Stuck on the sidelines for an entire season last year, Riot Games finally pushed Xayah back into the meta at the start of 2023.
Thanks to a couple of small buffs to her and the game-changing ADC item updates in patch 13.1b, Xayah is now one of the strongest marksmen, as she now gets her power spike a lot earlier into the game. This makes her a threatening presence, especially against front-to-back and hard engage team comps. She’s also one of the few ADCs with a self-peeling spell, which can save her in nasty situations.
Considering that she has new item orders and tweaks in her rune setups, it’s time to check out the newly updated Xayah build in League.
Runes
Precision
Lethal Tempo: Xayah bases most of her damage output on her feathers. Increasing the attack speed allows her to quickly put down as many feathers as possible, giving her a chance to one-shot enemies with her Bladecaller. With that in mind, Lethal Tempo is the only viable rune from the Precision tree. The attack speed bonus is substantial and it works at any stage of the game. Whether it’s for early-game trading or the teamfights later on, she can make the most out of this keystone rune.
Presence of Mind: Xayah is a heavy mana user, and she’ll often find herself running through all her mana during skirmishes and trades. Presence of Mind gives her a bit of extra mana to relieve the burden and rewards her with 20 percent of mana refill upon takedowns. While you might not feel its impact in short trades, it can amount to hundreds and thousands of extra mana throughout the duration of a game.
Legend: Bloodline: While the rune isn’t as strong as it used to be, lifesteal is something that Xayah wants regardless of the amount. She doesn’t get access to much sustain with her new build until later on, so Legend: Bloodline provides her some healing once Xayah collects some stacks. It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.
Cut Down: Xayah doesn’t have problems killing low-health or squishy champions, but her lack of percentage damage on her kit makes tanks a great counter to her. With that in mind, Cut Down is a great way to heavily increase her damage output towards beefy front liners, allowing her to shred through their health bar a lot more quickly.
Inspiration
Biscuit Delivery: This rune is usually run by high Elo players with the goal of making aggressive trades. The biscuits can restore a bit of health and mana, allowing Xayah to stay in the lane for longer and wait until the first core items. That being said, if you’re not using them early on, they pretty much lose all of their value. In that case, consider switching to Magical Footwear so you can save the 300 gold and avoid buying tier-one boots.
Cosmic Insight: Riot has been introducing more and more mechanics and champions that have the potential to kill squishy targets. Cosmic Insight lowers Xayah Summoner spells’ cooldowns, giving her more chances to use her Flash and/or Cleanse during the game. On top of that, it also gives her extra item haste, so she can use her Galeforce more often to reposition herself or chase after enemies. Overall, it’s a great rune to have on her.
Bonuses: +10 percent attack speed, +9 adaptive force, +6 armor
Starting items
Doran’s Blade
This is the standard starting item for most ADCs, and Xayah is no exception. It gives the best combination of stats, with attack damage, health, and a bit of Omnivamp for early-game sustain.
While it’s the best rune in most scenarios, it has a drawback: Xayah has to spend more gold to rush the first item component. On top of that, the resell value of the item is much lower (it’s only 40 percent of its total cost). Nevertheless, unless you’re fully proficient at the champion, it’s always recommended to start with Doran’s Blade because it gives the most amount of stats for the early laning phase. Make sure to get the health potion for the extra 150 health as well for any eventuality.
Core items
Galeforce
Galeforce is the most powerful and effective Mythic item for Xayah. It gives everything she needs stats-wise, and most importantly, the small dash item active effect. It works particularly well on her because she can use it to make sure she can hit the right targets with Bladecaller (E). You won’t need to use it every time, but it can be a great way to make those sweet outplays.
Berserker’s Greaves
Attack speed is crucial on Xayah, so Berserker’s Greaves are the perfect choice when it comes to choosing boots for her. This item adds an additional 35 percent attack speed as well as 45 movement speed.
Navori Quickblade
Ever since Riot changed the ADC items, Xayah now has Navori Quickblade as her core item right after Galeforce.
The main reason why you want to get Navori as soon as possible is to get access to the item’s active effect that reduces Xayah’s cooldown with her auto attacks. This allows Xayah to spam her spells, land more feathers, and increase her damage exponentially. Given that the passive item now activates with a 40 percent critical strike chance, it’s best to buy it as a second item.
End build items
Phantom Dancer
Following the two core items, the most common third item is Phantom dancer. Not only does it grant additional attack speed and critical strike chance, but it also gives extra movement speed and the ghosting effect that makes Xayah avoid unit collision.
While it may not sound like a big deal, Xayah is a champion that wants to move as freely as possible, and Phantom Dancer guarantees that.
Lord Dominik’s Regard
Lord Dominik is the other third item choice that you can go for, especially if you’re facing tanks and champions with lots of health. You do lose out on Phantom Dancer’s effect, but your damage will be much higher against those targets. Paired with the Cut Down rune, killing tanks will never be a problem for you. Regardless of the order, you want to build both items in most scenarios.
Bloodthirster
To round off the build, you can purchase Bloodthirster for the added lifesteal and the shield that can protect Xayah from dying immediately.
What’s even better is that you get a 100 percent critical strike chance with this build, and deal so much damage that almost no one will be able to outduel you. That said, you will be squishy without resistances, which makes you quite vulnerable to long-range spells and poke.
Guardian Angel
For this reason, Guardian Angel is usually the alternative to Bloodthirster. It grants attack damage like the other item, but you have extra armor and the revival effect. This is going to make picking fights easier, and Xayah can have a second opportunity to get back in the fight.
