Introduction: Top
Hello, everybody! This here be my very first guide and hero build for VainGlory! As you see, this one's made for
Lyra, the elf/elk hybrid magician. For those who don't know who she is, she is one of the two captains that can heal their team (health fortification doesn't count as healing,
Phinn!). The other healer, being
Adagio and
Grace. This build is focused on providing plentiful amount of heals for
Lyra and her team. But first, let's see her skills, shall we?
Lyra's Kit: Top
Her hero perk is called Principal Arcanum. This allows Lyra to deal crystal damage with her basic attacks and channel it (if she remains still) for a much stronger basic attack that slows! First hit deals 55-90 (40% CP scaling) on hit, while the channeled blast deals 65-175 (60% CP scaling) and a slow (35% of target's speed + 0.01% of Lyra's bonus health). Each charged shot costs 15-20 energy, so use it sparingly early game! In order to only use her first basic attack, tap on your target and then tap behind you to interrupt the channel. This is called Stutter Stepping, a known technique for Vox players.
Her A ability for is called
Imperial Sigil. This allows Lyra to cast a sigil on the targeted location where it heals allies and damages enemy heroes over time (Ally heal scales with 12% of Lyra's bonus health, whereas the damage scales with 60-180 + 80% CP for damage/sec, 75-225 120% CP for detonation against heroes and 100% CP for detonation against minions). The sigil will detonate when it's health runs out. It will lose health over time, and will diminish faster per hero (true if allies are damaged within range of the sigil). When it detonates, it provides a 20% speed boost for Lyra and her allies while it deals burst damage to enemy heroes, minions and objectives. Lyra can also manually detonate the sigil by tapping on the skill again when activated. The manual detonation also provides a burst of healing to you and your allies, consuming the remaining duration to heal at 60% effectiveness! This is your go-to skill, your bread. The overdrives provides extra casting range, +40 Health/sec, +80 Damage/sec and +100 detonation damage. Level this first, twice early game and get it's overdrive first. It also provides vision, the greatest weapon available within the game.
Lyra's B,
Bright Bulwark, will ensnare enemies within the circle, slows them (20% slow), and damages them (50-350 + 50% CP scaling). This will interrupt any dashing enemies should they attempt to dash through the walls, unless they're CC-immune (
Crucible,
Reflex Block,
Aegis). Overdrive provides a cool down reduction for the skill (18 > 14). This here be your butter. Overdrive it second.
Lyra's Ultimate,
Arcane Passage, allows Lyra to teleport to the targeted location and leave two portals, one on her original position, and another on the targeted location. The portal last 8.5 seconds on all ranks, and allies and enemies can go through them. If a hero walks through the portals, it enters a 4.5 cool down before the hero can use it again. Cool down affects different heroes separately (after an ally walks through it, the enemy doesn't have to wait 4.5 seconds to walk through). After using a portal and standing on one of the sides when it's on cool down, it enters a perpetual 0.5 second cool down until the 8.5 seconds are up or until the hero walks off of it. Enemies affected by Bright Bulwark cannot enter through the portal (the enemy has to be inside the Bright Bulwark, along with either side of the Ult portals.
And that pretty much covers her skills, now for the items!
The first item you want to get is either
Fountain of Renewal or
Halcyon Chargers. "But Ferg, why get Fountain if she has heals?", I hear you asking to yourself. Simple; because you can't get enough heals, plus, the +75 shield and 30+ armor lets you tank most attacks early game. As for the Halcyon Chargers, you can start off with +15% cool down reduction, +250 max energy and +4 energy regen! Both are solid items to start with. As for the third item, Crucible, not only it's a Reflex Block for your whole team, the ridiculous +600 bonus health will sky-rocket your Sigil healing with about 120 (more or less, should you have either rank 2 or 3 on Imperial Sigil), already making your team almost unkillable! For your next item, you could get
Alternating Current first to add an extra +60 CP for your basics, plus +60% attack speed and an extra 70% CP scaling for your basics at the cost of making it harder for you to control your basic channeling, or you could get
Stormcrown first for an extra 30% CDR, +200 max health and +4 energy regen, plus dealing 60-120 true damage (level 1-12) to minions and objectives, while dealing 20% of that damage to heroes. Getting the Stormcrown first means that you don't have to worry abouy losing your energy from the basic channeling, making it comfortable to use Alternating Current. For the final item, you can grab the
Nullwave Gauntlet to get +400 bonus health, 25% CDR, +4 energy regen and the ability to fire an exploding projectile at heroes only to temporarily disable all of their active items. If you want, you could build
Metal Jacket and
Aegis to add more shield and armor, and an
Atlas Pauldron for attack speed based enemy heroes, but it's very situational. You need to be up close and personal to use the Atlas Pauldron, so use it at your own risk. That's pretty much it for the items, so let me know if you like it, or if you have an item suggestion!
Optional Items: Top
Like all recommended builds, there's also optional items, which either give you an edge in battle, offer more defense or even more heals! Let's get to it!
As I mentioned above, Aegis, Metal Jacket and Atlas Pauldron are good choices for 5th and 6th items, but as you can see the newly added Optional Items section above, there are 4 more items! Let me explain them to you. If you're favoring damage, you can grab the
Shatterglass as your 5th item and the ever-so-lovely Alternating Current for 6th item. Sacrifice healing, CDR and energy recharge for extra damage, helping greatly against objectives and enemy heroes!
Next up, is Wartreads. You can get this item in any point in the game, only if you plan to replace the
Halcyon Chargers. Sacrifice CDR, max energy and energy recharge for +300 more health and a team-wide sprint! Normally, I would get this if my team isn't surviving team fights or aren't chasing the weak.
Next, are
Slumbering Husk and
Contraption. For Slumbering Husk, I thought it wouldn't be a good item for Lyra, but oh, my god, how wrong I was. Not only it adds +500 health, but if you take more than 20% of your max health as damage, your remaining health is fortified for a short time, allowing you to survive the most ridiculous bursts of damage! As for Contraption, it adds more health, a crazy CDR (40%!), and +3 energy charge. It's also 3 items in 1! If you activate it, you can shoot a flare in any direction, and if tap on your hero, you will drop a scout mine! As awesome as it sounds, you can only use it three times before it needs to recharge a single use each 5 seconds. After use, it enters a 20-second cool down.
Then there's
Shiversteel. This item adds +500 bonus health, and when activated, in 4 seconds your next basic attack will apply a 40% slow (6 seconds if you're melee). You can actually get this early if mana is an issue and you can't afford to use your channeled basics. Maybe help your team secure kills early in the game!
That's all the best optional items I could think of. Shoutout to Blissey123 for suggesting an optional items section and adding a Shatterglass to it!
How to Early Game: Top
First off, you'd want to start Lyra in the jungle, and after a couple of minutes, rotate to lane and provide a sigil should your laner need it. The sigil won't do enough damage in any point of the game, so only use it for healing, or escaping! Before the 6:00 minute mark, you should have your ult already. This time, rotate to Lane and stay there, either behind your carry or setting up last hits for him/her/it and only rotate to jungle if your jungler is in danger or attempting to take the gold miner. Focus on healing your allies and getting channeled basics on escaping enemies if your allies are tailgating them. Stick to your jungler until mid-game.
Mid-Gamerino for Lyrina: Top
At this point you should have at least the Stormcrown and building your way up to Alt. Current. Same as Early Game, focus on the heals, but this time, rotate a bit more often to the jungle if the gold miner looks delicious. Otherwise, utilize the passive benefit from the Stormcrown to help your carry destroy the turrets. Expect some team fights, so prepare your sigils, bulwarks and portals. In the team fights, provide healing and leave a Bulwark in the center of the fight to cut off powerful dashes and deal some damage in the process. If you see escaping enemies with low health, channel-basic them. As long as you hit your standard basic attack, you can cast the channeled basic that will home towards the target and slow them for your hungry friends.
Late Game, what now?: Top
Nothing much changes from mid-game tactics, other than to demolish every single turret that you see. You should have full build at this point. If your allies are taking Kraken, be there for them. Not just for the heals, but to wreck the living scales out of it with your Stormcrown and Alt. Current combo! And, that's it. Like I said, nothing much changes between Mid to Late game.
Tips n' Tricks!: Top
- Stick with your jungler in early game, even if you can sustain yourself.
- Wait until you get to level 4, where your heals, provided that you have enough max health items, will pretty make you and your team indestructible.
- When escaping, use your boots first before dropping a sigil to get the speed boost. Once you're far enough, drop a bulwark and ult either away from the enemy team, or into your team.
- When rotating, focus on healing your carry. If your jungler is hiding in the brush, DO NOT THROW A SIGIL IF THEY'RE WAITING FOR A GANK. You do more harm than good, because you're revealing their location. When rotating back to the jungle, heal your jungler before anything else.
- Never engage a fight without your team! Even if the enemy is squishy, they can still burst you down!
- Only use your sigil to heal your team or to provide a chase opportunity or an escape window! If you have Wartreads, use that instead to chase/escape/engage.
- If you want to engage, and your team is behind you, teleport to the target location and immediately drop a bulwark and a sigil. Your team will then take the portals and start wrecking the enemy team. This also works well of you have the Atlas Pauldron!
- When rotating from Lane to Jungle and vice-versa, use the blue ping (the same one that appears when you teleport back to your fountain) to announce your allies about your rotation. This is extremely important.
Team synergies!: Top
I'm going to be really straightforward here:
there are no bad synergies when it comes to Support Lyra.
She works so darn well with basically every single hero in the game, but there has to be at least the perfect combo, and I can only think of 4 heroes:
Rona - Rona, being the underrated tanky jungler, benefits greatly from Support Lyra, not just for the heals, but the speed boost from the sigil, and Lyra's lockdown combo! This means Lyra can assist Rona by boosting her speed when Rona uses her ult!
Gwen - Lyra is just a must-have for Gwen, given that the bunny-girl needs to close enough for her pikes, and she's rather squishy.
Reim - He's pretty slow due to his tankyness, so that speed boost allows bim to get close enough and nab some kills. He can also help peel off enemies from Lyra with his Root.
Baron - Probably the most slowest carry hero in the game, and the most vulnerable to ganks. A Lyra on his side is almost mandatory.
If you guys suggest other heroes that can pair up excellently with Lyra, then let me know in the comments!
If all else fails, get some protection: Top
If your team is falling behind on kills and functioning turrets, and if you're getting hard-targeted and burstsd down like a good turkey in Thanks Giving, get Metal Jacket and Aegis. But you should hold on to the Stormcrown, just in case, so only replace Alt. Current and Nullwave Gauntlet.
And that's all she wrote (get it?): Top
Thank you for taking your time on reading my very first guide! Share your thoughts! Drop a thumbs-up or a comment! What items would be better on Lyra? What else do you think you should do in Early/Mid/Late game? Again, thanks for reading! See ya on the Fold!
Edit 7-4-2017: Took me long enough to fix some gramatical errors, adding/removing some information and otherwise retesting the build -.-'.
Edit 7-21-2017: Removed "More Heals" item tab, added
Shiversteel and
Nullwave Gauntlet to "Optional Items". Fixed even more grammatical errors. Added Shiver Steel info in the "Optional Items" chapter column.
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