Over the years, players have came up with multiple ways to play support oriented heroes as junglers or even carries. Some of these that exist right now includes Wp Ardan, Cp Lyra, Wp/Cp Adagio and Wp Grace. However, there is one hero that is so good that in the last season has been played as a top pick beside heroes like Krul or Idris, and this hero is Lance.
Lance in my opinion is a very easy to understand hero, and thus very abusable for players who knows exactly how to use him at a high level. His kit is a very utility based one, with the ability to root, stun and reposition and still have a good enough damage output, allowing him to peel for his teammates while poking enemies with his long range as compared to other melee heroes.
Today, I am here to breakdown hybrid Lance, a devastating bruiser known for bursty poking tactics and crowd control capabilities. We will take a look at his kit, his items and how you combine the both of them to make him a troublesome peeler.
His Heroic perk and Skills:
- Lance’s basic attacks damage every target along their path. However, his attacks are slow to land and attack speed is less effective on him.
- Instead of energy, Lance uses stamina to activate his abilities. Purchasing items with energy and energy regeneration increases his stamina and stamina regeneration.
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Skill |
What it does |
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Impale(A)
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Lance lunges forward and strikes through his opponents, dealing weapon damage and rooting them in place.
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Gythian Wall(B)
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Lance smashes enemies back with his shield, dealing weapon damage and also stunning them if they collide with a wall or structure (max 1.4s). Afterward, he holds his shield steadfast, greatly reducing incoming damage from the target direction by up to 90%.
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Combat Roll(Ultimate)
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Lance rolls in the target direction. His next basic attack within 2s will strike quickly, dealing bonus crystal damage. |
Items for Hybrid Lance build:
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Item |
Why to build it |
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Stormcrown
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Stormcrown ensures very quick jungle and objective clears with Lance. Since Lance heroic perk allows him to be able to hit minions in a straight line, Stormcrown further enhances his early game clear times to have more time for rotating into lane and also clear objectives quickly. At Level 12 you do 150 true damage to enemy heroes every time you are able to basic attack with it’s activation, allowing you to Combat Roll (Ultimate) into poking with it’s burst. The cooldown reduction needed for you to use your abilities to peel and reposition more frequently. |
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Aftershock
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This item can combo with your Combat Roll (Ultimate) as since Combat Roll (Ultimate) is an ability with a really short cooldown at max level, you can Combat Roll (Ultimate) and poke with your range, activating Aftershock’s passive effect due to being able to Combat Roll (Ultimate) successfully, allowing you to also deal 10% of your target’s hp and further enhancing the empowered basic attack from your Combat Roll (Ultimate). This item also gives you a bit of crystal power to help enhance your crystal ratios for your abilities as well as the cooldown reduction needed for you to use your abilities to peel and reposition more frequently. |
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SorrowBlade
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A good item for Lance due to a high burst damage when he lands his Impale (A) as well as quick damage with your basic attacks to enemies standing in a straight line with your heroic perk. Recommended if you wish to have a consistent base damage and go for a straight drawn out fight. |
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Atlas Pauldron
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Impale(A) is a good engage tool for Lance onto unsuspecting enemy carries, and this could be used before a Combat Roll (Ultimate) into the enemy carry to Atlas Pauldron them as Lance abilities allows him to gap-close easier and get to the enemy carries to slow their attack speed. |
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Tension bow
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Tension bow now deals 100 base damage as well as 100% of bonus weapon power every 6 seconds, along with a base weapon power of 40 and 45% armor pierce which allows Lance to always Combat Roll (Ultimate) to set up for his empowered basic attack, and activate Tension Bow to deal a sudden burst of damage, recommended more for a poke and reposition playstyle. |
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Fountain of Renewal
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Decent item if you think your team is dying too fast. It is not bad at all since Lance damage kit will most of the time let him have two slots free, including boots. This means he could always go for defense and utility items, thus Fountain of Renewal is always viable depending on the situation. |
What I build and how I jungle with Lance:
For Lance,
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Phase |
What I Buy |
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Early game |
Every game, I will start off with Stormguard Banner. This item costs exactly 600 gold and the reason I start of with this item is because I want to go for a faster jungle clear early game and be able to have a better chance and kill securing the center treant, mainly because I want more Exp to reach level 6 as soon as possible, as well as having more time to rotate to lane for a potential first blood gank.
By 5 mins, I will be looking to get my Stormcrown as well as a Sprint Boots, and this allows me to clear minions and objectives at a faster rate while giving me more cooldown on my abilities, allowing me to Impale (A) to engage more often when the enemy carry is caught out of position and allowing my team to apply more pressure, while having Combat Roll (Ultimate) allows me keep rolling forward and poke with the Stormcrown activation right after my Impale(A) lands to chip away their hp bar quickly and forcing them to back off or recall to safety. |
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Mid game |
With all that, I will build an Aftershock next at around 8-9 mins, further empowering my empowered basic attack that I get whenever I use Combat Roll(Ultimate) successfully allowing to burst down the enemies even faster by being able to Combat Roll (Ultimate) a lot more frequently due to the combined cooldown reduction from my Stormcrown and Aftershock allowing me to poke enemies quickly and bursting their hp bars down by repeatedly activating the passives of Stormcrown and Aftershock constantly. |
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Late game |
At 12-13 mins I would have already gotten maybe a tier 2 defence item as well as either a Tension Bow or Sorrowblade. Tension Bow are for a poking kind of playstyle, where you highly rely on poking by spamming Combat Roll(Ultimate) to activate it’s empowered basic attack and burst enemies quickly, while Sorrowblade is meant for landing your Impale(A) and then being able to constantly basic attack and advance forward into enemies than keeping your distance with Combat Roll (Ultimate) and only attacking when your empowered basic attack is activated.
After which, the tier 2 defence item could be built into anything depending what it is. If you have built a Warmail, building it into an aegis allows you to dive and engage with your Impale(A) without being afraid of getting punished by Crowd Controls through blocking them, or Fountain of Renewal, if you are dying too fast from getting bursted down to be able to peel long enough for your carry and could use some extra health regeneration. If you have built a Coat of Plates, building it into an Atlas Pauldron allows you to use your abilities to gap-close to enemy weapon carries and slow them down, rendering them a lot less effective for the next 4 seconds and allowing you to win trades and fights easier. |
About my build, the reason I start off with Stormguard is because of the quick jungle clear, as well as kill secure. Lance honestly isn’t as damaging as he is early game as he should be later on. However, he has a good range for a melee hero, and this allows him to try steal farm or center treant early game from a safe distance.
Once I reached the later part of the early game, I buy Stormcrown as this will allow me to capture objectives at a quicker rate as well as giving me the cooldown in order to use my abilities more frequently, allowing me to engage more with my Impale(A), peel more with my Gythian Wall(B) when getting engaged on as well as Combat Roll(Ultimate) to poke more often and apply pressure to the enemies in lane.
Next, I will go with Aftershock as Aftershock provides me with a hefty burst activation upon every successful ability, which is good for Lance since his peeling, engaging and poking are all ability reliant and allows him to keep activating the passive of Aftershock and chunk 10% of his target’s hp at a time upon each activation. This item provides Lance with even more cooldown to help with his ability reliant kit and playstyle allowing for more engages as well as poking damage to help lane out trade the enemies and then push for turrets or pressure to capture objectives.
Tension Bow/Sorrowblade will be a good last damage item, due to how much weapon ratio lance abilities have. Especially Tension Bow is good, due to being able to stack the activation of Tension Bow, Aftershock and Stormcrown on top of the empowered basic attack from Combat Roll (Ultimate) to chunk down carries hp by a large percentage, allowing for aggressive engages and quick ganks, this applies a lot pressure and also allows him to dive for kills or force enemies front line assasins to back off due to how low their hp bar is when getting poked right after being stunned into a wall with Lance’s Gythian Wall (B).
After which I mostly go for Atlas Pauldron as since I am more into dealing damage through poking, this also means I can use my Combat Roll (Ultimate) to close up onto the enemy carries and activating the Atlas Pauldron while I roll to make it harder to predict and block, while setting me up in a good position to Impale (A) followed by the empowered basic attack from the Combat Roll (Ultimate) I used to burst them down. I will also get a Fountain of Renewal due to how much it ties me into my job of a peeler, where my team comp’s win condition when picking Lance jungle is keeping my carry alive and healthy, and what better way to do that by providing them with a bit more Health regeneration, or myself so that I can peel for them longer if I am against a fed opponent.
Playstyle:
So up the elo ladder to Vainglorious Silver, I mained 3 different junglers and one of which is Lance. I hated to play him at first, and really question whether he is even worth the pick, but I will soon realize how devastating it is to get pressure by a Lance and just how much peel one can provide with Lance.
What we are going to talk about now is what Lance kit is made up of and why these abilities are really strong for a peeling jungler. First up we got Impale (A), it’s a very easy ability to understand. So when Impale(A) is used, Lance will a few steps forward, before his spear lands on the ground in the targeted direction, dealing quite a bit of damage to enemies caught within the hit box as well as rooting them in place for a short duration. This root can be really dangerous though, for example if you have a Grace or Celeste, this root might be a very dangerous engage tool for the enemies to face as it can make sure the enemies are locked in place and are unable to move, allowing your team to guarantee a stun on the enemies and continue doing damage.
His Gythian Wall (B) is a very hyper-peel abilities, that allows Lance to push enemies backwards from their position relative to the selected direction. Remember, his shield has a cone hit box, so this means enemies engaging from directly in front can still be pushed to walls at the side by aiming between the enemies and the wall. This also means as long as the enemies are within his cone hit box when getting shoved, they will be considered as push and making them touch a wall causes them to get stunned. This ability is so good that any dive comps can be screwed over just by getting shoved into a wall when trying to dive on your carry, and this gives your carry to create more space between them and the enemies and allows them to either follow up by a crowd control while the enemies are still stunned or kite backwards using abilities or basic attacks, giving them more time to stack up on stacking items while dealing free damage and allowing them to punish by out trading damage with the enemies for their mistake. This ability should always be saved till when you have to peel for your carries when they are getting dived on, do not use it just for the stun and poke, as the cooldown does take quite a bit to recharge from cooldown and this gives the enemies an opening to kill your carry easily without getting punished through getting stunned.
His Combat Roll (Ultimate) is well a combat roll…. And probably one of my favorite abilities in the game due to how aggressive it is as well as it’s cooldown. So what this ability does at full build Lance is essentially repositioning in any direction for a few meters, followed by an empowered attack. Sounds simple right? However the potential for this ability is massively powerful and here is why I feel that way. The cooldown for this ability at full build and overdriven is 2 seconds. Think about it, every 2 seconds, you will be presented with an additional option of rolling towards your carry to peel for them harder with your Gythian Wall (B) by pushing enemies backwards or into walls during a fight, or you can roll towards enemy carries, into an Impale (A) for a massive engage for your team to capitalize on. Whichever you choose also gives you your empowered basic attack that you can use to combo with your items burst activations for a hefty amount of damage. With a movement ability this short, you can also dodge crowd control abilities when necessary, catching out mispositioned enemy carries and poking them with your long range as well as using your ability combo by simply Rolling, into an Impale (A), empowered basic attack from your Combat Roll (Ultimate), and then back into a Combat roll, so basically you can dip in and out of an engage, or you can keep on applying pressure and move forward, allowing you to have more area control and go for turrets, preventing enemies from contesting objectives by zoning them out or even steal their jungle farm by forcing them to recall and ruining their jungle rotation timers. His poke really does shine when it is spammed, and that is really why I feel Lance kit can be so threatening and troublesome to deal with. It provides him with mobility, positioning switches between bruiser and peeler in quick successions as well as a burst of damage for pressure.
General difficulties and solutions:
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Difficulty |
Solution |
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Hard to land your Impale (A) |
Practice please…. I am also a player too, and I also miss a lot more when I first started playing Lance. Try to predict your enemy’s movements, whether they will be moving in a straight direction or dodging , and if so which direction, try to spot out if maybe your opponent has a movement pattern that they follow and exploiting it might help you land your Impale (A) on them easier.
Missing your Impale (A) can be very punishing due to the few frames that you would be stationary and potentially get stunned and cc chained upon, however rewarding since landing an Impale (A) can just set up a cc chain for your team by locking the enemies in place to get hit by your team’s abilities. |
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Harder early game match-ups against other junglers early game. |
When playing Lance, the goal is just to get to level 6 and Aftershock as soon as possible as those will be your power spikes. Level 6 gives you your Combat Roll (Ultimate) which enables you to combo it into an Impale (A) for a menacing lane gank and closes up the space between you and the enemy carry for area control and forcing them to back off almost like you are zoning them. Aftershock gives you a burst of damage for every basic attack done after an ability is used, thus allowing you to combine it with the empowered basic attack after Combat Roll (Ultimate) to deal a reasonable amount of burst damage, thus resulting in a power spike and giving him the ability to fight better than only having Stormcrown due to the damage reduction early game when used against heroes.
So just play passive, don’t go for too much early aggression and farm up first before you hit your power spikes. |
In conclusion, Lance is a very pressuring jungle hero to go up against, due to having a kit with a balance of both crowd control and good damage output, helping to keep dive heroes off his carries as well as allowing his team to catch and out and capitalize on mispositioned enemies and punish them by immobilizing them and bursting them down by leaving the enemies vulnerable.
Well this will be the end of my Lance guide, in the next guide, I will cover on some general tips on lane aggression to make your lane more threatening and pressuring to deal with.If you wish to discuss more Vainglory related content, or even message me about your doubts, feel free to do so by joining my public guild server by clicking here
Once again, thank you for reading and I will see you on the fold.
-BioStorm’s Leader, SLICE
BioStorm