Lulu fell off the map as a support a long time ago. She saw play in the top and mid lanes for a while directly after that, but small changes to her eventually pushed her out of the spotlight completely. I think she's one of the most underrated support picks in the game currently, though less universally powerful as some other picks.

Ability Overview

Passive - Pix, Faerie Companion: Pix is a wild Faerie that accompanies Lulu. Pix will fire a barrage of magical energy at targets that Lulu attacks.

Usage: The magical bolts from Pix can be blocked by minions and other champions. Create some empty space between you and your target for maximum damage.

Q - Glitterlance: Pix and Lulu each fire a bolt of magical energy that heavily slows all enemies it hits. An enemy can only be damaged by one bolt.

Usage: With the ability to reposition Pix with Help, Pix!, you can set up very long range Glitterlance slows. Understanding that Pix slightly trails whoever he is attached to is key to not missing Glitterlance on the primary target, something that is a lot easier than it may sound.

W, Whimsy: If cast on an ally, grants them Attack Speed and Movement Speed for a short time. If cast on an enemy, turns them into an adorable critter that can't attack or cast spells.

Usage: While the polymorph effect is very powerful, it is vital to know when to buff your AD Carry instead. In situations where the enemy team has already blown most of their hard crowd control or had very little to begin with, giving your squishy friend additional kiting power is often preferable. This also goes for situations where you are heavily outnumbered. Polymorphing one of three enemies coming to kill your AD Carry won't save them very often.

E, Help, Pix!: If cast on an ally, commands Pix to jump to an ally and shield them. He then follows them and aids their attacks. If cast on an enemy, commands Pix to jump to an enemy and damage them. He then follows them and grants you vision of that enemy.

Usage: Attaching Pix to an enemy champion grants True Sight of that champion, meaning you can see them even if they are invisible. This is more valuable than ever with the preseason changes to Control Wards and Invisibility/Camoflage.

R, Wild Growth: Lulu enlarges an ally, knocking nearby enemies into the air and granting the ally a large amount of bonus health. For the next few seconds, that ally gains an aura that slows nearby enemies.

Usage: The slowing aura on this ability is commonly overlooked. The aura lasts 7 seconds and has a larger radius than it appears to have because it is coupled to a size increase in the source of the aura. There are situations where Wild Growth is best used to help a teammate stick to a target.

Skill Order

The most common skill order is Help, Pix!, Whimsy, and then Glitterlance.

Pix is Lulu's shielding ability and is therefore her "always useful" ability. While the cooldown doesn't decrease with skill rank, the extra 40 shield per rank or 30 damage per rank is too good to ignore.

Whimsy scales incredibly well with skill rank, but simply isn't used often enough to warrant maxing first in most cases. Each rank drops the cooldown by 1 second, increases both the buff duration and the polymorph duration, increases the percentage attack speed granted, and, importantly, doesn't increase the mana cost of the ability!

Glitterlance may seem like the obvious ability to max first, but without a lane of your own to farm and push, the benefits of additional ranks aren't that attractive. With each rank, Glitterlance gets 45 base damage and costs 5 more mana. The cooldown and slow, the more important aspects for support Lulu, don't change with rank, meaning level 1 Glitterlance is nearly as effective as level 5 Glitterlance.

Runes

I take very defensive runes on Lulu support. These allow you to chip away at your opponents in lane early and often without a huge risk to yourself. You can, however, take more offensive runes depending on how threatening the enemy team is to you.

Marks: I take attack damage marks for the early game power spike. Lulu has a strong level two and can make favorable trades in the early game. As such, she is often looking for trades that include at least one auto-attack to trigger Thunderlord's Decree when grouped with Glitterlance and Help, Pix!. Attack damage marks give you more bang for your buck early in the game. If you plan on running ability power in your runes or buying more than a little ability power through the course of the game, hybrid penetration or pure magic penetration marks can be good choices as well.

Seals: Seal slots are most efficiently used for either armor or flat health runes. If you take armor quintessences, take flat health here. If you take some other quintessences, you have a choice between armor or health. Pick whichever you don't expect to be building first through your item selections. Armor/magic resistance and health are more effective when paired.

Glyphs: Flat or scaling magic resistance are the best defensive option here. Flat or scaling ability power are great for those of you who like to live dangerously and buff harder in exchange for being more vulnerable. Avoid cooldown runes here as every item in your build has cooldown reduction. You'll reach maximum cooldown reduction after four items. As for when you're sitting on one or two items, you don't need the cooldown reduction as badly as you'll be switching between burning your Thunderlord's Decree cooldown and playing passively.

Quintessences: I take armor runes here because I also take health seals. Other interesting options here are ability power runes for generally more potent abilities and movement speed runes for those of you who find yourselves doing a lot of roaming. As the movement speed quintessences are percentage based, all those Cloud Drakes become even better.

Masteries

As Lulu, you'll be taking all masteries that deal with regeneration, cooldown reduction, and movement speed.

Regeneration masteries help you get the upper hand in the long war in bottom lane. Being able to use more abilities without recalling and recover from enemy attacks faster can open up better recall timings, time to ward on your own schedule, and other map control benefits.

All of Lulu's abilities have some sort of duration attached to them. Glitterlance has a slow, Whimsy has a polymorph or buff effect, Help, Pix! has a shield duration, and Wild Growth has a health buff and slow zone duration. As with all duration skills, you want to maximize uptime, or the ratio of time the buff is active against how long the buff is inactive. Intelligence allows you to get 45% cooldown reduction, a mark you'll often hit, and maximize duration uptimes for all of your spells.

As with any support, movement speed is necessary because you'll always be moving around the map to ward.

The Item Build

Core

Eye of the Watchers: Your combination Sightstone/Frostfang item. Saves an inventory slot over Frost Queen's Claim which is invaluable for having a dedicated Control Ward slot. The ability power and mana regeneration make it the clear choice over the Ancient Coin support item route for Lulu.

Redemption: General consensus is that this item is incredibly strong and is likely to see changes down the line. It's a core item partially for that reason, but also because it covers one of Lulu's weaknesses, her inability to heal her teammates. The healing portion of Redemption's active actually heals more than the summoner spell Heal at every level, isn't restricted to two targets, and is on a much lower cooldown. Beyond the healing, the active has a massive radius, deals 10% maximum health true damage to enemies, and has range equivalent to Twisted Fate's ultimate. The base stats on the item are also generally good stats. Flat health, both types of regeneration, cooldown reduction, and healing and shielding power. This should be your first item aside from Sightstone and Frostfang.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: These are your primary boot choice because of the cheap cooldown reduction on both abilities and summoner spells. You should feel free to switch out your boots late in the game to Mercury Treads or one of the speedier boots, especially if you hit the cooldown reduction cap with your other four big items.

Other Options

Ardent Censer: This is another item that allows Lulu to grant her allies healing. By shielding an ally with Help, Pix!, the Ardent Censer buff now adds health on-hit in addition to magic damage on-hit and attack speed. Lulu also uses all of the stats on Ardent Censer (cooldown reduction, ability power, movement speed, healing power, and mana regeneration) quite well.

Locket of the Iron Solari: While not the mandatory buy it was in previous seasons, the power was shifted into raw stats and the shielding active ability. For the first time in a long time, supports have a legitimate low cost, high magic resistance item while not being stuck buying stats for their teammates in the form of the old Aegis of the Legion. This is an item with great stats for complementing the flat health you'll get from Eye of the Watchers and Redemption.

Abyssal Scepter: As always, this is the item to get if your team has multiple magic damage threats. You'll often be in aura range of at least a few enemies in any given fight. 10% increased magic damage is nothing to sneeze at if you can keep the aura applied consistently.

Champions to match up with:

Vayne – Lulu and Vayne are similar in that they are both more powerful in small skirmishes. During the duration of a single Whimsy, Vayne can often get a Silver Bolts trigger off, which is nearly always the difference between her living or dying in a close duel. Glitterlance further emphasizes Vayne's agility advantage in most duels. Help Pix! and Wild Growth both also shine as single target defensive abilities in small fights, granting an ally 500+ effective health as early as level 6!

Jinx – A huge part of Jinx having success in fights relies on activating her passive, Get Jinxed!, by racking up assists or kills. Lulu's Whimsy, when ally-cast, increases the same stats that Jinx naturally gains from activations of her passive, attack speed and movement speed. As such, Lulu can artificially trigger Jinx's desired power plays for 3 to 4 seconds at a time. As with any hard-scaling AD Carry, the shield and health gains from the other parts of Lulu's kit are very valuable.

Lane dominant AD Carries – This would include champions like Ashe, Caitlyn, and Draven that can control space well either through utility abilities or the sheer damage threat they represent in a 2v2 scenario. These champions can cover up power troughs in the form of the very long cooldown of Whimsy, her only hard crowd control, and her relatively low defensive stats.

Lulu is really only an ideal support in one case: teamed with a hypercarry type champion past laning phase. Despite this, I believe her strength lies in being a passable support in many situations outside of that.

Laning Phase

Lulu can function as a lane bully into a lot of support matchups because of the almost-guaranteed nature of her damaging abilities. If you can safely get into range you put Pix on the enemy support or AD, a Glitterlance and follow-up auto attack will trigger Thunderlord's Decree and put out a surprising amount of burst early in lane.

Specifically, Lulu can usually aggress into lanes with pick-focused supports, as they are far more comfortable being the ones dictating when and where engagements happen. This includes champions like Thresh, Blitzcrank, and Bard. The most important part of skirmishes with these champions is to be careful upon disengagement. They'll be looking to hook or stun you after you've blown all your cooldowns and leave you with no choice but to flash away.

Against more dangerous lanes, Lulu's versatility allows her to play a defensive role. While obviously not of Janna-level defensive prowess, Pix, Glitterlance, and eventually Wild Growth can allow you to squeeze out of a lot of precarious spots alive and occasionally turn bad situations into kills for your team. While a minor point, there's an advantage that Whimsy has over a pure stun as a defensive ability.. The opponent can still move. While this may sound like a bad thing, there will be a delay between the Whimsy hitting your opponent and the opponent realizing they have been polymorphed in the heat of battle. This lures them further into your lane's threat range and guarantees additional damage in the next few seconds, and that can make all the difference, whether it means getting a kill or taking lane dominance, if only for long enough to push and recall. Sometimes that's all you need in one of these dangerous lanes.

I've found that the most difficulty comes in lanes against Caitlyn and Ashe players. Caitlyn's range makes it very difficult to find a favorable trade. Between her maze of traps and threat of a 90-Caliber Net to Headshot combo, she will generally be a larger threat to you than you are to her. Ashe poses a similar issue. Her high range and permanent slowing ability means you'll likely win the initial trade, but take a lot of damage trying to retreat. Lulu also lacks a method of negating an Enchanted Crystal Arrow, such as a Black Shield or a Devour.

Team Fighting

In a full-blown teamfight, there often aren't a lot of difficult choices to make as Lulu. The split nature of her abilities make the choices fairly obvious and premeditated based on the manner in which the fight is being engaged

If your team aggresses, you'll have far more options in how to use your abilities. You either send Pix to a frontliner and try to Glitterlance to force a fight or hold your shield to fend off a particularly pesky backline diver. You're generally holding your Whimsy for a counterengage on your backline champions in this situation, with the option to Whimsy your AD for the large infusion of movement speed and attack speed. Wild Growth follows this same pattern. You look for either a multiman knockup or additional crowd control on a high priority target. Lacking an aggressive use you deem "good enough," you throw it on your AD or backline mage at the first sign of danger. It is important to not hold your ultimate too long for an underappreciated reason I mentioned earlier.

The main benefits of Wild Growth (the knockup and infusion of health) are so obvious that many people don't respect or perhaps even know about the last facet of Wild Growth. It grants the affected ally a slowing aura (scaling as 30%/45%/60% based on skill rank) for 7 seconds. Even if the area of effect is small, that's ridiculously powerful!

Conclusion

In summary, Lulu is a support that specializes in passing large buffs to important single targets and controlling space with Glitterlance and Wild Growth. The dual nature of both Whimsy and Help, Pix! allow Lulu to be flexible and have interesting decisions to make with her cooldowns at every stage of the game.

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