune setup the same as previously mentioned. Again, while the boost in Attack Speed is nice for a Champion that loves Attack Speed, it’s not critical for her to thrive. Additionally, the added Attack Range is not that significant on a Champion like Bel’Veth that already sticks to her opponents like glue! The main deciding factor between these two options is better early game or late game Runes and whether it’s more important to have more healing, or more Attack Speed.

Summoner Spells

As for Summoner Spells, like most Junglers, Smite is a must of course! As for the second Summoner Spell, Flash is ideal, but it’s not entirely unreasonable to consider Ghost as an option as well. In a sense, you can compare Bel’Veth to Master Yi or Shyvana, who are probably better with Flash, but can certainly take Ghost to help stick to their enemies even more and chase anyone across Summoner’s Rift!

Build

Now that we’ve got a grasp of her abilities and the best Rune setups, let’s look at what her in-game build should look like.

As a jungler, Bel’Veth should always start with Emberknife as her starting item just like any other on-hit jungler! Also like other on-hit junglers, Bel’Veth should rush Kraken Slayer has her first item and her Mythic Item. Ideally, she will build her upgraded boots (preferably, Plated Steelcaps), and Blade of the Ruined King.

Once this core build is out of the way, you’ll want to build either Death’s Dance or Wit’s End for some situational resistances depending on the enemies’ strengths. After this, the final two items should be Guinsoo’s Rageblade and Guardian Angel, or the other of Death’s Dance and Wit’s End that you did not build already. For the most part, it’s probably best to just build Guardian Angel to use the Stopwatch active and revive from Guardian Angel. When the revive passive is down and you have the gold in the late game, you can then swap it out for either Death’s Dance or Wit’s End or an alternative situational item that might be of use while you wait on that Guardian Angel cooldown.

Clear

At level one, you’ll want to start with Void Surge as it activates your passive several times and deals the most damage to help clear consistently. Since Bel’Veth is a manaless Champion, she can start at either blue or red buff if she wants to and should take full advantage of that to path in the direction that makes the most sense for the given game.

When starting with the red buff, you’ll want to basic attack once and buffer the animation with your first use of Void Surge. You should continue to basic attack twice between each use of Void Surge (just like you would with Lee Sin after every ability). Once complete, the buff should be around half health unless you’re being leashed. Regardless, you’ll need to kite it down towards your Krugs to help you quickly transition to that camp because you’ll ideally full clear! Start your Kurgs with Smite and use your Above and Below near the start of the camp so that it’s off cooldown to finish the small Krugs that spawn while kiting back towards Raptors! Then continue clearing Raptors, Wolves, and then start Blue and as it’s getting to about half health, kite it towards Gromp to clear both at once. When done properly, you should be finishing the clear before 3:15 on the game time with a leash, or just about 3:15 without a leash (but not having Smite for the Scuttle Crab).

Before we move onto the matchups, it’s important to remember that full clearing is not a necessity, and if there is a free gank or other opportunity on the map, Bel’Veth should look to siege the moment and return back to the camps after!

Matchups

It’s still early in Bel’Veth’s time on Summoner’s Rift, but it’s pretty clear that she’s meant to be a scaling jungler like Master Yi or Shyvana! As a result, she is countered heavily by heavy ganking junglers and proactive early game junglers. Some Champions that fit this mold would be Volibear, Elise, Wukong, Rek’Sai, Rammus, Sejuani, and Nunu & Willump. These junglers are either going to essentially be uninterrupted when trying to snowball their lanes as Bel’Veth will not be so strong in the early levels or have tremendous map pressure and can also counter jungle Bel’Veth, removing camps she needs to scale her Attack Speed!

Her better matchups include Assassin junglers that need a few kills to get rolling, other scaling junglers, or ganking junglers that don’t have the same bulky stats like the others listed! Some Champions that Bel’Veth does well against include Olaf, Karthus, Viego, Rengar, Kha’Zix, Nidalee, Hecarim, and Master Yi!

Ganking Methodology

With Bel’Veth, you have a massive strength in gap closure with your Void Surge and possibility to refresh an additional use of Void Surge! Unfortunately, Bel’Veth’s only source of crowd-control to get off her damage is from her Above and Below, which is a skillshot-reliant knock up. If Bel’Veth does not land this skillshot, she will not be able to pull off an effective gank without a teammate’s crowd control to help her out.

As a result, Bel’Veth should look to gank lanes that have setup for her to then follow up with her Above and Below after she has used Void Surge to gap close in the direction. When hitting Above and Below, this will refresh that use of Void Surge, after she is already on top of the enemy! If she needs to attempt to gank a lane that does not have such a setup, she should look to pull off a lane gank if possible so that she can surprise the enemy and have an easier time getting on top of them where she can deal as much damage as possible and get off those much-needed basic attacks!

Teamfighting

Last but not least, we need to talk about teamfighting as Bel’Veth. The last thing you want to do is rush in and try to engage the fight. You’ll die, and you’ll probably die fast! Instead, just like Master Yi or Shyvana, you’ll want to be prepared to move in as soon as the opening presents itself. Before every teamfight, you should consider what major sources of crowd control are available to the enemy team that could stop you from popping off, and what Summoner Spells are down on enemy carries! As long as you live long enough to activate your Ultimate on an enemy Champion, the snowball should start to roll, and you should find yourself shredding through the enemies one at a time like a lawnmower! Especially later into the game, your Attack Speed will be so high that when you get to sit and right click for a few seconds, even the tankiest of enemies should fall before you! That’s why it’s critical to ensure you have the opportunity to do just that and have the patience to wait out those major abilities!

Conclusion

Bel’Veth is a very fun Champion by design but is clearly taking a lot of getting used to by her early Solo Queue statistics! Always remember to take new Champions like Bel’Veth to Normal Games before rushing into Solo Queue so you can learn the ins and outs of her playstyle! It’s easy to read and understand the concepts behind her gameplay, but it’s a whole other ball game to actually act it out in a real setting against other players! Take the time to practice using her abilities and get used to the patience you need before running into the fight!