Overview
Who let the dogs out? (Who? Who?) Naafiri is a champion that excels at assassinating squishy targets and then snowballing it into more kills -- when ahead, she’s an absolute terror that can duel almost any champion in the game thanks to the literal pack of dogs that follow her around (and we’re not talking about her teammates). Click here for the latest data on her best builds, including Runes, Items, Summoner Spells, and more.
Keys to Remember About Naafiri
Naafiri is extremely mobile thanks to three of her abilities helping her out in that category -- this allows her to be creative about the angles she approaches from, and it also allows her to easily catch enemies while they're overextended or trying to rotate to another lane.
She's an assassin that wants to snowball the game. This means you want to fight early and often to try to accelerate the pace rather than sit back and scale.
Strengths
Naafiri is a very mobile champion thanks to having three mobility boosts in The Call of the Pack [W], Eviscerate [E], and Hounds’ Pursuit [R]. Having so much mobility makes her a versatile champion when it comes to how she wants to approach fights, though it’s often through the front door that’s going to be the easiest and most effective. Hounds’ Pursuit [R] is extremely powerful at helping her secure a kill, and if she’s able to get the reset, she can use it again to go for a second target: this makes her very powerful against teams that have multiple squishy champions (especially in bot lane). There’s a ton of damage on her kit, which makes her a prime champion to secure picks throughout the game.
Weaknesses
Getting the first kill is huge and will be more and more important as the game goes on -- securing a second cast on her ultimate will allow her to gain a shield and reposition herself, which could end up being vital to her survivability. That said -- teams that are heavy on defenses and properly kite back together are going to be very difficult for her to play into. She’ll want to be picked later into the draft to counteract some of that, but in general she still needs to be careful about going in against moving balls. Waiting for enemies to isolate themselves will work often in Solo Queue games -- especially early in games -- but it becomes harder and harder as game length increases.
Game Plan
Early Game: She should have a strong clear early with her speed -- early ganks are a little reliant on having some CC from laners, but her ability to close gaps will still make her a potent threat, especially once her ultimate is online.
Mid Game: Her mid game is very strong -- teams typically are still spread out at this point but start to roam more often. She can catch people in transit quite easily and then try to turn those kills into objectives on the map.
Late Game: It’ll be harder to secure kills at this point in the game, but she still has good threat in team fights, especially with The Call of the Pack [W] making her untargetable.
