Honestly had horrible luck with this augment. Shes supposed to be tanky since she has the protector trait but her ability is so bad. It gives her damage reduction and a heal over time, but the amount of times she’s died during the spin channel? Almost every single time. Her heal is wasted because it happens over a duration instead of an instant pop like other units, meaning her chance of dying is much higher if you out-dps the heal at any point.

The wind up makes her a terrible unit, with or without starfall. She has to gain mana by hitting 4 attacks in melee range so she has to survive in the frontline for at least 12 or 16 hits to hit the entire map. She’s the only one like this where you can kill her before the heal fully happens. And to do that while full damage or half damage just doesn’t seem viable. That’s like trying to make full-damage Viego work in the frontline without stretchyarms. If you place her in the back, you lose out on a frontline unit now, and her channel takes way too long that your other tanks will die before she gets a large enough to hit the carries. You might as well play Ahri, because in the time Neeko gets to hit the carries, Ahri will probably have killed all their tanks and you’re hitting their backline already.

Neeko definitely feels like one of the stronger Hero Augments in the current patch (15.2d), just behind Garen and Malphite. Two games going first with 6 Guardians with the backline carry being Smolder in one game, TF in a second game.

I think core build is definitely Edge of Night, Archangel, plus 1 (either JG or 2nd AA). Other than that, the K’Sante 2 being the main tank is so important. I personally ended up prioritizing Power Up on the K’Sante over Smolder because the aggro toggling makes a big deal in winning late game fights.

The fight typically plays out with K’Sante being aggro’d first, then when he dies and revives, Neeko takes aggro. Then EoN procs, and aggro jumps back to K’Sante. By that point, Neeko is usually on her 3rd or 4th cast and you’ll just wipe backline.

I played her from a Zhonya’s start (Yone Portal) and she felt pretty good; Zhonya’s consistently allows her to get in one more cast which was often the difference maker in the fight, since she’d drop aggro, heal, and start bombing the backline

Some personal thoughts on starfall neeko, I’ve tried quite a lot of it and while I agree that it’s bad, I don’t think it’s completely unplayable. I’ve had good results by early game building full tank on neeko, hunting for max vitality and farming value with long fights; generally playing 4-6 protectors. I try to loss streak by only playing tanks. I do Ahri Neeko rr @7 with 6 prot until I hit 3* on both. In most games, I’ll put one or two of her late-game items on early, then after 3* neeko, I transfer tank items to k’sante. After that I’ll either move to like a sg vertical with 4 prot, or like some 4 prot 4 sorcs thing.

tldr it still kinda blows but I think with the right strat it’s pushing c tier

Yep, this augment is not great at all