More on Jungle Poppy

Ok, so earlier this evening I decided to do some experiments by myself in order to figure out if Poppy can actually do a full jungle run. That's Blue, Wolves, Wraiths, and Golems. For her masteries, I went 1, 8, and 21, taking Smite in Offense, MR/Armor and Strength of Spirit in Defense, then the normal ones in Utility. For Runes, I took armor pen marks, flat armor seals, flat MR glyphs, and flat armor pen quints. Post hoc I learned that using so much armor pen is overkill while Jungling, and it will be better to have 6 armor pen marks, 3 AD marks, then AD quints. I also tested this using my AP build, which is magic pen marks, armor seals, AP glyphs, and AP quints. I didn't notice much of a difference between them overall. As usual with Jungling, start with cloth armor and 5 health potions.

In my control, I started the route by taking Q first, then wailing on the large golem until it died. Now, this is incredibly easy to mess up. As soon as that Q hits, queue two potions. Then, it's a race against time, but as she gets lower she becomes more efficient with her effective hit points, which will see you through the little minions if you kill the golem in time. After that, grab her E skill. Queue potions as you fling wolves into walls, and Q them down. Move to the wraiths, smite should be back up, and smite the big wraith. Then, proceed to kill the golems, neither of which do much damage to her, especially when she's low.

So, at this point all I have proven is that Poppy does have the capacity to solo the jungle, but whether or not that makes her a good Jungler is yet to be seen.

Why?

Can she gank well at early levels?

This part is more dependent on summoner spells, I think. Ghost and Flash are very good, yet I think Flash will be better overall for her on the basis that she can use her W, Flash ahead of the enemy, then E them to force the enemy back into your team. As I understand it, Jungling is a race to level 4, after which you need to begin a gank fest in order to make it worthwhile. If you wait til level 6 when she can towerdive like almost nobody else in the game, like MANTHEON, the enemies are probably too near that level for it to matter as much as an early gank. Lacking a slow is what bugs me when it comes to her trying to gank out of the jungle.

IF she wants to do this, she needs movement speed in order to get the necessary positioning to have her E be worth it. However, if you have enough team coordination, having one person with Exhaust in top and bottom, then they can pop that as soon as Poppy pushes the target back. Q and autoattack, and see what happens.

Currently I'm considering how to approach making Poppy a better laner, because she is terrible at farming. She has to get in close, and has not a single multi-target ability. Here's a quick link to a guide that has helped me a lot today:

Linku!

With this is a great point concerning the relevance of her Q after rank 2, which assumes that you, as Poppy, will be going after their carries when team fights break out.

This is the result of my labors today, and I think it was well worth it. Right now I'm wondering if I should continue trying Poppy as a Jungler, or go after that laning build in the link, which requires movement speed quints, which are damned expensive, but so worth it on her.

:D

Jungle Poppy Problems

Salve,

Last night I tried a few games attempting to jungle with Poppy. Even though I thought I was doing everything correctly, two prohibitive things are keeping me from thinking that Poppy can be an effective jungler:

Mana
Hit Points

Now, it may be that I should have a leash, but with the masteries I took, which went to magic pen in offense, down to extra damage and AP in defense, then imp. ghost in utility, I thought that she would be able to withstand taking on Blue buff first.

I was quite wrong. I will test it out with a leash, but lacking any hp regen on her abilities, and with her level one prohibitive mana bar, I doubt that she can be a quick and effective jungler.

As an aside, I took AP Quints, flat armor seals, AP glyphs, and magic pen marks.

So, she doesn't have the sustain to work in the jungle, and that does transfer over to the lane a bit, but without as big a constant early demand.

Heck, the poor gal begins with only a little over 200 mana. So, this issue has me rethinking the character build again.

Sheen is the most important weapon to get Poppy to do well early on with her dps output. Also, since she has mana issues, I think I'll try the following item build:

Mana Crystal
Potions
Sheen
Boots
Boots of Swiftness
Rod of Ages
Force of Nature
Void Staff
Rylai's Crystal Scepter
Lich Bane

So, what I get out of this is the ability to take advantage of her naturally high armor, yet her magic resistance will desperately need a large buff, so enter Force of Nature. Since resistance goes through before damage itself, and if it exceeds 10% of her max hp it gets reduced 50%, I think this will give her the advantage of lasting quite a bit longer than she would otherwise after her initial assassination run.

As for where to fight with her, I would suggest coordinating with your team to take fights into the jungle. If the enemy team won't follow, then send one or two to push a nearby lane, then try to angle them in anyway. She'll be most effective with her CC in the jungle, and a large obstacle to be removed.

Something that will be annoying is that, although you can use Diplomatic Immunity on a tank to get at the carry, if that carry has movement blocking abilities or items, you will be moving slower, just not taking damage. Quite annoying, and so I would suggest entering the fight from as oddball an angle as possible, potentially with a good flash.

Flash over the wall, ult the tank, charge the carry, blow all cooldowns, then hopefully get cake.

I'll attempt this particular build tonight. I'm wanting to play her in ranked matches, so getting a set-in-stone build will work well.

As a side note, I haven't tried her in Dominion yet, but I think she'll be a great champion to use there, due to plenty of walls and her own movement speed buff.

Alright, I will return later with an update on Popps!

Poppy's Equipment

So, I've been thinking today on how to alter how I used to do my Poppy build, which just focused on mass AP, not much survivability. She is an assassin, but she does need to be able to take damage after her initial six seconds of relative invincibility.

I'm still working on her jungling concept, so I'll post that later, but here is the item build I want to test out:

Boots
Potions x3
Boots of Swiftness
Sheen
Force of Nature
Thornmail
Will of the Ancients
Void Staff
Lich Bane

The main issue I have with her is her hit points, but I think it'll get mitigated by her very high defenses against enemies. This lets her move about quickly, which she needs to do- I may try out Boots of Mobility,- Sheen is a must for her early, Force of Nature for MR, Thornmail for armor and harming basic attacks back, Will of the Ancients for AP and Spell Vamp, Void Staff for AP and magic penetration, then Lich Bane to top the cake. I'm a bit worried about her damage output right now, but she has some much-needed utility because of how fast she will be, and how her abilities interact with walls and Lich Bane.

I'll do some testing, and write more on this later.

Poppy

Yay, so I'm halfway to level 29, and my efforts at getting access to ranked mode and the tribunal are nearing completion!

Here I want to talk about what is my favorite champion, albeit not one that I have played very often: Poppy, the paragon of DEMACIA!

This is a champion I rarely see get played, and having played her enough to see where she shines and doesn't, I think I know why such is the case.

She demands better positioning than any other champion I have seen.

This is due to her Heroic Charge ability, her E, which has two parts, the first of which is damage due to her tackling someone. The second part, the more vital one, is if while tackling they meet an obstruction, more damage is done, and the target becomes stunned. This is entirely dependent on her positioning on the map, and in certain areas of the map she loses efficiency as a melee assassin champ.

Her most effective place in the map is the jungle, simple as that. After the jungle, in lane trying to work the angles. She actually loses power when you make the push into the enemy base. Although, you can shove someone into a turret or inhibitor.

Oddball part is, she is not classified as a jungler. She'd be great for a jungle invasion, but so far I haven't seen anyone jungle with her, which I have thought of trying out sometime. Issue is she lacks lifesteal when her abilities are used naturally. Although, she has great defenses, and her passive will make up for a lot of her issues.

Speaking of her abilities...

From Riot's own website considering her abilities:

Devastating Blow - Poppy crushes her opponent, dealing attack damage plus a flat amount and 8% of her target's max health as bonus damage. The bonus damage cannot exceed a threshold based on rank.

Poppy crushes her opponent, dealing attack damage (+0.6) plus 20/40/60/80/100 and 8% of her target's maximum health as magic damage. The bonus damage dealt cannot exceed 75/150/225/300/375.
Cost
55/55/55/55/55 Mana
Range
600

Paragon of Demacia - Passive: Upon being hit or attacking an enemy, Poppy's armor and damage are increased for 5 seconds. This effect can stack 10 times. Active: Poppy gains max stacks of Paragon of Demacia and her movement speed is increased for 5 seconds.

Passive: Upon being hit or attacking an enemy, Poppy's armor and damage are increased by 1.5/2/2.5/3/3.5 for 5 seconds. This effect can stack 10 times.

Active: Poppy gains max stacks of Paragon of Demacia and her movement speed is increased by 17/19/21/23/25% for 5 seconds.
Cost
70/75/80/85/90 Mana
Range
600

Heroic Charge - Poppy charges at an enemy and carries them further. The initial impact deals a small amount of damage, and if they collide with terrain, her target will take a high amount of damage and be stunned.

Poppy charges at an enemy and carries them for a short distance. The initial impact deals 50/75/100/125/150 (+0.4) magic damage. If they collide with terrain, her target takes 75/125/175/225/275 (+0.4) magic damage and will be stunned for 1.5/1.5/1.5/1.5/1.5 seconds.

Cost
60/65/70/75/80 Mana
Range
525

Diplomatic Immunity - Poppy focuses intently on a single enemy champion, dealing increased damage to them. Poppy is immune to any damage and abilities from enemies other than her target.

For 6/7/8 seconds, Poppy is immune to any damage and abilities from enemies other than her target enemy champion.
In addition, Poppy's attacks deal 20/30/40% increased damage to the marked target.

Cost
100/100/100 Mana
Range
900

Valiant Fighter - Any damage dealt to Poppy that exceeds 10% of her current health is reduced by 50%. This does not reduce damage from structures.

So, how do these abilities work in unison?

Well, first off, her passive will keep you in the fight for longer than you would have otherwise due to its damage reduction. This gives her amazing effective hit points because of that 50% reduction. Something I have been thinking of for a while is whether or not to go with more hit point-giving items, or with more defense oriented items. Like Force of Nature versus Warmog's armor. Initially I thought that it would simply be better to have more hit points, but since her passive made off of hp, I think it might be better to have higher defenses than normal so her passive will come into play more often.

I'll need to look around for the equations on how her passive works, and I'm thinking that higher defenses will actually come out on top as far as interaction with the passive.

Alright, so generally her ability sequence will go as follows for her assassination and generally fighting game:

W to get speed and an angle of attack.
R to get the damage bonus and invincibility against other enemies.
E to shove them against the wall and stun them.
Q to do massive damage, and make them QQ.

One issue the poor gal has is that her AP ratios are relatively low. However, I generally stack AP on her, primarily for how her Q interacts with Sheen/Lich Bane/Trinity Force. Most recently, I've been wondering about what to do about her choice of equipment.

I think I'll consider her masteries and equipment sequence in a short while. I'll probably do a full DPS, then a jungling build, which demand different things. I do want to pursue talking about my favorite champ, so 'ere we go!

DEMACIA!