Before we start, I will go over a brief history of Lulu from her introduction to the MSI tournament.

Background

Lulu was released on patch 1.0.0.136 in Season 2. Designed by Xypherous, known for such champions as Renekton, Riven, Nautilus, Oriana, and Fizz, Lulu was the first support released after Leona. Many of Xypherous’ champion designs have aged very well, Orianna was given a lot of praise for her unique design and coinciding playstyle and Renekton, although he didn’t shine at first, had become a baseline top lane pick for many splits in professional play. Lulu and Orianna have proven to be the most enduring designs of Xypherous still relevant even many years after their release and many iterations of the meta.

In patch 3.14 Lulu received changes to make her less oppressively powerful. Despite the intentions behind the balance changes, Lulu was a huge force in the mid and top lane and was nerfed in patch 4.5 and 4.13 and provided this context for the latter changes:

Lulu's Glitterlance slow no longer scales with ability power, and Whimsy's movement speed buff duration now scales with rank. Whimsy also costs less at later levels.

"We initially thought solo lane Lulu was a unique addition to the game, so we wanted to let her stay a viable pick in both solo and duo lanes. That said, top lane Lulu is currently shutting down a lot of diversity in competitive play and, because Lulu's solo lane and support power are tied so closely together, we had to go for changes that reduce her oppressive strengths first. As an aside, we know this isn't a great situation where we keep indirectly reducing support Lulu's power to maintain her viability as a mage, so this is something we'll have to really consider for the future."

This was Lulu’s last balance change and has since remained untouched. Much to her credit she is still picked very frequently this season. The GE Tigers utilized Lulu in their trademark "Juggermaw" comp which revolved around using Kog’maw as bait, then using Lulu’s Help. Pix! (E) and Wild Growth ( R) to save Kog’maw and allow him to continue to deal damage.

Meanwhile in the NALCS Lulu would be mostly played by TSM Dyrus, who won all three games he played on Lulu. She also made an appearance in the mid lane at the recent Mid-Season Invitational, banned 9 times, picked 6 times, and only coming out with a single win, Lulu held one of the worst pick-to-win ratios at the tournament. It is worth mentioning that many of the games in which Lulu was picked that she was played as a mid-laner. While Lulu did have a poor win record at MSI it is clear that through every season and meta that she has persisted to be relevant for everything she brings to the table, be it damage, crowd control, utility, or defense.

Image courtesy of paper-neko on deviantart

The Baseline Support

Many different players have what I like to call a baseline champion for a certain role. A baseline champion is a champion that you should start out with, practice often, and master as the champion teaches many aspects of the role and is simple to play but not easy to master. Some of these supports are Sona, Janna, and Thresh.

Sona might be the epitome of a baseline support as she has her strengths and is widely regarded to be an easy champion to play. Janna is the “medium difficulty” pick in this regard as she is a high tier support having seen play over many seasons and while she may seem simple to play, a highly skilled Janna player can interrupt many abilities in the vide below.

Thresh is the last representation of a baseline support as he is incredibly difficult to play and to master.As now TL Xpecial showcases, Thresh can be terrifying when mastered. The reason Thresh is a baseline support is because Thresh will not ever fade out of relevance as some supports have in the past. Since his introduction Thresh has seen many balance changes and outright nerfs to his kit and has still consistently seen play. Once you learn to play Thresh, you can always pick him no matter the meta or the season, he is simply that good.

Since the introduction of solo lane Lulu, she has not seen much play in the bottom lane, teams such as TSM prefer to pick Lulu as a top laner as she is able to farm at a distance with Glitterlance and still does her job even with little gold. TSM has shown that they like to picm Lulu for team compositions designed to protect an ally as many of her abilities scale with AP, the stat solo lane Lulu players prioritize as can be seen in images below.

Image from LoLKing

Image from Probuilds.net

The Kit

Thresh is held in very high regard and one of the many reasons can be that he offers constant pressure in lane. Thresh’s Flay (E) passive allows him to deal relevant amounts of damage throughout the game as well as put a hurting on his laning opponents. Lulu’s Pix, Faerie Companion passive may not be as strong as Thresh’s Flay passive but it gives Lulu a similar amount of presence in lane. Lulu’s passive grants her more damage when she has the opportunity to do so (i.e she can auto attack) but strengthens her shield target’s damage as well as Pix, Faerie Companion scales with Lulu’s AP and the attack speed of whichever ally is the recipient of Help, Pix!

All champion and champion abilty images courtesty of LoL Wikia

One of the reasons Lulu has persisted throughout the many iterations of the meta is that her abilities are all very flexible whether they be used for defense or offense. Her Whimsy (W) being the shining star of her kit (outside of her ultimate). Whimsy is effectively a stun as the target cannot attack nor cast any spells, this also acts as a silence and a slow. This means that Whimsy is able to deal with assassins such as Zed, Katarina, and Ahri due to her ability to render the target harmless and vulnerable during its duration. Whimsy also gives a large movement speed bonus, allowing you Lulu to roam or place wards deeper into the jungle as she can make a quick getaway.

This ability is especially useful in all-ins in the bottom lane. Where some supports would take exhaust, we can think of Whimsy as a variation of Exhaust; slowing the target and decreasing their threat potential.

Glitterlance (Q) and Help, Pix! (E) have great synergy together, able to poke from a long distance as well as provide vision these two abilities can help secure a kill on a target or be used to peel.

Lulu’s ultimate Wild Growth is an incredibly versatile tool in many aspects of what a marksman needs from their support. Lulu is able to follow up CCs from a distance, only needing to be in range of her ally to cast it, she can follow up any CC with a knock-up to further disrupt enemies. She is able to use it on her allies who are in danger, such as disrupting Zed by casting Wild Growth on her targeted ally as he comes out of his Death Mark (R ), or save an ally from ignite by giving them bonus health. This ability can also be used to bait your enemies, Lulu is able to get closer to the damage threats, casting Wild Growth on herself she can ensure her safety while knocking-up enemies, she opens opportunities for her allies to come in and get the kills.

The Set Up

I like to use a set up of 9x AD Marks, 9x Armor Seals, 4x Flat Mana Regen Glyphs, 5x MR Glyphs, and 3 Flat HP Quints Glyphs. The Quints are interchangeable with flat armor as Lulu does not have a generous amount of base armor, I choose to use flat HP quints as I prefer to play more aggressive early in the laning phase and the bonus flat HP helps during all-ins. Flat AD marks give Lulu a respectable amount of auto attack harass early on and the mana regen glyphs enable me to poke with Glitterlance more often.

The mastery page is a fairly standard support page, with 9 points in defense for a bit of durability and 21 points into utility for extra pots, cooldown reduction, mana regen, and gold.

Why Lulu?

When considering the strengths of a champion we also need to consider the next, or the, best alternative when doing so. Here we will have to do some cross examination between some of the best baseline supports.

The above image is meant to tally each of the champions abilities in each of the categories given. So simplicity sake we will be looking primarily at the amount of abilities a champion has to offer in the categories rather than the numbers of each ability. While both champions have the same number of damage spells, Sona comes out ahead in burst damage once she has her Crescendo (R ) available, while Lulu has more damage available during the early parts of the game. Each champion has their strengths but when compared Lulu is a bit less vulnerable than Sona. Lulu has the benefit of being able to Polymorph a champion to shut down their damage for a short time and she can gain health to help her survive. While Sona can defensive use Crescendo it becomes crucial that she land it effectively and Aria of Perseverance’s (W) heal can be affected by users of ignite.

Janna has a similar skill set as Lulu but the primary difference here is that Janna is more effective with the proper timing and reaction time. As presented in a video in the beginning, Janna is capable of canceling many champion’s abilities with the use of her Howling Gale (Q) and Monsoon (R ). Her Eye of the Storm (E) shields her ally while providing them more AD, something a Marksman can benefit greatly from. However, Eye of the Storm is most effective when timed properly, either to block an incoming attack, buff up the damage on an ability during its casting (such as Caitlyn’s Piltover Peacemaker: (Q) or Grave’s Buckshot (Q)). Even Janna’s ultimate can be difficult to use effectively as it can throw enemies to safety during an all-in or leave Janna vulnerable if she is engaged on after the initial cast. While Janna may seem better on paper, it takes practice and skill to play her to making the most of her skill set.

At first glance Thresh has much more damage than Lulu while scaling very well to boot. Similar to Janna, Thresh is the most effective when in the hands of a veteran player, able to land Death Sentence’s (Q) and effectively Flay (E) makes a skill Thresh player shine. Perhaps one of the few “support carries”, Thresh is able to make plays, secure kills, and rescue allies like none of the other support champions. With all of the benefits of playing Thresh, he can also seem extremely weak when you don’t land your Death Sentence or Flay as those are your primary forms of CC. Not landing these abilities at the most crucial moments can mean that Tryndamere or Katarina are left to freely wreak havoc on your team and Marksman.

The primary benefit of using Lulu as a baseline support is that many of her abilities are point-and-click, meaning she has few skill shots to aim and primarily uses good timing and game sense to make the most of her kit. For example a veteran Lulu player might tag Vayne with Help, Pix! as she uses her Final Hour (R ) to keep vision of her during the use of Vayne’s Tumble (Q), she may also Polymorph her to shorten the amount of time Vayne has access to the addition AD bonus of Final Hour. When and where to use Wild Growth is also primarily a knowledge based decision as we can simply cast Alt+R to self cast Wild Growth or smart cast it onto our allies to save them or knock-up near by enemies. The use of Whimsy can also be used to speed up allies in conjunction to allies who have been buffed with Wild Growth, able to consistently provide damage with Wild Growth’s slow and Whimsy’s ability to speed up allies.

Lulu’s flexible kit allows her to remain effective with the right decision making rather than the appropriate skill. Champions such as Janna and Thresh are example of champions who are more effective when played at a higher skill level and while these champions are arguably better than Lulu in the support role, there are benefits of learning to play Lulu and using her as a baseline support which the other support champions do not have.