You emerge from the jungle into bot lane with your support Zyra at your side. Minions clash in the center of the lane as you rear back your minigun to begin mowing them down, raking in the cash. You realize that your enemies have been oddly out of sight since the game began.
Then you hear it. “That tasted purple!” A Lulu just turned you into a squirrel.
That horror story is the reality that most of us have faced when we’ve queued up for a ranked game on Summoner’s Rift over the past couple of weeks. If you’re in the bot lane, you’re probably either playing with a Lulu or against one. In fact, Lulu even has the highest play-rate of any support in the game—a whopping 24.24 percent, according to Champion.gg, a League of Legends statistics website.
Usually, if a champion is balanced properly, their winrate falls the more often they’re played. There should be some skill to earn as you play a champion. In Lulu’s case though, her winrate remains at an impressive 52 percent despite her high rate of play.
So what’s wrong with Lulu? Was she buffed a lot recently? Did an item she builds get changed? No, no, and no.
Nothing has changed with Lulu in quite a while, in fact. She simply works really, really well in the current meta. Items like Redemption, Ardent Censor, and cheap AP options like Rylai’s and Liandry’s Torment make building on Lulu very efficient. She can jack up some AP to deal enough damage while at the same time buffing her shields with the Redemption/Ardent Censor’s unique traits.
Combine that with Lulu’s already strong shields and disruptions and she becomes quite a monster. Not only that, but the cooldowns on her spells are oddly low. Expect some nerfs in Lulu’s near future. Shield size or shield cooldown will likely be targets, because as far as protection supports go, none do the job better than Lulu.
