Stare Into My Sol (Conquest - Mid - S2)

Unstable Manifestation is the core of Sol's kit and is important to keep in mind when playing her. To deal any damage with your autos, and to really bring the heat with your abilities, Unstable Manifestation needs to be at full stacks. This is most easily done by popping your Radiance before engaging someone, but you may still want to keep your Stellar Burst until you're at full heat. Disapparate can also help you either gain or maintain stacks by allowing you to land consistent auto-attacks on your foes. Sol's passive is also incredible for boosting your tower push potential. With greater attack speed and more damaging autos, Sol can take down towers FAST if left unattended.

Radiance is primarily a setup for getting your passive stacked and to begin healing prior to engaging an enemy. However, Radiance is also excellent as a jungle clear, a heal during any battle, or combo'd off of the stun from your Disapparate or the slow from your Stellar Burst to keep enemies within the radius. One important aspect to take note of is that this ability will heal you more at lower hps since it heals based on a % of your missing health, so this ability is actually the most potent when you're about to die. Generally I level this second since the heal and heat scale really well.

Stellar Burst is your go-to damage ability. It will stay active indefinitely, only activating on your next basic attack (regardless of whether you hit it). This ability will hit twice, slowing enemies hit by it, making it incredibly effective to mix in while auto-attacking enemies. This will allow you to land more autos without the use of Disapparate, as well as provide you your best AOE and waveclear ability.

Disapparate is an incredibly versatile tool for Sol. It provides her best escape, granting her an incredible 10-30% movement speed with immunity to slows and then full immunity and untargetability for several seconds at the end. This immunity can also be used to counter potential incoming hard CC like Ares' No Escape if anticipated on time. Alternatively, you can also activate Disapparate and then Aegis Pendant, allowing you to burn through the time prior to gaining your incorporeal form and then utilizing it to gain extra frames of invulnerability. This ability also provides Sol's best CC, her stun. This stun from the path can be used to accomplish several things. If used defensively, you can strafe right to left a bit while escaping, forcing enemies to pursue you less directly to avoid being stunned. Alternatively, if using Disapparate offensively you can use your trail to deal damage to enemies, as well as stun them at the end leaving you open to combo it into your Radiance or Supernova if you stun them farther away. Finally, if using Disapparate offensively, remember that you can auto-attack without the movement speed penalty and that you can cancel your incorporeal form early to continue attacking your enemies. You may need to watch the circular timer to know exactly when to cancel this ability, since it can be a bit deceiving.

Supernova is a relatively simple ultimate, giving you your best AOE damage, directed similarly to Ah Muzen Cab's Honey + Hou Yi's Sunbreaker with a knockup on each hit. This is great for finishing off enemies that have moved out of your range, or bringing the heat to a teamfight, especially when paired with CC to keep your enemies in one place. This ability in particular pairs well with your Disapparate if you can knock up your enemies along its trail to help deal Disapparate's damage and stun. It's also important to consider that the knockup on Supernova is a great setup for your allies as well, so keep that in mind when considering when to use your ultimate. You should also remember that this ability only does 20% damage on successive hits, so you should prioritize hitting more enemies with this ability over hitting one enemy many times in most scenarios. Finally, do note that Sol is cc immune during her ultimate briefly, make sure to use this to your advantage if in a tight situation.

Starter
Soulstone
soulstone is my preferred starter with Sol since it allows you to blend building heat with enhancing your ability power and laneclear, as well as providing you with much needed mp5. It's also called soulstone. SOLstone.


ALTERNATIVE
If your early game is worse than your enemy mid laner's and you're afraid of being bullied out of lane, and/or ganked by the enemy jungler very early on, Vampiric Shroud is an excellent choice offering you greater health and sustain than [[soulstone]. However, it does not have the same offensive capabilities.


Item 1

My preference for Sol as a mid laner is Shoes of the Magi since they provide superior power and penetration, and because soulstone helps provide enough mp5 to aid your mana sustain for the most part compared to Shoes of Focus innate mana, especially since Sol isn't particularly mana dependent.


Active 1

Greater Purification is essential for any mage since it allows you to escape from hard CC. This non-replaceable, you will likely need Purification Beads early in order to survive ganks from enemy junglers and supports, or the enemy mid laner if they have strong CC like Poseidon or Agni.


Active 2

Aegis Pendant is a solid active, giving you immunity from damage for a brief period of time while allowing you to move. This active is also great when paired with Disapparate since it allows you to become immune prior to entering your incorporeal form, giving you a very long period of damage immunity. Take into account that you cannot use this item while under the effects of hard CC, so it's often necessary to pair this item with Purification Beads. Compared to Greater Aegis, Aegis Pendant allows you to move and escape while it is active, but leaves you open to being affected by CC and doesn't provide damage reduction after its immunity. Generally this active is better against teams that won't utilize hard CC in order to take advantage of you while this item is active, and is best for avoiding high damaging non-CC abilities like I'm a Monster and Searing Pain.


ALTERNATIVE
Greater Aegis is used basically the same way as Aegis Pendant. Compared to Aegis Pendant, Greater Aegis gives you immunity to hard CC while it is active and gives you damage reduction for a period after it is active, but leaves you open to being focused by the enemy team once it's over since you're unable to move while it is activated. This can be great for avoiding hard CC without needing Greater Purification(like Ares' No Escape and Xing Tian's Whirlwind of Rage and Steel), as well as ultimates that prevent you from moving due to pulls, slows or hard CC (like Poseidon's combo of Release The Kraken! + Whirlpool (slow + pull + knockup) or Cupid's Fields Of Love (slow + mesmerize)), or ultimates that last longer than 2 seconds (like Anubis' Death Gaze).


ALTERNATIVE
Heavenly Agility is not as useful on Sol compared to most mid laners due to her Disapparate, however if the other team is using slows and Weakening Curse often and you want to give you and your team the buff, as well as gain the bonus healing for your Radiance, Heavenly Agility can be a solid choice.


Item 2

Chronos' Pendant is my preferred second pickup due to its awesome 25% CDR allowing you to not only deal damage more often, but also heal and use your escape more freely as well, and its mp5 which will help eliminate your mana sustain problems. However, it can be necessary to grab Polynomicon early if you need the lifesteal for health sustain in lane, so take this into account when considering your second purchase. If buying this later, I prefer to grab this after Polynomicon and Demonic Grip.


Item 3

While Demonic Grip is a solid form of penetration, I prefer to also grab Spear of the Magus since Demonic Grip isn't quite as reliable. Spear of the Magus will greatly lower enemies' protections allowing your abilities to do far more damage, especially to tankier enemies. If you believe more power is better than more penetration, you are doing your damage calculations incorrectly (in most cases). But why Spear of the Magus rather than Obsidian Shard? Spear of the Magus meshes better with Demonic Grip's protections reduction and all of Sol's abilities hit multiple times giving you easy stacks for Spear of the Magus.


Item 4

Polynomicon offers a host of stats that are ideal for Sol at this stage in the game. It gives you lifesteal for health sustain in the end of the laning phase, more mana, and a passive that lets you skyrocket your dps by blending your abilities with your auto attacks. It is important to remember that Polynomicon's passive does have a cooldown, so take that into account when trying to max your dps in a fight.


Item 5

I consider Demonic Grip core for Sol in order to truly take advantage of the way her auto-attacks blend into her kit. Demonic Grip will not only increase your attack speed, but it will also allow you to lower enemy protections on successive hits. This will not only make your auto-attacks hit harder, but all of your abilities used after the stacks are built as well. If you have the opportunity to tower push earlier, you may want to swap the order of Demonic Grip and Spear of the Magus.


Item 6

Rod of Tahuti is essential to any mage building power. While expensive, completing it grants you a huge boost to your power, making it necessary regardless of the other items in your build.

Lifesteal

Divine Ruin is a great replacement to Polynomicon if countering a healer in lane such as Ra or Hel. I would recommend grabbing this early during the laning phase, typically second item if you choose to do so.

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Pythagorem's Piece is more expensive than Polynomicon, doesn't offer a similar passive to boost your damage and doesn't offer more mana. So what is your incentive to use it? Instead, Pythagorem's Piece grants you more than twice as much lifesteal, more power and 10% CDR, as well as an aura to boost your teammates' magical power and lifesteal. This item is great with more than one mage on the team, or if you feel that you'd prefer additional lifesteal and CDR vs more bursty autos and mana. This item can also be used to replace Chronos' Pendant later in your build assuming you skipped it, if you choose to do so.


Power

Soul Reaver is an amazing tool to increase your burst potential once a minute during the late game. However, this item is best swapped out with your Chronos' Pendant, making it sub-optimal the majority of the time since you will lack lower cooldowns. One build you can run with this is Shoes of Focus -> Pythagorem's Piece -> Demonic Grip -> Spear of the Magus -> Soul Reaver -> Rod of Tahuti since this will still grant you 25% CDR and allow you to utilize Soul Reaver's passive. However, in this build you lack Polynomicon's passive, giving you more single target burst when Soul Reaver's passive is active, but less overall. Alternatively, against very non-tanky teams, you can simply replace Spear of the Magus with Soul Reaver if you're managing the stacks on your Demonic Grip well.

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Book of Thoth can be used to replace Chronos' Pendant if you wish to do more damage at the cost of your cooldowns being longer (not typically recommended), Polynomicon at the cost of lifesteal (can be situationally better), or Demonic Grip for better ability power with weaker in-hands. This item will also grant you a LOT of mana early game, giving you the ability to utilize your abilities more frequently out of base (albeit with longer cooldowns). However, I would not often recommend this item simply due to Sol's low mana costs and because the other items mesh so well with her kit. If you do choose to buy this item, I'd recommend going:
Shoes of the Magi -> Book of Thoth -> Spear of the Magus ->
(choose two) Chronos' Pendant, Polynomicon, Demonic Grip -> Rod of Tahuti.


Defense (Winning Lane)

Void Stone is an amazing item for helping you win lane against an enemy mage if you're falling behind, or simply want to dominate your lane. Its combination of penetration and magical defense allow you to do a stupidly larger amount of damage to your enemy mid laner relative to the smaller damage they do to you. However, this item does NOT scale well into the late game, making it really only useful if you're falling behind or are able to pull very far ahead of your enemies. I would recommend replacing Spear of the Magus with this item, with your build order being: Shoes of the Magi -> Void Stone -> Polynomicon -> Demonic Grip -> Chronos' Pendant -> Rod of Tahuti

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Telkhines Ring, like Void Stone, gives you a huge boost to your early damage potential by giving your basic attacks more umph and providing you with additional attack speed, power and health. This makes this item excellent for dealing damage to minions and enemies early game, getting stacks for your heat and/or soulstone and also leaving you with a little more health to utilize. However, like Void Stone, this item does NOT scale well into the late game, once again making it really only useful if you're falling behind or are able to pull very far ahead of your enemies. I would recommend once again replacing Spear of the Magus with this item, with your build order being: Shoes of the Magi -> Telkhines Ring -> Polynomicon -> Demonic Grip -> Chronos' Pendant -> Rod of Tahuti

The gameplay behind Sol is rather unique to her. Overall, she's very bursty, short ranged, and fast on her feet, probably most similar to Chronos blended with Chang'e, but still not at all the same. It's always important when engaging an enemy or a teamfight to be aware of your passive. Your passive will not only make your basic attacks more damaging, but also your abilities. The best way to get your passive to maximum heat is to use Radiance followed by some basic attacks. Generally it is best to do this before getting into the fight, but it requires you to really commit. Because Radiance is on a 15s cooldown (~11 with 25% CDR) you have to choose between starting a fight with greater heat or having the ability to heal, deal damage and get maximum heat with Radiance later on.

In general you should try to take advantage of Sol's mobility. Her Disapparate allows her to rotate lanes incredibly fast, as well as do circles around her enemies (if done literally you can get a stun off as well). However, not only does Sol's Disapparate allow her to move at a quick pace, but none of her abilities require her to stop moving, with Disapparate allowing you to keep moving at full speed even while using your auto-attacks. This can make you incredibly difficult to lock down, and if used correctly, a juking master.

Compared to other mid laners, it's also important to note that you have a very small range despite being so squishy. Unlike gods like Agni or Scylla that can attack enemies from long distances, every ability you have only affects the short range within your basic attacks (except for your ultimate). This generally requires Sol to dance around opponents at a very close range like Chang'e, despite being so squishy herself. Avoid engaging enemies that can outrange you like Agni if your distance is unfavorable.

Finally, maintain your heat in a fight! Remember that staying on the sidelines will cause you to lose heat quickly, if you need to attack some jungle camps that are out of range or use your Radiance to heal and get more heat before reengaging the enemy, any time you spend in a fight at lower than maximum heat is a time when you're doing potentially over 40% less damage.

I always start out my build for Sol with Lost Artifact, soulstone, and two health potions (one of which I may substitute for a ward if playing against early game assassins like Thanatos). Like most mid laners, you and your teammates should take out the red buff jungle camp before going to lane. After the first wave you'll want to clear the mid camp on the solo lane side with your jungler, clear the mid lane, clear the other mid camp and then rotate between clearing the mid lane and the back fury camps with your jungler. Once in lane, you have a number of objectives: If you have superior clear you want to clear the lane fast enough with Stellar Burst so that the enemy mid laner is pushed under tower, sacrificing precious experience and gold, you want to damage the enemy mid laner so that they have to return to base, to conserve mana and avoid damage so that you can stay in lane as long as possible, to watch for enemy ganks and not push so far that you're vulnerable (avoid targeting the tower too much during the early game), and you want to set up your jungler so that they can gank your lane.

Learning to balance all this is essential. Early game, Sol has rather mediocre clear, but is very mobile and can quickly burst down opponents with the help of her jungler. Sol is not all that mana hungry compared to many mid laners, so she can take advantage of this to use her abilities more often to poke down her opponents. However, being too aggressive with Sol early is dangerous. She lacks a strong escape or CC and she's very squishy, so being ganked early is a bad situation if you're not prepared. Another thing Sol lacks is a long range clear or poking tool. All of her attacks require her to be within basic attack range of an enemy (aside from her ultimate) so be aware of your enemy's zoning tools when engaging them.

If you've done this successfully, your enemy will be at low health before too long, and you will still have a good amount of health and mana to spare. This opens you up to use your Radiance and Disapparate to get in the enemy's face with full heat basic attacks following up with your Stellar Burst and ultimate once they move out of range (alternatively you can begin the engage with your ultimate if you know you can then secure the kill, just avoid wasting an ultimate if an enemy has an escape handy). If you've only been moderately successful, you and your enemy should still be in lane with around half health. Encourage your jungler to come gank in this scenario, because you can deal a good amount of burst damage with your abilities giving your jungler an easy kill.

Mid game you should make sure to keep the mid lane pushed whenever possible in order to keep the enemy minions under tower and to not lose any gold yourself. You should also make sure to take out the midcamps whenever possible, or at least let your jungler take them out. These camps offer a stupidly large amount of gold and xp, so obtaining them is essential to your team's long term success. Either you, your jungler or your support should keep these warded at most times.

You should try to take the damage buff item whenever possible. While you're in that area, it's often a good time to either help or gank the duo lane since you've already spent the time to move in that direction. Ganking the duo lane is incredibly important since it can help your ADC gain advantage against the enemy team's and potentially help your support as well. Rotating as mid should be done whenever possible. If you've cleared your lane and no jungle camps need clearing, don't just sit in lane! Rotate to the duo or solo lane and help gank an enemy. It can make a huge difference not only for you but also for whichever lane you help out.

Around mid game is also the time your team typically goes in for Gold Fury. During these fights, try to catch as many people within your ultimate and Stellar Burst as possible, while also prioritizing securing the GF. Generally it is best to have at least one member of your team deal a high damage ultimate to the Gold Fury to secure the kill, if need be this may have to be your Supernova or at the very least your Stellar Burst. Since Sol has such a high dps with her basic attacks, you can very easily take out the gold fury with just your support and your ADC if possible.

Late game Sol is truly a force to be reckoned with. Mixing your basic attacks and your abilities, your dps is greater than many mages at this stage in the game. However, it's important to note that you may not have as great an area presence as an Agni, Poseidon or Eset. Generally Sol is best at singling out whatever opponent is closest and dealing a huge amount of damage to them over a relatively short amount of time. Avoid being burst down by gods with a lot of control like Serqet and Hun Batz with their ultimates. Use of Greater Purification and/or Aegis Pendant is a must to survive these encounters, and can truly turn the tide in your favor.

In the late game Sol particularly thrives on taking down towers and phoenixes, as well as objectives due to her obscene damage output with her basic attacks as well as abilities. Use this to your advantage, as most teams' mid laners aren't capable of taking out these objectives as well as Sol and having another force on your team aside from your ADC and/or jungler that is capable of this can lead to amazing split push tactics. Finally, avoid being too aggressive being in the middle of a fight. While you have amazing dps, enemies are also very capable of bursting you down. Stay safe and be opportunistic in your approach. If given the right scenario, Sol can be devastating to the enemy team, but otherwise she can be blown out as easily as a candle on a windy day.