How to play Rell, League of Legends’ newest champion

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Rell, the Iron Maiden, is League of Legends’ newest champion.

As the sixth and final champ to be released in 2020, Rell is the dedicated bottom lane support for this year’s cycle of champions. Rell’s playstyle draws a ton of similarities to Leona since both are bulky supports that can keep enemies in check due to their wealth of crowd control options. One major draw toward Rell is that she’s a powerful counterpick option against heavy shield comps due to her Q’s ability to destroy every form of a shield that absorbs damage.

If you’re looking for a new tanky support to learn that has a focus on their ability to crowd control with the chance to fortify teammates, consider adding Rell to your champion pool.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to play Rell.

Runes and abilities

As a tanky support that specializes in engaging and crowd control, Rell’s best keystone rune is Aftershock. After Rell uses her normal engagement tools and activates any form of crowd control on her opponents, she’ll gain bonus resistances and deal extra explosion damage after she uses her ability rotation. 

If you’re supporting in a lane with a weak or passive marksman, you can consider picking up Guardian instead. The ability to grant your teammate a bonus shield every so often can save them. Rell can activate Guardian from a distance thanks to her Attract and Repel ability.

Passive: Break the Mold

Whenever Rell does a basic attack, she steals a minor portion of the target’s armor and magic resistance and bonus damage is dealt based on the number of resistances stolen. While the enemy has stolen resistances, Rell also gains a small amount of armor and magic resist.

While Rell can steal stats from multiple enemies at a time, she can’t take the same enemy’s resistances more than once. If she auto attacks the same enemy twice, the duration of the resistance-draining ability is only refreshed.

Q: Shattering Strike

Rell lunges her lance forward, dealing damage in a target direction. The first enemy hit by her Q takes the full damage and is affected by her passive ability. Enemies that are behind the first enemy hit with Shattering Strike take only half damage and are free from the passive. If Rell is tethered to an ally with her E ability, her partner is healed for each champion hit.

A major component of her Shattering Strike is that Rell breaks enemy shields, like Janna’s E and Sett’s W, before dealing damage. This means that with proper timing, Shattering Strike can deal a massive amount of damage if you use it to shatter shields in teamfights and skirmishes.

Since Shattering Strike has a cast time, Rell can flash in the middle of the cast time’s wind up to change the position of where her Q will land. As seen in the clip above, you can extend the range of your Q if you cast flash immediately after. This technique will surprise enemies since the only way they can escape it is if they preemptively predict it because they’ll be unable to react to it.

W: Ferromancy; Crash Down and Mount Up

Rell’s W has two components based on her current stance. If she’s mounted, Rell leaps to a target location around her and transforms into her armored stance, dealing magic damage, knocking up enemies around her, and gaining a bonus shield until it’s destroyed or remounting.

If Rell is in her armored form, Rell mounts up on her horse again, gaining temporary bonus movement speed, which is increased when moving toward enemy champions. If Rell can connect an auto attack during the duration of the bonus movement speed, she stuns the enemy and knocks them up behind her. Rell gains bonus attack range to help connect this enhanced auto attack.

Even though Ferromancy’s dismount portion is a cast time, Rell is unable to reposition herself with flash in the middle of it to surprise enemies. Despite this, Rell can cast both her E and R abilities while transforming to her armored form.

E: Attract and Repel

Similar to Taric, Rell forms a tether between herself and a targeted ally. While you’re in range of your partner and the tether holds, the ally that you bonded to gains 10-percent bonus armor and magic resistances. Rell can recast her tether while bound to an ally to make it explode, dealing magic damage to all enemies that are on the tether. Enemies damaged by Attract and Repel are stunned for one second.

Since Attract and Repel is an ability without a cast time, you don’t have to cast Attract and Repel before flashing to gain optimal usage. To get a surprise hit on your opponent with your E, you can flash before casting Attract and Repel instantly, which will leave your opponents unable to react if you activate both in quick succession flawlessly.

R: Magnet Storm

Rell exudes magnetic energy, knocking up and pulling every enemy near her instantaneously. After the initial activation, Rell sends a constant outward pulse in an area that constantly drags enemies back toward her and deals magic damage during the duration.

Magnet Storm’s follow-up drag isn’t a hard crowd control ability, so enemies can still use their dashes and blinks to get away. But if you manage to catch up to them with your AoE zone, they’ll be dragged back toward you.

Since Magnet Storm has a short but initial cast time, you can do a Magnet Storm and flash combo similar to your Shattering Strike and flash chain to surprise multiple enemies at once.

Item choices

Tanky supports have a wealth of options when it comes to Mythic item choices. If you’re facing off against a mobile team, you can go with Shurelya’s Battlesong or Turbo Chemtank to use their actives to catch up to enemies. Between these two items, Shurelya’s Battlesong is the cheaper option to go with if you’re low on gold.

If the enemy team has a tough time eluding you and is forced to fight against you, Locket of the Iron Solari and Frostfire Gauntlet are both fantastic purchase options. Locket of the Iron Solari provides your team with bonus resistances just by existing and a burst shield when a fight gets difficult. With Frostfire Gauntlet, you extend your ability to keep enemies slowed and contained within an area since the slowing field will be massive.

If you’re comically ahead, you can consider picking up Sunfire Aegis as an option. The amount of damage you’ll be able to inflict with the Aegis will be massive since Rell has a ton of staying power in fights. This option is rarely advised, though, since the other choices that were previously listed are either cheaper or provide more utility for your teammates.

For non-Mythic items, adapting your build based on the enemy comp will aid you in finding success. If the opposing team has a ton of healing and physical damage, Bramblevest and Thornmail will be highly effective in increasing your rate of survival while cutting down their effective healing.

If the enemy team has a lot of magic damage and burst, Abyssal Mask and Spirit Visage are powerful options that grant you opportunities to deal more damage or improve the effectiveness of shields on you. Another option to survive burst, while being the most expensive, is Gargoyle’s Stoneplate. The ability to activate a massive temporary shield can help you stay in fights for a long time.

How to navigate the early, mid, and late-game

During the early laning phase, you may find yourself getting poked out if you’re up against ranged opponents. To get around this problem, you should mainly put yourself in range of getting harrassed if you’re ready to engage and fight the enemies head-on. As Rell, you should constantly look for opportunities to get into skirmishes and crowd control enemies, letting your laning partner land damage in a safe manner.

But before engaging, be mindful of your surroundings. An ill-timed battle can put you in a compromising position and lead to a death if your partner isn’t ready to fight or if the enemy jungler shows up. Since Rell has Attract and Repel, if your jungler shows up, you can set up easy stun chains if they can get behind your enemies.

Once the mid game arrives, you should have more bulk thanks to having items. As a support, you should make sure you have wards in key areas where you plan on battling or moving through since knowledge of where the enemy is will improve your odds of success. Since skirmishes are bound to happen, identifying who you should hit with your chain of crowd control will be key to your team’s success because shutting down a high priority enemy will keep your team ahead.

During the late game, where teamfights become more hectic, the main idea you must decide is if you should play the role of the engager for your team or peel for your high-performing allies. If you have immobile carries that are susceptible to burst, consider leaning more toward peeling for your allies. If you’re in the lead and your team has trouble catching enemies with high mobility, playing the aggressive role to lock up enemies should be your goal.

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