Alice:Going APe

Build And Guide Alice: Going APe

Items
Virtue's Necklace
Flashy Boots
Boomstick
Frosty's Revenge
Hecate's Diadem
Soaring Aura
Talents
Heal
Sprint
Flicker
Introduction
Arena of Valor’s most maligned support character is capable of a whole lot more than simply running around with a perpetual shield present on her allies. With a hefty long-range stun and a massive magical circle at her disposal, Alice may not be a great healer – or a healer at all – but she certainly doesn’t need to sit back and cast shields all day long.

The idea of this guide is to build Alice, not as a dedicated Mage (there are plenty of other more powerful picks there) but as a Support character that can dish out some respectable damage while running circles around both teams casting shields, stuns, and slowdowns to facilitate a deadly push on the enemy base.

Any team seeing Alice lock in with play with the assumption that shields are coming their way, so you’ll still be dishing those out whenever possible. You’ll just be doing a whole lot more damage than most would expect of you.

Abilities
Trot – Any ability Alice activates will boost her movement speed by 20% for 1 second. That’s it. Nice and easy.

Sunshine – A ball of light cast from Alice’s staff from moderate range, it stuns and damages any enemy caught in the blast as it lands. It’s powerful, but tricky to land thanks to its small area of effect. Read your opponent’s movements, and hope someone comes in to finish of whoever gets hit.

Friendship – Activating this ability grants Alice and any nearby allies a powerful shield for around 6 seconds that can be broken once it has absorbed enough damage. Those affected have their movement speed increased by 30%, too; but only for 2 seconds. A great tool for initiating an advance or retreat. Expect to use this multiple times in a late-game fight.

Hissy Fit – A cruel move that leaves a large circle of damaging magic in the target location, slowing all enemies caught within and increasing the damage they take from magical attacks. Enemies are also silenced for the first second they spend within the field and take damage every half a second. Not only is this great to encourage all-in tactics, but it’s a great way to line up multiple enemies for a Sunshine stun.

Ability Order
Building Alice as an Ability Power attacker isn’t like building any other mage. She’s still a brilliant Support at heart, and must be played as such. For that reason alone, Alice’s skill order still depends on direction of the match.

Starting things off with Sunshine is absolutely fine. The stun, when fired from the safety of the brush, can be a great way to secure an easy kill in a single-lane matchup with a nearby ally, or to keep aggressive attackers at bay. From then on, however, leveling up Sunshine and Friendship will likely fluctuate as the battle wages on.

Attempt to prioritize Sunshine if things aren’t getting hyper-aggressive too quickly, but switch to improving Friendship if the enemy team has managed to snowball ahead, or group fights are becoming rapidly more apparent. Alice still can’t eradicate a team on her own, so shielding allies to keep them around longer will ultimately allow her to land more of those decisive shots.

You’ll likely find yourself having to level Friendship back to back with Sunshine in most matches – and your team will expect this too. You can’t chance how a team acts with an Alice on their side, so either try to keep things even to be on the safe side, or just build Friendship ahead of Sunshine.

Talent
Heal – While a solid Support class, Alice has nothing in the way of heals. She can shield her allies to reduce incoming damage, but can never pick up those who’re looking a bit worse for wear.
With the amount of control abilities she has on hand, paired with the movement speed boost of Friendship, picking up Heal will only solidify her role as Support even more, healing up those about to be picked off, or bolstering the whole team to a point where they’re confident enough – with a shield – to carry on the attack. 

Sprint – Alice may sound like a girl with great mobility thanks to her passive and secondary ability, but her stubby little legs can only take her so far. The boosts offered by her abilities don’t last too long, and using Friendship to boost back into combat will likely see her allies rush in without a shield ready to go. Sprint is a long-lasting Talent that will see her across the battlefield and into whichever combat situation she needs to attend. At can also drastically help in the hit n’ run tactics she employs to stun and slow targets that are typically far faster than herself.

Flicker – The idea remains the same her, but offers Alice a means to shift through thin solid objects to get where she needs to go. Flicker is a tricky skill to master, but can be a great way for her to reposition before an attack, retreat, or zip toward her enemy’s escape route that she can then close off with Hissy Fit in a pinch.

Item Build
Building Alice for heavy damage isn’t actually all the different from building her as the Support she paints herself as. She’s still highly succeptible to mana starvation given the rate at which she uses her abilities, so a few of her item choices are built to keep that in check. Other than that, the cooldown reduction from most aids her utility, but the added Ability Power ensures her stuns and slowdowns are more than just that.
Virtue’s Necklace will still be your first pick. It might not give as much Ability Power  as Orb of the Magi, but the cooldown reduction and mana management offered will cover Alice from the rest of the match without having to rely on something like the Mage Buff. Throw some Flashy Boots on top to give another 10% Cooldown Speed.

Next, we opt for Boomstick over something like Soaring Aura or Apocalypse. Alice won’t be spending too much time up close or following up with auto-attacks, so hitting hard with her spells and sneaking an extra AOE strike in every 5 seconds or so can really help when she’s dipping in and out of combat between cooldowns. Hecate’s Diadem and Holy of Holies come in later to drastically scale the damage she causes while threatening tanks with her Magic Pierce.

Finish things off with either Ancestral Glory or Staff of Nuul. The latter is recommended for that final burst of damage that scales with Hecate’s Diadem, as Holy of Holies awards a burst of HP greater than Ancestral Glory. If you’re playing things right, you won’t be dying very often anyway.

Arcana
Alice is known across the game, and typically hunted down by a group that knows what they’re doing. Even still, with the rate at which she zips around the battlefield, the idea here is for her to be in and out in a flash, repeating the process until she’s bought enough time through stuns, slowdowns, and shields for her team to start getting some kills. She shouldn’t be taking too much damage, with her attacks having the secondary effect of keeping would-be assassins away from her brittle skin. Our choice of Arcana should reflect thing playstyle, with Ability Power, Magic Pierce, and Cooldown Speed being the primary focus.

For those just getting started with the game, or just new to the Mage formula, Tier-1 Arcana is a simple affair. Talisman, Absorbtion, and Disruption is all you can really go for, gifting Ability Power, Magic Life Steal, Magic Pierce. It’s good enough for now.

Moving into Tier-2 Arcana, Corruption offers two of the stats we want the most – Ability Power and Magic Pierce. Revelation would probably be the more enticing pick for Purple slots with Ability Power and Magic Life Steal, leaving the added Magic Defense as a handy buffer. Alacrity can be had in its place – or mixed in – to give round off HP and give a little extra bounce to Alice’s step with increased movement speed. Finish things off with Serenity if you chose Revelation last; otherwise, pick up a handful of Corrosion for the extra hurt.

Rich enough to fill up all 30 of those slots with Tier-2 arcana? You’ll be spoiled for choice. Violate offers slightly less Ability Power over Enlightened, but makes up for it with Magic Pierce – a no-brainer. Devour in the Purple slots awards much the same, but the added survivability from Benevolence should be chosen, as more Ability Power will be had from filling Green slots with Hex – which doubles as a way to gain that all-important Cooldown Speed.

Early Game
Early game Alice is just like any other Alice – she’s great at mitigating the damage from burst-heavy opponents, or can help herself and her friends escape the grasp of fast-hitting melee strikers. Bide your time with those abilities long enough to farm the Gold necessary to start pushing ahead with that AP build.

Rely on Restore and the kits behind your tower to replenish mana in a pinch, but try not to go too overboard with Sunshine if you’re struggling to hit your mark. Just start using it on minions when you’re safe to speed things along, and save the cooldown for if an enemy is lounging around or coming in for the kill.

You won’t be able to offer much in the way of meaningful damage until Hissy Fit is available, but even then it won’t be doing much before you get your own Virtue’s Necklace.

Mid Game
Once you’ve built your first major item, it’s time to take it for a spin. It’s better not to expect 1HKO levels of damage at this point, but that’s not the aim of this build.

The idea is to sting a little while dishing out the support your team needs to keep ahead of the game. As group fights start to become the norm in the match, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to stun one or more targets with Sunshine as multiple melee heroes converge on the same location to partake in a little fisticuffs. Once stunned, the rest of your team can rush in to capitilize on the free hits and lack of incoming damage.

If there’s still a bit of distance between yourself and the enemy at that point, pop Friendship to give the speed boost needed to get you in there (and your team), with a shield ready to back you up against the opposing team looking to rescue their ally. Using Hissy Fit at the start of an encounter like this can slow down the enemy team enough to make stunning with Sunshine that much easier. You’ll even hit harder thanks to the magic resist reduction applied to those within the Hissy Fit effect.

Late Game
In the final leg of a match, Alice’s cooldown times become a major threat to the opposite team. Stuns and slowdowns are a constant thought, and shields can appear at the most inoportune times to block major hits and help keep their targets running circles around them. At the forefront of this – or rather, the back – is Alice, zipping around throwing in disruption after disruption. Except this time, they actually hurt in and of themselves.

You’re still not exactly great at pushing out lanes, claiming Abyssal Dragons, or lapping up jungle buffs; but that just leads to more time spent halting the idea of an enemy advancement. Wait on your allies to appear and make their move, then pop Friendship to have them all rush in with damage mitigation ready to go. Compliment the fight with a stun on whoever you can successfully target, and use what remains of your movement speed boost to drop Hissy Fit slightly behind the largest collection of enemies.

This won’t maximize the time they’re forced to spend taking damage within the circle, but it will limit their next decision. They can either retreat back through it for additional damage, or push forward to break free and face the continued assault of your allies. Either way, you’ll want to follow up with Sunshine again whenever possible, with the best time being while they’re still stuck within the damaging field of Hissy Fit. It’s all about weaving through your abilities and keeping the other team under your control for as long as possible, boosting the time your own gets to strike back without worrying too much about the repercussions.

This constant barrage of abilities is even more apparent as you’re pushing against the enemy core, but fighting outside the final towers can be a little more tricky. The best way to manage this is to rely on the AOE abilities of your allies and doing what you can to make it easier for them to land their own attacks.

To do this, abuse the movement speed buffs of your passive and Friendship to slide in  and out of the danger zone toward the base of the tower. You’ll want to keep landing Sunshine on any enemy slow enough to take it, but Hissy Fit should then be used more defensively. Use it further in the field of the tower on either exit to limit the opposite team’s positioning options, creating a choke point on the other side for you and your allies to abuse. Keep them topped up with shields and aim to stun who you can. You should then be relatively free to focus on the tower and work your way further to victory.

Tips
Hissy Fit is big enough to block most pathways. Use it as a target makes their escape, or block one side of a base tower to make aiming Sunshine far easier.


If unbroken, the shield from Friendship typically lasts as long as the abilities cooldown once items and levels are fleshed out.


Each of Alice’s moves can be used to initiate a fight, or pull out of an existing brawl.


Use the slowdown and magic resist reduction of Hissy Fit to better aim Sunshine, resulting in a dangerous stun and more damage than a standard use.
Match-Ups
AP Alice, as she’s now known, is best when paired with nimble attackers who can rush in and finish off a target hit by Sunshine. Nakroth, Butterfly, Violet, and Valhein are all solid choices here.

In the same vein, those capable of dealing fast and/or powerful magical blows will be able to make light work of those caught within Hissy Fit; like Ignis, Aliester, Mganga, Natalya, and Diaochan. Anyone with a similar AOE strike will cope just fine here, but those with added control effects and combos stemming from successive skill shots will enjoy the impairments brought by a hyper-aggressive Alice.

When taking her on, tanks are by far her biggest problem. She can stun them relatively easily thanks to their size, but she’s limited to just two damage-dealing attacks on a cooldown far higher than dedicated attackers, leaving her with little choice but to run away before she’s pinned long enough to get killed by someone else. Single her out or root her in place, and she’s yours for the taking.