Draven Build Guide by LeeBron Jenkins

About Me

Welcome to my Draven Guide!

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My name is LeeBron Jenkins and i am currently a Diamond Marksman on EU-West. Draven is one of my favourite champions in the game because of his Spinning Axe and i believe him to be extremely strong if played correctly.
This guide will show you everything you need to know about Draven and, hopefully, improve your draven mechanics.
Thank you for taking the time to read my guide and please do not forget to leave a comment and vote on it so i can improve it.

"The 'best' is wherever I decide to set the bar each day." - Draven, the glorious executioner.

Pros/Cons

Pros: + Huge Damage with Spinning Axe + Attack/Movement speed steroid Blood Rush + Global Ultimate Whirling Death + Snowball-potential due to League of Draven + Awesome critikal strike animations + If Draven does it, it's not killstealing + Awesome skins Cons: - No escape at all - His movement is extremely predictable - Infinity Edge not the best item for Draven - High skill cap - Sometimes annoying quotes

Spells Made In Noxus

Always take barrier and flash since Heal got nerfed in 4.13 (Heal decreased to 90-345 from 95-475). Barrier gives you a shield between 115 and 455. Another point is that champions like Tristana or Fizz, who are extremely popular nowadays, have abilites that reduce healing by causing grievous wounds. Conclusion: Barrier is simply the better choice at the moment. You should always take it.

Noxian Rune Setup

Greater Mark of Attack Damage is a must have on every Marksman since you need Attack Damage for trading and farming early. They also make your Spinning Axe deal more damage. I recommend taking 9 Greater Mark of Attack Damage.

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Greater Seal of Armor and Greater Seal of Health are extremely powerful in early trades since they provide a lot of tankiness. I advise you to take 9 Greater Seal of Armor or 4 Greater Seal of Armor and 5 Greater Seal of Health, depending on your personal preference.

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As a Marksman, you need some magic resist on your lane since most supporters deal magic damage. Later on you will be glad that you took them because Ahri, LeBlanc or Syndra want to kill you. Take 9 Greater Glyph of Scaling Magic Resist or 9 Greater Glyph of Magic Resist, depending on the matchup.

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Greater Quintessence of Attack Speed got buffed in Patch 4.5 and i recommend taking 2 of them because they make last-hitting a lot easier early on and you can attack an enemy champion or minion better while your Spinning Axe is mid-air. You should also take 1 Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage as you gain some trading power since your Auto-Attacks and Spinning Axe will deal more damage. It makes last-hitting early on easier aswell.

Masteries Made For executing

Offense:
You wanna go 21-9-0 because you mainly focus on dealing damage as a Marksman.
Take the Double-Edged Sword since it is draven's axe and amplifies your damage.
Do not take Spell Weaving or Blade Weaving . Dangerous Game and Warlord are simply stronger.
Do not take Frenzy aswell because you dont need the attack speed as much as the percentage bonus AD from Warlord


Defense:
In this tree we focus on some early tankiness for the laning phase
Take Block , Unyielding , Veteran Scars and Juggernaut to come out ahead in early trades.
You should also take Recovery . 2 HP per 5 seconds does not seem like much, but it will actually help you a lot early.

Draven's Superior Skillset

League of Draven This passive is great for snowballing if you manage to get some kills early. If you have a lot of adoration stacks, try to pick up a kill somewhere but DO NOT DIE. If you have 200 adoration stacks and kill someone, you get 200*2+50=450 gold. If you die with 200 adoration stacks, you lose 200 potential gold. Ability Details When Draven catches a Spinning Axe, or kills a minion or monster, or destroy a tower, he gains one stack of Adoration. When Draven kills an enemy champion, he consumes all of his Adoration stacks and gains 50 + (2 × per stack consumed) gold. Draven loses half of his Adoration stacks upon death.

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Spinning Axe This is Draven's main damage ability and this, ladies and gentleman, is what makes playing Draven so fun. As it basically buffs your autoattacks, mastering this skill is a big step when mastering draven. Controlling the axes will be difficult the first few games, but once you get the feeling you actually will start to know where the axe land and not just see it. Catching Spinning Axe gives tons of adoration stacks and the ability to keep Blood Rush up constantly Hint: Try to always juggle 2 Spinning Axes because it provides you with a lot of trading power and you can immediately get the 2nd axe again if you lose it in fights. Ability Details Active: Draven starts spinning his axe, making his next attack within 6 seconds deal bonus physical damage equal to a percentage of his total attack damage. This axe will ricochet off the target high up into the air, landing 2 seconds later at a location determined by Draven's current movement direction and speed. If Draven catches it, Spinning Axe will be applied to his next attack and he gains a stack of Adoration. Draven can hold up to two Spinning Axes spinning at once. Bonus Physical Damage: 45 / 55 / 65 / 75 / 85% AD

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Blood Rush This Steroid makes Draven even more powerful since it helps dodging skillshots, chasing enemies and - believe it or not - killing them. You can keep it up constantly if you catch your Spinning Axe. Ability Details Active: Draven gains increased movement speed for 1.5 seconds and increased attack speed for 3 seconds. The movement speed bonus decreases rapidly over its duration. Catching a Spinning Axe will refresh Blood Rush's cooldown. Movement Speed: 40 / 45 / 50 / 55 / 60% Attack Speed: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%

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Stand Aside Use this skill to quickly burst and/or disrupt enemies. Use this skill wisely since it is your only cc. ATTENTION: Sometimes when you use Stand Aside and Whirling Death immediately afterwards, it knocks the enemy out of your Whirling Death. Ability Details Active: Draven throws his axes in a line. Enemies hit take physical damage, are knocked aside, and are slowed for 2 seconds afterwards. Physical Damage: 70 / 105 / 140 / 175 / 210 (+ 50% bonus AD) Slow: 20 / 25 / 30 / 35 / 40%

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Whirling Death Use Dravens Ultimate to quickly deal damage in a skirmirsh or to finish off fleeing/low enemies. HINT: You can reactiavate Whirling Death before it hits an enemy so the enemy will get hit twice almost immediately since the axes return closer to him. Ability Details Active: Draven hurls two massive axes in a given direction, dealing physical damage to every enemy struck. Upon reaching the edge of the map, striking an enemy champion or upon the reactivation of Whirling Death, the axes will slowly come to a stop before changing direction and returning to Draven, dealing the same damage to every enemy struck on the way back. Whirling Death deals 8% less damage for each unit hit, down to a minimum of 40%. The damage reduction resets when the axes reverse direction. Physical Damage (one hit): 175 / 275 / 375 (+ 110% bonus AD) Maximum Physical Damage (two hits): 350 / 550 / 750 (+ 220% bonus AD) Minimum Physical Damage (one hit): 70 / 110 / 150 (+ 44% bonus AD) Minimum Physical Damage (two hits): 140 / 220 / 300 (+ 88% bonus AD)

Glorious Itemization

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These are the standard starting items for every marksman. The Doran's Blade will give you some tankiness, sustain that scales well because it is lifesteal and not flat hp since 4.11. The health potion will allow you to trade more frequently and the warding totem is great for controlling the bushes on your lane.

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At your first back you should ideally have enough gold for the B. F. Sword. If you dont have enough gold, get a Pickaxe and/or Doran's Blade instead. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES GET Berserker's Greaves AS YOUR FIRST ITEM. It is just a waste of 675 gold. Get another Doran's Blade instead or, if you already have 2 Doran's Blade, dont buy anything. Feel free to get the Berserker's Greaves after you have finished your Infinity Edge.

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Since patch 4.11 you rush Infinity Edge instead of The Bloodthirster. Nowadays Infinity Edge only costs 300 gold more than The Bloodthirster and gives you way more damage. You do not need the lifesteal you would get with The Bloodthirster because Doran's Blade's lifesteal is enough especially if you got 2 of them. The problem with Infinity Edge is that it does not provide as much damage for Draven as for other marksmen like Caitlyn, Tristana or Jinx. This is because your Spinning Axe cannot crit. Let's assume that you have 100 attack damage: Normal auto-attack crit=200 Damage Normal auto-attack crit with Infinity Edge=250 Damage You deal 25% more damage Spinning Axe crit=200+85=285 Damage Spinning Axe crit with Infinity Edge=250+85=335 Attack Damage You deal 17.5% more damage As you can see above normal Marksmen like Caitlyn, Tristana or Jinx gain a bonus of 25% compared to a critical strike without Infinity Edge. Draven only deals 17.5% more damage than a normal crit. This means that the other Marksmen get relatively more damage than Draven and that means that Infinity Edge is not as cost efficient as on other marksmen. This is also the reason why Draven is - in the current meta - not as strong as he used to be.

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Now you are ready for buiding Youmuu's Ghostblade. You can get the Berserker's Greaves after your Infinity Edge or after the Youmuu's Ghostblade. As soon as you have finished these items you should take a look at what your enemies are building. Check wether they already built big armor items. If not, check wether they build e.g. Seeker's Armguard, Glacial Shroud, Warden's Mail etc. If your enemies don't have one of the listed items, you can buy The Bloodthirster and then Last Whisper, if they do, get Last Whisper instead and after that The Bloodthirster

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You have 3 defensive options: 1. Guardian Angel against assassins like Fizz, LeBlanc etc. 2. Banshee's Veil against poke heavy champions like Jayce 3. Mercurial Scimitar against cc like Terrify, or Death Mark Personally i usually prefer Mercurial Scimitar because of the Attack Damage and the Active.

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You can get Trinity Force as your 3rd item when you are extremely fed. Catching Spinning Axe is the key for most damage, because you need to spam Blood Rush to get as many sheen procs as possible. Buy The Bloodthirster afterwards, sell Trinity Force later and get Last Whisper. You can also build Statikk Shiv or Phantom Dancer instead of Youmuu's Ghostblade. Try it out and build whatever you prefer.

Honorable Gameplay

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You have chosen your runes, masteries and summoner spells. Now you are ready for the big battles on the fields of justice. Get your starting items and run to the bottom side of the map to cover the red/blue buff. Help your jungler killing it at 1:55 with 2 or 3 auto-attacks. Now the laning phase begins. Try to push the 1st wave to get the levelup before your opponents do.
When you hit lvl 2 you have a short window where you are 1 level ahead of your opponents. This is your time to fight since you are a lot stronger because you can use 2 abilities while your enemies can only use 1.

This video is an example of this strategy. I start pushing by attacking coninuously the purple minions. When i am close to Lvl 2, i tell my support to go ham and we immediately engage when we hit Lvl 2. I auto-attack quinn a few times and accidently cancel my last one.
Now we have an HP advantage over our opponents and leona engages again. I kill quinn, get 271 gold + 124 gold because of League of Draven and end up dying because i walked into turret range when she was already dead.

Now you should keep farming and always harass your oppenents when you can without losing cs or more hp than your opponents. Once they already lost some HP, you can go ham and kill them.
In this clip i harass Vayne with 2 auto-attacks and dodge Nami's Aqua Prison. I tell Thresh to fight since Nami's only hard crowd control is on cooldown. Vayne tries to get farm not realizing that Thresh is flanking her. I start attacking vayne and thresh Flays her. In the end I use Flash to finish her off with my Spinning Axe.


IMOPORTANT:When you are ahead with Draven you have to use your lead and kill your lane opponents as often as possible in order to effectively snowball and carry your team.
You can also zone and simply outfarm them. This is done by only attacking each minion once and as late as possible. If done properly the minion wave will stay a far away from there turret for a long time and they can't get any last-hits. If they still try to get some gold, punish them by auto-attacking and eventually killing.

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Draven is a strong teamfighter because of his area of effect damage, his crowd control and his damage with Spinning Axe. In teamfights you should generally attack the closest target while staying away from any potential hard crowd control threat. If any bruiser decides to dive on you, you can kite (auto-attack while running away) him easily with your Blood Rush and Stand Aside. Once ther frontline is down you can go ham on their carries since they shouldn't be able to fight you 1v1.

After a successful teamfight you should always try to get objectives (Dragon, Baron, Turrets) since the enemy team obviously can't contest them. You should also remember to go back early enough to be able to contest objectives if the enemy team decides to rush them after they respawned.

Summary

All in all you should now have an idea of what to do as Draven. The trick to get better is simple: just play a lot. Especially teamfighting and juggling your Spinning Axe requires a lot of experience which you won't get by reading guides.
Thank you for reading my Draven guide anyway. I hope it helps you improving and please leave a comment so i can improve aswell. Don't forget to upvote if you liked it.
"Draven out!"