Positioning:

To me, this is the MOST important aspect of being a good Ezreal player. You need to know where to be in a fight, and how you will not get easily focused by the frontline initiators. Positioning is key for you to be able to deal damage while not getting focused or killed. You need to know when you should go in and when you should just back out of the fight(I will explain this at the final few chapters).

Prediction:

Not something a player new to Ezreal will be able to do, but it's not like enemies will just stand there and take skillshots to the face. You need to predict the enemy's movement such that your skillshots hit the opposing player. Also, you need to check if there is a low health enemy, and then predict where he is going to Recall so that you can snipe him.

Map Awareness:

You need to know when the jungler is ganking your lane. A billion pings won't help you if you don't notice the minimap fast enough. Also, you need Map Awareness to constantly look for lanes that are pushing in the enemy's favour and low health enemies so that you can kill them.

Practice:

Finally, you need a lot of practice. It's not like Ezreal is an easy champion to play. You need to constantly make improvements to YOUR gameplay and not blame losses on your team. You need to find out your mistakes on Ezreal and improve them. After all, Karma herself said, "To conquer oneself, is to conquer all." So you need a lot of practice to become good.

When you see this lane, you know that they will definitely aim for the lategame. Your goal is NOT to let them get there! If you see them pick Nunu & Willump, try asking your support to pick Sona. It helps a lot! All 3 of these AD carries benefit a lot with Nunu & Willump.

How to counter:
Except for Caitlyn, all of the AD carries mentioned have a VERY WEAK early game with nearly NO ESCAPES. You need to kill them early by jungler ganks, or poke them out of lane and force them to lose farm which they need. If you don't then you are going to lose lategame. However, with Caitlyn, it is slightly different. You need to shut down Caitlyn at the MIDGAME. This will be hard, but this is possible if you team can force and win midgame fights.



I have seen this before, and this is the ultimate kill lane. Their early game burst damage is already enough to take you down. If they get just one kill on you, you cannot farm normally anymore. This is a very dangerous lane even for a champion like Ezreal.

How to counter: This lane may be hard, but not impossible. Get a champion with good poke and with very good counterinitiation. One example of this would be Zyra. Yes, if Leona lands one Zenith Blade on you, you will take a lot of damage. However, if you can poke them down by 1/2 health before Leona attempts to burst you with Draven, you can easily counter and focus fire on Draven. Remember that Draven has NO ESCAPES so if that happens then you will most likely secure a kill. The only way to counter this lane is by playing a heavy poke lane. You can also ask the jungler to help kill them once.
Note that this lane is a kill-or-get-killed lane, so if you can kill them, PRESS your advantage.
If you are playing a sustain/burst lane, you just need to survive till lategame cause you have a better lategame than the duo.

In the early game, you should be focused on farming, while trying to do sufficient poke on the enemy if you are in a poke or sustain lane. However, if you are playing with a support such as Leona and Blitzcrank, when they pull or initiate on the enemy, you have to go in. You can easily chunk down a lot of the enemy's health, and you can kill them if you are dealing enough damage.

If you get a kill in lane, then you want to deny them farm and NOT get the early turret. With the snowball, you can easily zone the enemy player out and if they come to farm then you can just apply aggression on them. Remember that the early game is NOT to take towers, but to get as much farm as you can while denying the enemy farm.

If you play a poke or sustain lane, you need to poke the enemy frequently, and you have to win the small trades. If you find yourself losing then don't go into a small skirmish and put down damage that the enemy cannot answer. HOWEVER, if you always see that enemy Soraka heal her ADc till he is full health again then I suggest you don't waste mana to bother to poke the carry or the support.

Generally, the early game can last from as short as 10 minutes to about 20+ minutes. I recommend only going into the midgame if 1.Your towers start to fall or 2.You have a big enough advantage to be confident to win objective fights.

Whether you are in a kill, poke, or sustain lane, nothing beats FARMING. Even if you kill the enemy once, if you are 30+ CS behind the opposing AD carry, he is still going to have more gold than you.

Now I will list some statistics:
Maximum amount of creeps you can score in a lane in 20 minutes:240 creeps
Farming 17 normal creeps(siege minions not included)=Champion kill(w/o any deaths or kills).
Generally, I will ALWAYS aim for 170-190 farm. That means that for evey 6 minions, I don't miss any or I only miss one. This INCLUDES going back to buy items, which on average you might have to go back 3 times. 190 farm will give you a MAXIMUM OF 4055 creep GOLD. This means that you could straight up buy a Trinity Force if you want just from farm. This is why FARMING is your main priority in lane, next is zoning the enemy AD as your 2nd priority, and getting kills as your 3rd.

Pro tip: No matter how much you spam your skills, stop spamming them if you have 100 mana or less. Only resume if you have 200 or more mana. This is because if the jungler ganks or you get initiated on, you need Arcane Shift to escape. Even if you are at full health and the enemy is at 1/4, don't use your Mystic Shot to try and kill him. He might be baiting you into first blood!

After 20 minutes, look at your farm and see how you have done!:

<100 farm: This is bad. REALLY BAD. This means that if your lane doesn't have any kills or deaths, you probably can only afford items leading to your 1st item. At 20 minutes, you NEED to get your first item already. The game can wander into midgame ANYTIME at this point, and if you do not have your 1st main item, you will SUFFER. If you get this farm, it means that 1. You can't last hit, 2. You got zoned out hard by their bot lane due to excessive deaths or 3. You were TOO AGGRESSIVE. Many a times the main reason is 2 in ranked, but 1 in normals can be quite common.

100-120 farm: Not as bad as having less than 100 farm, but still not that good. You could barely get a cheap first item, but then again having less gold hinders your ability to fight. If you are new to Ad carry, this farm will probably be what you will be getting at the start. You need to balance dealing damage and last hitting, and as Ezreal is a champion with good escapes, there really is no reason you should not be able to do these things well.

121-150 farm: This is what most players will get, unless you are high elo or exceptionally skilled at the champion. This is decent, but this also means that you didn't farm 2-3 of the 6 minions available, which is not good. Even if you back 3 or 4 times, you should AT LEAST get 150 farm and above. However you can get your 1st item quite easily and you can be ready for the midgame if it is forced.

151-170 farm: This is already good to a lot of people, and I agree. Having this amount of farm essentially allows you to get an Infinity Edge if you want, and this doesn't include KILLS AND DEATHS. Usually any farm above 150 means that either both lanes are sustain lanes OR you got the early advantage.

171-190 farm: This is the standard that I always aim to get while farming, as if I have no kills or deaths, I can STILL get Bloodthirster and level 2 boots if I'm lucky enough to farm siege minions.

>190 farm: Honestly, the maximum farm I ever got in 20 minutes is 213 farm as Karthus, but that was because I was farming wraiths while I could, and I only backed once. If you get anything above 190 farm that means that you have succeeded very well in the earlygame and you should be easily able to transition into the midgame. Honestly I VERY VERY RARELY get anything above 190 farm, and I only hit my 170-190 farm goal 50% of the time even if I am playing my best champions such as Cassiopeia, Vayne and Ezreal.

Farm level roughly represents your earlygame score!:
0-120=You probably lost the earlygame.
120-150=You probably broke even, or you might be losing or winning your lane by JUST A BIT.
>151=SUCCESS


I am really critical about the early game as Ezreal needs to win his earlygame and snowball to not fall off as hard lategame.
Tell me if you want me to include pictures of when to last hit!

At this time you will start to aim for big objectives, which are towers, inhibitors and the Baron.
Dragon should have been done in the earlygame already, but make sure you are there to compete for every Dragon when it spawns. You will be sticking with your team most of the time, though sometimes you may wander around to farm. Your Statikk Shiv and Bloodthirster along with tier 2 boots should be completed around this stage.

Even though you might be sticking with your team ALWAYS REMEMBER TO FARM AS MUCH AS YOU CAN. Farming=Gold. Gold=Items. Items=Damage. Damage=Kills. Kills=Advantage. Advantage=Towers Towers=Inhibitors Inhibitors=NEXUS. So to get the nexus you need to FARM.

If you won your lane then you can afford to stick with your team more. If you are losing make sure to stick with your team if you need to defend or advance towards an objective, but otherwise aim to CATCH UP in the farm that you have lost. Whether you win or lose your lane, make sure to stay safe in teamfights and farm if you can(of course don't farm in a teamfight lol).

By now 1 team should have the advantage. However if you even reach the lategame as Ezreal take note that 1 MISTAKE or 1 HEAVILY LOST FIGHT can cost you the game. This means that you simply cannot afford to farm on your own(even in your base) as the enemies could: 1. Gank you, kill you, and fight 5v4 with your team LACKING THE ADC or 2. Force an objective with your team fighting 4v5 without you, the ADc. Teamfights will decide the match now, so decide on when you want to force advantageous fights and when you want to gank a caught enemy and force objectives or fights.

This section is about major fights, and my definition of major fights is anything 3v3 or above. Your main goal here is to stay safe and deal as much damage as possible. Unless you have a very good reason to do so, NEVER aim anyone at the backline, even if they may be the AD carry. You should ALWAYS be attacking the closest person to you, even if that champion is building a lot of HP and armor items.

If you go anywhere beyond the frontline with no casualties, then you will definitely be the first one UNLESS you have a big lead and the enemy team is derping. I said it again and again, but if you have 0 health, no matter how much AD or attack speed or critical chance you have, damage=0. You are SUPPOSED to be the main damage dealer, and without you, your team will probably not have enough damage to win the fight.

ALWAYS use Trueshot Barrage if it's up BEFORE A FIGHT. Never use any of your skills except Arcane Shift DURING the heat of the fight. Even then, Arcane Shift and/or Flash and/or Barrier/ Heal/ Cleanse/ Exhaust should not be wasted. Use those spells IMMEDIATELY if you are being focused. You CANNOT afford to be the first few to die.

If you sense that if you are losing the fight, stay there UNTIL your frontline begins to die and their frontline is still going strong. When you see your top laner and jungler die, you know you have to GET OUT OF THERE ASAP. If you can survive a lost teamfight, you can still defend objectives and turrets and cause the loss of the fight to not be as great as it would be if you died.

If you are WINNING the fight, as in their frontline begins to die, you can go all in for the ace. Use Mystic Shot to snipe people and Arcane Shift to move forward IF the enemies do not have the capability to turn around and kill you.

V1.0.3.01
These changes are a continuation of our earlier effort to carefully scale back some of Ezreal’s excess power. Although these nerfs affect AP Ezreal, right now we’re focused on stabilizing AD Ezreal. After that we’ll assess the state of AP Ezreal.
Base movement speed reduced to 325 from 330
Rising Spell Force:
Duration reduced to 5 seconds from 6
Trueshot Barrage:
Damage falloff per target hit increased to 10% from 8%

Notable items:
Bloodthirster Cost increased to 3200
Trinity Force Price reduced to 3903
Black Cleaver Health reduced to 200 from 300
Maximum stacks increased to 5 from 4
Armor reduction per stack reduced to 5% from 6%
Fixed a bug where spells were applying more reduction than intended


Thoughts on ITEMS:
My thoughts on this patch is that Trinity Force is now a good item to include in your build, and can take the place of Infinity Edge or Iceborn Gauntlet if you want. It has become a REALLY GOOD ITEM for Ezreal to take. It is cheaper and still gives the same awesome stats!
On Bloodthirster, I feel that the change does not really affect Ezreal's build much, and I would still get it as my 2nd/3rd item.
Nerfs on Black Cleaver makes it even less viable for AD carries.

Thoughts on Ezreal:
The only spells affected are his Rising Spell Force and Trueshot Barrage. The nerf from 6 seconds to 5 seconds isn't much for an Ezreal player, as it can always be refreshed. However, the Trueshot Barrage nerf makes it a bit harder to clear waves of minions, but you can still use it to do so. This patch balances Ezreal out and makes him not as OP as he was last time.