Aurelion Sol full guide from an Ex-master tier Aurelion Sol otp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzzOayyD8D8
Disclamer: i do not own this guide. This guide was made by a friend of mine who asked me to translate it a long time ago as he unfortunatly did not have the ability to write in english. https://i.gyazo.com/71bd55c1e1ab8f60a755fd69e9599f39.png **Everything that you will read below is 100% translated from french to english. Keep in mind that everything from the original guide was not translated like Lybal asked as he changed his playstyle step by step without changing the guide **
Hello to everyone
Today, a small guide to one of my prefered champion, Aurelion Sol. Our little dragon can be played mid, and potentially jungle or top, this guide will only focus on the mid lane.
But before everything, as a perfect gentleman, i will present myself:
I am a poor random player that spent his time in diamond to face the different troubles of this dangerous game that is league: the toxicity, the 5 enemies that opposed me in this game, pushing towers, carrying players that had a bad game, being carried when i had a bad game, and many situations that you all know but are too many and different in each game One day, the Developers of this game released a new champion so beautiful, so new which was a beautiful divin dragon with a unique gameplay, this made me interested and i then decided to only play him for weeks to face an alcoholic fat ginger that fought with barrels, a sherif that had a gun, with this entity that had an infinite age owning power without limits and able to create stars 100 times bigger than the world of runeterra in the marvellous universe of MOBAs However, the beer and the gun powder were not good enough against the star dust that was used by this sublime dragon and i quickly climbed to Master, since that i was one of the only player that played this champion at this level, i was among the best players of this champion in the whole world, and i was proud of it! i don't like to show off but that was a little true. However i didn't stay in the holy land for much time, and for diverse reasons i stopped playing ranked for a while and lost my level. i decided to start a smurf again to only play my two favorite champions, sol being one of them. In the meantime i saw what were people saying on my main and decided to do this guide to refute things that people believe and to help people that have troubles to master Sol, and that from an experienced Sol player
Keep in mind that this guide was done to give the bases of the champion, and people need to play Sol to know his micro-management like replacing ourself constantly, knowing if we should play agressively or passively, knowing how to play against some champions, knowing what Sol can do, and mostly knowing how to rotate. So much things that i can't write them all.
I) His Strengths:
- A stun that can be easily placed
- permanent slow with Rylai -Decent mobility with E -tons of damage in AOE that can surprise a lot of time -Great tankiness for a mage due to his build -Lane control -teamfight beast -scales well
II) His weaknesses:
-Needs a lot of experience -Needs a perfect positioning -More sensible to CCs than other champions -cannot escape ganks -average range -cannot hide himself in bushes -weak against melee champions that are mobile
III) His mechanics:
Let's be clear, i won't teach you how to play Sol, how to kite, how to position, because i can't, this is only you that can learn it through playing the game. I will however show you how to use his spells, what mistakes can Sol do, and for lazy people i prepared a "keys to remember at the end, however you won't know why you should listen to them:
-Something you need to remember is to never use Q with your E during a gank. You will hit your targets one time out of 100! Just circle them with E and here you only have to ult/stun and it's okay. Everytime i watch a streamer or other Sol player doing this and missing everytime, this hurts my eyes and my forehead is red from blood due to facepalms. -Your W is your main damage spell, no matter what you do you should always play around it, I INSIST A LOT ON THAT!!! -Your E can be used to roam, but don't use it to come back to lane the movement speed bonus is already enough for that (unless you have 20 minions under tower) it's not as powerful as TF or taliyah ult but it's not an ult and has way less cd, and more important it is less predictable than them! -E+Q combo can only be good if E has some ranks in it, so we're goanna use this in late game to join fights from far away or to surprise enemies that are doing baron/drakes -And for your ult, most of the time during match ups against melees you will use it to knock them out, even if it can be tempting to use to deal damage, you need to understand that a 500 hp zed can easily kill you -Against ranged match ups we will use it more agressively, to deal damage, or to slow to place easily W and Q. -Understand well that aurelion Sol ultimate has an insane scaling which means in late game it can be used to nuke an entire team -Aurelion Sol is the lane God and can 1v1 any mid laner with the only condition of being able to fight for a long time on a set range. We wil try to dodge spells while taking StormRaider's Surge. -As much as he has decent damage in the first levels, he's squishy and needs to be careful on his W mana cost since it was nerfed!
Keys to remember: -never E+Q during a gank, only E behind them and then Q -always play around his W -always roam with E -keep your ult as a defensive tool against melees, and don't hesitate to use it if they come too close. In teamfight, use it as a nuke if a lot of people are in a line -Lvl 2 extremely strong, however he's squishy in early game and ends up oom
IMPORTANT KEY: The roaming
Asol needs to roam to be efficient, however roaming is an art! 
Roaming requieres experiences, every game is different so i can't give you advises on this, you need to know 3 things:
-Always push the lane to roam, or always push the lane if the enemy midlaner is roaming
-always be careful to the enemy jungler as he can countergank. Same thing with enemy mid laner. Against Anivia or Orianna you won't have problems but a good Twisted Fate or other mobile mid laners can ruin your roaming
-How are your enemies? if they push constantly do not roam, if you have a bottom lane that cannot follow do not roam (or if they have safe picks like janna+sivir)
IV) Runes and masteries
IMPORTANT: Do not take MS runes if you're playing with Ghost
Runes to begin with Sol:
http://www.zupimages.net/up/16/27/7ayg.png
http://www.zupimages.net/up/16/27/8opg.png
if you want an agressive option take AP/lvl on blue runes
This rune page is not mine but i took them from a high level Sol player that plays Sol without ghost:
http://zupimages.net/up/16/44/dkfv.png
And to end this with masteries: http://zupimages.net/up/16/31/8gva.png
i'm sorry but i'm not letting you so much choises because stormraider's surge is the best keystone to Aurelion, and that to EVERY SINGLE situations, it's very easy to explain it. Aurelion Sol is a champion that plays on long trades and has too much damage that he doesn't need tld or dft, the main problem he will encounter is the perfect positioning to hit with W. Stormraider's surge will allow him to reduce the size of this problem as it gives him bonus movement speed and slow resistance
V) Summoner spells
i will put here everything that can be taken on Sol and explain what is the best without explaining why flash is essential in every situation
Is only useful in the first level of the game, later Sol doesn't need more damage and it becomes useless the longer the game is
i redirect you to the explination of stormraider's surge
barrier and heal do the same thing but differently, however barrier ends up better in the mid lane as most of mid laners will take ignite unless they play defensively
is extremely useful against champions that have too much burst or against melees
is essential against match ups with too much CCs like 
We will only take and most of the time, the others are very situational
VI) Spells
we will max W first and then Q keep in mind that you should skill a 2nd rank in W at level 3 rather than taking E as you won't roam in early game if however you plan to back then skill it to comeback faster with the passive
VII) Build and itemization
+
is the best starter in every situations
Sol is one of the only champion that can back everytime without any issue as he can comeback to the lane quickly. Potion+dark seal to increase the efficiency is way the best option to Sol
(Generally we will never build 
, simply because it can delay power spike items like Rylai)
1st item: 
but we can also buy 
. ROA is more about scaling, while GLP is better against melee champions and better in early/mid game
GLP is better in most of situations but ROA is also a viable option if we feel like we don't want the slow
2nd item: we will build boots and here we have a lot of options: 
is strong against teams with little magic resistance
if we want mobility, DO NOT BUILD 
PLEASE as CDR is terrible on Sol, or at least it's worse than mr pen and more movement speed!
if we want to play defensively then 
are here for us against magical/physical damage
if the game lasts a long time we will remove the boots to build 
3rd item: we will build 
, this item gives an insane powerspike and at this moment the champion will reveal his true potential. However if the situation is complicated we will delay it to the 4th item in favor of more defensive items
4th item: at this point we have a lot of options. Sol can build a lot of items but generally items giving HP+AP are strong on him, 
has an insane synergy with Sol. If we want more defense then 
are great options, or 
if the enemy team is somewhat tanky
later, you can build them all with other options like rabadon
At any point please do not build CDR like 
VIII) Match ups and lane management/trades
Here is where you tell yourself "finally, the last part, and after this i will be able to play Sol" nanananana, this will be a long part At first i wanted to talk about every match ups but i realised that it was impossible I decided to group them in archetypes: -assassins -long range mages -short range mages -mid lane adcs -exceptions
i really insist on stormraider's surge and sometimes ghost
Assassins: Like i said above, Aurelion is weak against assassins, he has some troubles but unlike other mid laners he is somewhat better He's really tanky after some items so they will have some troubles to oneshot you, it's hard to kill them due to their mobility but if you play safe they will also have troubles to kill you , especially that we will build zhonya or banshee quickly against them except if we're dominating. But the main issue is that assassins have no problems to stick to Sol, which is a problem for him, but does it make the match up impossible? In most of the situations No, but in some situations yes but every champions have counterpicks.
unlike old talon cannot instantly appears behind you, be careful at his roaming and kite him with your ult against his dash you will be able to play against him
you need to dodge his harass and play extremely agressive everytime he doesn't have his W (that has a long cd).
Please use your ulti BEHIND YOU if he ults you as this is where he will appear
is somewhat the same as above except that unlike them he can stop your W, once he builds mana/hp/cdr it's going to become unplayable
not really dangerous if we're careful to where her daggers are
keep your ulti to cancel her ult, and remember that she can punish a mistake very easily
can easily kill you in lane, but unlike the others she's worse in teamfight. If you don't die and rush defensive items like banshee you can turn this into your favor
easy match up until level 6
Against diana you need to try to dodge her Q
against akali however she won't have enough damage to kill you until she buys an item, and once she will waste all her dashes you can kill her
the hardest match ups of all times. they can easily engage then disengage, they have a lot of damage and overall can trade in a short time easily
You need to play agressively at level 1 and 2
Against fizz, save your E against his ult and use it when he uses his ult and you will easily dodge it and fizz will lose a lot of power for 1 or 2 min
Long range mages
they all have too much harass, too much range like ziggs and xerath they will never win a long duration trade and if they come in range do not hesitate to fight them The bad side of this match up is that most of them have a cc to stop your W
short range mages
they have a similar range to Sol, however keep in mind that unlike him they do have cast times and this gives an insane adventage to Sol to dodge their spells or to place his Q they're too many so i can't talk about them one by one
**Mid lane ADCS **
The only class that can win against Aurelion Sol in an extended trade, which means you can't fight them at level one and two unlike other champions. therefore you need to be careful and wait until your own powerspike with your items there is however a difference at how you play against jhin or corki so do not hesitate to ask me details
exceptions
in other words, those who do not follow the rules above
Yasuo is extremely annoying because he can counter every single mechanic of Sol in one vs one, as long as he has creeps it's going to be impossible to touch him with his dashes and his wall, in lane he's able to engage and disengage at the same time the only thing you can do against this is to wait until laning phase is over, and later to not fight him in lane
i do not know if you have played against cass before, but it's really a horror to deal with.
Impossible to beat in early game because of her mobility and DPS. However if by a miracle you manage to hit her with a stun you can easily trade a bit of damage and run away with stormraider's surge.
She has sustain and you don't
the real problem is her ult that you need to predict and dodge, and doing it will change the match up from A to Z.
very snowballing match up
viktor even if he's similar to other mages has a bigger bust and longer range than them as well as having a spell that totally prevents All-ins (W). His ability to stop your W with ult is extremely dangerous and he can scale harder than you in teamfight
you need to not fight him while his ult is off cd.
even if she's all about burst, each second that passes is a strength to syndra as she can stack more spheres, even if she misses her Q her ability to use all spheres can easily remove more than half of your hp and this is a problem to Sol as he's squishy before items
the difficulty of this match up is about how syndra uses her E
Ahri despite being an easy lane to Sol as he has more waveclear and more movement speed than other ranged champions with stormraider's surge and can dodge her spells has one problem.
the only problem however is that if she charms you during stormraider you will run to her direction with the speed of light
this is where i generally take in my match ups
this is where the guide ends, however if you have questions do not hesitate to comment below and i will ask Lybal about anything
