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Pros & Cons

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Pros:

• Great Scaling
• Great Itemisation ( & )
• High Mobility
• Strong Self-Peel With
• Long Range Poke

Ezreal is an excellent pick in the current meta. He is often played in pro play for a reason, his scaling is extremely good and he comes online very fast, much faster than most traditional marksman that requires 3 items. For Ezreal, he only needs the first two core item such as the & . For the many hard matchups he may have, you can safely farm out the laning phase with his Q from a safe distance, without getting too close.

Cons:

• Weak Early Game
• High Mana Usage
• Skill Shot Reliant
• Has Unwinnable Matchups
• Hard To Comeback

Ezreal has probably one of the weakest laning phase out of all the marksman out there right now, this makes him very vulnerable to enemy jungle ganks, heavy CC supports like Leona and Nautilus. Who can even tower dive Ezreal in a 2v2 situation if you play poorly. Not only this, he has many hard matchups like Draven, Caitlyn, Tristana during the early laning phase, this may destroy your laning and make you completely useless for the rest of the game and it can be very hard to comeback unless you have other teammates who has been winning their lanes. Every ability on Ezreal's kit is also a skill shot, this means that in order to maximise your DPS you will need to hit those skill shots, and if you are not used to playing skill shot reliant champions you may have a very hard time doing damage.

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Why and when should you pick Ezreal ?

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Why Ezreal ?

Ezreal has a high skill ceiling due to his skill shot reliant kit. But this makes him even more fun when you are able to master him, making full use of his abilities. The outplay potential on Ezreal is very high, with his E ability which is almost like a free flash and the itemisation of this champion means that you can build in such a way that makes assassins useless against you, building defensive item early on will help you tremendously especially how weak every marksman are in the early game, and the lack of item choice they can go for, but Ezreal remains extremely versatile.

When to pick Ezreal ?

Ezreal is another good blind pick right now in the current meta. The main reason being that he is able to farm safely from a distance using his mystic shot, that is relatively low on cooldown and mana cost. Especially after he completed his first base and have purchased the . It is almost a given that you will be losing lane, and if you ever win lane that is even more problematic for the enemies because you will most likely outscale them by being far stronger in the later stages of the game. If an enemy tries to CC you, you can always use your E ability to get away to safety, another reason why he is such a safe pick. The main thing to watch out for when picking Ezreal is when the enemies pick something extremely aggressive in the early game, like a Pantheon paired up with a Draven(probably the strongest and most aggressive early game duo lane) can be a nightmare experience for you.

Lethal Tempo

Presence of Mind

Legend: Bloodline

Coup De Grace

Cut Down

Nimbus Cloak

Transcendence

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In-depth Mechanics

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Reduce Cooldown

This is your bread and butter damage ability, you almost always want to be spamming it, either on the minion wave, dragon, jungle camp or enemy players. One of the reason why you would want to do that is because whenever you hit your Q you are actually reducing the cooldown on all your other abilities, meaning that you are able to use multiple Arcane Shift in a single fight, or even, start off a teamfight with your ultimate and by the end of the teamfight you may even have it back up again. Allowing you to do insane damage, so get practising with hitting Ezreal's Q and you will be godlike !

Essence Flux Proc

is an ability that is very easy to land on your opponents, as it travels through minions and ignores them. During your games you will undoubtedly hit this many times but there are various of ways to activate it, first is by simply autoattacking the opponent. The second way is to arcane shift forward where it will automatically prioritise the target hit by your essence flux as long as you are within autoattack range. This is a great way to trade with your opponents as it is almost impossible to react to arcane shift. So it is an ability that can be proc by any of your other abilities/autoattack. Meaning you can also proc it with your mystic shot and trueshot barrage.

Ultimate Combo

This is the highest DPS you can do on Ezreal, and the best way to go about this is to start off being in a brush, hidden in vision so that you abilities are almost a guarantee hit and they will never see it coming, it goes like this; Trueshot Barrage > Essence Flux > Arcane Shift > AA > Mystic Shot > AA. This will almost guarantee a kill on anyone that is not a full tank. The reason you want to do this from a brush is so that you are out of vision, that means the enemy movements are extremely predictable, allowing you to hit your heavy skill-shot reliant abilities all in a very short amount of time, without them being able to react until your entire combo has landed on them, which by then they should either be dead or very low health that they have to burn flash and run away.

General Ultimate Usage

You may see in pro plays, they would use their ultimate on a minion wave, or start off a fight for dragon or baron even though the cooldown is relatively long and may not 100% be a hit. Well as I have explained with Mystic Shot, if you consistently hit this ability, it will drastically reduce the cooldown reduction on all your abilities, meaning that your ultimate actually has a shorter cooldown the better you are at hitting skill shots. You may want to use your ultimate on a minion wave for a few things, first, to get lane priority, especially in mid lane, when dragon/baron is up you want to be able to shove the wave faster than your opponents so that you and your team can then walk to the river/jungle together to secure vision control for the upcoming objective. So when you actually start the objective, you have full vision of where the enemies are at and you can plan against them. Secondly, you may want to use it when you do not have lane priority and there is a high chance the enemies are doing either baron or dragon, so that they are usually grouped up around the pit area, making the enemies location easy to predict and your ultimate a very easy ability to land, ensuring multiple hits, this alone will provide very high value if you team does proceed to fight them over that objective.

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Laning With Ezreal

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Laning phase is usually the weakest stage for Ezreal, as he is weak overall in comparison to most of the other marksman in the early game and is quite reliant on mana, so before you reach your first item Manamune, you most likely want to play passive and focus solely on farming or if the matchup allows it you can obviously always look for plays but it may not always be advantageous make a play, as it is easy to lose a large chunk of farm when fighting too much. Usually, when going even or slightly behind, I will gladly take it as a win in my book, you come online much quicker compare to the other marksman with your first two item powerspike, Manamune & Iceborn Gauntlet, making you much more powerful than your counterpart if you are able to survive laning phase.

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Outside of Laning

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Outside of laning phase, Ezreal is extremely strong if you were able to go somewhat even in lane. Assuming you have completed your first two core items. In teamfights you want to make sure you constantly spam your Q to poke the enemies as it will be your primary source of damage. If the situation allows it do not be afraid to Arcane Shift forward or Flash forward make a play. If you are able to hit your Q constantly, you can even force the enemies to concede an objective before any teamfight begins and they have to recall/base making it a guarantee that you get that objective. Knowing when you can Arcane Shift forward or not is also extremely important, this will be further explained in the map awareness guide chapter in the later section.

Play Video

In the video above I talk about the following concepts:

- Respecting Fog of War

- Hitting/Starting Objectives without a Reason

- Dealing with Assassins

- Knowing what good fights to take and what bad fights to avoid

It is recommended that, you take one of those tips and attempt to apply it in your next game to reap its benefits. Make sure you only do one at a time if it is too overwhelming, otherwise you will not learn from it. Even playing in a normal game will help, it need not be ranked.

Play Video

In the video above I talk about the following concepts:

- Level 2 Power Spike

- How to punish your enemies with this power spike, or respect it and back off of it

- Knowing how many minions it takes to reach level 2 first in a duo lane

- 3 Clips of 3 Different ADCarry; Tristana, Caitlyn and Ezreal show casing what we have mentioned above.

Make sure you test this out in a normal game first before attempting it in ranked. It is okay to make mistakes, go all out and learn from your mistakes. Best to record with some sort of software so you can go back and watch your own replay to analyse what has happened.

Play Video

This video is not owned by me but I think it is very well detailed on how to teamfight in general as a carry.

- Direct Initiate

• Create fight or flight response.
• Go in 1v5 if you have to.
• Carries DO NOT go in.

- Follow Up Initiate/Hit Tanks

• Tank pressure backline, or tankline.
• Forces everyone to use cooldowns/abilities
• Carries stay OUT until tank cooldowns/abilities are used.

- Hit Tanks

• Hit tanks after tank cooldowns/abilities are used.
• Forces out backline cooldowns/abilities
• Carries in range of 1 person.

- Kill Backline

• APC flash on backline or finish off tanks.
• ADC can dive if no enemy burst cooldowns/abilities are up.
• Tanks can make a flash play.

- Clean Up

• Flashes to kill fleeing enemies, this will ensure objectives are much easier to take without anyone contesting or the potential of throwing the game away.

I highly recommend you watch the video, not only just read the text on this guide. The video will include examples and instances where it very much make sense and will sink into you how it actually works. If you have to, make sure to rewatch the video a few times and in your next few games, to only focus working on these things for every teamfight. This may come across as overwhelming if you are a new player, but be patient it will become second nature.