GM PEAK BEL'VETH JUNGLE GUIDE - EX RANK 1 (ENGLISH)

BEL'VETH JUNGLE GUIDE EX RANK 1

ABOUT ME

Hi, I'm Gromix (GRX). I was Rank 1 Bel'Veth on League of Graphs before the rework, and my peak is 1350+ LP and Grandmaster on EUW. I've been on this champion since release: when she was meta, through every patch where she was dead, and now that they've reworked her from the ground up.

The thesis of this guide is simple and I'll give it to you up front: PTA with Kraken and Blade of the Ruined King. I've been running PTA on this champion since long before it became popular, and at this point it isn't a strange opinion anymore. If someone tells you the correct rune is Lethal Tempo, they're reading pick rate, not win rate. This champion improves an absurd amount off one simple keystone swap — I'll get into why further down.

I stream myself playing this build and talking through what I'm doing, in case you'd rather see the tips in game than read them. And I have a Discord where I answer Bel'Veth questions from anyone who asks, and where I do coaching (VOD reviews, pathing, decision making, objective control). Feel free to drop in and ask — any conversation about this champion is welcome.

• Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/gromixlol
• Discord: https://discord.gg/baMFcSazEA | gromixlol
• Twitter (X): https://x.com/gromix_lol
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@gromixlol

Spanish version of this guide: https://www.onetricks.gg/guide/m1fc5lo

RUNES

Press the Attack → Triumph → Legend: Alacrity → Coup de Grace / Last Stand | Cash Back → Triple Tonic | Adaptive Force → Adaptive Force → Flat Health

PTA vs Lethal Tempo

Lethal Tempo gives you more of what you already have in surplus: hitting hard in long fights. You get that for free in the late game from Kraken and BorK. What this Bel'Veth is missing is the early game and skirmishes, and that's where PTA gives you your damage in the first three autos (or auto — Q — auto), which is exactly the window where jungle duels, ganks and objectives get decided.

And PTA doesn't fall off a much in late game: the damage amplifier gives you a shot at a reset that no other keystone gives you.

Conqueror — is it worth it?

It's playable if there's a lot of melee and you can stack it fast. I actually prefer it over Lethal Tempo, purely because of the champion's identity.

Coup de Grace vs Cut Down vs Last Stand

Coup de Grace by default. Bel'Veth has an execute on her R and enormous mobility for chasing, so finishing targets under the threshold is trivial and the rune is live constantly. You can take the damage-against-higher-health option (Cut Down) if the enemy has three tanks or more, and the same goes for Last Stand, which is the better pick when getting a reset is off the table and you expect to be permanently low HP.

Cash Back and Triple Tonic

The Inspiration secondary isn't optional. Cash Back is what gets Blade of the Ruined King online sooner, and BorK's price is the only real argument against the item — compensate for it with Cash Back and the argument disappears. Triple Tonic gives you the extra damage potion that sustains the aggressive clear and can outright secure objectives you'd otherwise have to give up, on top of the free skill point at level 9.

Shards: flat health > scaling health

Double Adaptive Force and flat health. You have less base health since the rework, they cut it again in 26.16, and running base health is what makes the clear better and makes contesting scuttle crab an actual option — something that wouldn't exist without PTA or with scaling health.

ITEMIZATION

The plan is always the same: Kraken → Blade of the Ruined King

With those two items you already have all the damage you're going to need for the entire game. Your ceiling isn't killing, it's surviving long enough to kill. That's what lets you go a defensive third item and actually play the champion the way her identity demands, instead of like a glass-cannon ADC who buys Guinsoo's just for fun.

FIRST BACK (depending on your gold)

Everything you buy here goes toward Kraken (Rectrix 775 + Hearthbound Axe 1200 + Recurve Bow 700 + 325 combine = 3000g).

• A good first back is 3x Long Swords, or Recurve Bow + Boots (if the game calls for it).

SECOND BACK

Prioritize finishing Kraken above all else. If you can't afford it, buy whatever component you're missing — there's no harm in delaying tier 1 Boots until your first item is done.

FIRST ITEM: Kraken Slayer

No alternatives. It's what makes the reworked champion playable: now that her auto attack lands at 100% instead of 75%, all of her damage comes from the item. It was, is and always will be the best rush item on Bel'Veth.

SECOND ITEM: Blade of the Ruined King

This is where I'm going to disagree with the newer players who only know this champion post-rework. Further down I'll explain why this item is simply better than Guinsoo's .

The only historical complaint was the price, and that's what Cash Back is for.

THIRD ITEM: Death's Dance (or Wit's End)

Death's Dance in the vast majority of games: it's what lets you stay inside a fight long enough for your autos to matter, it lets you make mistakes, and it's the most busted item in the game.

Death's Dance combined with the damage reduction and lifesteal from your E and from Blade of the Ruined King lets you win fights you could never win on other builds, and once you start getting resets you completely deny the damage those champions were going to do. Even into an AP comp, Death's Dance is more useful than Wit's End (sometimes, depends on champs + CC).

Against AP comps with a lot of CC you should go Wit's End instead: there the magic resist, and above all the tenacity, is worth more than Death's Dance's generic survivability.

FOURTH ITEM: Terminus / Wit's End / Jak'Sho

• Terminus: it got buffed in recent patches and it synergizes really well with Bel'Veth's identity. Good option when you already have Death's Dance and you don't need the tenacity from Wit's End.
• Wit's End: if you still need tenacity or magic resist and you didn't buy it third.
• Jak'Sho: a solid standard item that gives you HP and both resistances, and its passive synergizes well with the champion.

There are a huge number of viable fourth and fifth items, and I don't want anyone reading this guide to close themselves off to any of them. After your three core items → Kraken Slayer → Blade of The Ruined King → Death's Dance you can adapt the build to whatever the game forces on you.

There are games for Guinsoo's to snowball harder after your third item, there are games for Guardian Angel, even games for Hullbreaker. The build here is completely flexible.

BOOTS

The right defensive boots are worth more than any offensive boots. Read your comp and the enemy's, then decide. By default:

-> Against heavy auto attacks + AD

-> Against CC + AP

-> Situational

Standard build:

Kraken Slayer -> Blade of The Ruined King -> Death's Dance -> Plated Steelcaps / Mercury's Treads -> Terminus / Wit's End -> Jak'Sho, The Protean / Guardian Angel

BORK VS RAGEBLADE: WHY MY SECOND ITEM ISN'T THE ONE YOU'RE TOLD TO BUILD

HEADS UP, WALL OF TEXT!

VS

Some Bel'Veth players are going to tell you to go Rageblade second. I build Blade of the Ruined King, and I'm going to explain why, because this is the part of the build that gets argued about most.

First, the raw stats.

• BorK (3200g): 40 AD, 25% attack speed, 10% lifesteal.
• Rageblade (3000g): 30 AD, 30 AP, 25% attack speed.

Identical attack speed. BorK gives you 10 more AD and lifesteal you don't have anywhere else (your E only heals while you're channelling it). What Rageblade gives you in exchange is 30 Ability Power, which in an AD build feeds a W you level last and don't use for damage. That's item budget you're throwing in the bin.

Second: attack speed is the single stat you need least.

Rageblade's selling point is its stacking attack speed: 8% per auto up to 4 stacks, 32%. Fine. Now count what you already have: your passive gives you 20% every time you cast a spell, your passive gives you more per accumulated stack, your R gives you more on top, and Kraken already handed you 40%. Bel'Veth is probably the most attack-speed-saturated champion in the game.

And attack speed has diminishing returns: going from 0% to 32% is an enormous upgrade, going from 120% to 152% is barely noticeable. Rageblade is selling you precisely the stat you're already drowning in.

Third, and this is the real argument: the rework took away your damage against high-health targets, and BorK is the only thing that gives it back.

Before the rework, your R passive dealt 6/10/14 (+12% bonus AD) true damage. That was what let you melt tanks and bruisers. The rework left it at 2/4/6 (+3% bonus AD) — a quarter of what it was. They deleted the tool you killed tanky people with.

Look at what each item offers against that problem:

• BorK: 9% of the target's current health as physical damage on every auto attack.
• Rageblade: 30 flat magic damage.

Against a 3,000 HP bruiser, that's 270 per auto versus 30 per auto. Even once you've already got them to half health, it's still 135 versus 30. Rageblade's damage doesn't scale with the enemy's health at all; BorK's is built for exactly that. The rework took away your answer to fat targets, and there's exactly one item in the game that hands it back.

So is Rageblade bad? No. It's bought at the wrong time.

What makes Rageblade strong isn't the 30 magic damage: it's the Phantom Hit passive, which reapplies your on-hit effects. In other words, Rageblade is a multiplier. And you buy a multiplier after you own things worth multiplying, not before.

If you have BorK, your Phantom Hit is duplicating Kraken and 9% of the enemy's health. If you go Rageblade second, it's duplicating Kraken and 30 flat points. That's why Rageblade is an excellent fourth item and a mediocre second one: it isn't worse, it just arrives too early.

The price, which is the only objection you'll get.

It's 200 gold, and Cash Back covers it. But the price comparison is framed wrong in the first place: Rageblade builds out of a 400 gold Amplifying Tome that does absolutely nothing for an AD build until the item is complete. BorK builds out of Vampiric Scepter, Recurve Bow and Pickaxe — all three work for you from the minute you buy them. BorK's path is more expensive on paper and cheaper in practice.

When would I reconsider? If the enemy locks in five squishies with no tank at all, the gap narrows a lot. I'd still take BorK for the lifesteal. And you'll see that comp about one game in fifty.

GUIDE AND TIPS

You have three clocks running at once, and the job is to pull all three forward. Items (the first two), stacks (40 and 80) and levels (6, 11 and 16). Every decision in the game gets judged with one question: does this bring one of my power spikes closer? If the answer is no, you probably shouldn't be doing it. What sits at the end of those three clocks is what wins games: at 80 stacks your form never expires, and from that point the enemy no longer has a single window where you're vulnerable.

Play the early game the way you'd play any other jungler. The most widespread mistake on this champion, and the one I run into most when I review games, is treating her as pure scaling and farming quietly waiting for "your moment". It doesn't work. When you get ahead early you're not just getting gold, you're getting stacks, and stacks are the lever that gets you to permanent form ahead of schedule: playing aggressively early is how you scale fast.

Grubs are the spot on the map where you pick up the most stacks at once: seven, counting the coral. That's almost a fifth of the way to 80, off an objective that takes twenty seconds. On top of that you get paid twice: the objective gold, and the plate gold your lanes pick up. That's why you plan them ahead of time — time your recall so you arrive with an item, and set up vision beforehand, not during. If you have to choose between being topside for grubs and botside for drake, barring a very clear exception, you're topside.

Drakes are negotiable. On a champion that scales like this, walking into a drake fight you can't win with botlane or mid losing is donating tempo, vision and sometimes the game. If trading away this drake pulls my items and my stacks forward, I take that trade every single time. By the same token, securing a drake buys you five more minutes of breathing room to keep scaling, because soul and Elder arrive later.

In the mid game, live on the sidelanes. Use Q's mobility to generate plays on the side: hunt someone down alone, force a 2v1, shove and make them send people. On top of that, when you have the Voidgrub buff, Herald or Baron, you're the best splitpusher in the game. Add permanent form to that and you can just park yourself on the sidelane while your army of little worms takes down their entire base.

And one bit of free damage: weave autos in between your abilities. You can cancel the auto attack animation with any ability and squeeze out extra damage that most people leave on the floor.

THE END

That's about it. If you have questions, if you want me to review one of your games, or if you just want to talk about the champion, drop by the Discord: I answer everyone, and I coach anyone who's willing to put the work in with her. The links are at the very top.

I'll keep the guide updated whenever a patch calls for it.

Signed: GRX Bel'Veth