Hello, I'm XenoTek the current starting jungler on the new Phoenix Reign roster. Welcome to my Jungle
Samuel Guide, where I will explain how I play
Samuel successfully in both ranked and competitive matches.
Samuel is typically a laner, but I believe he is best suited as a jungler due to his incredible early game strength and excellence at fighting in narrow spaces.
I hope you enjoy!
-Xeno
Samuel’s Heroic Perk is one of the most important parts of his kit. Every 6 seconds, Samuel fires a bolt of lightning at an opponent, dealing bonus crystal damage scaling with level. Most importantly, Samuel also draws back energy to himself in the form of health and energy. This regeneration is only 25% as effective against non-heroes, so when possible it is best to use this attack on heroes for maximum effect.
Since it is only a basic attack, you should use it whenever it is available as there are only positive effects (except if you are at full energy and could use A first). In the laning phase, one combo to use for some effective poke damage is: perk blast - A ability - auto attack.
Malice & Verdict is kind of like a CP Skye’s Forward Barrage in that it is a directional projectile and the main source of damage. When activated, Samuel will fire two shots from his wands, impacting at first target hit. Samuel can move between the shots, but both shots will go towards the original location you tapped it. So for example if you tap directly in front of you then move beyond where you tapped, the second shot will fire behind you towards where you originally tapped. Additionally, Samuel gains a small movement speed boost while channeling this ability for a duration of ~1 second, allowing him to kite or chase down enemies with even greater efficiency.
Empowered Attacks:
If Samuel is standing inside his Drifting Dark, the shots from Malice & Verdict are empowered. Empowered attacks deal increased damage, move faster, travel farther, and deal AOE damage in a small radius upon impact. Additionally, the cooldown is significantly reduced while inside Drifting Dark, making it possible to fire out many empowered attacks in a short duration. See the Drifting Dark for situational uses and the best ways to utilize the full potential of the empowered attacks.
Upgrade Priority:
Malice & Verdict is Samuel’s primary ability and should be treated as such with the overdrive priority. ALWAYS upgrade Malice & Verdict first, as the cooldown is reduced upon overdrive and the damage is massively increased.
Drifting Dark
When activated, Samuel creates “a large field of darkness” that moves in the selected direction, slightly damaging enemies inside. The main importance of this ability, however, is for the potential for Empowered Malice & Verdict attacks. As described in the Malice & Verdict section, Samuel’s potential damage output gets massively increased when he is standing inside the Drifting Dark. Additionally, when both Samuel and a target are standing inside Drifting Dark, he heals a small amount for each target inside the field.
How to use Drifting Dark:
In order to get the maximum effectiveness from empowered attacks, Drifting Dark should be used in a direction that Samuel can walk with it and not be in danger of getting deleted. For example, unless chasing the enemy, don’t use it directly forward. Instead, use it to the side or diagonally so Samuel can poke more and take as little damage as possible. Try to fight in tight corridors and in the jungle in general mostly so Malice & Verdict has a better chance of hitting.
Upgrade Priority:
Taking the overdrive on Drifting Dark increases the speed and also makes it travel farther but with a higher energy cost. Only max Drifting Dark when the enemy is extremely mobile and is a kite-composition. Most comps in this meta have a Phinn or Lance, so maxing Drifting Dark isn’t necessary and can actually be a hinderance due to the increase in speed. Instead, it is usually better to take the overdrive on Oblivion.
Oblivion
Samuel's ultimate, Oblivion, brings a different kind of CC to the game: sleep. This is extremely powerful, as like a silence, it prohibits use of abilities and activating items in addition to stopping movement. However, if your team inflicts direct damage onto a sleeping enemy, they will “wake” and will lose all of the negative effects of the sleep.
Due to the long casting time, Oblivion is extremely hard to land. If landed, though, it will be extremely devastating. Some of the best uses of Oblivion are attempting to sleep the enemy support so that he will not be able to activate any items, and likely spelling destruction for the enemy. Similarly, you can also sleep one of the carries, enabling you to freely focus the other one without the sleeping enemy being a nuisance.
Roam Heroes to Pair
Samuel With:
- Phinn- Can use his Forced Accord ~every 15 seconds late game. This allows for massive chain combos since Phinn’s pull will bait the blocks. Use Oblivion after they use their blocks for maximum effectiveness.
- Lyra- Lyra provides additional sustain to the already sustaining monster of Samuel. Additionally, her ultimate lets Samuel get on top of the enemy without using his B.
- Catherine- Cath is a really good hero to combine with Samuel. If Catherine ever lands her silence, the fight is pretty much a guaranteed win. If the enemies are Silenced, Samuel can easily land his sleep which silences AND immobilizes them for even more time. It also works vice-versa, if the enemies are asleep, they can’t block the silence at all.
Samuel pairs well with any hyper-carry laner that can output a lot of damage quickly. Heroes like Ringo, Celeste, Kestrel, etc are perfect laners to pair with Samuel since Samuel cannot provide enough damage to completely carry a fight by himself.
Samuel is probably the best early game mage. His damage output is extremely high in the early game, and with his energy/health regen, he can out-sustain pretty much anyone. Be careful of his slow level 1 clear speed, however. Unless with a Lance or Phinn in jungle, Samuel has a very slow clear speed in the early game. If the enemy reaches your jungle shop before you can get level 2, I would recommend going to lane and trying to poke out the enemy laner. With Drifting Dark, you can do tons of poke damage without much risk and maybe even get a kill. After, try to rotate down with your own laner to steal the enemy mid-heal camp and snowball from there.
Samuel’s strongest point in the game is the mid-game. It is absolutely imperative you take advantage of his massive power spikes at level 6 and whenever he gets Broken Myth. Be sure to build early energy items to make sure you can output as much poke damage as possible and be able to steal creeps from a distance, but energy shouldn’t really be a problem with your perk and heal minions. Rotate with your laner and try and steal as many enemy camps as possible. If you’re having trouble snowballing the jungle, put more focus on the lane. Once you get the first turret down, it will be much easier to maintain more jungle control, at least of the mid/shop camps.
In the late game, Samuel’s job is mainly to be a nuisance/distraction for the enemy while your lane carry outputs most of the damage. Samuel does a lot of damage, but usually cannot deal enough to fully carry a team fight by himself. Build Broken Myth stacks before engaging fully with Drifting Dark by kiting around the enemy support. See the Drifting Dark section for tips on using Drifting Dark, but be sure to use only when necessary and when/where you will be able to output the maximum amount of damage. If you get separated from your cloud, you lose a MAJOR chunk of your potential damage output. Otherwise, just keep trying to output as much damage as possible without putting yourself in a position to get caught out/deleted by the enemy.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found it useful. Send any questions you may have to
@XenoTekVG on Twitter,
Team Phoenix or comment below.
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-XenoTek
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