Hail of Blades is one of the three rune keystone choices in the Domination rune tree in League of Legends. In this tree, Electrocute is a staple for most burst champions, and most ARAM players love Dark Harvest. However, Hail of Blades is reserved for only a few picks that truly make the most of it.
But if you do decide on playing one of these champions, taking Hail of Blades as your rune keystone will ensure that you have great success in your games. Continue reading to find a list of the best champions that should use Hail of Blades.
Also read: Top glacial augment rune champions
The best champions for the Hail of Blades rune are those that rely on their basic attacks to maximise their damage output. With that said, the best champions for the Hail of Blades rune are:
- Tristana
- Twitch
- Kai’Sa
- Draven
- Vayne
- Kalista
- Braum
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How Does Hail of Blades Work?
Hail of Blades is an alternative to the Lethal Tempo rune that is present in the Precision rune tree. A very explanation would be that both runes serve the same purpose, which is to give your champion a quick boost in their attack speed.
To trigger Hail of Blades, issue a basic attack command on an enemy champion. If the basic attack lands successfully, you increase your attack speed for the next two hits within a short duration. Hail of Blades will also allow your champion to exceed the game’s attack speed limit.
Hail of Blades allows you to quickly hit your basic attacks on enemy champions. That is why it is a great rune for champions that rely on auto attacks, like ADCs whose main source of damage is their basic attack damage. It is also amazing for champions who have AA-based stacking effects in their kit.
Best Picks For Hail of Blades
A good champion to go with Hail of Blades will make you understand just how underrated this great rune is. If you want to try it out, check out this list of the best picks to go with this rune.
Tristana
If you could only ever pick one champion with Hail of Blades for the rest of your League career, Tristana would be your blind-pick. This champion literally benefits so much from this rune that all other runes for her just pale in comparison.
Tristana’s main damage comes from her E, Explosive Charge, using which you place a timed bomb on your target. With every basic attack that you land on an enemy on which you have placed your bomb, you increase the damage caused by the bomb’s explosion. Keep in mind that this bomb deals AoE damage, so enemies near your target will also take massive damage.
Using Hail of Blades after placing your bomb will allow you to quickly detonate your bomb, and deal maximum damage possible in a really short amount of time because of how quickly you can land your first three auto attacks after triggering this rune’s effect.
Twitch
Twitch is the biggest raid-boss style attack damage carry that you can pick to haunt your enemies not only in the bot lane but also the jungle. Hail of Blades is completely broken when paired with this champion, because it allows you to burst down your enemies before they can lock on to you.
Twitch’s Q makes you camouflaged, so the enemy team cannot see you getting ready to raid them, in addition to an attack speed bonus for you to ambush your enemies afterwards, and his R gives you a huge range and attack damage bonus, in addition to allowing your attack bolts to pierce through enemies and hit multiple people at once.
As you can imagine, when a Twitch pops out of his Q with his R active, and shoots everyone down quickly with a huge attack speed bonus from his Q and Hail of Blades, the enemy team has their HP bars taken away before they can even think of running away.
Kai’Sa
Kai’Sa is another ADC that goes extremely well with Hail of Blades. The logic behind this is two-folds: she deals most of her damage through her auto attacks, and her passive stacks give her more damage on enemies depending on how many times she has hit them.
As the daughter of the void, Kai’Sa has some special abilities. Her basic attacks on-hit and her W apply stacks of Plasma on the enemies she hits. Each stack of plasma allows you to deal bonus damage to enemies, and the fifth stack consumes all stacks and deals a large amount of damage at once.
With Hail of Blades, you can quickly get multiple plasma stacks on your enemies, thanks to your super quick auto attacks. Assuming that you land all 3 Hail of Blades attacks, one W+HoB autos or HoB autos+W combos will let you get damage from full stacks of your passive and burst down your enemies in no time.
Draven
Draven is a champion with one of the highest DPS (damage per second) stats in League of Legends. This ADC can melt down enemies extremely fast simply by hitting them with his basic attacks.
Draven’s strength lies in his Q, Spinning Axe. Every time you press Q, Draven’s next auto attack deals bonus damage, and if he catches the axe that ricochets to the ground after hitting your enemy, you get the bonus damage again. So if you keep hitting enemies with basic attacks and catching your axes, you have a permanent damage boost on your attacks.
Here’s the neat part: his Q has perfect synergy with Hail of Blades because it allows you to quickly land high damage axes on your enemies and absolutely delete them in a fraction of a second. You will definitely enjoy this combo if you like watching enemy health bars disappear.
Vayne
Vayne is easily one of the strongest late game carries in the game. She deals so much true damage consistently that you can even shred tanks if they dare step up against you. However, her early game can be super disappointing because you do not have any attack speed or meaningful damage at that point.
However, Hail of Blades is the best early game rune in League of Legends, and it will allow you to actually have an impact within the laning phase. Vayne’s W, Silver Bolts, gives her a passive that deals percentage max health true damage on every third auto attack on an enemy.
The three rapid attacks from Hail of Blades allow you to quickly get this true damage part off as soon as the fight starts, and even in an early game fight, you can easily trigger it twice, which will whittle your enemies down so fast that they will literally be too scared to fight you head-on again.
Kalista
Although this champion is very hard to play well, especially in low elo, Kalista is actually an extremely reliable ADC that barely ever loses a lane. However, even if you are an experienced Kalista player, you will struggle against ADCs that can match your early game damage, like Draven, for example.
Hail of Blades allows Kalista to double down on her early game strength, and defeat champions that may even beat her otherwise. It also gives her a lot of burst potential at all stages of the game, and you can fill your enemies with your spears in absolutely no time.
Once you have loaded the enemy’s body with your spears, you can use your E, Rend, to pull your spears back out, which will deal a huge amount of damage to your enemies and slow them. As such, Hail of Blades allows you to abuse this mechanic by stacking your spears up without even needing many attack speed items in the early game.
Braum
Braum also has a stacking mechanic based on his basic attacks, which automatically makes him a great pick for an AA-heavy rune like Hail of Blades. This rune also makes him really strong for roams and objective fights around the map, so he benefits from it in ways more than one.
Braum’s passive works by giving him a stack on enemy champions every time he hits them with his auto attacks or his Q. The fourth stack stuns the enemy and deals bonus basic damage to them. So, Hail of Blades allows you to stun your enemies as Braum faster than they would expect you to.
Once an enemy has at least one stack from Braum, attacks from your allies will also put more stacks on them. So, if you have a slow attacking ADC like Jhin or Senna with you, you can easily compensate for their lack of stacking input through your own Hail of Blades basic attacks.
Final Thoughts
Hail of Blades is the strongest rune in the early game, and is super useful on most ADCs even in the late game. All in all, it is an extremely fun rune to mess around with and is super strong on the right champions.
If you love having so much attack speed that you burst your enemies down through nothing but basic attacks before they can even touch you, you should definitely try these champions with Hail of Blades.
Feel free to discuss your favourite applications of this rune and the champions that you think should work especially well with Hail of Blades in the comments below!
(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
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