From a 1.6 million mastery high diamond Vayne aficionado… lets dissect her current state and perspectives.

Well, first of I’m gonna present my credentials on the subject:

I‘ve been playing this champion across the last 10 seasons at least. She is my most played champion every single season since season 5 (I play since pre season 3, so yes I am older than you I would gess lol). I have every single one of her skins, chromas, emotes and icons release. I’ve played her in good and bad states, and I think I have a really good overall game knowlege around her kit and game state.

I currently sit around D2, having reached Masters as my personal best. This is not an impressive accomplishment itself, but I can consistently reach this elo without any major struggles, only applying basic game knowledge of wave management, recalling timing and the mechanics I gathered playing her for over 3.000 games. This season I have played 70 ranked games with Vayne with a 60% WR, which I consider it to be a good WR given her current weak state, being ranked as the 697 best Vayne worldwide, again, not an impressive accomplishment. Just out of reference, i don’t consider myself a “high elo” player. I think that “high elo” is GM and above, where the game really changes the way it is played.

https://www.leagueofgraphs.com/summoner/br/zLui-BR1

That being said, here is my perspective around her current game state and some other considerations:

1 - Vayne is a very difficult champion to play at higher elos. And by that I’m not talking about mechanics. Mechanics come naturally with training and becoming comfortable in given situations (1v1, being pushed and pushing in lane, splitting, knowing her spikes and so on…). Vayne is a hard champion because of her VERY SHORT ”zone of influence”, which is the area around which she can basically… do anything. That area is limited by her auto attack range, 550. Different of most champions in the bot lane, Vayne cannot do absolutely nothing outside her attack range, meaning that whenever she CAN do anything, she will ALWAYS be in condition of being punished. Better players know this better, and can take a lot of advantage of this weakness, making laning phase barely playable. Think about playing a lane against a good Caitlyn/Lux duo, or a good Karma, or a good Ashe. They will naturally choke you out of HP, forcing bad recalls and putting you behind in Exp/game tempo... which leads to my next topic.

2 - Vayne NEEDS sustain. She MUST remain in lane for as long as possible because if she falls behind, it is way more difficult to get back into the game. If you fall behind, you will be forced to face stronger opponents inside their “zone of influence”, and now you are in double disadvantage (weaker and lower zone of influence). As if it were not bad enough facing that Cait/Lux/Karma/Ashe in ”equal” conditions, imagine Now that you are in level and item disadvantage because of low sustain and bad recallings. That being said, I think that the nerfs to BORK (core item in my opinion), Dorans Blade, Fleet Footwork and her absolutely pathetic base health (550, least of any other ADCs vs Dravens 675!!!, Jhins 655 and so on…) make her laning phase a nightmare, naturally forcing her to play way too passive and giving away laning priority almost every time. Consider that level 1 Vayne with a Doran’s Blade has less health than Draven/Lucian with no items! It is almost 2 auto attacks advantage worth of HP, making early trades very difficult. So basically we have a low zone of influence ADC, who cannot rotate early to skirmishes and thus loses priority around Dragon fights. If she does rotate, she will lose CS/exp, and it is better that the outcome is the best possible, or the bot lane gap begins to build towards the opponent

3 - Playing Vayne in top lane is better and easier. That is because 3 factors: she inverts the relation of “zone of influence“ against a most of top lane champions; she gets lane prio early game and thus doesn’t fall off exp/game tempo and can help securing early Grubs; she has a long lane against most of time low escape/mobility champions who underestimate her chasing potential, which is one of her strongest features (and it is related to her “zone of influence”, that becomes artificially inflated in this situation, after all you are most of times chasing after in a long lane in a 1v1 situation vs a melee champion without the interference of supports). All of this having in mind that you will likely compromise your team comp playing an ADC in the top lane, so don‘t forget that.

4 - Vayne can split push, has a lot of outplay potential, self peeling and is one of the top 3 duelists in the game. So you can split push, but that doesn’t mean you must do it. Split pushing is one of the best strategies in the SoloQ environment because you can exploit the lack of communication and incoordination of the opponent, and often times I see myself doing it even when I’m playing the ADC role. If you see no options around teamfighting, your support forgets that you even exists and no one is playing around creating space so you can deal DPS, just get to that side lane and apply constant pressure dragging 2-3 enemies to answer to you, so that your team can make cross map plays around objectives. In that regard, I see no other ADC with this potential and versatility.

5 - The best support to play in laning phase is, in my opinion, Karma. The best support to play once you get past the laning phase is Milio/Yuumi/Lulu. That is very personal and is according to playstyle. I see myself as someone who takes a lot of advantage of mobility and spacing, so I love on hit builds and every support who can give me Movement Speed buffs so that I can manage my zone of influence better than my enemies (mechanics, training, champion experience). Karma is because I believe she is a great early game support, mainly capable of throwing back punches with good damage, good wave control if she Q’s the wave, and also with good ganking setups/kill potential (W) and Movement Speed buffs. So that you know, I value movement speed so much that I think it is the single best stat in the game, and I usually like to build around it (BORK, Trinity, Kraken, Phantom Dancer -> I fucking love this item).

6 - Vayne NEEDS to be buffed, and I think she will get the treats from now on since I believe she will be the recipient of the future Transcendent skin next year through Uzi’s (undisputably the best ADC of all time) choice. But not only that, I think she is genuinely weak right now. I would say she deserves a buff to her base HP as well as lowering her mana cost and a little bit of cooldown on Condemn (E).

There is so much more to it, but I think that this is a good start to a discussion. I would like to read your thoughts on everything I said, and feel free to ask me anything. I will gladly answer your questions and love to help you improve with Vayne.

I am here to learn from you!