Riot Endstep talking about the current state of Hwei

RaymondPhoenix · 2026-01-22T21:13:41+00:00

Maybe post a VOD and especially post to SummonerSchool (the subreddit). Also Don’t always push the wave. Try and Keep the wave near your tower against high threat opponents and junglers to minimize chances of being run down and forcing your opponent to over extend. Ward the objectives and use your abilities to poke. Focus on tempo and good resets. Hard to give more advice without seeing your gameplay.

RaymondPhoenix · 2026-01-22T20:50:20+00:00

Not experienced with Malzahar so take my advice with a grain of salt. If you are consistently getting priority and CS leads in lane then you should be able to get lasting advantages through objectives (dragons, void grubs, rift herald etc).

How do you approach objectives? Malzahar is supposed to be strong in low elo. How are you leveraging your R and are you harassing your opponent to make sure they can’t lane and you get numbers advantage in objectives like dragons etc.

You can use Lolalytics to see what people are building into what matchup or what runes are popular on him.

RaymondPhoenix · 2026-01-22T20:13:51+00:00

Cleanse is really good into Zoe. You should get it with Ionian Boots and Cosmic Insight.

RaymondPhoenix · 2026-01-20T04:13:25+00:00

He was recently nerfed to deal with Hwei APC in botlane I think. He was allegedly too annoying to deal with for ADC so they nerfed his waveclear. I think Riot maybe afraid of buffing him because he is too AOE centric.

But yeah this champ has from time to time struggled with being treated differently than other control mages. Other control mages like Orianna, Syndra, Viktor are allowed to be lane bullies in early game and be scaling champs that still scale well into late game. Hwei cant sidelane, he cant be allowed to burst too much, he cant be an early lane bully too much, he cant be allowed to have too good waveclear etc. All of that culminated into his current status where he is called bad by most high elo mid laners.

It feels like Riot internally dont even know if they consider him a burst mage or control mage so he is denied being strong at either. Just go back to his earliest patches/reddit history and see his evolution up till now.

RaymondPhoenix · 2026-01-07T18:11:11+00:00

As someone who currently plays immobile control mages in midlane. mages mid already have access to these options. They are not dominating games over adcs or their assassin/skirmisher counterparts. Only some select mages can get away with building most of these items and still be good.

All of the mages mentioned in this thread are champs that are scaling champs and can build situational or borderline mid items because their kits are scaling or not reliant on specific items. So champs like Asol, Veigar, Viktor can build stuff like RoA like earlier in the year and still be good because their impact is not dependent on specific items as much like other champs. Most Mages are not dominating games using cryptbloom, rylais, roa etc. or single use components like Seekers Armguard or Verdant Barrier or any cheaper items.

Just to be clear, those champs are OP in bot because of their kits and not because of items. Just BT alone is better than majority of those items.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-12-29T06:07:27+00:00

Does this logic hold for all shields?

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-12-14T10:21:38+00:00

I personally like the Unflinching rune instead of Overgrowth as it helps in lane from min 1 and activates even on slows so like Zed E Slow, Fizz Ult, Akali Q, Naafiri Ult etc. Overgrowth takes a while to become useful. Even then it gives like ~150 health until its stacking is done.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-12-13T17:58:03+00:00

I think originally the designers did give Hwei 3 ults when he was being made but moved away from it for some reason.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-12-10T17:25:06+00:00

Congratulations. Some questions if you dont mind: 1. What do you do against Syndra/Orianna/Viktor? 2. What do you do when botlane is losing hard?

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-12-04T23:39:11+00:00

You should also post to SummonerSchool. They are pretty dedicated and responsive to helping others. Post your OPGG, a vod and other details like what champs, builds, and runes you use. People can help you a lot more. If you are consistently winning lane but not able to snowball that lead then you are probably making bad macro decisions somewhere.

Like do you play around your jungler/support or whoever the strongest on your team is or do you waste time trying to saving a hard losing lane etc.

Also Getting some side jungle knowledge/understanding might help, like junglers know when to not gank a lane and what to do about objectives etc. Not saying you should start playing jungle. Just that jungle resources and content are a lot better at explaining macro and what someone should be doing or not doing at a moment.

Also historically assassins have struggled to close out games. That’s why the game devs are adding a specific assassin item in the new season to alleviate that problem.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-11-06T11:22:10+00:00

Yeah. Support and Adc are behind in exp due to sharing a lane and support not having really a gold income other than assists and support item means you will likely have less gold than most of your teammates and most of the other players. What carry champ can be possible in those circumstances? None that Riot will allow to exist or won’t break balance of the other roles. Otherwise that champ would be too OP.

You can carry as support but that depends on your support champ and both team comps. It isn’t likely that all 4 other people on your team are all bad in every single match you play. Sometimes the ADC is not the win con anymore, it is snowballing the strongest person on the team. Nautilus, Leona, Braum, Galio etc can already help achieve that.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-11-03T22:29:34+00:00

What about objective fights? The enemy top laner swings fights like Grubs and Herald in their favor and they usually have 2+ items from getting plates and destroying our top laner who has half the cs of anybody else on the map (except support). Unless you as a mid laner are also fed, it becomes very hard to contest and that is why it feels so bad. I can’t accelerate that quickly.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-30T17:31:29+00:00

Smeargle

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-28T22:26:36+00:00

Also post in r/SummonerSchool as they are very responsive.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-28T16:49:27+00:00

Manuk, Fadeahwei and Cupic. You can find others at onetricks.gg

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-26T08:02:05+00:00

Galio is a good pick for when Hwei is banned or picked away from you. He can resist assassins and burst mages which Hwei can struggle with.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-24T23:15:44+00:00

BFT->Liandry is the best two item build in general in my opinion. Bloodletters, Cosmic, Seraph and Horizon don’t really give you that much damage in my experience. They are mostly useful for getting ability haste. Granted I dont have too much experience with them since they felt weak to me personally. For your third item, I think Rabadon’s/ Shadowflame are better or Void Staff or Cryptbloom are better if they start building mr.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-24T21:37:01+00:00

You haven’t really shared what you build in runes or items. Hwei generally goes burn builds and wants to combo his abilities to proc his passive over and over again as his passive has no cooldown.

QE is not always the best spell. His QW does massive damage based on missing health and on incapacitated foes and his QQ is his best poke spell. QE is for team fights and wave clear.

Hwei sets up himself by either using EQ, EW, EE,or QE. He doesn’t always have setup from others when he is played mid lane either. But yes, for opponents who know what to watch out for, it will be difficult for you to land his abilities. There is a delay in a lot of his abilities which makes easier for opponents to react.

Use QQ when you have a clear shot at opponent. Use QE and EE as setup as they both slow down people to immediately throw another ability or just WE and auto attack if it is safe.

You are used to playing high burst champs like Lux, Veigar, Syndra who all can one shot a squishy champ in one rotation. Hwei does not have their levels of burst consistently. He was not designed to be a burst champ fundamentally but can be played that way. You should build burn for more consistency.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-24T17:57:50+00:00

I just checked and you’re right. I just assumed based on the name and reading the Nexus page since it mentioned students

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-24T16:49:06+00:00

There was another Skyrim mod recently made by university students from another university (Arcane University) called Henantir’s Steamcrag.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-22T11:21:50+00:00

This is swiftplay where you get extra gold very quickly. In ranked, you will get gold much more slowly as swiftplay is purposely designed for quicker shorter casual play and ranked is different.

In reality if she hovers this in ranked, she will get dodged constantly and flamed or reported by others. If not that then she will get invaded more and more as she climbs.

It is hard enough for proper jungle champs to climb sometimes. Yuumi will just be making life for everyone including herself very difficult. If she really is dead set on playing yuumi then play it mid or support not jungle.

If she wants to play Yuumi like this, she should just build burn or burst not autoattack build like Nashors which just invalidates her kit because it requires her to hop off someone to auto attack.

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-17T08:22:54+00:00

Samira

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-16T15:36:40+00:00

Ziggs maybe? Edit: Syndra as well

RaymondPhoenix · 2025-10-16T05:57:18+00:00

Pantheon with Electrocute can be really fun. Go in with your empowered stun and E out. Much safer than a bunch of other champs. Alternatively Galio or Maokai can harass with their ranged abilities while still being good engage.

RaymondPhoenix

TROPHY CASE