Morgana champion guide: Playing with Tormented Soil

Morgana — alongside her sister, Kayle — has now been officially reworked. This guide will be focusing on Morgana, but if you need one for Kayle, we have that, too.

While Morgana hasn’t received a full scale rework, she has gotten a full visual update and some small changes to her abilities. We felt it would be unjust to let her sister have all the glory, so we’re making a guide for Morgana, too! We will be focusing on Morgana as a support for the sake of this guide.

Skills

Passive - Soul Siphon

Morgana restores health equal to 20 percent of her damage dealt via abilities to enemy champions and large monsters.

Soul Siphon gets stronger as your abilities deal more damage, but, as a support, your main focus is less about dealing damage and more about peeling for your carries and engaging or catching out an opponent. You also won’t be building all that much Ability Power so the healing won’t be incredibly high. It can still be noticeable, especially if you manage to hit multiple enemies with Tormented Soil and Soul Shackles in a fight.

Q - Dark Binding

This ability has a long root duration and does a decent amount of damage, meaning that any squishy champion caught by a Dark Binding will be vulnerable for a few seconds at every point in the game. Try to set up a gank by landing Dark Binding onto the opposing ADC or squishy support and fish for a high priority target in a teamfight in order to increase your chances of winning it. You may also want to hold onto it and use it as a zoning tool, or to peel for your carries when they get jumped on by an opponent.

W - Tormented Soil

The damage is negligible for the most part, and enemies aren’t just gonna stand in it for no reason. The damage can add up and force the opposing bot lane to recall at a sub-optimal time due to the risk of dying. Try to throw it down beneath someone that’s been hit by your Dark Binding to get some free damage.

It can be used to reliably proc the Tribute passive on your Spellthief’s Edge from a safe range, but will only grant you one stack no matter now many people you hit or how much many ticks of damage they take.

E - Black Shield

Black Shield is the ultimate peeling ability. You should always try to use Black Shield on a carry when you see a crowd control ability, such as Zoe’s Sleepy Bubble Trouble, or Thresh’s Death Sentence, flying towards them.

R - Soul Shackles

Soul Shackles can be used as a strong initiation and peel tool that can force enemies to either run away from the fight or get locked in place and be left vulnerable. You need to be careful when using this though, if you die the opponents won’t have to worry about being stunned anymore. Make use of your Zhonya’s Hourglass to become invulnerable if you start to get focused down.

One tip that many players don’t know is that Morgana can shackle an invisible target as long as they are within her range. You can tell if an invisible target comes into your range if Soul Shackles becomes cast-able, as it can only be used if there are targets nearby.

Skill Max Order - Q > E > W

You’ll want to max Dark Binding due to not only the high base damage and 90 percent AP scaling, but also for the root duration increase. At max rank you get another full second of root onto the already generous duration.

Follow up by putting points into Black Shield. You want the shield to absorb as much damage as possible going into teamfights, as the more health the shield has, the harder it is for it to be removed via magic damage.

You should always try to have at least three points in Black Shield by the time teamfights start happening, meaning it is fine if you skip a point or two in Dark Binding to make sure the shield doesn’t get broken easily.

Runes

Grab Summon Aery along with Manaflow Band, Transcendence, and Scorch from the Sorcery tree. Summon Aery works well with Morgana as she can poke and shield, making this a hybrid offensive and defensive keystone choice.

Manaflow Band helps to keep you topped off on mana, Transcendence helps to cap you on cooldown reduction, and Scorch gives you some additional damage, which helps your early laning phase. Dip into the Inspiration tree next and pick up Perfect Timing and Cosmic Insight. Perfect Timing gives you a free Stopwatch which can be used at any time after 10 minutes. This rune also reduces the cooldown of your Zhonya’s Hourglass by 15 percent. Cosmic Insight grants 5 percent CDR on abilities, summoner spells, and items as well as increasing the CDR cap by 5 percent.

If you want to focus on dealing less damage but providing more defense for your carry, then you can try using the Resolve tree with Guardian along with Demolish, Bone Plating, and Revitalize. This is a more tanky build that focuses on giving a bigger shield to your carry, forgoing the damage from the Sorcery tree.

Build Order

Start

• Spellthief’s Edge
• 2 Health Potions

Mid Game Core

• Boots of Mobility
• Zhonya’s Hourglass
• Eye of the Watchers

Late Game Core

• Redemption
• Twin Shadows

Situational

• Locket of the Iron Solari
• Ardent Censer
• Shurelya’s Reverie

Grab Oracle Lens after you finish the quest on your support item. You won’t need the wards from the warding trinket and clearing out enemy vision is important. You should always remember to purchase at least one Control Ward before leaving base, since you’ll want to place them quite often to secure and deny vision.

Early Boots of Mobility allow you to roam effectively and help to pressure the map. Try to coordinate a gank with your jungler to net some free kills and objectives.

Zhonya’s Hourglass allows you to engage without the risk of dying before your ultimate finishes, which is quite good considering you’re not the tankiest of champions. Twin Shadows helps you find an out of position champion, allowing you to land an easy Dark Binding on them while they’re slowed, or they can be used to scout an unwarded area of the map without the risk of dying.

Synergies

Morgana plays well with the following champions:

• Jinx
• Sivir
• Ashe
• Caitlyn
• Master Yi
• Katarina
• Kayle

These champions are usually quite susceptible to crowd control. Black shield can help them pop off by ignoring any stuns or slows sent their way, allowing them to play more aggressively.

Counters

Morgana struggles against the following champions:

• Sona
• Zilean
• Zyra
• Brand
• Draven
• Twitch

Some of these champs deal so much magic based damage that they dampen Black Shield’s effectiveness, some can just simply kill you when you try to engage, and others don’t really care about Black Shield and will just outright kill anyone you try to peel.

Conclusion

Not much has changed with this rework, but the quality of life buffs given to Morgana along with her new visuals are very welcome changes. If you want a champion who can reliably peel and help your carries carry harder while also being a strong initiation and zoning champion, then give Morgana a try. You’ll make ADCs everywhere cry about being rooted for years!