Challenger | Patch 14.9 | How to play Aphelios like a Pro - Complete Season 14 Guide

Is what most people think when they see Aphelios, but he is a lot easier than you might expect. Don't let his 20,000 word wiki page overwhelm you, he is one of the most versatile and fun champions you can play as an ADC.

As an LEC pro player I feel very confident that you'll be able to have a good understanding on how to play Aphelios after reading this guide.

I will keep them as simple as possible, you can always look in the wiki (https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Aphelios/LoL) for specific info like damage and cooldowns, I will focus on what happens when you press a button.

1.- Aphelios Passive: Here is where you will find the "spells" you level during a game. Since you have 5 weapons you don't actually put points in them and instead use skill points to gain one of 3 stats: Attack Damage, Attack Speed or Lethality, in that order (Q W E).

You try to max Q first and then E but it's also "optimal" to level based on what items you have. If you bought a bunch of Attack Speed and no AD you can level AD and vice versa.

The damage, cooldowns and effects of all your guns (and your ultimate) improve themselves when you gain levels; with other champions you would put a point in level 6 to unlock your ultimate and a point at level 11 to upgrade it but with Aphelios you will automatically unlock it and improve it.

2.- Main Weapon: Aphelios has 5 weapons but can only carry up to 2 at any given time, they will cycle in the order you use them (I will cover gun rotation later). Each of them has a name and they're based on the 5 moon phases, but they're commonly known by their colors.

• Sniper, Calibrum - Green: Your basic attacks have 100 extra range.
• Pistol, Severum - Red: You heal a portion of damage dealt.
• Cannon, Gravitum - Purple: Your basic attacks apply a decaying slow.
• Flamethrower, Infernum - Blue: Your attacks now deal AoE damage in a cone behind your target.
• Chakram, Crescendum - White: This one kinda changes how your basic attack works alltogether, think of them as boomerangs you have to catch before throwing them again. You can hold up to 20 of these at the same time and gain more when using spells.

Each has 50 ammo, you use 1 per basic attack and 10 when you use its ability. When you run out of ammo it sends it to the back of the rotation and equips the next one.

3.- Main Weapon's Ability: Each weapon has 1 ability which you can use with Q. Essentially you only have 1 basic spell at any given time. Abilities use your main hand weapon and apply the effect of your off-hand one. Here I cover their abilities when on the main hand:

• Green throws a long range bolt and marks the first enemy unit hit. These marks let you do a basic attack with your other weapon which deals extra damage per mark.
• Red gives movement speed and makes Aphelios start attacking multiple times (scales with your attack speed) at the nearest enemy, prioritizing champions. He alternates each attack with his off-hand.
• Purple roots anyone who is slowed by its attacks.
• Blue fires a cone that deals AoE damage and locks onto everyone hit to then shoot them again with his off-hand weapon.
• White puts down a turret that uses your off-hand weapon as its own. They're untargetable until an enemy walks within its range.

4.- Off-hand Weapon: This not only shows your off-hand but lets you switch to it by pressing W. I already covered each weapon's effects above but one thing to mention is that every single ability will apply the effect of your off-hand or secondary weapon.

5.- Next Weapon: This simply shows which weapon you will get next. If you press E it will show a text above Aphelios too.

6.- Aphelios Ultimate - Moonlight Vigil: Throws an AoE skillshot and attacks with your main hand weapon to each enemy hit. It will have a different effect depending on which weapon you had; they're essentially their normal effects but stronger:

• Green marks every enemy champion hit with each mark dealing more damage than normal ones.
• Red heals an additional amount if you hit at least 1 champion.
• Purple makes the slow stronger and the root last longer (only against targets with the empowered slow).
• Blue deals the most damage of all weapons but also makes each champion hit deal splash damage all around them which can overlap.
• White generates 5 chakrams and an extra 1 per champion hit, so a minimum of 6 and a max of 10.

The gun rotation is a lot simpler than you might think. Aphelios has a total of 5 guns and can only hold 2 at any given time, each gun has 50 ammo: you spend 1 when you do a basic attack and 10 if you use its ability. Once it runs out of ammo it will be sent to the end of the queue and it will put the next weapon in your hand, not your secondary.

Essentially they will show up in the order you spend them.

Every game you start out with Green and Red, followed by Purple, Blue and White , then it loops back to whichever you used first. For the best gun order I recommend to spend Red, then Green, Blue and Purple. Now you should have Red + White so go ahead and spend Red one more time. Now your order is "set" so just spend them in the order in which they show up.

Now for the hard part, what do you do when you mess up the weapon order? Now don't panic this is normal and will happen every so often, what you wanna do is continue cycling your weapons correctly untill you get back to the weapons you messed up. Easy example, beginning of the game you use green instead of red, now you get white green instead of white red, then you just use up white and return to red green and use red first, now on your next cycle you will have the right order. You can fix your weapons even if you mess up multiple rotations you just need to remind yourself of your correct order and return to the cycles you messed up, do not try to hold onto a weapon until next cycle, I see some people doing this and its just not good as it makes you only play with one weapon for so long and it will ruin your whole order. You should also be willing to spam abilities off cooldown to get the desired weapons you want before teamfights.

Your Blue Q has longer range than your auto attack, and you can angle it slightly for longer range You can flash while channelling green Q to redirect it. You can use either spells while your chakrams are running out to get 0.5s more time to hit a target to refresh the stacks. You can get both your guns low ammo early game to get 4 spells off in quick succession. Always auto before red Q for free auto same with green Q and blue Q (just more optimal damage.) You cannot R Flash.