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Vi Build Guide by Vapora Dark


Vapora Dark In-Depth Jungle Vi Guide 9.20 Season 9

By Vapora Dark | Updated on October 9, 2019
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Shield Bash
Bone Plating

Legend: Alacrity

+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+6 Armor


LoL Summoner Spell: Flash


LoL Summoner Spell: Smite


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Jungle Role
Ranked #3 in
Jungle Role
Win 53%
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Resolve & Precision

Aftershock: Vi already deals enough damage to kill people in a single combo, the large amount of resistances and damage this rune offers will be far more useful than any other keystone right now.

Shield Bash
Shield Bash: Your passive will be up very often in fights and clearing the jungle so the extra resistances are nice. The extra damage is nothing to scoff at either with how often you generate the shield. It also works nicely with Sterak's Gage for extra synergy.

Bone Plating
Bone Plating: The most consistent option in this tier. Conditioning might be good in games that last a long time but the flat damage reduction will be more important for longer usually. Second Wind is useless as a jungler.

Revitalize: With how often you generate shields, just like with Shield Bash, having a rune that affects how powerful they are is a no brainer. Always making your shield 5% stronger and 10% stronger when you're below 40% is huge over the course of a match. Your healing will also be increased too, making your Smite and jungle item heal you for more.



Legend: Alacrity
Triumph: This can be a life saver in close fights, and the 20g per takedown actually adds up to quite a bit in bloody games.

Legend: Alacrity: Vi synergises super well with attack speed, especially for clearing jungle camps, so the stats given by this are very welcome.

10% Attack Speed
9 Adaptive Force
6 Armour


Smite is likewise irreplaceable on junglers, even more so than Flash. It immensely helps your clear speeds and the health of your clears, and more importantly it helps secure camps and objectives like Dragon and Baron Nashor. Even if you were playing a jungler that could healthily clear the jungle without Smite, not taking Smite would still be out of the question. And Vi isn't even one of those junglers to begin with.

-Skill Order-

> >
Passive: Blast Shield
Blast Shield: Whenever you hit an enemy with a spell, you get a shield that has a cooldown varying by level. This helps you more healthily clear the jungle, and makes you pretty tanky in team-fights, especially when combined with Aftershock and Shield Bash.
Vault Breaker: This ability is your main gap closer as well as your only CC besides Assault and Battery. It also has huge base damage, so you can burst really hard if you land this to begin a combo.

Something important to note is that you can cast Flash while charging Vault Breaker, but if you flash during Vault Breaker's dash it'll just cancel it. If you're going for a Flash Vault Breaker, make sure to Flash before you release Q.
Denting Blows: Every 3rd auto-attack on the same target deals extra damage, reduces their armor, and grants you attack speed. This increases your clear speeds by so much that you'll actually want to start Denting Blows over Excessive Force even though it won't allow you to activate Blast Shield until level 2.
Excessive Force: This makes your next auto-attack deal extra damage to the target and in an AoE to enemies behind it. It's also an auto-attack reset so you'll want to make sure you're applying it correctly to get the most auto-attacks off as possible.
Assault and Battery: This spell is almost a free kill on every gank if you use it on the right target. In team-fights you'll use this either to lock down high priority targets, to make picks, or to peel for your carries. It also does some pretty good damage, especially at later levels, so you'll be doing a lot of burst overall to whoever you choose to go on.

Hunter's Machete
Hunter's Machete + Refillable Potion: The starting item for any jungler is between Hunter's Machete and Hunter's Talisman. Vi should opt for Hunter's Machete as it synergizes with her high attack speed while clearing, and as she won't be using any spells to make use of Hunter's Talisman during her first clear. You'll want to go for Refillable Potion instead of 3 Health Potions as she doesn't strictly need the extra sustain, so you'll save yourself some gold in the long run.
Stalker's Blade - Warrior
Stalker's Blade - Warrior: Enchantment: Warrior is the best jungle item for Vi due to her great AD ratios. Stalker's Blade is the best Smite upgrade for Vi as it'll allow her to stick onto enemies better. Optionally you could instead build Skirmisher's Sabre if you intend to brawl with the enemy jungler often.
Ninja Tabi
Ninja Tabi: These are the strongest Boots right now, and the ones you'll want to build in most games. They're only good vs AD champions though so you'll want to forego them if you're not facing many AD champs.
Mercury's Treads
Mercury's Treads: Against high CC comps, or comps with high magic damage, you should op for Mercury's Treads, as they offer both MR and Tenacity.
Boots of Swiftness
Boots of Swiftness: If neither of the apply above, default to these Boots. They're very good on Vi as her Q is a self-slow as she charges it, and these boots reduce the effectiveness of slows. It also helps her get closer to a target to hit them with Assault and Battery.
Trinity Force
Trinity Force: Due to Vi's low CD spell + frequent auto-attacking nature, this item is the biggest damage spike you can get on Vi, as you get the Sheen proc and and a huge 40% attack speed.
Sterak's Gage
Sterak's Gage: This item matches perfectly with Vi and is her best third item. The health damage and shield you get from this all play perfectly with her playstyle. Not to mention resistances are less of an issue for you thanks to Aftershock.
Guardian Angel
Guardian Angel: Further making you harder to kill whilst giving you more damage, this item is perfect for Vi. You'll very often be getting this item 4th but sometimes you need pure tank stats or magic resistance in which case you should consider things like Dead Man's Plate or Adaptive Helm.
Gargoyle Stoneplate
Gargoyle Stoneplate: If you're the only engage your team has, this item can be perfect to buy after your Sterak's Gage because once you use all your abilities your damage will drop dramatically, so becoming nigh-unkillable can be all that you need to win fights. Just make sure to activate it after your do your damage as the downside is very noticeable.
Randuin's Omen
Randuin's Omen: This can act as a replacement for Dead Man's Plate against high crit/AS comps, or when the enemy ADC is particularly fed. Champions like Yasuo and Jinx are the type of champions you should consider buying this item into.
Dead Man's Plate
Dead Man's Plate: After Sterak's Gage you might need to become a lot more tanky in order to kill people, or simply survive fights you pick. Dead Man's Plate has the most innate synergy with Vi as it allows her to more easily look for ulti picks.
Adaptive Helm
Adaptive Helm: This item can replace Dead Man's Plate or Gargoyle Stoneplate if the enemy team has a lot of magic damage. Out of the 3 large magic resistance items this one is overall the best for Vi.

Blue Start





Red ( Smite)
Standard start if you're on red side since you get to have your bot lane help you with it, and if you have a melee support they'll usually tank most of it for you so you can move onto your next camp with almost no damage taken. Move onto wolves before taking your 3rd buff. From there on you can either look to gank, take scuttle, or keep clearing.

Red Start





Blue ( Smite)
Standard start if you're blue side so your bot lane can help you as you do it. You can also start it even if you're red side if you want to let your bot lane get an advantage by being in lane quicker than the enemy bot lane, or if you want to avoid losing your red to an early invade by the enemy jungler, such as Ivern.

Farm, farm, farm. You want to get yourself as fed as possible so take as many jungle camps as you can, as well as take lane CS whenever the opportunity arises (explained further down).

As with any jungler you should be ganking, but don't go out of your way to force ganks that seem unlikely to succeed. But on the flip side, go for any ganks that seem likely to succeed, since whether it results in a kill for you or for your laner, you'll still be getting free gold and XP, and then get to tax some gold/XP from the lane CS as you help your laner shove the wave into the tower to make the enemy miss out on CS.

Additionally make sure to hold lanes whenever possible, e.g. if one of your laners has to recall or dies, the enemy will be shoving that wave into your tower to make your laner miss CS, so you can take advantage of this by taking the wave for yourself since it would die to tower anyway, and thus get yourself ahead since lane CS gives more gold than a jungle camp, and does so without being at the expense of your HP.

Whenever one of your ganks succeeds, look out for an opportunity to get an objective out of it. For example if you double kill the enemy bot lane you can convert that into a dragon since for the enemy mid and jungle to contest that they'd have to 2v4. However, dragon is not always a possibility, especially if your team is low or if you only kill one of the enemy bot lane, and sometimes it's just not even the best objective to take. If you have to choose between taking a dragon or getting the tower first blood, you should pretty much always go for the tower first blood, since it grants a massive gold increase which is more immediately beneficial than that of the buffs given by dragons. And in general I would just always prioritize towers over dragons, since getting more map control by taking down towers makes it easier to take dragons later on, whereas choosing to take a dragon instead is harder to convert into taking towers later.

Whenever you see the enemy jungler showing up on the opposite side of the map, if there's no plays for you to make on your side then it can be worth going into their jungle to counterjungle them while they're too busy to respond. Whenever you counterjungle, if possible you should take the big monster but leave 1 small monster alive, to delay the camp's spawning as much as possible. When the enemy jungler wants to farm the camp, they won't find it already in the process of respawning soon, but have to kill the last remaining monster for a tiny bit of gold and a tiny bit of XP, and then have to wait the entire 1m40s for it to respawn.

If you find yourself getting significantly ahead of the enemy jungler then you can just start going into their jungle whether you have vision of them or not, provided your lanes are in a position to help you. With a level advantage you have a stronger Smite and can easily steal away camps they're trying to do, and they shouldn't be able to straight up win fights against you. Just don't do this if your nearest laner is getting pushed in since that means they won't be able to come help as they would miss a lot of CS to the tower, but the enemy laner can come help kill you without losing out on anything.

As the game progresses you'll find yourself in many team-fights. During team-fights you generally want to go for priority targets with Assault and Battery, but it's not quite as simple as that since while sometimes it's more valuable to kill the enemy carries, it's sometimes even more valuable to simply peel for your own carries. You'll have to use your own judgement to determine what's the correct choice, but it's generally best to peel if you have a great late-game ADC like Jinx, Twitch, Kog'Maw, Vayne, etc.

Hopper is Bae
That's it for my Vi guide. I hope you found this helpful and learn to play Vi as well as you want to.

If you still have any further questions after reading the guide, feel free to ask in the comments, I'll try to answer them as soon as possible and consider addressing them in the guide so future readers may not have the same questions.

Special thanks to Hopper for banners and coding.