Brave, Fierce, and Fast (Solo)

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Guan Yu is an excellent solo laner who has pressure in most matchups, great sustain, is extremely safe, dives well, abuses Caduceus Shield, and fits into most team comps well because he can play around his backline or dive the enemy's backline.

Start off by buying Bluestone Pendant, Warrior's Axe, or Tainted Steel and a Chalice of Healing. Get two Healing Potions and Blink Rune. Multi Potions can be useful if you plan to fight the enemy solo laner early on because the heal stacks on top of your Chalice. The extra mana sustain from them is really nice with Warrior's Axe and Tainted Steel.

Go to speed buff at the start of the game. Clear it as fast as possible and then head to mini harpy camp. Your jungler will be on the bigger harpy camp and will pull them towards you. Don't use Taolu Assault on the minis, hold it for clearing blue buff. After both camps are down, head to blue. Clear blue then go to lane.

Once you get to lane you should use your abilities primarily on the wave. You will get out cleared by most gods before you get boots if you go Warrior's Axe so play defensively and more conservative with your mana because you need to stay strong enough to defend your blue buff from a possible invade. If you went Bluestone Pendant your early levels will be much easier. You'll clear as well as most other gods and be able to play more aggressively because you have sustain on your starter item. The goal is to get full boots on your first back. If you don't get a kill in lane, you'll have enough gold once you clear the wave that comes after you get your second blue buff.

Warrior Tabi is the best boots option on Guan Yu since he has insanely high scaling and the power boosts the damage from his auto-attacks which already hit harder than most gods. You'll have good clear and be able to quickly kill people in lane once you have these boots. If your lane opponent doesn't have a leap or something to get them away from Cavalry Charge at this point in the game, you can use it on them as soon as you get back to lane with boots. Solos have around 1000 health at this point into the game and your ultimate will do about 650 damage.

As the solo laner and frontline during team fights, you want to be initiating for your jungler and pressuring their backline so they're not free casting onto your team. As Guan Yu you want to kill or zone a backliner with your jungler, or run back to your team to heal them. Either way, it's important to have a teammate near you because when you heal them your cooldowns are reduced. Guan Yu's first ability, Conviction and his second ability, Warrior's Will both have a 3.2s cooldown at max cooldown reduction after healing an allied god and dashing through an enemy god. Taolu Assault's and Cavalry Charge's cooldowns are also reduced when healing allies and dashing through enemies. You can get Guan's ultimate ability cooldown to 30s reliably. 25s is possible. Taolu Assault goes down to a 5s cooldown. Guan's cooldowns are insanely short in team fights. Guan can blink then dash on a squishy and once they dash away or if they don't have mobility he can ult and get the kill or get their Purification Beads and Aegis Amulet.

Using Taolu Assault before Conviction or Warrior's Will so that it will get the cooldown reduction from either healing allies or dashing through enemies. This lets you use it more often resulting in more damage done.

Using Taolu Assault is an easy way to build up Guan Yu's passive Painless. Use this before you use Conviction for a boosted heal.

Use Warrior's Will to dash through the enemy solo and the melee creeps, then run to the archers. This groups the wave so you can hit all 6 minions with Taolu Assault.

Don't be afraid to cancel your ult Cavalry Charge early after just 2 or 3 swings. It's mainly used for the CC. A 40% slow into a 2s stun is great setup.

At level 3 when you get Conviction you can heal your wave as well as yourself. This helps get pressure vs gods with bad early clear and punishes enemies for using abilities on you, not the wave.

Guan Yu is a mix of high damage, good cc, low cooldowns, and good sustain. He has everything a solo laner needs and with the rise of the healing meta, he's become unstoppable.

"With conviction charge forth on your warhorse and shred through armor and foe."