Lillia has been seeing more picks in the solo lanes, including Pro Plays since her modifications in League Patch 11.14.
Lillia has recently stormed the League of Legends Korean Challenger level, especially in the top and mid-lane positions. The reason for this is that Riot extensively updated her skill set, with the most notable change being her passive in League Patch 11.14, which now providing her extra healing and increasing damage over time.
Furthermore, The Bashful Bloom has an annoying poke playstyle that can suit extremely well with mostly any builds based on different matchups and team comps. With that being said, her build can vary from Liandry’s Anguish for more AP damage to Frozen Heart – the newest build trend that is specified against AD Bruisers and will be discussed more in this article.
Champion Insight
First, let’s go through Lillia’s major weaknesses. To begin, any player who has played Lillia will agree that her starting health is very low, making it tough for this champion in the early laning phase and in-lane tradings. Secondly, Lillia’s abilities are generally focused on harassing her opponents with slow and damage over time (Q, W), however, it is nearly impossible for her to finish her targets, especially in the early game. This leads to Lillia’s third drawback when Q is the main damaging tool in most of the cases, however, the opponent may easily evade if she uses it too predictably.
For example, in the match between FPX and EDG, Doinb’s Lillia constantly demonstrated the ability to create pressure in the lane and had better wave clear than his opponent. However, from the middle to the end of the game, DoinB progressively lost his advantages and impact, contributing little to the team’s general performance since she couldn’t rush into the fight to perform Q – R crowd control on the opponents.
Finally, after having her skill set adjusted, The Bashful Bloom now has a very limited mana pool and the cooldown of her abilities has been increased. Therefore, newest the Frozen Heart build on Lillia is designed to fix these mentioned drawbacks of her playstyle.
Frozen Heart Build Strength
With Frozen Heart, this item not only increases Lillia’s armor, which makes her extremely tanky against Bruisers and ADCs but also adds two very important stats in the early game that are cooldown reduction and bonus mana. This is not only suitable for champions who mainly rely on her abilities to poke like Lillia, but also compensates for the weakness of low starting health. From here Lillia will be more confident with in-lane trades and team combats, combined with the new passive in League Patch 11.14, she can now have extra healing and dealing massive damage much earlier. In addition, the passive of Frozen Heart also allows her to continuously slow the enemy when hit by basic attacks.
Upon Lillia acquires this item, she seems to be like a fish in water, since it not only causes the opponent to slow down but also allows Lillia to boost movement speed when hitting the target with her abilities. This makes the enemy team seeming unable to avoid her Qs and they also can’t catch The Bashing Bloom when she repeatedly kiting and running around thanks to the slow from E and the speed increases from Q.
Frozen Heart Build Weakness
The downside of Frozen Heart is that it is only useful for facing champions with physical damage. Simply because the extra armor from Frozen Heart will have little effect when opposed to mage champions like Vladimir, Rumble, Syndra, etc. Not only that, but when facing a team with a lot of CCs or burst damages, she will have a tough time trying to run in the middle of combats and can be caught immediately at the start of each fight.
This build also performs better against a team with less communication and teamwork, since Lillia is still a very fragile champion that can’t provide any protection to her team. Against teams with better tactics and at higher skills levels, she will have a much harder time trying to create any impact on the enemy teams nor protecting her teammates due to her natural playstyle.
Conclusion
If you are looking for a strong, unique pick against the Bruisers meta, Frozen Hear Lillia is an excellent choice for you in Patch 11.16, however, always remember to check your matchups and team comps as she is not a “jack of all trades” pick and is highly situational. Therefore, in the right condition, you can be an unstoppable force in combat and have so much fun running around harassing the entire enemy team. Good luck on Summoner’s Rift!