The gist of playing Blitzcrank: If you land your hooks, you’re probably doing most of what a good Blitzcrank is doing. But reality is a bit harsh for one league’s old champions, feared for having one of the longest range “win game” buttons through landing crucial hooks with his Q – Rocket Grab. For a fairly straightforward kit, he’s one of the harder champions to pilot successfully, especially in the higher ranks as players get better at playing around his threat window. He’s often punished, bullied in lane by champions who can more safely play their kit, and more often than not, people get quite passionately upset, to say the least, if you’re missing your hooks.

But hey, we have a guide with Lee “IgNar” Dong-geun, a longtime player of our favourite robot, to share with you some info on his favourite champion.

So why is Blitzcrank fun?

I think it's like, the kind of showmanship is big. Usually, like 90%, it can be shit [champion pick in game], but 10%, it can be a good carry. It's harder to use well, and if you do, it looks really cool. That's it. It's cool when you play good, because it's usually not a good champion, and hard to play Blitzcrank in a good way.

- IgNar

Showmanship is a surprisingly accurate word for Blitzcrank, where crowds cheer almost as much as when they see Teemo picked, singular long-ranged hooks on carries create massive, explosively loud fights for the crowds to shout to, and it looks really cool when you land all your hooks. When you’re playing Blitzcrank, it’s one of the biggest playmaking supports that doesn’t directly involve jumping into the team and flying around like the many highly mobile champions. It’s simple, you find a cool angle, hit a good hook, and you’ll look pretty good on your champion. A kind of simplicity found only in some of League’s oldest champions.

I think you’ll also have to keep in mind, as IgNar says, Blitzcrank is not usually a good champion. It’s the kind of underdog pick that often gets associated with “cheesing” and “low elo pubstomper” because, well, it’s fairly accurate. You have an incredibly high impact when you hit a hook, but the downtime often leaves your lane heavily punishable, where if you fail to land hooks, the whole gimmick falls apart. But at the same time, that exactly is what makes him fun, because succeeding on underdog champions against the metagame is a flexing factor to how some may enjoy playing League of Legends.

Skill Rankup Order

To keep things simple, IgNar suggests the common Q-max into W-max, giving you more movement speed and attack speed from maxing W, and lower cooldowns on your main hook ability. The idea is that by having a lower cooldown hook, your window of vulnerability and opportunity is much stronger, because let’s face it, if your hook is down, Blitzcrank isn’t doing much outside of running fast and hitting people.

Runes

So typically, Blitzcrank tends to go the melee support augments, primarily Aftershock, Guardian, Glacial Augment, and Spellbook. We asked IgNar for his preference.

In my opinion, for Blitzcrank to be good, [Unsealed] Spellbook. If you have Spellbook as a melee support, you can make so many angles, like with ghost, exhaust, cleanse, so unless it's against stuff like another melee supports where you need to be tankier, usually Spellbook is the best in my opinion.

- IgNar

While it may surprise you a bit that IgNar is dropping a bit of lane presence with the more lane-dominant defensive tree keystone runes or Glacial Augment, the logic is that Blitzcrank wants to be finding key angles more than he wants to be stronger in lane. Sure, the logic of win lane, win game can sometimes apply, especially with more aggressive carries like Draven who want kills in lane, but think about it like this: Your primary goal as Blitzcrank is either engaging through hooking key targets into vulnerable spots, or zoning off opponents with the threat of your hook.

Only spellbook gives you that option, because it lets you say take ghost to catch people off guard, Exhaust to slow and weaken carries, Cleanse to suddenly get out of being caught out of position, or when the opponent needs their cc to escape from Blitz. Spellbook gives you the angles to win the game through your hook, rather than having more pure stat advantages from the defensive tree runes.

But really, it also just happens that most of the other runes tend to fall off. Your defensive runes tend to be stronger early, but odds are that having any of the summoner spells will give you way more options to find angles in the game. Blitzcrank isn’t exactly a scaler by numbers; he scales more in how dangerous it is to get hooked in the later stages of the game where teamfights are more common. All you really want to do is hook well and find angles.

Build Options

IgNar Soloqueue Blitzcrank build. Notice he’s very versatile with his build path, taking advantage of both enchanter support items like Mikaels and Bandlepipes. He combines the classic celerity + nimbus cloak with Hexflash combo for surprise engages and speed. Item builder site - Shyv.net

I like locket usually, because you get assists easily (laughs). Frozen heart is usually good, but I think if you can, Bandlepipes, the one that gives attack speed around you if you cc someone, is really good.

- IgNar

Blitzcrank is pretty typical of a melee support build. Cheap items like Locket, Frozen Heart, Bandlepipes, and Zekes Convergence are all solid items. In particular, Frozen Heart has a little extra synergy through getting a bit of extra damage and increased shield for his passive: Mana Barrier from Frozen Heart. Generally, though, build to survive when playing support.

As for Bandlepipes, it has a rather strong general synergy with Blitzcrank. His ultimate benefits from attack speed, where hitting them before you cast your ult gives bonus procs of damage, movement speed, and attack speed, helping your team catch up with you on engage and deal more damage, and generally is easily applied from either Blitzcrank’s Q or E.

When to pick Blitzcrank?

IgNar shared his perspective more so towards pro play and Blitzcrank, but we do believe it applies quite a bit to solo queue, especially in the higher ranks.

I feel like Blitzcrank is way too hard to play in my opinion. I feel like after the change to fearless, I don't know why, but it's harder to pick it. This meta is really snowbally, so if you just lose lane too hard, the snowball is going to be too big in my opinion. Blitzcrank is not a consistent snowball champ; it's just really hard to pick. But maybe against Braum, you can pick it.

- IgNar

We’ve established that Blitzcrank isn’t exactly a powerhouse of a pick, but it’s kind of a unique situation. In theory, Blitzcrank is very powerful in a snowbally game, as he has one of the best snowballing tools early for making picks through his Q. However, in practice, you’re often forced to hold it solely for the threat because the moment it misses and it goes on cooldown, the opponent has a massive window to punish. For reference, Level 1 Blitzcrank Q is a 20s cooldown with a 100 mana cost, roughly 37% of his max mana. That’s an incredible amount of downtime that most capable players can take advantage of to make sure Blitzcrank cannot recover in lane.

But as IgNar says, it’s consistency. There will be games where you miss your hooks, and it feels entirely like a dice roll. The most you can do is try to make easier angles for yourself with runes like Unsealed Spellbook.

How to stand out as a good Blitzcrank player?

I think it's really obvious, but most people, including good players like high elo players, don't think about, or forget about it, you need to think about your teammate's skills, your teammate's skills, let's say you have Sejuani in the jungle, don't use your skills until it's a really good angle. Just save it until your team makes the good angle for you.

- IgNar

In a nutshell, making sure you’re using your abilities with some thought, which seems obvious, but in practice, a lot of players play on autopilot. Some hypothetical examples below:

• Holding Q for the threat of using it.
• Holding Q until after your opponent uses their mobility, or gets caught by someone else’s crowd control, to make it easier to land the hook.
• Checking for vision prior to aiming for a hook, or even feeling out if they have vision by the way the opponent moves (e.g., if they seemingly move away from where you’re hidden in a bush or behind a wall).
• The Sejuani example from IgNar, where your E – Power Fist, is an excellent way to help stack Sejuani’s E passive – Permafrost together when you’re in melee range of the target, letting you lock down targets while still having your hook ready to use. You can let Sejuani engage first and follow up without needing to use your hook until necessary.
• Blitzcrank’s ultimate – Static Field, breaks shields and cancels channels (well, technically, 5-second silence). Use it meaningfully (e.g., stopping a Katarina/Samira mid ult without needing to run up to them).
• If you think your opponent is going to jump on top of your carry, you can always hover around them while repeatedly clicking on the enemy target about to jump in, especially if you per-activate Power-Fist, which will let you cc them without needing to aim anything. (Although be wary, it has a duration.)
• Keep in mind basic Blitzcrank combos. You get extra damage the more autoattacks you land before you use Blitzcrank’s ultimate.

In a nutshell, use your abilities smartly as Blitzcrank, as a lot of his power is tied directly to when and how you use your Rocket Grab, more so than the damage it gives.

Conclusion

Even if Blitzcrank may not be the best of champions, he is definitely a very fun pick to consider in your pool. Everyone loves a good Blitzcrank who lands their hooks and roams the map, putting pressure everywhere to opponents who have to warily play around being hooked out of nowhere.