Hey everyone and welcome.
Today, we have something really special for you.
You'll be learning how to play the literal lowest win rate jungler in the game: Qiyana.
Okay, no, we haven't lost our mind, there's a reason for this.
Qiyana is unique in that despite her having the atrocious average win rate of 41%, she
has one of the highest win rates when it comes to players that main her: at 57%.
That is a 16% win rate differential between the average player and those that master her.
It's not just about win rates though.
Qiyana is well known as a popular pick in challenger solo queue and is a staple amongst
professional junglers like Tarzan, Clid, and Jankos.
And here's the thing, learning how to play Qiyana jungle is a great way to teach yourself
how to approach learning as a whole.
She forces you to master certain elements of her, like her opening route and her combos,
in order to even play the game.
Compare this to a simpler champion like Warwick, who's very forgiving, you could play thousands
of games of Warwick and never really feel the need to optimize his spell rotations or
your routes.
Essentially, by learning Qiyana, you'll begin to understand what true champion mastery looks
like.
Alright, enough hype, let's jump into Skill-Capped's guide to Qiyana jungle.
So to start, you first need to be aware of what Qiyana's ability do.
If you already know, feel free to skip this section, but we'll be trying to cover it as
fast as possible.
So Qiyana is all about Elements.
She can select between 3, Brush, River, and Terrain, which each impact her abilities in
unique ways.
Her W ability, Terrashape, is how she selects an Element to hold, dashing towards towards
the target location.
While holding an Element, she'll gain bonus attack speed, 25 range, and damage.
On top of this she'll gain out of combat movement speed while near the Element currently being
held.
This has a unique interaction with her passive, Royal Privilege, which causes her next basic
attack or damaging ability to deal bonus damage to all enemies hit.
This bonus damage has an on-target cooldown of 25 seconds, but the cooldown is reset on
all targets when you gather an Element.
This interaction icreates one of her staple combos.
With an element held, you can auto-attack an enemy, then use W, swapping to a new Element,
resetting your passive, and auto-attacking again, applying your passive's bonus damage
a second time.
Now, Qiyana's Q ability, Edge of Ixtal, will slash forward in a line dealing damage.
It will consume the current element you're holding, applying a bonus effect based on
the consumed Element.
For Brush, a grass trail will appear, granting Qiyana invisibility and a movement speed boost
until she attacks or exits.
For River, it Roots the enemy and then slows them.
And for Terrain, enemies below 50% of their maximum health are dealt bonus damage.
Now, her Q ability will have a cooldown of 7 seconds, but similar to her passive, this
is reset upon gathering a new Element.
And suddenly we can see that staple combo become a bit stronger.
We can Q, which applies the bonus damage from our passive, then use W to grab a new Element,
this resets both our Q and passive cooldown, to then cast another Q, applying our passive
damage again.
All you need to know, is that grabbing a new Element will reset the cooldown of both your
passive and Q ability.
Now for her E ability, Audacity.
Qiyana will dash a fixed distance towards a target unit, dealing damage.
This is your main form of gapclose and it also has the most important interaction in
her whole kit.
If there's any combo to master, it's this one.
You see, if you cast your Q ability during Audacity, it will automatically aim it at
the dash target.
Yes, you heard me right, it's essentially an aimbot.
Watch this, I cast my E ability to dash towards the target and during this animation I cast
my Q.
Now, despite my mouse aimed nowhere near them, it automatically aims it at the opponent.
This makes it impossible for the enemy to Flash or escape this combo, since your Q ability
will automatically follow them, we'll be getting into this more later.
And finally we have her ultimate, Supreme Display of Talent.
Qiyana sends a windblast in the target direction that knocks back enemies, and stops upon hitting
terrain.
It then creates a shockwave around it, stunning enemies and dealing damage.
This is self explanatory, shove enemies into a wall for big CC and damage.
If it doesn't hit a wall then it will still knock the enemy back, but won't do any damage.
However, a lot of players don't know that this interacts differently through Brushes
and River.
It will also create a shockwave in these circumstances, allowing you to stun and do damage without
having to push the enemy into a wall.
Alright, now that you understand the basics of how her abilities work let's jump into
her opening route.
Trust me, you'll want to pay close attention, as jumping into a game thinking you can just
clear camps will not go well for you.
So the first thing you need to do is buy a Hunter's Talisman, this will give you a ton
of healing, which you definitely need, as you're about to see.
So as Qiyana, you always have to start at your Red buff.
This is because you're relying on the interaction between Hunter's Talisman healing effect and
the AOE of your Q ability, to clear the Krugs and Raptors.
If you start at your Blue, you'll find yourself taking too much damage, not healing enough,
and having to recall after you kill the Gromp and then heading to your Red, not exactly
the greatest start.
You'll want to start with your W ability, as this gives you bonus attack speed, damage,
and range.
As you auto-attack the Red, use your W to swap to a new element, this will reset your
passive's bonus damage on the camp, allowing you to clear faster.
Next, you move to your Krugs, which you'll use your smite on, and it's here you'll first
have to master a few tricks.
So you want to Q the camp, then swap to a new element to reset your passive and Q cooldown.
However, one trick is to swap to the Grass element, since it makes you invisible, you
can hide inside it, using your Hunter's Talisman to heal off the camp.
Just make sure you don't reset the camp by watching their patience timer above their
healthbar.
The next trick, is to position yourself so that the Medium Krug is behind the Ancient
Krug.
You can then kite back and forth, preventing the Medium krug from ever damaging you.
Clear the rest of the camp and head towards your Raptors.
Again, we want to swap to the Grass element.
Since we've AOE'd this entire camp, our Hunter's Talisman is stealing 30 health from each of
them, for a total of 180 health while we stay hidden.
This is how you stay healthy in your initial clear.
Then, I want you to take note of how we swap to the Terrain element.
Remember, this will give us bonus damage to targets below 50% health.
You always want to swap to the Terrain element when your camps are below 50% health since
you'll do bonus damage and clear it faster.
Alright, now that you've cleared your Red side jungle you're level 3 and have access
to your E, your main gap close ability.
This makes available one of the strongest, most effective ganks in the game and that's
Qiyana's level 3 transition gank mid.
I'm not exaggerating when I say that this has over a 50% success rate in your games,
just check out all these clips we have of this working out.
Alright, so for those uninitiated, a transition gank is a type of gank you use on mid lane.
It allows you to go from one side of the map to the other, while applying a gank in the
process.
For Qiyana, the transition gank mid is so effective at level 3 due to a combo we actually
covered earlier.
Remember, when you cast your Q while in the animation of your E, it will automatically
aim it for you.
It essentially locks on the opponent, meaning even if they flash it wll still hit them.
This transition gank mid will net you first blood in so many games, but even more important,
is that you help your mid push out the wave to soak minion experience after.
This is because Qiyana doesn't have the greatest early clear speed.
Soaking the minion wave after you gank will make it so that you don't have to farm as
many camps, and can spend more time trying to make early ganks work.
It also has a great follow up.
After transition ganking mid, you can then look for an immediate gank on the side lane.
The reason this is so effective, is that you can take the path behind the enemy's red buff,
avoiding the enemy's wards, and getting behind them.
By the time you finish this second gank, the nearby Scuttle will have spawned, and you
can move to take it.
However, this is great if the enemy mid is pushed up or in a neutral position, but what
if he's at the safety of his tower, denying us the ability to gank him?
In this case, you have two options.
First, is to actually look for a side lane gank on the same side of the map you started
on.
In this clip, Qiyana takes her Red, Krugs, and Raptors.
She looks for the standard transition gank mid, but the enemy Zed is playing safe, holding
his shadow to escape and hugging the bottom side of the map.
When we check top, we can see Ornn has taken some damage and the wave is pushing towards
our Jax.
So we head top, picking up a free kill with our level 3 power spike.
We then take the nearby Scuttle since its spawned.
Most importantly though, is that you check the enemy's Blue Buff after this.
This is because when you show ganking the top side of the map, a common response by
the enemy jungler will to be steal your blue side jungle.
So you check if the enemy's blue buff is still alive, if it is, then it means they're stealing
your blue buff, so you want to steal their camps.
If it isn't, then you'd want to head towards your blue side jungle as normal.
In this case, it's alive so we steal it, into then spotting another gank top side, making
sure to soak minion experience after the successful kill.
Okay, but what if after taking your Red, Krugs, and Raptors, neither the transition gank mid
or the gank on the nearby side lane is available?
Well, then you move forward by taking your Blue as normal.
After which, you either take the nearby Scuttle, or if you feel you can't fight for it, then
full clear your blue side jungle and head towards the Scuttle on the other side of the
map.
Great, so you should now have a clear gameplan for your opening route, but what about afterwards?
How should you balance ganking and farming with Qiyana?
Well, I don't want to give you the wrong idea, into thinking you should just be ganking like
crazy.
Qiyana has great opening attacks, but don't be afraid to farm afterwards if no ganks are
available because Qiyana actually has great scaling.
For example, in this game, Qiyana opens with the standard Red, Krugs, Raptors, into a transition
gank mid.
After this, she takes the nearby top Scuttle, into her Blue, and then has to recall due
to being low on health.
Great, so we're past the opening phase, so what do we do next?
Well, we have all of our camps up, so Qiyana heads to her Krugs, during this time she'll
be looking bot for a gank, but since none are available due to the enemy bot not being
in lane, she heads to her raptors.
Again, now that she's cleareing her raptors, she'll be looking for a gank mid, but none
are available there either since Vayne is playing so safe.
So she then moves to her Wolves, but spots Rek'Sai gank bottom lane.
And one thing we've taught you many times, is how when you spot the enemy jungler on
the opposite side of the map, you want to look for advantages on the side of the map
that you're on.
So Qiyana invades, stealing the enemy's Raptors, then taking the nearby Scuttle that's spawned,
into a gank on the enemy top, and stealing the enemy's Krugs after.
My point is, despite us having a very aggressive gank orientated opening route, don't just
spam ganks afterwards, you need to fall back on a solid balance of ganking and farming.
Alright, so we've covered a lot so far, but some of you are probably wondering how you're
supposed to skirmish and team fight as Qiyana?
We'll be covering this shortly, but before we can teach you how to team fight, you first
need to learn Qiyana's ability combos.
So first you have her basic skirmish combo and that's to Auto-attack, then Q, use your
W to grab a new element, resetting your passive and Q cooldown, then auto-attack and Q.
This is your basic spell rotation for damage and the one you'll be using at the end of
your combos.
Now, as we covered earlier, your main gank combo will be to select the River element
so your Q roots, then press E, and cast Q during the animation to lock onto the enemy.
You then use your W to swap to a new element, landing an auto-attack, into your second Q.
However, this changes once you're level 6 and have access to your ultimate.
This is one of your most important combos so listen up.
You want to use your E+Q combo that we taught you before, rooting the enemy with the River
element.
However, while they're rooted, you then cast your ultimate, knocking them into a nearby
wall.
After this, you can then swap to a Terrain element, to get the extra damage to targets
below 50% health, and auto-attack into Q.
So when you put this all together, it will be E+Q, into Ultimate, then W+Auto-attack+Q.
And these make up the basic combos that you will need to master.
Auto-attack+Q, W to reset cooldowns, then Autoattack+Q
While holding River element, E, then Q during the animation to root.
Then follow it up with a W into Auto-attack+Q.
While holding the River element, E, then Q during the animation to root, into your Ultimate.
And finally, while holding the River element, E, then Q during the animation to root, into
your ultimate, then W into Auto-attack+Q.
Now, these are the basics, and it's mandatory that you master them, so head into practice
mode and get to work.
That being said, you can actually take these a step further, using a mechanic called input
buffering.
So what's input buffering?
Well, it's best explained using an example.
Let's say you wanted to use your E+Q combo to root someone, but they were out of range.l
Well, then you would cast Flash, then the E+Q combo.
However, this is actually wrong, and instead, you want to input buffer your E ability.
This is done by casting your E ability, and THEN flashing, what you'll find, is that your
E ability will cast immediately once you're in range, significantly faster than what's
humanly possible.
This same idea of input buffering can be applied to other ability too.
For example, let's say you want to land your Q on an opponent, but they were just out of
range.
Again, most players would flash and then Q, which gives the opponent more time to react.
But what you want to do is input buffer it by casting Q, and then immediately flashing.
This way, the enemy will have less time to react to it.
The reason why knowing this input buffering mechanic is so important on Taliyah, is that
you can use it to set up huge engages on the enemy.
You cast your E ability, input buffering it, then Flash within range, and immediately cast
your Q, then follow that up with the rest of your combo, casting ultimate, into W, Auto-attack,
Q.
Another high level trick you can do with this is redirect your ultimate.
For example, let's say you didn't have the proper angle to use your ultimate to knock
the opponent into a wall.
Usually, players would Flash, and then ult, giving the opponent time to react.
Instead, you can ult, input buffering it, then immediately flash, this will still redirect
your ult while giving the opponent much less time to react to it.
Alright, now that we've covered the combos you need to master, let's get into how to
actually team fight with Qiyana.
You have one clear goal when it comes to team fighting.
You begin by holding the River element so your Q will root.
Then you look for flanks from the side or behind, and E+Q combo onto the enemy's backline,
rooting them in place.
You then follow this up, ulting them, into using W, grabbing the Terrain element for
bonus damage, into Q.
This can be easier said than done though, and that's why having your Flash available
makes this so much easier.
You can come in from the side, input buffer your E, and then Flash into Q, then Ult, into
W+Autoatack+Q.
I know, you may have thought there would be more, but in reality this is what you're looking
to accomplish in every team fight, landing that big ult on the enemy backline.
Now, what if our ultimate is on cooldown, then what are we supposed to do?
For example, in this clip, Qiyana doesn't have her ultimate up.
What you want to do, is stay on the outskirts of the fight, using your mobility to keep
yourself safe and focus low health targets that are isolated.
In this case, we focus Singed, but the enemy backline gets in range to focus us, so we
kite back and focus the enemy Zac.
After this, you can use the long range on your Q to land poke as you retreat.
Again, move to the outskirts, then look to move back in on isolated targets.
Remember you're an assassin, not a tank or bruiser, without your ultimate you don't have
the CC to protect yourself on an engage so you have to be a lot more careful.
Now, for the million dollar question of what element should you be grabbing?
Well, as we taught you earlier, your standard engage will have you holding onto the River
element, rooting the opponent, then swapping to the Terrain element for bonus damage.
You'll be using elements in this way the majority of the time.
That being said, there's a great element combo you can use when you're in trouble and that's
double grass.
In this clip, Qiyana ganks bot, ulting Morgana and getting a kill on her.
But then Nocturne shows up, and E's Qiyana into flashing on her.
With Nocturne chasing her down, she opts into the double Grass combo.
This keeps you super safe and can grant you up to 7 seconds of invisibility.
So if you find yourself in danger, the double grass combo should be your go to move.
Alright, so you should now have everything you need to start stomping with Qiyana.
That is, everything except runes and an item build, so let's fix that.
For primary runes you want to go Electrocute, Sudden Impact, Zombie Ward, and Ravenous Hunter.
Electrocute is for more damage, but can be replaced with Dark Harvest if you find yourself
consistently snowballing hard.
Sudden Impact will give you lethality, which synergizes with the lethality build you'll
be using.
Zombie Ward is really overpowered at the moment when combined with the new lethality item
Umbrail Glaive.
Seriously, using Zombie Ward with Umbrail Glaive will give you the highest vision score
in the game, it's completely busted, so abuse it before it gets nerfed.
If you don't want to use this combo then Eyeball collection will be your second best option
for more damage.
And lastly, Ravenous Hunter is taken as it will give us more healing during our clear.
Qiyana can struggle with staying healthy when farming, so this helps alleviate that, while
also giving us better dueling potential.
For secondary runes, you want to head into Inspiration, taking Magical Footwear and Cosmic
Insight.
Magical Footwear is simply too good to pass up, as it's essentially giving you a free
350 gold.
Cosmic Insight is taken as there simply aren't any other viable options to take as a jungler,
and the extra cooldown reduction is always nice.
For stats you want to take Attack Speed, Adaptive Force, and Armor.
Attack speed is taken as when tested it actually increases your clear speed more than if you
take Adaptive force in that slot.
Adaptive force is then taken for more damage.
And you take Armor since camps do physical damage and this will help you be healthier
at the end of your clear.
For your items, you want to start Hunter's Talisman, turning it into the Chilling Smite
upgrade, and then the Warrior Enchantment.
You then want to rush boots of mobility as soon as your free boots kick in.
Trust me, these will make ganking and engaging so much easier for you.
Next, you get an Umbral Glaive.
This is the cheapest lethality item at the moment and has that great synergy with the
Zombie Ward rune to give you complete vision control across the map.
Next, you want to get Duskblade, into Edge of Night
Duskblade will give you the raw damage to one shot people, while Edge of Night will
protect you so you don't get bursted down every time you try to engage.
At this point, you'll only have 1 item slot left, and what item you choose to go is situational.
If the enemy is stacking Armor, then you want to get Lord Dominik's Regards.
If they have a ton of healing, then get a Mortal Reminder instead.
If you still find yourself being focused and bursted down, then opt into a Guardian Angel.
And finally, if none of those options are applicable, you can't go wrong with a Ghostblade,
giving you more damage, and movement speed to help set up engages.
So that's going to do it for Skill-Capped's Qiyana jungle guide.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below, as we do our best to answer
any and all questions we get.
And as always, good luck, and have fun, on summoner's rift.