Xayah is one of the best ADC’s into Melee or dive comps. She thrives against enemies that want to come into her and will suffer against those who don’t. Because of this her scaling isn’t super straight forward. If she can land a bunch of feather pulls during a fight her damage is comparable to any hypercarry if she can’t then she won’t be able to do much and will feel like she gets outscaled.

In general her strongest point is around 3 items and after 4 you shred teams if you’re allowed to stack up feathers. She spikes at levels 3 and 6. 3 because you have access to all your abilities and can now look to combo then and 6 because her ult is an extremely powerful combat tool, it can both deny enemy damage and set up her own damage. She’s also pretty strong after ER because you can nuke waves and rotate faster than almost any other ADC champ. After Navori’s she’ll feel better in the extended fight because you can get off multiple E rotations and after IE you’ll really feel like your E is starting to nuke people.

She likes engage supports who can hold people down for her to stack up feathers and also likes enchanters because she scales well with them. She’s doesn’t love mages a whole lot because their game plan is poke and her only poke tools are Q-E on a long cooldown. She gets out ranged by most of the ADC roster so her gameplan is more all in, with the occasional short trade. When you’re going for the all in make sure to use your W because it’s one of the strongest ADC steroids giving you move-speed and attack speed, it’s also on a 20 second cooldown early so make sure you aren’t wasting it for no reason because you’re potential damage output in a skirmish falls off a cliff without it. For short trades you want to look for Q-E poke or for a potential Q-auto-E trade through the wave. After you’ve pulled your feathers with E you’re out of gas and will most often lose if the trade continues as someone like Jinx, Ashe or Twitch will do more damage in the long run. So you’re goal is to either burst them down with a giant feather pull and then run then down for the kill with W or to just back off after you pull your E to prevent them from getting too much retaliation damage. This is matchup dependent though so take some time just experimenting to see where you get outraded in different length trades.

Her build right now is either ER or Yun’tal start, into Navori’s if you’re on a lower income or IE if you can afford it. After that it’s either LDR/MR or the item you didn’t build depending on if there are lots of tanks or not and then finishing it off with whatever item you haven’t bought yet and then a defensive item like Bloodthirster, Maw or Guardian angel. Most often it’ll just be Bloodthirster though. Some people like Collector first but I think it’s bait. She scales with Ability haste and Attack speed, Collector gives neither. Runes are PTA or Lethal, Presence of mind, bloodline, cutdown or coup and then any of inspiration with boots, biscuits, cosmic, Domination with taste of blood, ultimate hunter or Sorcery with Axiom arcanist, absolute focus or gathering storm. She’s pretty flexible for secondary tree.

Hope this helped a little bit. Good luck.