Rell - The Angy Iron Maiden
By EmpresBlue, the rare Rell Main.
EmpressBlue
Introduction
IGN: EmpressBlue (EUW) Playing since: December of 2017, I joined preseason leading up to season 8 Favourite Role: Support and Mid equally. Favourite Item: Zhonya's Hourglass so I can accidently press it walking to lane then die because I don't have it 10 seconds later. Introduction: Hey! My name is Nathan but online I go by the name TheBlueImperial or Blue for short and I've been playing league for about two years now and haven't looked back since. I'm from the United Kingdom despite my abysmal spelling/grammar and training to get my Helicopter Licences!
Rell's Abilities
Pros and Cons
Rell is an incredibly fun champion with so much to offer. She's insanely good at initiating a teamfight, while being just as good at turning around an enemies engage. With tons of unique mechanics, synergies and playstyles you'll find it hard to get bored of the champion.
She does of course does come with her drawbacks, like any other champ. She's got a lot of hard counters, some popular champs. She is probably one of the most easily punished engage support when she misuses and ability like Ferromancy - Crash Down / Mount Up.
Despite all this, nothing beats the feeling of landing a 5 man engage with your Magnet Storm and setting up a game wombo combo. She's a rewarding champion to play and well worth picking up, even if its just as a counter pick to some of your matchups.
Pros
- Incredibly durable from defensive stats being increased by a % while dismounted.
- Quick at traversing the map due to % movement speed buff passive while mounted.
- Huge teamfight setup with her Magnet Storm engage, can set up wombo combo's.
- Provides a % of her defensive stats to her tethered ally from Attract and Repel, making them more durable.
- Her CC cannot be reduced by tenacity, due to it all being knock-ups or low duration stuns.
- Has a shield breaker on a basic ability Shattering Strike. Incredibly useful against Sett, Tahm Kench and Immortal Shieldbow.
Cons
- Incredibly slow while dismounted, leaving her vulnerable until her Ferromancy: Mount Up is available.
- Very long cooldowns, meaning you're very easily punished for misusing an ability.
- Has little to no agency, she relies on having an ally nearby to do anything.
- Her ability Ferromancy - Crash Down can be cancelled by certain types of CC, leaving her incredibly vulnerable.
- Difficult to pick up and learn due to how hard mistakes are punished.
- A lot of medium-hard counters, they are still winnable though!
Disclaimer
I do recommend taking all of these Pro's and Con's with a pinch of salt. A lot of her disadvantages don't really apply to the lower elo's of league because they're less likely to punish mistakes. So don't take them as a warning sign to not play her or consider trying her out, they're just a warning to be careful and mindful of your strengths and weaknesses.
Skill Sequence
Rell
Like nearly every single champion in the game (excluding some rare cases) we want to max our ultimate Magnet Storm at every opportunity with no exceptions. It is our fight/game changing ability, having it up more often is too good to pass up.
Since Ferromancy - Crash Down / Mount Up is our bread and butter ability it is important for us to max this second. It increases our shield strength from Ferromancy - Crash Down and our movement speed while chasing during Ferromancy: Mount Up. You're essentially levelling two separate abilities when you level it, which just increases is value so much.
After maxing Ferromancy - Crash Down / Mount Up we max Shattering Strike, it has level scaling for damage, healing and cooldown whereas Attract and Repel only scales with damage since 12.17.
Lastly, as mentioned before we max Attract and Repel last because it now only scales with damage per level, this was done to allow for Rell to max Shattering Strike second over Attract and Repel by giving it a static cooldown.
Summoners
Runes
Engage Runes
The standard rune page for your games, take whenever you're planning on making large engages as often as possible and need every little bit of protection you can get. Aftershock just synergises with Rell incredibly well. It gives you a massive boost in defensive stats that are further amplified by 10% when unmounted after you use Ferromancy - Crash Down. It also gives a little bit of damage, which is always helpful when you're trying to secure kills bot lane.
All of the follow up runes are there to compliment Rell's play-style, by giving her more survivability and mobility for longer engage ranges. Some of the runes will provide sustain or cooldown reduction for better ability or summoner spell uptime. Essentially anything that can give Rell and edge in the middle of battle.
Protection Runes
I will admit this is quite similar to the above rune page, but it felt worth mentioning as Guardian kind of specialises in a peel focused playstyle. It also has it's own recommended build since you're not prioritising on engaging on the enemy, your goal is to protect your carry at all costs.
Whenever you take this rune page, you're usually going to follow it up in game with item's like Locket of the Iron Solari and Knight's Vow, using every possible obtainable way to help keep your carry alive on top of your CC you're directing at anyone who dives onto your carry.
Glacial Augment (Unique/Preference)
A prewarning for this rune page, it is not beginner friendly at all. Not in my opinion anyway, since you're going to be a significant amount more squishy, so you're punished a lot more for misplays. Only take Glacial Augment when you're comfortable enough on Rell to deal with this, only then will you perform well with it.
The reason this rune is really strong though is because of it's giant AoE lines it leaves on the floor whenever your CC an enemy. These lines slow all enemies by a decent amount and make all affected enemies deal 15% less damage to your allies (this does not include you). In combination with your Magnet Storm, immobile champions will find it essentialy impossible to escape you.
Builds
Standard Build
Rell is a pretty simple champion in the grand scheme of things, she wants to jump in and cause as much trouble as possible, to do so you need to be tanky enough to survive your initial engage. This is the standard build path which you will build majority of your games for Rell since it does exactly that for her, on top of that you're gaining Grievous Wounds from Thornmail and vision control with Vigilant Wardstone.
Ally Protection Build
Rell doesn't have many games where she is incapable of jumping on an enemy team but they do happen, when you're against those sort of teams it's best to switch to a peel focused role. This build is focused around that role, giving you every possible resource available to protect your carry and keep them from dying. This build also doesn't just need to be used when you're against a difficult team to jump on, sometimes they have a ton of divers that want to blow up your carry and that is also a good time to bring out this build.
Turbo Engage (Unique/Preference)
This is the more aggressive/imitation focused Mythic item, you're sacrificing supportive capabilities and more gold for a stronger engage. With the introduction of Evenshroud it's gone down in popularity and overall usefulness but it still has it's still a very viable item. It's also somewhat down to preference if you take this item over Evenshroud or Locket of the Iron Solari, I personally see this as more of a niche item, but some people like it as their primary Mythic.
Everfrost Build (Unique/Preference)
The less popular Rell build, the use of Everfrost might get you some questionable looks but I can assure you it's incredibly strong. It's incredibly versatile in helping you lock down hypermobile champions or making it impossible for immobile champions to play the game, there isn't many scenarios where the build isn't at least viable. It will take some getting used to though compared to the standard build as you're considerably less tanky.
Early Gameplay
Game Start
The start of the game is an incredibly important time where things can either go incredibly well for your team or set your team up for failure. Knowing what to do during the start of the game as Rell and what decisions to make is a learning experience, over time you'll begin to learn what invades and fights you win and which ones you don't. In this section though I will run through some of the basics, my thought processes on why I did certain things and not others while including some useful tips for the start of the game.
Watching For Invades
Blue Side:
Red Side:
Leashing For Jungler
Rell is a junglers best friend when it comes to leashing, she reduces the defensive stats of the Blue Sentinel / Red Brambleback jungle monsters. On top of this Rell can also tank at least two hits with the shield from Ferromancy - Crash Down before flipping them with Ferromancy: Mount Up for some extra damage and CC. Make sure you're standing behind the buff before using Ferromancy: Mount Up otherwise you will get stuck behind it after and body blocked, slowing down getting back to lane.
Invading
Rell has Ferromancy - Crash Down / Mount Up which counts as two separate abilities, making her pretty good for invades. She has AoE CC from Ferromancy - Crash Down and then shortly after can transform to use single target CC with Ferromancy: Mount Up for those trying to run. However, invading isn't something that will happen every game and is only really done when your team decide as a whole to do it. Never try to force an invade if people are refusing to turn up.
Counter Invading
Sometimes you will be playing against enemy teams that scream "We're going to invade", they will usually be teams with champions like Blitzcrank, Pyke, Nautilus or Thresh. When you're against them and notice they'll probably invade you can group with your team to hide in a normal invade route to catch them off guard and completely shutdown their invade, this gives you the advantage since you're capable of hitting a big multi-target stun with Ferromancy - Crash Down as they huddle together to find you.
Rell's Laning Style
Rell is best and most efficiently played as an aggressive engage support, looking for every opportunity to jump on the enemy laners and secure kills for your ADC/APC. She excels at holding enemies still for long periods of time and surviving large amounts of damage, especially in the early game. She is best paired with aggressive laners such as Lucian, Tristana and Samira.
However, since Rell is probably one of the best "wombo combo" engage supports in the game, she is more than capable of playing less aggressive lanes to scale heavily into the mid-late game. Champions like Varus, Seraphine and Jinx are good examples of this, they need time to scale but when they do, they complement your kit so incredibly well with large amounts of CC and AoE damage.
Since Rell is an engage support, she's pretty capable of roaming, less potent compared to her fellow engage supports like Rakan and Leona, but strong never the less. Roaming however is still not something you want to spam as a support, leaving your ADC/APC vulnerable in the lane by themselves and leeching XP off your laners repeatedly is not always the best call.
Her playstyle and how to execute these playstyles varies from game to game, I've done my best to explain the thought process behind them during my games. Hopefully, they'll be a useful insight in how to make the right decisions during your Rell games.
When To Make Engages
Since Rell is an engage tank, you'll mostly be wanting to engage in majority of your games. However, picking the right time to engage is incredibly important for any engage tank, but most important for Rell. Since her Ferromancy - Crash Down is essentially a self root with how much it slows you, making a poor engage is almost a guaranteed death sentence.
Where Is Everyone?: Before you make any real decision, you need to pay attention to your mini-map, usually long before you make an actual engage. Tracking where all your enemies and allies are is the make or break for any engage.
You're Weak!: Tracking the cooldowns of enemy champions and their summoners is incredibly important. An Ezreal without Arcane Shift or a Tristana without her Rocket Jump is extremely vulnerable. On top fo this, if they're lacking Flash it's just a huge opportunity for you to engage them.
Helping Hands: Having any ally Jungler or even laner come and gank your lane is incredibly helpful, it can set both your lane and their lane up for success and snowballing a win. Whenever you see an ally Jungler/Laner making their way to your lane, try to assess whether or not it'd be a good idea to make the play, if you find it too risky just ping them off and more often than not they'll listen.
When To Play Safe
Peeling/Playing Safe is a much shorter explanation over when to engage, due to it being a lot more simple in execution. Peeling is a much more passive playstyle in which you're not being proactive, you're being reactive. Your job is to essentially nullifying any engages or plays that the enemy makes on your laner, this is most useful when playing against other engage supports.
Usually, this play style will be used when laning with ADC/APC's that have incredibly weak early games or little to no self peel and you're against a lane with tons of aggressive engages. An example of this is when you're laning with a Kog'Maw or a Senna, they're both quite immobile and lack self peel, nor is their sustained damage strong during the early game, they need to scale to function properly. As Rell, you'll just be protecting them from champions like Leona and Pantheon that want to dive onto them and kill them.
Using this playstyle is usually more damaging than helpful if you're laning with an ADC/APC that excels in early game trades/all-ins. As those champions usually do not scale as heavily as the champions mentioned previously, so they get no value out of playing super safe. The exception to this is if you've lost one or two fights are are now behind, playing safe and waiting for either mistake to be made by them or a gank from your Jungler is the best call.
When To Roam
Roaming is incredibly powerful, the ability to snowball your allies in multiple lanes can sometimes secure a win for a game. Roaming successfully is dependent on both the ally and the enemy composition, especially for Rell.
To help increasing your chances of successful roams, you'll just need to follow this simple checklist:
Mid-Late Gameplay
Objectives
Baron Nashor: The lovely Baron nashor is an objective that provides a pretty large buff to your entire team and causes any minions you stand near to get significantly stronger in damage and durability. Getting this objective just allows you to push enemy towers without the enemy being able to really stop the waves since the minions are a lot tankier, very useful against a champion like Anivia.
Elder Dragon: Elder dragon is the objective you will see least, it only spawns once a team has gained the Elemental Drake Soul which can take a very long time to do. It's for good reason though, the buff it grants causes enemies you hit to gain a true damage DoT, if they're brought below 20% maximum health they're executed. Getting this objective is high priority because it will often lead to the team that gets it winning the game. If the enemy gets it, do not fight them and wait out the buff because you will often just lose the fight if the enemy has it.
Rift Herald: Rift Herald (also known as "Shelly") is the objective that spawns in the Baron Nashor 's pit before 20 minutes have passed, meaning it is purely an early-mid game objective but worth mentioning. Killing the rift herald will drop Eye of the Herald, when picked up it will replace your Stealth Ward slot and can be used to place a Rift Herald for your team. The Rift Herald will then go to the nearest lane and will charge down any towers it comes into contact with, dealing massive amounts of damage but at the cost of it's own health bar. It's amazing for early game because it can take towers down quickly to cash in on the plates.
Elemental Drakes: The Elemental Drakes of Summoners Rift are incredibly powerful, they have the ability to sway the game in your favour. Each game will have a different order of drakes and choice of map alteration alongside their respective drake souls. Since Rell is played bot lane as a support, you're going to often be there fighting for these drakes in the early game so it's best to understand what they do and whether or not they're worth fighting over.
Teamfighting On Rell
A champion that truly shines in teamfights, it is what makes Rell such a valuable asset to teams. She has so much AoE CC with Ferromancy - Crash Down, Attract and Repel and Magnet Storm she can lock down entire teams by herself, allowing her team to very easily clean up and kill the entire enemy team.
Something to always remember is that even if you have a rough lane as Rell you can still provide so much impact compared to other engage supports like Thresh who will just get blown up if they're behind. You only need to land one good engagement for your team to clean up, you might die for it but you're a support, it's somewhat your job to die for you team.
Indentifying Your Teams Strengths
Every game you will have to identify your win conditions for the game, this wont always be your lane partner. You need to identify on your team who will be the right target focus on synergising with, you will usually prefer to fight alongside a Yone than a Singed during a game. Once you've identified your teams carry (or win condition) you will do everything in your power to enable them in teamfights and protect them from dying or setting up an combo for Miss Fortune's Bullet Time or a Yasuo's Last Breath will be what wins you games.
Making An Engagement
As Rell your true strength is making enagements in teamfights because of how strong your Magnet Storm and Ferromancy - Crash Down enagement is. The amount of fights you automatically win for just hitting 2-3 people with your combo is just insanely strong, hitting 4-5? thats just a game winning engagement usually with the right follow up.
Making an engagement is dependent on many thing, but the two most important rules are "Do I have my teammates nearby" and "Do they have cooldowns up". You're purely setup as Rell, you have no damage yourself and rely purely on your allies to kill people you engage on. If you engage when no one is nearby or still waiting for important cooldowns you will get absolutely no value out of it and will often die and waste your cooldowns.
I personally try to save my Magnet Storm for when objectives are coming up, enemy teams will often funnel onto objectives to contest them and this is where Rell truly shines. It also allows you to make some sneaky plays as you know they will want to contest the objective, allowing you to hide in a nearby bush and make a flank engagement.
Combos
Q -> Flash
A more niche mechanic for Rell, buffering abilities is nothing new to league. Many champions are capable of doing this with abilities that have long animations/windups, the application of Rell's is less useful but still important to know. It can sometimes secure a kill on someone who is about to escape and is out of auto-attack range.
W1 -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> AA
This will be the standard combo for Rell in most of the early stages of the game, it's usually best to try and make use of the small animation cancels that are possible with Rell, due to how insanely long her auto-attack windups are.
Flash/Hexflash -> W1 -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> Auto
The same as the above combo, but with the use of Hextech Flashtraption (or Flash if it's up). It allows you to do some pretty undodgeable engagements from the bot side bushes, it's incredibly strong with Ferromancy - Crash Down because they wont expect you engaging from as far as you normally would.
W2 -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> Auto
This will be the second most used combo for Rell in the early stages of the game, it's a lot more consistent and cannot be cancelled (amazing against champs like Vayne) but only works on a single target unlike Ferromancy - Crash Down. It's usually best to try and make use of the small animation cancels that are possible with Rell, due to how insanely long her auto-attack windups are.
Flash/Hexflash -> W2 -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> Auto
The same as the above combo, but with the use of Hextech Flashtraption (or Flash if it's up). It allows you to do some pretty undodgeable engagements from the bot side bushes, especially since Ferromancy: Mount Up cannot be cancelled once you've made contact with the enemy.
W1 -> R -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> Auto
You unlock an insane amount of teamfight power once you hit level 6 on Rell and unlock Magnet Storm. It's Rell's most important combo, jumping in and locking down an enemy team to set up your allies abilities, if you have to drop the autos you can, you're not prioritising damage since you're just setting up for your allies now.
Flash/Hexflash -> W1 -> R -> Auto -> E -> Auto -> Q -> Auto
The same as the above combo but with the addition of Flash (works with Hextech Flashtraption just slower and not as fast). It allows you to extend the range in which you can engage on the enemy, allowing you to make some insanely big engagements because the enemy don't expect your engage range.
Everfrost -> W1 -> E
Example of an Everfrost combo. This is my favourite part of Everfrost, it allows you to fish for engages without actually having to commit to a fight by throwing your body into the enemy. You can simply use a short item cooldown, if it hits you can usually just engage straight away with Ferromancy - Crash Down and if it doesn't root them you don't really risk or lose much.
W1 -> Everfrost -> E
Example of an Everfrost combo. Simply extends your CC duration by rooting them after you have landed your intial CC with Ferromancy - Crash Down, making escaping your engagements as a hypermobile champion incredibly difficult.
W2 -> Everfrost -> E
Example of an Everfrost combo. The replay system isn't showing the combo correctly, however it will normally flip the enemy over your shoulders with Ferromancy: Mount Up and you just simply Everfrost behind you so they land in the root. Makes escaping near enough impossible for the enemy, especially since they can't dodge Ferromancy: Mount Up since it's activated with an auto-attack.
Warding
Warding Guide
An in-depth but less beginner friendly Warding Guide made and maintained by Mobalytics.
Fast Ward Kill
Rell is incredibly slow at killing Stealth Ward's and even slower at taking Control Ward's, it's painful but there is sometimes a way to speed this up. Since Ferromancy: Mount Up is an auto-attack reset, we can use this to kill wards a lot faster than usual. It's uses are few and it wont happen all that often, but I feel like it's worth mentioning because it happens enough.
Fast Ward Kill
For a melee champ Rell has a decent auto-attack range, sitting at an impressive 175 range. This range is the threshhold for being able to hit wards over the smaller walls on Summoners Rift, if the ward is close enough to the wall you can position yourself to hit it over the wall.
Pulling Yourself Over Walls
Using the information above about hitting wards over smaller wards thanks to our 175 auto-attack range, this can be used to get over some walls. Since Ferromancy: Mount Up will cause her to charge (essentially dash) at the target, this means she can target a wall over a ward in range and get over said wall. This is a lot easier though thanks to the extended range from Ferromancy: Mount Up, bringing Rell up to an impressive auto-attack range of 275. This mechanic also works on a champions, it will however often make you and your target swap places, bringing you over the wall and them to your original location.
Conclusion
If you have any feedback, questions or requests for the guide, please feel free to either leave a comment here on the guide or contact me via the MobaFire Discord server, I'm pretty active there!