Mastering Aphelios - a Champion Guide by DIG Neo
There’s plenty of time to climb this season. Take Neo’s advice to master Aphelios for some free LP!
It’s still early into the season and plenty of players likely haven’t reached their goal for the season yet! For the Marksmen players out there, we covered some key details with Dignitas QNTMPAY’s bot laner Toàn "Neo" Trần, so that newer players and even experienced players alike can learn something new about the infamous “200 years” Champion, Aphelios.
Aphelios, The Weapon of the Faithful, is one of League of Legends’ most misunderstood Champions for his unique kit design. The majority of players have no understanding of how Aphelios works, and for good reason. We will dive into the basics of Aphelios and let Neo guide the discussion to highlight the specifics for piloting the Champion so players can use Aphelios’s complexity to their advantage!
When is Aphelios the Right Pick?
Right now, Aphelios is really good. You can first pick Aphelios any time!
It’s this exact reason that we chose to discuss Aphelios. To the average player trying to find the best Marksmen Champions to play, they will find a tier list that says quite the opposite! In fact, in U.GG’s Patch 12.5 Bot Lane Tier List, Aphelios is literally at the bottom with a staggering win rate of 45.18% in Platinum+ solo queue around the world!
Why is that and how could Aphelios have such a low win rate but pro players like Neo think he is top tier? Well, it’s for two key reasons. First, the Champion is unique with essentially five different basic attacks, five different basic abilities, and five different ultimate abilities! Second, because he is also incredibly easy to kill!
Most Marksmen are squishy by design as a counter to their high damage output, but the added problem of not having any escape tool or consistent self-peel makes Aphelios constantly vulnerable to enemies! This combination makes Aphelios incredibly difficult for new players to pick up and learn so few can get to the point where they truly understand how to play him!
However, if you change your perspective and instead look at Aphelios’s win rate based on experience with the Champion, Aphelios’s win rate is much higher. While it’s still not high compared to other Champions, the most important stat is looking at the difference. When you take the delta (the difference between the overall Champion win rate and the Champion win rate with over 50 games played), Aphelios ranks in the top 15 Champions. This means that experience on Aphelios makes a significant difference in winrate as it currently brings his win rate up 8% which is comparable to that of other complex Champions like Kalista, Ivern, Ryze, and Singed! So, once you actually learn Aphelios, he’s a fantastic pick! Even as a blind pick!
The Runes
Now that we know Aphelios is worth the investment, let’s start with the pre-game fundamentals like Runes! Precision is obviously the correct choice for the Primary Rune Set, but what’s worth investing in that tree? Like most Marksmen, it’s dependent on the enemy team composition. Overheal, Triumph, and Presence of Mind are all highly contested and mostly depend on personal preference. For the Legend line, Legend: Bloodline will be the most consistent option for late game scaling and should be prioritized. Finally, Coup de Grace is a great option against squishy enemy Champions, but more often it’ll be useful to have more damage against the enemy tanks so Cut Down will be beneficial! But what about the Primary Keystone?
If they have a lot of tanks, you need to go Conqueror. In teamfights, if it’s a long teamfight, you need to get stacked. In teamfights it is better if you can do that, but it needs to be a long fight! I think in the laning phase, it is so useless. Press the Attack is much better for the laning phase. For me, I use Press the Attack more often because it is better in the lane and in [our] games, we need to pressure the enemy in lane to get ahead first. The early game is more important to me, so Press the Attack is usually better.
Simply put, if the team compositions drafted seem to prefer 5-on-5 brawls, Conqueror will likely work out well for you as you have a higher chance of getting it stacked! However, to gain an advantage and snowball your lead, Press the Attack will provide much more value and consistency from game to game!
The Best Mythic
In terms of the build, many Aphelios players will prioritize Galeforce as their Mythic Item but some tend to occasionally opt into Immortal Shieldbow or even Kraken Slayer. Currently however, Galeforce is definitely the best option for its utility and overall adaptability for both offensive and defensive plays.
I only prefer Galeforce. It just gives you more escape, which is better for him. I would not consider taking the other two.
Gun Priorities
Now that the simple stuff is out of the way, it’s time to discuss his guns. Aphelios has five guns that he can use, but what are the best combos?
I think for me, I only prefer blue gun and white gun together. The next best is blue and green. The worst combo for me is the purple and white gun. It’s just terrible. To fix that, just spam the gun you have to get it out of the way. When I do that, I just steal jungle camps from River.
The most challenging feature of Aphelios is certainly how the guns can interact with each other. Looking at the guns in isolation is not that complicated. Green is for extra range, red is for lifesteal and survivability, purple is for crowd control and engage, blue is for area-of-effect and wave clear, and white is for high damage per second and objective shredding. However, as Neo points out, there are certainly gun combinations that work extremely well together, and some that just don’t! The blue and white gun combination allows for Aphelios to quickly stack chakram with a Q from his blue gun and gives him options to use his ultimate with blue for massive area-of-effect splash damage, or with white gun to gather even more chakrams for insane single target damage per second!
The next combo Neo favors is blue and green. Similarly, with grouped targets, Aphelios can Q with blue gun to activate marks from the green gun to allow for another area-of-effect basic attack but from range. If needed, Aphelios can then follow up with a blue gun ultimate for even more area-of-effect damage, or a green gun ultimate for even more green gun marks for follow up from a distance!
The worst combination as mentioned by Neo is white and purple. Basically, its only use is to run away from an enemy by placing a turret with the white gun and using the purple gun to snare them. Aside from that, there will always be better options for both damage and utility!
Surviving Alone
A common feature of the League of Legends meta in bot lane is for the Support to leave lane early and roam a lot! Despite Aphelios’s vulnerability without any escape tools, with the proper gun pairings he is able to hold his own quite well!
When the Support roams, I like having blue gun mostly. It has waveclear, which means a lot of safety for you. The second best is probably white gun. Whenever you can get blue and white, it’s just way better.
Once you get out of the laning phase however, ensuring you can maintain your gold income while minimizing risks is challenging as Aphelios. It does require teamwork which is often difficult to come by in solo queue!
If you want to get away with farming the wave, you need to call support from Jungle or Support. You need them to camp you there and let the enemy push in the waves.
The Core Build and Build Path
Before we dive into Aphelios’s intentions for the mid game, it’s important to know what to build after the Mythic Item is complete! In short, Aphelios’s core build is really only two items and Berserker’s Greaves! After that, it’s generally adaptable, but Infinity Edge, Guardian Angel, and more critical strike chance of another defensive item work best. But what’s the magical second item you may ask?
After Galeforce, if the enemy has no tank, then get Collector. If they have a tank, then Lord Dominik’s Regards is good. For Aphelios, you only need two items to hit a big power spike, so he’s a really good Champion.
Teamfighting
With the build formalities out of the way, it’s time to touch on the teamfighting and methods of carrying the team as Aphelios. After all, Aphelios is a Marksman like so many before him. So, the general principles are the same for him as they are for other Marksman. It’s easy to over complicate it, but Neo puts it quite simply.
Just pay attention to what gun you have and what you can do with it in the teamfight. The rest is the same as other Champions.
As long as you have the familiarity with the use of each gun and the corresponding abilities, it’s simply a matter of paying attention to the ammo left available and from there, it’s like any other Marksman. There are no necessary gun swapping combinations that players should focus on using to get higher damage combinations out. Instead, just trying to make sure you have the best guns for the teamfight is what really matters.
I don’t really do any last ammo gun swap combos. It’s not difficult to do, but I only prefer blue and green gun for teamfights. You can just use green gun ultimate to hit all the enemies and deal a lot of damage. The blue gun is best for teamfights, but white and green are really good, too! For the ultimate, blue is the best for damage, green is also fine. The red gun is only useful to ultimate with for surviving. The purple is so useless, don’t use it! People like purple for the root but Aphelios is the carry and should have a teammate that can engage for you. It’s a waste to use purple then.
Conclusion
There you have it! The overcomplicated Champion Aphelios, simplified! Players should prioritize understanding his guns, their abilities, and ultimates, and then take the time to consider when each would be appropriate. After enough time and games invested, players will truly understand the design concept behind Aphelios and take advantage of those that don’t! It’s well worth the time as Aphelios has had some of the highest carry potentials of any Marksmen since his release! Make sure to take the tips from Neo and put in the time to get used to the ins and outs of the Champion and enjoy the free LP!
Thanks to Neo for sitting down with me and discussing all 200 years of Aphelios! If you want to learn more from Neo, you can follow him on:
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