Introduction
Today we are going to discuss Solo Queue Guide to Vayne (Season 12) in a simple and easy way. We will discuss:
- Laning phases strengths
- Support counter match-ups
- ADC counter match-ups
- Support synnergies
If you want to climb the ranks in League of Legends, and especially in Solo Queue, you need to be comfortable putting your team on your back and carrying them to victory single-handedly. Unfortunately, very few Champions are built to handle such weight. For Marksmen players, that Champion is Vayne.
Vayne is one of the best Champions a player can pick up to solo carry their games. Additionally, as we head into Season 12, Vayne is one of the best Marksmen right now, and she has been for many years! In Solo Queue, this fact is primarily driven because she is an incredibly powerful scaling Marksman. With Solo Queue games being more chaotic and running slightly longer than pre-made games do, she has a better chance at reaching her mid-to-late game power spikes! Additionally, some of the hardest Champions to deal with are tanks at these stages of the match. Vayne’s kit is designed to deal significant sums of damage to the tankiest of enemies because her Silver Bolts activate percent health true damage!
Furthermore, the rest of her kit is no joke for carrying either. Vayne has a built-in ‘steroid’ by increasing her attack damage stat in her Final Hour (ultimate ability). Additionally, she can even reset her basic attack animation with her Tumble ability to get two basic attacks off in quick succession! With great power comes great responsibility. Vayne has exceptional survivability in the grueling environment of mid-to-late game team fights by using her Tumble to kit and dodge essential abilities, using her Condemn to self-peel, and even combining her Tumble with Final Hour to gain invisibility for a brief duration! The culmination of these abilities and her passive make her a significant threat and a valuable pick in nearly every Solo Queue game!
Vayne’s Strengths
Vayne is the incredible Solo Queue god because she provides her team with a late-game insurance policy! Seriously, just by surviving in a game until the later stages, she will become more and more activated to the point where you wonder where she has been all game! No matter the situation she finds herself in, when played well, Vayne can swiftly turn the tables on her enemies even in the stickiest of conditions!
Vayne’s Weaknesses
The biggest concern with Vayne is her early game strength (or the lack thereof). Vayne can undoubtedly have good trades resulting in surprising damage and even kills in lane. However, it’s pretty tricky to do without the enemy underestimating her damage. While this is undoubtedly going to happen (especially in lower ELO), whether it does or not is no big concern. This weakness can even be considered a bit of strength if used to your advantage. See, Vayne’s early game weakness is evident, resulting in the more intelligent enemies attempting to apply pressure to gain an advantage through the weak Vayne. When planned accordingly, Vayne can either play well enough to waste the enemies’ time and resources or simply call for assistance knowing that this pressure is coming! Vayne is a ticking time-bomb after all, so enemies will undoubtedly feel the pressure to create an advantage early in the game and can often over-extend or recklessly play out the lane to try and push that lead!
Aside from her lack of early game power, she is also shorter ranged than most Marksman. Combining both weaknesses and it’s easy to see how enemies can abuse her in the lane. Therefore, the key to being a good and consistent Vayne is to know how to play out the laning phase! Vayne can either act as a snowball for her enemies or as the snowball for her team that cannot be stopped once rolling!
Supports to Pair with Vayne
Understanding the Support Champions that are best paired with Vayne is somewhat tricky. While there are certainly better Supports to play with Vayne than others, it’s often best for Vayne to have a Support that can thrive in her matchup. Ideally, when Vayne is going to be played, her Support will choose their Champion towards the end of the draft to have as much information to go off as possible. Of course, it’s not realistic every game, but it’s certainly something to aim for, and the results will prove worthwhile once Vayne players understand which Support will compliment her best in the given scenario!
The best Support for Vayne will maximize Vayne’s chances of surviving the laning phase without being abused significantly. To better explain, let’s use the example of Caitlyn and Swain. The range and poke advantage of Caitlyn and Swain are nearly impossible to deal with as Vayne, regardless of her Support’s pick. However, a Champion like Blitzcrank or Thresh would be a fantastic choice in a situation like this. Most players tend to choose a Support that would heal Vayne from the poke. This is not worth it because it will only weaken the blow to Vayne’s early game. In a matchup as hectic as this, Vayne needs some breathing room. Not only do these hook-based Champions provide the threat of engagement via displacement, but they can also help shorten the distance between the Champions where the difference in the range becomes negligible. A Blitzcrank Rock Grab landing on either Caitlyn or Swain in the early game would nearly always result in them burning Flash. This creates a massive window where the enemy cannot disrespect the hook-based engage and must ease off the pressure onto Vayne.
Aside from the pressure these hook-based Champions remove from Vayne’s shoulders, Vayne will still be at a disadvantage. However, aside from Caitlyn’s basic attacks, the remainder of the skills Caitlyn and Swain are skill-shot reliant. Skill-shots are generally not a problem for a good Vayne because of the low cooldown on her Tumble. Therefore, Vayne just needs to respect Caitlyn’s range advantage, Headshot damage, and the traps she has laid down. By focusing on just those matchup features, Vayne will be able to survive and even thrive in the lane with more health. The more health Vayne has, the easier she can keep pace with Caitlyn’s early game power and even use some advantages to gain river and Dragon control. In this specific example, Vayne should be healthy enough to follow up whenever Blitzcrank lands the Rocket Grab and start her journey to the solo queue monster she will become later in the game.
The last piece of advice to consider in this example Support matchup is to know when to sacrifice minions. Vayne’s goal should never be to get as many minions as possible. It should be to get as much gold as possible. Although this may seem counterintuitive, willingly sacrificing some minions to gain a better position to pick up more than you would have otherwise been able to, or even to set up a gank to get a kill off, is much more important and worthwhile! The worst-case scenario is that her Support does not land any hooks in this example. In this case, she is back to farming under the tower like she would have been with the Enchantress Support that people tend to gravitate towards picking anyway. But, if even one good hook lands and Vayne can get a kill, it should almost be considered an extra 10% chance of winning the game!
Overall, the best Support to choose with Vayne is one that counters the enemy bot lane. Of course, when counter-picking is not an option, Supports with great engaging tools or Supports that can both provide peel and healing to Vayne are ideal. Vayne players can consider it a Rock, Paper, Scissors game. Where engaging Supports are great against poke-heavy enemies, poke-heavy Supports are great against passive/healing enemies, and peeling/healing Supports are great against engaging enemies!
Vayne Counters and Matchups (Marksmen)
Traditionally, the best counters to Vayne are other Marksmen with much longer range, have a much better early game, or have some area-of-effect abilities that she cannot avoid easily. For better context, Caitlyn, Kog’Maw, and Ashe are long-range Champions that Vayne often struggles against in lane. Miss Fortune, Twitch, and Draven are challenging for Vayne because they have better early game damage and have area-of-effect abilities that can start/stop Vayne from prolonging the trading patterns where she has a better chance of winning! For example, Miss Fortune can easily activate Press the Attack with her Strut and Double Up. Miss Fortune would need to walk up, use a basic attack, Double Up, and then a second basic attack to win the trade. In that time, Vayne likely can only get two basic attacks off even if she uses Tumble. To make the trade even easier for Miss Fortune, she can even use Make it Rain to prevent Vayne from pursuing after her first two basic attacks to attempt to activate Silver Bolts! Vayne can only compete with the damage in this scenario by using two basic attacks and then using Condemn immediately after. While this will trigger her Silver Bolts, the cooldown on Condemn and the mana cost are so high that she will be very vulnerable for the entire cooldown!
Vayne Counters and Matchups (Supports)
In general, the most challenging Supports for Vayne to play against have high damage poking abilities like Zyra, Xerath, Vel’Koz, Lux, or Brand, or they have engaging/catching potential like Lux, Morgana, Nautilus, Pyke, and Thresh. The better Vayne players will suffice against high damage poking ability Champions with proper positioning and ability usage. However, engaging/catching Champions are much more challenging because the skill shots that they hit on Vayne are much more rewarding than the poke-based Champions! Consider the threat of a Brand’s Sear ability compared to Pyke’s Bone Skewer ability. The actual difficulty to land the skill-shot is relatively similar. However, Brand’s Sear does damage (or stuns if already burned), whereas Pyke’s Bone Skewer pulls the target closer to him and slows them when they land! Essentially, Brand’s attempt to deal damage to you, whereas Pyke’s attempt to flat-out kill you!
Overall, the Supports with these engaging/catching abilities don’t just apply pressure to Vayne by using them. Not using them is generally more threatening because it means they can still use them! Either way, the best Vayne players will minimize the threat that these abilities carry by either staying out of range or dodging it. Therefore, Vayne players must at the very least be mindful of their power and how easily they can shut down Vayne!
The Early Game
As already discussed, Vayne wants to be allowed to sit and farm minions at the very least. If she can do that, she’s effectively won the early game. Vayne certainly does have the damage to win fights in certain situations. However, it’s often an unnecessary risk without a gank or appropriate assistance from her teammates. Vayne should always try to prioritize playing her early game in a way that will minimize the enemies’ ability to pressure her and shut her down. The better Vayne is at minimizing their early game pressure, the more pressure they will feel they need to apply, and the better the chances are of them over-extending!
The Mid Game
The mid-game is when Vayne is most surprising. After almost eleven years since Vayne has been released, players generally understand her late-game threat. However, they still fail to understand her power spikes before the late game. At this point in the game, Vayne still relies heavily on her teammates to help her, but Vayne can carry the game from that point onward with the proper setup! Her catch potential with her passive movement speed, Final Hour movement speed, and stun is incredible. Not to mention that she will have her Silver Bolts ability max level, which will start dealing insane sums of damage when activated!
The Late Game
In the late game, the best strategy is to survive. Surviving by any means necessary is always optimal. The longer Vayne lives, the more damage she can deal and the higher the chances are of her team winning the fight (if she is dealing damage). Vayne’s late game is what Vayne players work all game towards, so it’s vital to master this stage. If players cannot master the late game as Vayne, there isn’t any point in playing her. Vayne cannot deal damage without using her Basic Attacks. Therefore, every Basic Attack must be with purpose! Every Tumble and Comdemn can only be made with the forethought to know what will happen next! Combining these concepts is the best way to maximize your team’s chances of winning the game!
Conclusion
Vayne’s playstyle is cutthroat. It will require a player with a certain threshold for stress and an ability to handle peer pressure. After all, drafting Vayne is meant to be a late-game win condition, so if the player can’t live up to the prowess Vayne is supposed to have, what’s the point? Remember, Vayne’s life is critical to her chances of winning the game. Vayne always has and will always be one of the best Solo Queue Champions to solo carry games, so draft her with that in mind!