How To (Actually) Play Pele SEASON 9 UPDATE

"9.5 out of 10" - Inters3ct

Guide updated for season 9! Bumba's Hammer is a dead item, as is Shifter's Shield. Added glyphs, relic upgrades, removed boots. Cleaned up and reformatted the build to be clearer about which items you should be building.

Hi there! I'm DiscoFerry, and I'm a long time masters ranked player and (ex) not-so-secret Pele one trick. I have around 250 games on her, with a 70% win rate and a 3KDA from masters ranked games, on top of dozens more games in scrims and tournaments. I made this guide to share my builds and some of my tips for her with the community.

Overall Pele is a strong god, with lots going for her. Some of her biggest strengths are:

+ Tons of burst damage, both single target and AOE.
+ Strong mobility with the movement speed on Magma Rush and the dash on Volcanic Lightning
+ Decent cc with the knockup on Eruption and the slow on Volcanic Lightning
+ Amazing early game pressure without really falling off lategame

Pele's downsides are few, and not too glaring. She lacks instant mobility outside of her ult, her passive is prone to antiheal, she can suffer against knockup immune gods, and her cc isn't great, but that's about it.

Here's a quick rundown of all of Pele's abilities and their uses:

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Everlasting Flame Gives you a large power and lifesteal boost when you go under half health. This allows you to turn a fight around quickly, especially early game where the enemies don't have antiheal to counter it.

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Pyroclast is your main clear and damaging ability. She has two charges of this ability. You want to level this up first.

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Eruption is a circular knockup ability that increases in range as you level it up. This is used to set up a Pyroclast auto-attack cancel combo.

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Magma Rush is Pele's best ability in my opinion, it's what allows her quick, fluid, in and out playstyle to work. When toggled on twice, it gives 60% movement speed, and does a solid amount of dps too. This is also your level 1 clear ability. Managing Magma Rush's fuel properly is important to play her to her fullest potential.

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This one's the fun one. Volcanic Lightning is a nutty ability. A long, fast dash that does way too much damage, followed by three cone auto attacks that do ability damage in a large area. This ability alone can 100 to 0 a squishy lategame, while also almost killing anyone behind them. The dash is also cc immune, making this an amazing chasing, killing, and cc dodging ability.

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Leveling order:

Level 1-5:

Maxing Order:

Don't level anything at level 8 so that you can put a point into Pyroclast and Volcanic Lightning at level 9.

Magma Rush is your best level 1 clear, so you start with it. At level 2, your best kill potential is with a combination of Magma Rush and Pyroclast, so get that next. At level 3 you want Eruption, and from there you start leveling your abilities as above.

Volcanic Lightning and Pyroclast are your main damage tools, and so you want to level them to max as soon as possible. Next, level Eruption for the larger knockup area and damage. Lastly, level up Magma Rush for some extra damage.

The starting build is pretty self-explanatory, and is what you should be building on every ability-based jungler like Pele:

• Eye Of The Jungle is the starter of choice all junglers now with the Bumba's Hammer nerfs in my opinion.
• Mace is bought as your only real options for first item are Jotunn's Wrath or The Crusher (please don't rush Soul Eater in jungle)

The core build items are the first items you should build in (almost) every single game on Pele:

• Jotunn's Wrath is now buildable again due to the Bumba's Hammer nerf, as you wont be overlapping CDR by building both now.
• The Crusher is a strong early game damage item, with decent power, pen, a damage passive, and attack speed which is more helpful than you'd think due to quick AA canceling combos and her ult autos.
• Arondight is probably the single best item on Pele, as 75 power is super strong, and the passive will activate immediately after the dash of Volcanic Lightning finishes, meaning that the damage will activate on the first auto-attack of the ult. The movement speed passive also helps you continue chasing if you run out of fuel on Magma Rush.

The only time you won't go these three items first is when you desperately need the antiheal from Brawler's Beat Stick, you would generally replace The Crusher with this.

I'll briefly describe the use of each situational item and when you should build them:

• Brawler's Beat Stick is a strong penetration and antiheal item, and should be built either before or after Arondight if you require antiheal (for example if the enemy team has a Hel, Aphrodite, or lots of self-healing or lifesteal. You can also rush this item straight after boots if you are desperate for early antiheal.
• Magi's Cloak is great for avoiding getting cc locked while your Purification Beads are on cooldown. It can be built anywhere between fourth and sixth item in either build if you are getting picked by something like Confound or Anvil of Dawn when your Purification Beads are on cooldown.
• Titan's Bane - hard to recommend really, but if their comp is very tanky you can maybe grab it. Get one of the other items preferably though.
• Mantle of Discord - the pickup if you are getting blown up in the damage build path. I probably wouldn't buy this if you already have Spirit Robe. Get it instead of Bloodforge or Heartseeker.
  
  I'll give a quick mention here to Hydra's Lament, which I don't build, as it doesn't proc on Magma Rush, and Volcanic Lightning halves your basic attack damage while the cones are active, which kinda screws over your hydras passive.

Purification Beads. Blink Rune. That's it. Order is up to you.

Please don't build anything else. This is true for almost all junglers.

Some junglers can skip Blink Rune for Aegis Amulet, for example gods like Thor who has his ult and hammer to engage, but Pele needs blink to engage without Volcanic Lightning so she cant really skip it.

Go Purification Beads first if you think cc will either get you killed or stop you getting kills early game (like a ***bakharna), or rush Blink Rune if you are confident you can get kills with it early.

If I had to give you only one tip for playing Pele, it would be this:

You aren't being aggressive enough.

When playing Pele, you should be telling yourself repeatedly "I am Pele. I win this fight." 2v1? You probably win. Half health 2v1 vs 2 early game gods and a full wave? You probsbly still win that one too. Obviously don't be dumb, but err on the side of over-aggression until you get the balance down.

Pele's biggest power spikes are:

• Level 2. Pele is the best level 2 jungler in the game. No, there are no exceptions. Hell, she's arguably the best level 2 god in the game full stop. The only argument would maybe be Hercules.
• Level 5. Remember earlier in the guide when I said that Volcanic Lightning "can 100 to 0 a squishy lategame"? The same is true at level 5. This ability does 480 base damage at RANK 1. And that's not even counting the auto-attack damage and the abilities you will be using too.
• Arondight completed. This gets its own power spike mention due to how much power it gives to her, as mentioned in the item explanation above.

You should be extra aggressive at these times.

Some more advanced tips:

• Always fight or clear with Magma Rush toggled on fully. You should only use the first form of this ability for mobility, and even then not very often.
• Keep Magma Rush above 40 fuel when out of combat, you don't want to get caught with no fuel when you really need it.
• Learn the timing of Eruption so that you can activate it early so it erupts right as you get into knockup range.
• Make sure to auto-attack cancel between your abilities. A normal combo is (with Magma Rush toggled on fully): Eruption > auto-attack > Pyroclast > auto-attack > Pyroclast > auto-attack.
• Save Volcanic Lightning for either chasing an enemy after they use their movement ability, or to immune a cc that will stop you from killing someone. An exception to this is when the cones can kill someone that you wouldn't be able to reach otherwise.
• Volcanic Lightning's dash does cone damage behind it when it hits an enemy, so you get 4 cones in total if you hit it.
• If you are close to half health while out of combat, consider letting a camp or minion wave get you down to half hp so that Everlasting Flame activates and you can heal.

Hopefully after reading some or all of this guide you've learned something about playing Pele. If you have any questions about the guide feel free to comment, dm me, or find me on discord DiscoFerry#6038 and I'll do my best to answer. Thanks for reading!