These items and runes are ideal for Vayne.
Vayne is one of the best scaling bot laners in League of Legends season 10. She has a weak early game, but once she gets going, she becomes unstoppable. After you buy Blade of the Ruined King, you will kill tanks and carries alike with no issues.
As with all League champions, however, specific items are going to be more effective depending on the situation. But there are certain items that are good to build on Vayne regardless of how the game is playing out. These core items are going to ensure that you have the best possible experience with the champion.
Runes
Precision
Press the Attack: This keystone ensure that you get good trades early on and are able to three-shot carries in the mid to late-game. The keystone is easily activated with a simple auto, Q, auto combo ensuring a huge amount of damage without issues.
Triumph: Triumph allows you to do those montage plays. It recovers a portion of your health on a takedown while also giving you some additional gold.
Legend: Alacrity This is a pretty basic rune to grant you more attack speed, which is a core stat for Vayne. But if you’re going to face a lot of beefy champions, feel free to take Legend: Bloodline to increase your lifesteal potential.
Cut Down: This rune helps you penetrate the beefy frontline even easier. Since you aren’t going to build any health items, this item will be able to be activated quite often against tank champions. If no tank champions are present on the opposing team, however, then feel free to take Coup de Grace instead to deal more damage to those low-health enemies.
Sorcery
Nimbus Cloak: This rune became broken overnight once people realized how efficient the extra movement speed is, especially during the laning phase. From being barely picked to picked by most champions in the game, this rune ensures you get a small ghost effect when you use any summoner spell. It works perfectly with Vayne’s kit, which relies on dashing and moving fast around teamfights.
Gathering Storm: Gathering Storm is a straightforward scaling rune to increase your damage output the longer the game goes.
Bonuses: +10-percent attack speed, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor
Starting items
Doran’s Blade
Having some early lifesteal and attack damage is crucial for Vayne. Doran’s Blade also grants you 80 bonus health to make you a tad bit tankier early on. This item can be purchased multiple times if you’re having early game issues and need power as soon as possible.
Health Potion
During the farming phase, you are going to take damage from the enemy champions. Health potions heal back 150 health over 15 seconds and will give you extra time before having to base.
Core items
Blade of the Ruined King
Blade of the Ruined King is the tank-killer item and is a must-have if you want to take down enemy tanks. This is the perfect item for Vayne, which syncs up well with her W and ensures you deal a lot of on-hit damage regardless of how much AD you have.
It is the bread-and-butter item for Vayne and should be prioritized in most of your games. There are some rare exceptions, like getting a Wit’s End against heavy magic damage-oriented compositions. Otherwise, Blade of the Ruined King should be your first item.
Guinsoo’s Rageblade
Guinsoo’s can be one of the most broken items in the game on champions who have on-hit mechanics. Vayne has true damage in her W and Guinsoo’s allows her to use it more often, melting down tanks with no issues in the span of a couple of seconds. While the basic statline feels lackluster, the Guinsoo’s Rage effect gives you additional attack speed and the repeat on-hit effect makes up for those weak base stats of the item.
Berserker’s Greaves
Berserker’s are core boots for Vayne, rushable as a first item before you get any other items. It gives you movement speed to move faster in the laning phase and act like a ninja in teamfights with swift moves. The attack speed is also very valuable, especially due to your W which deals true damage.
Late-game items
Death’s Dance
One of the best ADC items in the game, Death’s Dance grants you defensive stats in magic resist and armor, alongside offensive stats in attack damage and cooldown reduction. But it’s loved by all ADC player for something else: the passive effect which reduces incoming damage and converts it into a damage-over-time effect.
Due to the lifesteal gained from the item, the damage-over-time effect is easily negated if you hit an enemy champion or a minion, making all ADCs deceptively tanky.
Phantom Dancer
Phantom Dancer stands as the perfect item for Vayne. It grants you attack speed, critical chance, movement speed, a shield, and a great passive which gives you even more movement speed while auto-attacking. This item makes you very slippery and gives you a safety net if you make any misplays with the scaling shield effect.
Guardian Angel
Guardian Angel is an overall great item and grants you armor, attack damage, and the chance to save yourself in a teamfight. The second life can help you win games against teams who blow all their abilities and engage tools on you and then run out of steam. This item will deny all their efforts by bringing you back to life ready to fight.
Combined with other defensive options, you’ll become a huge threat.
Bloodthirster
If you want to be tankier and have more lifesteal and attack damage, then this is the perfect item for you. Bloodthirster is one of the best ADC items in the game, giving you a great shield to start the fight with.
Getting this item third is a good option if you need the shield to survive enemy assassination attempts. In rare cases where you’re facing a full team of assassins, you can go for it as a first item to ensure that you don’t die every time an assassin sees you, however, you’ll lack damage compared to the Blade of the Ruined King.
Situational
Mercury’s Treads
This is a great boot choice option if you’re facing an AP-oriented bottom laner or if you’re facing champions with a lot of crowd control. This item grants you some durability, while also reducing the duration of incoming crowd-control.
Don’t rush this item early on, since Vayne doesn’t act like a tank champion and having magic resist is pointless if you don’t do any damage in return. Feel free to purchase this after Blade of the Ruined King.
Ninja Tabi
If the enemy is auto attack-oriented with multiple AD champions across the entire map, this item can be the difference early on. It reduces auto-attack damage via the passive and also gives you additional armor. Overall, it’s a great anti-AD item, which boots up your effective health by quite a lot.
Wit’s End
If there’s a lot of magic damage-dealing champions on the opposing team, you can get this item to boost your core stats of attack speed, magic resist and movement speed. The effect which acts as a pseudo-lifesteal is also great, ensuring you get back a lot of health during teamfights.
In certain compositions where the enemy doesn’t have tanks and is ability-power oriented, you can get this as a first item instead of the Blade of the Ruined King.
Rapid Firecannon
Great offensive item coupled with Phantom Dancer. These two items combined will give you the needed critical chance to ensure that you three-tap enemies. The added range effect is easy to activate as well since you’ll be dashing through the teamfight a lot.
Don’t purchase it without having other core items since the effect by itself doesn’t do too much if you lack the attack damage to actually have an impact.
Quicksilver Sash
Quicksilver Sash is a must-have item against crowd control. Even if the enemy doesn’t have a lot of magic damage, it’s still worth to get this item for the Cleanse. Sometimes the Cleanse can be the difference between life and death and having extra attack damage, life steal, or critical chance won’t matter if you’re dead.
As a result, if you’re facing champions who focus on locking you down, such as Leona, Nautilus, Ashe, Malzahar, don’t be afraid to invest into this item.
Randuin’s Omen
Randuin’s is a valuable item if you want to become tankier. It grants you health, armor, an attack speed-reduction debuff for enemies, and an AoE slow to allow you to kite even better. If you are the main target for enemy AD champions and need a bit more survival and possibility to kite, then this item is perfect for you.
While it doesn’t grant any offensive stats, by having it and being alive for a longer period, you’ll do overall more damage compared to if you’d just get an offensive item and die within a couple of seconds.
