Splitpush Hullbreaker Aphelios - Short guide + full game
/ mazrim_lol
Aphelios top was a very niche thing mostly in high elo KR soloq for awhile now, but hullbreaker and tier 2 towers giving more gold have been pushing it into wider viability.
What? Why?
Do you like bullying melee toplaners? Or even traditional ranged ones? Aphelios both wins 1v1 early lane and outscales most toplaners (provided have the correct guns for the 1v1, don't take purple/green gun combo into an all in with a brusier).
Aphelios has one of the fastest tower taking abilities in the game, white gun can probably take a tower faster than fiora
Surely you get camped
Yes, however mr 200 years is bringing those years to players who are not as familiar with them, you can turn 1v2s if you have the red-white gun vs even incredibly strong early game top/jungle duos, or at least scare them off.
Why is this better than other range tops
This is not a cheese pick like vayne top in that you just want to abuse range autos and if you die once you are just going to chain int to the bruisers, you are playing aphelios like you would tryndamere, zero fear of taking any 1v1s and attempting to just throw yourself down a lane to make pressure.
Why Hullbreaker
This item is just absurdly stat efficient, the shieldbow-hullbreaker combo makes aphelios absurdly tanky, it gives large amounts of hp plus resists. Lethality and magic pen will be basically negatived by the passive. Fundamentally if you cannot burst aphelios down he will utterly destroy you most of the time with his crazy dps, and this build attempts to remove his weakness.
Weaknesses of this build
Guns gun guns , you have to manage them, you have a terrible 1v1 with certain combinations, balance your available guns with how daring you are going to be with splitting, if you have red-white you want to draw people to you.
Extreme scaling toplaners - Remember I said "most", a few champions like tryndamere, jax and kayle are probably to going just continue smashing your face in if you fall behind. You can probably match fiora/riven lategame but it isn't going to be easy.