Lauriel: Holy Retribution From Lauriel Archangel

Build and Guide Lauriel: Holy Retribution From Lauriel Archangel

Cheat Sheet
Skill Build       

Smite > The Wheel > Blink

Recommended Talents       

Flicker, Endure

Items       

Orb of the Magi, Gilded Greaves, The Aegis, Rhea's Blessing, Hecate's Diadem, Ancestral Glory 

Arcana       

Violate, Devour, Hex

Introduction
Lauriel is a mage with high mobility and quick bursting damage abilities on short cooldowns. Making her great at moving around both on and off of the battlefields. With the ability to create a large area where your cooldowns are almost non-existent late game, you can deal a lot of quick burst damage while moving constantly around the battlefield.

Skill Build
Smite > The Wheel > Blink

Smite deals a small amount of damage when summoned and when the area of effect dissipates. However, the real effect that we are looking to use from this is that while inside of the area of effects circle, Laurie's skills have greatly reduced cooldowns. Making this her personal arena where she is queen. The only issue is, people can just kind of walk away if they have the mobility. The idea though is that the area is so large, you can generally kill your target before they can leave.

The Wheel is our next maxed ability. As it provides the most damage in our kit. Its base damage is quite low, starting out at 215 damages. The real power comes from the fact that it's a skill shot that can hit multiple enemies for full damage, and after a short duration it will disappear and do the damage again in the area it was recently cast. Much like our ultimate ability. Effectively doubling the damage. This scales with our bonus ability power extremely well into the late game and helps clear minions in lane easily early game. 

Blink is our late game beast of an ability. Which causes Lauriel to dive toward a targeted direction and summon 3 orbs. Which deal a small amount of damage for each hit, and reduces the cooldown by 4 seconds. While yes, this does deal more damage by itself on a single target than The Wheel. I level it after since the ability is a bit harder to control especially around minions. Early game it's also your only real escape, so I prefer to treat it as one unless I am going for a kill. Chances are you will be out of range, summoning no orbs at all, or you will hit minions with some of the orbs, and be way too close to the enemy with no way out. Use it as an escape early, unless you really know how to control it well.

Our passive is Divine Punishment. Enemies hit by Lauriel's abilities gain a mark for each hit. Every 4th mark will cause an explosion of true damage and slows the enemies by 90% for 1 second. This ability also grants Lauriel a small chunk of health after the explosion. Oh, man is this great late game. Short cooldowns on your ultimate mean you will be procing this all the time. As long as you are paying attention to marked targets. The health does scale with level and can be a great way to heal up if you manage to mark a few enemies at a time.

Recommended Talents
Flicker, Endure

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

Flicker is always a great Talent to use. It’s a free short ranged teleport ability that can get you over terrain or towards a position you want to be in instantly. I recommend using this ability and getting good with it, regardless of the hero used, unless you are the jungler. 

Endure 120-Second Cooldown: Immobilizes your hero to become invulnerable for 1.5 seconds.

Endure is alright on Lauriel since we have quite a bit of mobility built into our kit. Allowing us to cross over terrain without the need for Flicker. Endure will give us some time to avoid crowd control and damage from skill shots if we time it correctly. As well as 1.5 seconds of time for our cooldowns to reduce by. Sometimes giving us just enough time to cast another ability. Flicker is still my preferred but I can understand why you would take this on Lauriel.

Items
Orb of the Magi, Gilded Greaves, The Aegis, Rhea's Blessing, Hecate's Diadem, Ancestral Glory 

Orb of the Magi is a very popular item on most casters. Giving us the ability to gain health and ability power every 30 seconds up to 10 times at 12 ability power and 110 health per stack makes for a powerful item. Its other passive is the real reason we want it though, every level up we gain 20% of our health and mana over 3 seconds. This item allows most casters the ability to remain in the lane as long as possible to not miss out on gold or experience.

Next is Gilded Greaves. While items that grant defense are not usually taken on casters, Lauriel deals with quick bursts of damage that is not necessarily as hard-hitting as we'd like early. This just allows us to survive ranged harass damage mixed with our Orb of the Magi. You can exchange this late game with another pair of boots if you'd like more damage.

The Aegis gives us a bit of utility against ranged physical damaging heroes. The unique passive reduces the attack speed by 30% and the movement speed by 15% for 3 seconds of any hero that hits us. 

Rhea's Blessing grants us a shield once our health falls below 40%. This allows us time to escape the enemy if we begin taking more damage than we can handle.

Hecate's Diadem gives us a bonus of +35% of all our ability power we have collected so far, with a small bit of magic pierce at +75. Hecate's is the casters end game item. This is a huge power spike for us. As we have done nothing but collect items that grant us large amounts of ability power and defense.

Ancestral Glory is an item that allows us to make a mistake or survive an assassin bursts. Lauriel is not the tankiest of people, and while you scale well into late game, you are easily taken out. The only con to this item is its long cooldown of 3-minutes. Assuming your allies won't leave you behind to die again, it's certainly a great way to give us some time to work out an escape.

Arcana
Violate, Devour, Hex

Violate for the early game damage from more power and pierce. Reds don't really have anything better or even near as good for Lauriel. Enlightened is a bonus 1 ability power with no added stats per Arcana over Violate. I'd much rather have the magic pierce per Arcana.

Devour gives us a tad more damage at 2.4 ability power per Arcana, and 1% magic life steal per. Our ability to spam our abilities really lets the magic life steal shine all throughout the game. So, we get this for that reason. That and purple Arcana have basically no other choices for mages.

Hex for more damage and cooldown speed. Focus is recommended, but I don't like gaining .3% cooldown speed per Arcana extra over 2.4 ability power per Arcana with slightly less cooldown speed. Unless Focus is buffed, I can't really see it every being the better choice in Arcana.

Early Game
Early game Lauriel is quite weak vs most matchups. Your range is low, and your health is low. You can try to gauge the enemy and see if you can win trades with them, but the mid and late game is where you want to try and look for fights. Right now, there's no way you will hit anyone with all of your abilities. Use Blink to dodge abilities and avoid getting pushed out of the lane.

Mid Game
As we get into the mid game you might notice your starting to hit for quite a bit of damage. As the enemy starts getting some crowd control from the enemy or simply being distracted, it becomes much easier to hit enemies with the after effects of your abilities. Most of Lauriel's power comes from the fact that the abilities like The Wheel and Smite will reapply their power after a short duration. The early game most people will simply move off of the area of effect and effectively cut off half of your damage.

Late Game
Late game is where you shine most in my opinion. You hit harder and harder as time goes on, and you have more of an effect since more team fights will happen. The main thing is ending it before you get very far into the late game. At some point, the marksmen will out scale you. So be sure to focus them in team fights, and if you combo correctly, they shouldn't be a problem. Your ultimate should be used during the area of effect crowd controls early in fights. If even half of the enemy team takes the activation and secondary hit from your ult, you will ensure a victory for that team fight.

FAQ/Tips
You have a high amount of mobility. Use this to dodge around in fights to reduce the damage you take. You should almost never use Blink directly towards an enemy. Play angle to dodge abilities without trying.

Matchups
Krixi, Easy

Krixi is a long-ranged skill shot hero that does not deal well with people being in her face. As long as you wait for her to cast the ability that shoots forth her fairy clone and dodge that. You can go crazy, go all in, watch for the knock up, and at least make her need to go back to base.

Diao Chan, Easy

Diao Chan does poorly against high mobility. All of her abilities require a short time after casting to activate. Watch for the circle area of effect indicators she places on the ground and dodge them. After that, you are free to attack her at will. As long as you dodge the stun, she cannot hope to out damage you.

Natalya, Easy

Natalya does an insane amount of damage if you stand in her abilities. Abuse your high mobility to get out of the way of her abilities. If she casts her ultimate she stands still and fires a beam in a direction with a slow turn if she tries to readjust. Casting your ultimate under her is a good idea since she can't move without canceling the ability.

Airi, Hard

Airi has more mobility and has a hard stun on a short cooldown with a pretty good width. Your best bet is to watch and bait out her shuriken. If you dodge the stun cast spells in her direction but stay out of normal attack range. Every normal attack she does will reduce the cooldown on her stun skill shot. If you keep playing this lane dodging her abilities you should come out on top. Keep in mind she has three dashes in her ultimate if she really wants to get in your face and do damage. 

Ilumia, Hard

Ilumia is a hero covered in knockbacks. There is no great way for you to get near and stay near an Ilumia. Your best bet here is to just farm the lane and wait for the late game and get your kills in team fights. Seeing as how you deal damage a tad easier than her with your mobility.

Joker, Hard

Joker mid is a strong contender for the best physical damage dealing caster. His primary ability he will use in the lane and probably the only one deals massive damage at a super long range. Joker will more than likely sit under the tower and poke with his rocket and passive. Your best hope against him Is a Joker who doesn't abuse the range and comes into range to farm with normal attacks normally. If he does this you can fight him easily, but most Jokers should just be last hitting creeps with their passives increased attack range.