Vayne is widely considered to be one of the best tank killers in League of Legends at the moment. This status comes from her Silver Bolts providing percent max health damage in the form of true damage as well as her excellent chase potential. Her decent mobility and stealth also gives her some help in being aggressive or kiting out team fights. So why isn’t she picked or banned in every game?

Long Range Engage

Maokai and Nautilus are extremely strong picks in the meta right now. Both of them bring point-and-click crowd control which makes them significant threats to back line carries. Sejuani, Zac, and Gragas are the most common picks in the jungle and all have options that allow them to crowd control back line targets from long range. Gnar, Hecarim, Sion, Lissandra and Rek’Sai are more even more common picks that want to get to the back line and eat a carry. Hecarim in particular. He thrives off of Teleport engages with Homeguard that are so fast and devastating that you don’t have time to peel him off your carry.

Even Vi in her significantly weaker state in the meta would be a decent pick against Vayne because of her long range point and click lock down. Any of these combined with a Sivir make it incredibly difficult for a Vayne to survive long enough to do significant damage. If a Vayne is picked before the opponents have shown their composition(if it is picked before red side has picked 4 champions or before blue side has picked all of theirs) then it isn’t safe. Your opponent can simply pick something that has the ability to jump on Vayne and eliminate her. Her short range also requires her to be in range of these engage methods in order to even do damage.

Itemizations Issues

The current meta for itemization inherently hurts Vayne. Vayne thrived when top laners were getting Sunfire Cape and Spirit Visage as their first two items, Frozen Hearts were at most one per team, and Thornmail was rarely ever bought. There was never enough armor at any point in the game to shut down all sources of her damage. Now Frozen Hearts are common second items, or even first items, on top laners and junglers. This significantly hurts Vayne as until she gets Infinity Edge she relies on tanks having lots of health in order to take advantage of the Blade of the Ruined King passive and active, as well as her percent max health true damage on Silver Bolts. Frozen Heart doesn’t increase the health of her targets, gives them 100 armor, cuts Vayne’s attack speed, and gives her opponent 20% cooldown reduction making it easier to chase Vayne down. Her small auto attack range guarantees that she is in range of the Frozen Heart aura.

The other item that makes Vayne difficult to play right now is Righteous Glory. Every team that wants to engage team fights builds at least one. This makes it much easier for the team to get to the enemy back line and get rid of them. No one is safe from a Righteous Glory Sivir and Maokai.

How she could be played. In a perfect world.

Vayne could potentially be played in a Protect the AD Carry composition. This composition would likely be very similar to a Jugger’Maw composition and have at least a Janna and a Lulu for peel. Vayne would be able to deal comparable damage to Kog’Maw and have better team fight mobility. This might be one of the safer options if a team wants to play Vayne, but it’s still extremely dependent on the order of the draft phase as well as who the opponent picks. As soon as the opponent picks heavy engage, Vayne should be taken off the table. Her short range makes this much more difficult than if a Kog’Maw were used as she has to be roughly 170 units closer to the fight.

A Champion Identity Crisis

This puts Vayne as a champion in an awkward position in the meta as she is best used a duelist in a split push. Given this fact the other option for playing Vayne is to run a split push heavy composition which relies on a 3-1-1 split push. Vayne’s strength as a duelist was the reason she was used as a split pusher in season 3. It’s possible that this type of composition could be run but it is unlikely with top lane constantly running teleport and the emphasis on tanky team fight engage. The enemy team could just dive turrets while the Vayne and top laner were split pushing. The support would need to bring significant peel and the mid lane would need to have significant wave clear in order for a 3-1-1 to have a chance at working with Vayne.

But what about Lucian?

You might be thinking to yourself: “Lucian has a shorter range than Vayne and doesn’t have true damage or stealth. Why is he viable?” There’s a couple reasons. Lucian is much stronger in laning phase than Vayne is and has significantly better push and wave control in Lane Swap scenarios. Lucian also has scaling which isn’t dependent on his attack speed or the enemy’s health due to his passive. He also has decent wave clear in late game with The Culling and Piercing Light. Lucian is just a solid AD Carry at all points in the game while Vayne has serious power troughs and exploitable weaknesses.