Moon Elf King
Updated Apr 14, 2026
Estes is not a healer. He is a link economy, a five-second tether that keeps one specific teammate alive while the rest of your team plays around an indestructible target. The pick wins when your draft has that target, and loses hard when it does not.
Win Rate
53.38%
Pick Rate
0.8%
Ban Rate
41.82%
Team Buff
Emblem
Magical Emblem
Battle Spell
Purify
Weak Against
Strong Against
Estes should use his 2nd Skill to slow down the enemy team, then heal his teammates with his Ultimate and 1st Skill.
Estes is a pure deathball roam. His entire kit rewards your team for standing on top of each other: the link range is short, the ult is a radial aura, and the passive charges faster when you are linked to someone nearby. Hand him a draft where the plan is "five of us walk down mid together" and he is a terror. Hand him a draft with a split-pusher and a flex-lane diver and he spends the game watching his link break from 40 meters away.
Lock him when the carry is immobile and damage-dense. Kimmy, Beatrix, Moskov, and Lesley all want to stand in one spot and delete things, which is exactly what Estes needs to keep his link attached. He is especially strong into dive-based mages and enchanter supports (Angela, Rafaela, mirror Estes) because his sustain ceiling is higher and he brings real damage through the passive ricochet.
Do not lock him when:
If your draft fails any of those three tests, Estes is the wrong pick and no amount of mechanical skill fixes it.
Estes trades team mobility for team indestructibility, and every part of his kit services that trade. Moonlight Immersion is not a heal, it is a contract: you agree to stay in a 5-meter circle around your ally for five seconds, and in exchange both of you get 360 (+90% Total Magic Power) HP regen and 15 Hybrid Defense. Break the circle and the contract voids. That is the whole identity.
The rest of the kit exists to sell that contract harder. The passive, Scripture of the Moon Elf, charges 100 stacks into an enhanced basic attack that deals 250 (+150% Total Magic Power) magic damage and ricochets with a 60% slow for 1.5 seconds. The charge rate speeds up while linked, which is the game's not-very-subtle way of telling you to keep the link up or stop playing Estes. The ultimate, Blessing of Moon Goddess, is not a healing spike. It is a contract refresh and expansion: every nearby ally gets the link reapplied with doubled numbers (30 Hybrid Defense, 1020 (+225% Total Magic Power) HP over 8 seconds) whether they had one or not.
Read the kit this way and the decisions become obvious. Linking a dying carry is not a save, it is a down payment on the next 5 seconds of their life. Ulting when your whole team is healthy is not insurance, it is wasted cooldown. You are the bank, not the ambulance.
The roam lane rotation is where Estes earns his first gold lead or loses the game. If you are still in jungle at 1:30, something has gone wrong.
The spike is Enchanted Talisman plus Oracle, which usually finishes around the 8-to-10 minute mark on a normal gold curve. Talisman carries 20% cooldown reduction, Oracle carries another 10%, and together they put Estes near the CDR cap. His S1 drops from 11 seconds to roughly 7.7 seconds, which is the threshold where he can maintain near-permanent link uptime on his primary carry with no mana pressure thanks to Talisman's Mana Spring passive.
Oracle does something more important than the CDR, though. Its Bless passive increases received Shield and HP Regen effects by 30%, which amplifies every heal Estes outputs. S1's 360 sustained becomes 468 on the receiving end. The ult's 1020 over 8 seconds becomes 1326. In math terms, Oracle converts one Estes into 1.3 Estes and it costs 1860 gold.
After this spike, Estes stops being a support and starts being a second layer of tankiness. Your carry can stand in the middle of a fight and auto through it. That is what you are farming toward.
The reflex when you first pick up Estes is to stand behind the tank. That reflex is wrong. If the tank engages and Estes is on the tank's link, the tank charges forward, Estes does not, the link breaks in 0.8 seconds, and the fight starts with zero sustain.
Three positioning rules:
If your carry is Kimmy you get to push link range further forward because Kimmy does not move. If your carry is Beatrix in Renner stance you get to stand at maximum link distance and let her poke. If your carry is anyone with a blink, expect to lose the link twice per fight and accept it.
Estes runs 3 locked slots and 3 real conversations.
Locked: Favor (roam boots passive, the support emblem equivalent), Enchanted Talisman (CDR cap and mana sustain, non-negotiable), Oracle (heal amplification plus layered defenses, covered above). Build in that order.
Flex slot 1: the ult-reset item. Fleeting Time gives +15% CDR and reduces ultimate cooldown by 50% on kill or assist. On a 55-second ult this is a 27-second swing per teamfight. In grouped deathball comps where you are assist-hunting anyway it is the correct buy. In slower scaling games where you cannot guarantee the assist, skip it for a second defensive item.
Flex slot 2: the heal-war response. Build Dominance Ice when the enemy has a sustain support (mirror Estes, Rafaela, Angela, Floryn). Its 50% Shield and HP Regen reduction aura on incoming damage taxes their output the same way theirs taxes yours. Build Necklace of Durance if you are playing a magic-power-stacking Estes and want anti-heal tied to your basic attacks. Skip this slot entirely if the enemy has no sustain.
Flex slot 3: the burst counter. Immortality is the default, because Estes is target number one and the 2-second revive gives your team a peel window. Athena's Shield if the enemy has two or more magic damage threats. Antique Cuirass if the enemy is running two physical assassins.
Flask of the Oasis is a niche buy that deserves its own mention. It shields the target of your heal when they drop below 35% HP and reduces your own cooldowns by 2 seconds on trigger. It is excellent when paired with a carry who gets burst-checked at low HP (Kimmy, Lesley) and less useful when the carry has natural sustain or burst-evasion tools.
The weakest common default is Enchanted Talisman built fourth or fifth instead of second. Players see the modest stat line (+50 MP, +250 HP) and delay it for a bigger item. They never reach the CDR cap, their S1 is on an 11-second cooldown all game, and the fights where they should be refreshing the link twice they only refresh it once. Build Talisman before you build anything that looks exciting.
Ulting when nobody has taken damage yet. The ult's value is the refresh on existing S1 links plus the 8-second enhanced duration. Casting it on a full-HP team before the fight starts wastes the heal-over-time component on allies who had no health to restore. Wait until your carry is at 60% HP, then cast. The raw instant heal is the smallest part of the spell.
Switching the link mid-teamfight because a different ally is now lower HP. The sustained heal is a tick, not a burst: when you re-cast S1 on a new target, the first tick does not happen until the full interval has elapsed. Swapping mid-fight means neither target gets the full regen curve. Pick the link target before the fight starts based on who the enemy will focus, then stay committed even if the HP bars reshuffle. The only valid reason to swap mid-fight is if the original target died.
Pushing Domain of Moon Goddess onto the enemy team at engage. Enemies already standing inside the domain when it lands are not slowed. Only enemies who cross the edge after the landing animation trigger the 90% slow. Cast aggressively and you catch zero heroes. Cast defensively between your carry and a diver and you stop the diver cold.
Not buying Oracle when the enemy runs anti-heal. When the enemy stacks Sea Halberd, Glowing Wand, or Dominance Ice, the instinct is to skip Oracle because "the healing gets reduced anyway." This is backward. Oracle's 30% amplification stacks on the receiving side, meaning it is applied before the heal reduction is calculated against the target. The math says Oracle is more valuable into anti-heal comps than it is into clean ones, not less.
Ignoring the passive. Players treat the enhanced basic attack as a bonus. It is not, it is your only damage tool and the ricochet 60% slow for 1.5 seconds is a real disengage layer. Keep the passive meter in your eye line. When it hits 100, find the lowest-HP enemy in auto range and proc it.
Tip
Drop Domain of Moon Goddess between your carry and the incoming diver, never on top of the diver. The 90% slow only fires when an enemy crosses the edge, so a diver who jumps into the center of the zone is not slowed at all. Zone placement is a peel lane, not a kill zone.
Note
Run Purify, not Flicker, this patch. Your ultimate is a 150-mana, 55-second cast that gets cancelled by any hard CC. Purify removes the CC the instant you take it and lets you complete the cast. Flicker only moves you, which is not the problem.
Tip
If the enemy builds Sea Halberd or Glowing Wand, your first item after Talisman is always Oracle. The 30% received-regen amplification is calculated on the target side and offsets a meaningful chunk of the Lifebane penalty. Skipping Oracle into anti-heal comps is the single most common Estes mistake in high-elo replays.
Note
Your passive charges faster while you are linked to an ally. Rehit Moonlight Immersion on the carry the moment it comes off cooldown, even at full HP. The full-charge enhanced basic with its ricochet slow is your only zoning tool, and you earn more of them by keeping the link active.
