Ignis: Burning Up the Mid Lane

Build and Guide Ignis: Burning Up the Mid Lane

Cheat Sheet
Skill Build   

Holy Embers > Fire Crash > Rain of Fire

Recommended Talents   

Flicker, Purify 

Items   

Orb of the Magi, Enchanted Kicks, Boomstick, Hecate's Diadem, Holy of Holies, Rhea's Blessing

Arcana   

Violate, Devour, Hex 

Introduction
Ignis the anointed one is a mage based around dealing massive damage with an area of effect abilities. Considering the situation Ignis finds himself in. You have the ability to either gain a shield for taking damage, or applying a stun to escape or deal more damage. In team fights, Ignis is one of the strongest burst carries in the game. Considering his ultimate deals massive true damage in a large area of effect.

Skill Build
Holy Embers > Fire Crash > Rain of Fire



Holy Embers is a giant area of effect circle that after 1.5 seconds, explodes dealing massive true damage. You can tell when the ultimate will go off, based on the flames around the circle on the ground. They move from one point to the next, about one-third of the circle's circumference, and then the ability explodes. Basically, if you are the enemy of an Ignis player, move out of the circle as fast as you can. 

Fire Crash is the next ability we max. Ignis launches an orb in a medium ranged skill shot. Dealing great damage to the enemy it hits, and hits the enemies behind that one in a small cone. This ability upon casting increases Ignis' movement speed by 40% for one second. If the target hit is marked by his passive, this ability also grants Ignis a shield that absorbs a set amount of damage for 3 seconds. We mainly max this ability second, due to its short cooldown and the shield. While this ability does deal great damage, it's really the shield that lets us get away with trading with enemy mid lane consistently. Used correctly, almost no one mid lane can deal with you.

Rain of Fire is leveled last as it's not really used for anything but its stun and some slight poke. Ignis summons falling fire in a target area for 3 seconds. This deals damage to every enemy in the circle every second and slows them by 50% for 2 seconds. Marked enemies are also stunned for 1.5 seconds. You can combo into your stun to apply more damage to targets with higher mobility, or short blinks or dashes. Rain of fire lasts long enough to both apply your mark, and activate the mark. If the enemy does not move outside of the area of effect.

Your passive Sacred Flame, places a mark on enemies hit by Ignis abilities. After 1.5 seconds the mark activates, causing some of Ignis' abilities to have a bonus effect if hit by one of them in the next 2.5 seconds. Having control of this is key. You want to always make sure you are balancing your combos timing to allow for either a stun or a shield depending on your situation. Not just spamming abilities and getting whichever one hits.

Recommended Talents
Flicker, Purify 

Flicker  - 120-second Cooldown: Teleports your hero a short distance 

Ignis has no form of mobility outside of hitting an enemy for a short speed boost. To ensure you have an easier time getting out of a bad situation, Flicker is going to be my go-to pick. Most heroes benefit from a short-ranged blink. It's just too strong of an ability. Imagine you are stuck in between two enemies in the jungle, or the movement speed buff doesn't make you outrun Batman. You can instead, just Flicker over a wall.

Purify - 120-second cooldown: Removes all debuffs and control effects on yourself and gains immunity to them for 1.5 seconds. 

Purify gets a mention as its great against mid lanes with heavy crowd control. If you are a player who has issues controlling the quick movements necessary for Flicker. Go ahead and take Purify, it allows you to at least get your shield or stun up and counter your opponent trying to lock you down.

Items
Orb of the Magi, Enchanted Kicks, Boomstick, Hecate's Diadem, Holy of Holies, Rhea's Blessing

Ignis is a fan of eating through his mana spamming fireballs down mid lane at both his opponent and minions. So, the first thing we want to rush is the good ole Orb of the Magi. This item basically allows us to gain the mana and mana regen to abuse our short cooldowns and abuse our enemy out of his lane. Even if we so much as push the enemy out of lane once. We become ahead of him in experience and gold based on mid lane alone.

Enchanted kicks will give us a bit of early game magic penetration. We get these over Flashy due to our already short cooldowns and need for even more damage.

Boomstick is just a great way to make high damage area of effect spells deal even more high damage area of effect. We can get Hecate's Diadem instead of this if they rush magic defensive items. However, most mid lanes will just keep rushing damage items by this point.

Holy of Holies is just more ability power and health to help both our damage output and ability to live by granting us an extra 1400 maximum health points.

Rhea's Blessing is an item that grants us a shield worth 450 + 40% of our ability power when our health falls below 40% for 4 seconds. It also gives us massive ability power and Magic Life Steal. At this point of the game, your abilities do insane damage to basically everyone in a team fight due to your large area of effect. This item by itself can save our lives by basically keeping us topped off on health during fights. Combine this with your 2 shields from items and abilities, and you become very hard to kill for a hero with no escape abilities.

Arcana
Violate, Devour, Hex 

Violate gives us some much-needed early game damage with flat ability power and magic pierce. You can run Enlightened Arcana like the game recommends, but I've never been a fan of gaining 1 extra ability power per Arcana over the 2.4 magic pierce per. More stats per Arcana over flat Arcana is my recommendation. However, if you don't have Violate. Enlightened is still good for your flat damage early. 

Devour grants us early game regen with magic life steal. Cast rain of fire on a group of minions and watch as you gain a small chunk of health. It’s not much, but a few waves of this can make a huge difference.

Hex over Focus Arcana, unlike the game, recommends. Same reason as Violate as well. I just don't see why I would want to get .3% cooldown speed over the 2.4 ability power per. Seeing as how our abilities have short cooldowns already, and great damage. We just want more damage, and Hex will do that for us.

Early Game
Early game for Ignis is poking your opponent and seeing how they deal with you. If they charge on top of you, you can either stun or shield. If they dodge your stun easily, be sure to shield constantly. Keep the pressure on your enemy. Mostly we do this to keep an active mark on whomever you are against. If they don't do anything, feel free to proc your mark with another spell just to poke.

Mid Game
At this point of the game were basically waiting for small skirmishes to happen. You do not have the ability to move from lane to lane easily. You don’t have hard quick crowd control either. So, what you want to do is sit in mid lane and wait to fight as a team. If you do wish to roam, make sure someone else has hard crowd control to lock people down for you.

Late Game
Late game is where Ignis shines. Every team fight is a chance to show everyone just how strong you really are. Stick near your tanks and the back line and wait for the enemy team to clump up or get hard cc'd. At that point use your ultimate to melt the enemy team down. Poke with your ranged abilities, and stun them yourself if you need to. Just be wary not to get caught going for greedy pokes.

FAQ/Tips
You have no escapes, but tons of area of effect damage. Stay with your team or in your lane. You want to be able to retreat at any time it becomes necessary.

Keep an eye on your marks. You only have a short window to use them, so keep tabs on how long they have been there. Get used to tracking everyone who you mark, and the time of the mark.

Your marks are not active as soon as you hit an enemy. Be sure to space out your abilities.

Matchups
(Krixi, Easy)   

Krixi's range is mildly close to your own. Except you do much better damage than her, much sooner. The main thing to keep in mind is that your Fire Crash has a slightly longer range if you hit someone with it. Sometimes you can hit these longer ranged heroes with the cone from hitting a minion. 

(Natalya, Easy)

Natalya gets a special mention since her ultimate makes her stand still. While she is channeling her ultimate, she will gain a shield, and is immune to crowd control effects whilst that shield is up. Your ultimate deals true damage. Use your ultimate to blow away the shield and use Rain of Fire on top of them. This will cause your stun to proc right after you drop down their shield.

(Ilumia, Easy)

Ilumia has great damaging spells in an area of effect around her. So, the main way to win this fight is to just not get near her. Keep your distance and poke. They are bound to attempt to trade, so back off when they approach. They have nothing in their kit that allows them to trade with you outside of getting near enough to you.

(Arthur, Hard)   

Arthur seems like an odd hero to list for a mid-lane. However, he's one of the characters late game I've had the most issues with. His ability to run in at extremely fast speeds and do great damage on top of that, to you is an issue. Its best to hide near towers or behind your team with one of him on the enemy team. It is hard for you to stun in Arthur before he can combo you. On the flipside, it is very easy for him to combo you.

(Batman, Hard)   

Batman is great against squishies that can't run away easily. With his mobility, there's no way you will stun him before he kills you with his burst. His stealth means you can't use Rain of Fire to cut off his entrance to your lane. There is nothing to do but play super safe against a Batman jungle.