Hi, thanks for taking the time to read my guide, I'm Vorcia, a Platinum 2 ADC/Mid main. I play Ezreal as one of my main ADCs due to the safety he provides with Arcane Shift and Mystic Shot, especially with the Iceborn Gauntlet in blue build.

11/09/2014 - Updated guide for 4.16 Essence Reaver is still bad.

Which Ezreal build do I go for?
Standard ADC Ezreal is exactly what it sounds like, this build works against any matchup.

Blue Ezreal is a unique build where you build Iceborn Gauntlet and mana items such as Manamune and/or Essence Reaver. The purpose of this build is increased kiting and safety, especially against AD champions with no gapcloser, such as Garen or Darius.
Blue Ezreal typically has a significantly worse early game due to building a Tear of the Goddess and is weaker than regular Ezreal until he can get his Muramana. Lategame, the slow field of Iceborn Gauntlet, damage from Muramana, combined with the kiting potential from having 40% CDR for Arcane Shift (and a Blade of the Ruined King if you choose to build one) makes him nearly impossible to catch for melee's and impossible for most champions to run away from. The bonus armor from Iceborn Gauntlet also makes it much more difficult to be assassinated by AD assassins such as Talon or Zed. I usually go for Blue Ezreal against 4+ AD comps and when their bot lane doesn't have a Tristana or Kog'Maw who will outscale and outrange me lategame(rare I know). I'm not too worried about Vayne though, her range is rather low and as long as I position carefully, I won't be assassinated.
Be careful about picking Blue Ezreal against Caitlyn, Draven (Especially), Graves. If you're not experienced with Ezreal's laning phase, it becomes quite easy to feed these champs and cause them to snowball out of control.

For the following list, text in yellow only applies to Standard ADC Ezreal while text in blue only applies to Blue Ezreal

Why Pick Ezreal?

Pros

Cons

Great mid game with Trinity Force.

Bad early game due to low waveclear and low range, does no damage early game with Blue build due to building Tear of the Goddess.

Very safe throughout the game due to Mystic Shot's range and Arcane Shift.

Lategame isn't too bad but isn't the greatest either.

Armor from Iceborn Gauntlet makes Ezreal tankier vs. AD champs trying to dive him.

Relatively useless until lategame.

Can delay splitpushers, check/secure objectives, or push sidelanes with Trueshot Barrage.

Champion Synergies
/ / Are all good supports for Ezreal, they complement his poke very well. Sona in particular can heal Ezreal after bad trades he may encounter in lane.

/ Also work well with Ezreal due to providing him with a hard engage should he poke down the other lane low enough. If Ezreal decides to stay back and poke/trade with safety, both can offer Ezreal extra defensive stats to help win trades, and in Taric's case can heal him after bad trades. With Braum in particular, Mystic Shot and Arcane Shift make it rather easy to apply the stacks of his Concussive Blows.

/ / Or any other champion with a lot of waveclear and/or poke damage. They allow Ezreal to fire Mystic Shots without worrying about hitting minions. The additional poke also pushes the other team off their towers and other objectives letting your team have control of everything on map if they're patient enough.

- Core on every ADC, gives them safety and repositioning that they desperately need to survive so they can continue dealing damage.

- Good choice since it replenishes your health and gives more movement speed to kite away from danger. Can be inefficient to run 2 Heals on the same team though and Ignite kills this summoner spell, forcing you to either use it at a relatively ineffective time or take the reduced healing.

- Good alternative for Heal if your team, most likely your support, already has Heal, or you're just paranoid of Ignite, Morellonomicon, or Executioner's Calling. If you time it properly and think you won't need the bonus movement speed, Barrier will shield for more damage 100% of the time (But it won't save your allies like Heal can).

- I take this against assassins like Master Yi or Zed if my support isn't taking it for whatever reason.

- Take this for some aggressive cheese plays. I generally don't like it because usually my support takes Ignite and I prefer not having a double Ignite lane due to the risk of igniting the same person. Also, ADCs build full damage, their summoner spells should be for keeping them alive so they can still deal damage. I just don't think the 70-410 true damage is worth the extra autoattacks and Mystic Shots you could fire if you had the bonus survivability from the other summoner spells listed.

Standard Ezreal
9 Greater Seal of Attack Damage + 1 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage for last hitting.
4 Greater Seal of Armor + 5 Greater Seal of Health for more effective HP in the bot lane.
4 Greater Glyph of Mana Regeneration so you can use your Mystic Shot more often in lane.
5 Greater Glyph of Magic Resist to protect against supports who are mostly AP.
2 Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed for more early game DPS.

Blue Ezreal
5 Greater Seal of Attack Damage + 3 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage for last hitting. No Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed this time since Blue Ezreal doesn't rely on auto attacks as much.
4 Greater Seal of Armor + 5 Greater Seal of Health for more effective HP in the bot lane.
3 Greater Glyph of Magic Resist to protect against supports who are mostly AP. No Greater Glyph of Mana Regeneration since the Tear of the Goddess gives enough mana regen.
6 Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction gives 10% for 40% with the core build of Ionian Boots of Lucidity(15%), Iceborn Gauntlet(10%), and Sorcery(5%), you can replace these runes with Greater Glyph of Magic Resist though if you plan to build the Essence Reaver to give the final 10%.

Standard ADC masteries for both. Only difference is Blue Ezreal needs 5% CDR so I took the points from Fury and Frenzy since Blue Ezreal doesn't really need to auto attack as much and doesn't build crit items. Really no need to explain much, I just took all the AD relevant masteries and ignored the AP masteries.
Warlord barely gives any AD so I didn't bother taking it. You only get 14 AD at most from it, where Devastating Strikes can be worth from 12-18 or more armor pen on a tanky target with 200-300 armor.
Reinforced Armor is a bad mastery all around, especially on ADCs since you'll never get anything worthwhile out of it. Don't bother doing the math, its a worthless mastery.

Standard Ezreal
- ADCs autoattack, this item gives attack speed.
- As an alternative, Ezreal's abilities are all really useful except for his W, which I don't even remember the name of because I barely use it. CDR will help you clear waves easier with Trueshot Barrage, deal more damage with Mystic Shot, and keep you safe with Arcane Shift.
- You spam a lot of abilities, even better, your Mystic Shot applies on-hit effects so you don't even need to get into range to autoattack for your passive. The build is really good too and Ezreal benefits from all 3 items wonderfully.
- You need lifesteal, Bloodthirster is an okay alternative but I prefer Blade of the Ruined King because of an easier to obtain build path with Bilgewater Cutlass instead of B. F. Sword, also ADCs autoattack, even if you're Ezreal. Your low range puts you at danger though so if you don't have Arcane Shift available]], Blade of the Ruined King will keep you nice and healthy until its back up.
- You're an AD champion, you won't do any damage if they build armor.
- Highest damage AD item in the game.

Blue Ezreal
I'm not repeating items I've already explained, go back up to read them if you want to know.
+ rush. Start stacking your tear because it'll be a while until you get your Muramana, Sheen gives a really good offensive bonus while stacking your tear.
- Get this first since it'll stack faster with your autoattacks, it also finally gives you some much needed AD.
- Get this after your Manamune, it gives your Mystic Shot the AOE slow that Blue Ezreal is known for, the CDR also lets you spam Mystic Shot more often and keeps you safer with a shorter CD Arcane Shift.

Offensive
- CDR, Attack Speed, Movement Speed, everything that an ADC would want, albeit not together. Usually I sell my boots for this item.
- Too expensive, not really useful since you won't have mana problems lategame which is when you'll get this item. Double lifesteal is overall an inefficient buy due to Lifesteal being worth less the more of it you buy. Its ok on Blue Ezreal though since he needs the CDR if he doesn't take scaling CDR blues, and Muramana eats through his mana pool like no tomorrow.

Defensive
- Get this most of the time, unless they have no major CCs you need to get rid of.
- Stops surprise initiates from Malphite, Zac, Nidalee etc. Also takes out a large potion of AP assassins' damage like LeBlanc, Akali or full AP Gragas.
Guardian Angel - Bad item, chances are if this item gets popped, your team loses the teamfight because their ADC, the major damage source is dead and you get put out of position while reviving. It can be useful though if another member of your team is fed enough to carry the fight while you're reviving.

Early game to stop invades and alert your lane of ganks.
Late game so you can check the map when trying to snipe someone with Trueshot Barrage. It also helps control objectives since you can check them with your Scrying Orb.

> > >

Trueshot Barrage - Ultimate skill which can be used for damage in teamfight, executing targets from far away or just clearing waves, put points into this whenever possible.

Mystic Shot is a huge source of damage and also lowers the cooldowns of your other skills, spam this on minions for guaranteed hits if you have the mana to do so if your Trueshot Barrage and Arcane Shift are on cooldown. It goes down in CD per rank so think of ranking Mystic Shot as getting lower cooldowns on all your abilities.

Arcane Shift gives Ezreal a lot of the safety and kiting potential he's known for, max this second.

Essence Flux was the name of his W I forgot. It's really useful for pushing down towers if you use it on your allies. If you have someone on your team like Jax or Kayle, I'm sure they'd appreciate the extra attack speed in a teamfight, but other than that, if you need some damage in a teamfight, throw out Essence Flux. Since you're likely to be in the back as an ADC, it should be rather easy for you to line up Essence Flux to hit allies for the AS boost and enemies for some minor damage. Just an overall bad skill due to having no AD scaling, lower range than Mystic Shot, and costs too much mana.

Due to having no waveclear, low range, and only a decent all-in to make up for it, Ezreal should try to stay away from the other laners and just poke with Mystic Shot. Exceptions are champs who Ezreal can win all-ins against such as Caitlyn or Ashe. I always try to get 11 AD to last hit under turrets because chances are, you'll be getting shoved or zoned under your tower.
As a general rule, NEVER EVER Arcane Shift unless you're going to die if you don't, are about it be hit by dangerous hard CC like Unstoppable Force or Dazzle, or can guarantee a kill without getting you or your teammates killed (That means wards to know if their jungler is there).

Standard Ezreal
Once you have your Trinity Force, you can 1v1 most ADCs in the game. Your main strength though, is sieging. At this stage in the game, your Trinity Force proc'd Mystic Shots tear through teams defending a tower. Missed Mystic Shots just mean more damage on the tower from your Trinity Force procs. Try to get as many skirmishes or even teamfights in this time as possible, you'll need to win lots of fights at this time to snowball for lategame.

Blue Ezreal
While regular Ezreal has a Trinity Force, chances are, you'll have a Sheen and Manamune. You still can't teamfight so just to farm up for your Muramana and Iceborn Gauntlet to get things rolling.

Ezreal's main niche as an ADC is the ability to stay relatively safe with Arcane Shift and deal damage with Mystic Shot, but don't forget to autoattack if you can do so safely. This is much easier for Blue Ezreal to this because of all his extra mana and CDR. Kiting is also made easier by the Iceborn Gauntlet's slow field and armor.

Use your blue trinket to scout out Baron and targets you want to snipe.

ADC Basics
NEVER EVER Arcane Shift unless you're going to die if you don't, are about it be hit by dangerous hard CC like Unstoppable Force or Dazzle, or can guarantee a kill without getting you or your teammates killed (That means wards to know if their jungler is there).

Always try to stay on the edge of a fight for maximum safety.

Never run around alone looking for farm, you'll just get caught and die. This is especially true for bot lane, since if they see you bot, chances are the other team will pick up a free Baron.

Thanks for reading my guide, leave a comment detailing what you think I could do better, and feel free to voice any other thoughts you may have!