Lux: She needs to shine more

Ever since the Season 5 changes, Lux has fallen into perpetual mediocrity and simply does not see play compared to Xerath, Orianna, Ahri, Annie, etc. Her utility is easily outclassed, her damage is weak compared to the other long-range mages, and using her against manaless assassins is even more suicidal than ever. Even in Support positions, she simply does not compare to mainline supports like Janna, Thresh or Morgana.

#What are Lux's big problems?

Firstly, she never got any sort of mana cost compensation for the S5 mana regeneration changes. With her E costing 130 mana at rank 5, and her Q costing 90 mana at rank 5, while only having a mediocre 1198 maximum mana supply at level 18, Lux is highly prone to burnouts when you try to use your abilities to farm or push. While most would just say "Don't farm with abilities", realistically you are required to do so against several different match-ups (i.e. Annie, Zed, Katarina) to avoid being instantly killed. Even if you rush several early Doran's Rings, you will find yourself burning your mana out much too often compared to the meta mid-laners, who either don't spend much (if any) or are able to get mana capacity items without gimping themselves.

Second, which ties into the first, is that Lux is not a good candidate for mana-increasing items like Rod of Ages or Archangel's Staff. In the latter case, Lux's bad cooldowns and high costs cause her to take too long in maxing it out, while Rod of Ages simply delays her CDR items too long. Frozen Heart and other mana/CDR items simply are bad picks on her since she is AP-reliant, so she's left with next-to-zero options on increasing her maximum mana. Riot might be working on some new mana/AP items for PBE testing, but nothing's confirmed in that regard, so I'm not holding my breath.

Third is that Lux's damage is under par compared to other long-range mages. Xerath, Ahri, and even Orianna can out-damage Lux, especially since much of Lux's damage revolves around her passive, something that requires her to take too much risk. Unless you got fed, a single E is never enough to instantly kill minions in a wave, requiring you to auto-attack them to finish them off and expose yourself to attack.

In addition, though Lux can trigger her passive with her ultimate, she actually has a bug there at the moment. Presently, if you trigger Illumination with Final Spark, the damage won't include Illumination's AP ratio, so you're losing out on 20% of your AP with that burst. That completely sucks. (Thankfully, Riot knows about this and they're trying to fix it for 5.6.)

Lastly, there are some control issues with Lux that can seriously hold her back.

The first of these is that she cannot "pre-detonate" her E like Gragas can for his Q. In layman terms, you would hit E right before the projectile reaches its destination, and it will detonate the moment it gets there. Instead, Lux is left with an awkward 0.1-0.2 second delay before she can actually detonate Lucent Singularity, something that easily lets more than a few kills slip away.

The second is that her shield's casting animation causes a brief delay where Lux is left static and does not get any benefit. Lux doesn't get any shield until after that delay finishes, and it's during that delay that Lux could easily die. Meanwhile other support Champions with shields (i.e. Janna, Karma, etc.) can self-cast their shields and instantly get them, not requiring such a weird delay time. Players might argue that it's due to Lux's shield being able to affect multiple allies, but it shouldn't cause Lux to be punished for trying to bait with her shield like other supports would do.

#What could help Lux out?

Lots of you will say Lux is in a good spot because she still deals good burst damage at long range, and you'd be right. But that doesn't mean she can't get a few QoL buffs or improvements to get her back into good condition.

First and foremost, Riot needs to fix the bug on her passive when her ultimate triggers it. That missing 20% AP ratio is a serious problem.

Second is that Lux's E could definitely benefit from a cost reduction. 130 mana on her main damage skill is too high, and needs to be adjusted so Lux can function properly in mid-game.

Last is that Lux's control needs to be smoothed out. Allowing her to pre-detonate her E and making her W shield her at the start of the cast animation (instead of after the delay) would definitely help her out.

Adjusting Lux's damage is something Riot won't do (with the exception of fixing her passive), so the above suggestions will suffice. Making her more responsive and reducing her mana costs will make her a lot more viable since she won't always be forced to rush a Morellonomicon first.

---

TL;DR? Nope. Read it.