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Recommended Items
Runes: FLEET
+10% Attack Speed
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health
Spells:
Flash
Smite
Items
Ability Order STANDARD
New Destiny (PASSIVE)
Graves Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Kha'Zix
can duel you early if he clears healthily. be careful of him invading you at second buff, so get team to ward entrances. Super strong pick at the moment
Champion Build Guide
Graves passive is what makes him such a unique and fun champion: It turns his autos into a shotgun mechanic. he gets two shots before he has to reload (automatically) and his autos deal damage in a cone and knock jungle camps and creeps backwards. This allows him to have an extremely healthy clear making him great for new players! However, be aware that creeps and towers block his autos so if people are standing behind creeps use your q to clear them first.
Q - End Of The Line
This does small initial damage in a T shape in front of Graves, and after a short period will explode dealing a lot more damage in the T. If Graves hits a wall with his Q it explodes faster, almost guaranteeing both parts of damage on anyone caught in it. This is also his main tool along with his autos for his fast clear.
W - Smoke Screen
Possibly his most under-rated, yet simultaneously his most broken. Graves throws out a circle of smoke which deals a small amomunt of magic damage, slows the enemy and reduces their vision whilst inside the smoke screen. The vision denial is super oppressive, it lets your team land skill shots, lets you escape or chase and lets you suprise the enemy with Q R burst combo whilst they cant even see it coming!
E- Quickdraw
Graves dashes forwards, reloading a shell into his shotgun, resetting his basic attack timer and giving him a stack of true grit. True grit is graves second passive which grants him stacking armour with each E cast and the timer is reset on autos against Non minion tarets. This means you need to auto, then E which gives you three shots before needing to reload. This is graves second tool to stay healthy in the jungle, make sure you are kiting camps towards your next destination so that you can keep up the stacks during your clear. Graves also gains 2 stacks when dashing TOWARDS enemies. When taking objectives this means u can sometimes angle your dash so that you gain double the stacks! just make sure you dont dash in and die....
R - Collateral Damage
THE BIG BOOM. Graves shoot out a massive pellet which knowcks him backwards and deals massive damage to the first target hit, then good damage in a cone behind wherever it explodes. The range on this ability is massive, so its really good at sniping people who have flashed out of range. If you have lethality this ability is an AOE nuke, so use it to hit as many squishies as possible. the knock back can also help you escape, but make sure you use it to finish off enemies, as you wont be able to chase afterwards if they survive!
-healthy clear
-strong at all stages of the game
-good invader
-easy to learn
-FUN
-can carry 1v9
-good to blind pick
CONS
-struggles when behind
-no cc
-short range for a ranged champ
this is your standard page for graves, gives you extra kiting, better chase potential and also makes you EVEN safer than before. This allows you to miss step and get out alive.
Nimbus - extremely strong with smite
Absolute focus - safe clear meaning you're usually above 70% HP
Water walking - helps you in crab fights and rotate to lanes faster!
FLEET FOOTWORK
this the old rune for graves which is coming back into popularity! It makes his clear even healthier and ives you nice sustain in teamfights. As for secondary runes with this page, Tarzan goes for the inspiration tree, but sorcery tree is also a viable choice!
triumph - nice hp on kills
legend alacrity/ tenacity - go alacrity usually, but take tenacity vs high cc teams
last stand - i prefer this rune as it usually does more damage, but coup de grace is also viable
This is the most important step, and can be done in champion select!!! Firstly, look at your team comp and think about who is going to win you the game? Top or Bot? If you struggle with this an easy way to decide is: if there are tanks top, path from toplane to botlane. If you have a carry top (camille, riven, irelia, renek, etc.) path from botlane to toplane. there are a lot of nuances with this which will only come as you play more and learn about different lane matchups and how they play out.
THE FULL CLEAR
Easiest clear, safest clear, and your go to. When clearing make sure you kite camps to avoid them autoing u as much as possible. also kite towards your next camp to keep your stacks up, this means when going from wolves -> raptors or raptors -> wolves you must use an E when passing through midlane. Also make sure you use E as an auto reset! your auto attacks reduce its CD so you can use it quite frequently during your clear and should look to end your clear with 8 stacks.
Blue Buff start:
Blue -> Gromp (smite)-> Wolves -> Raptors -> Red -> Krugs (smite)-> Crab
Red Buff start:
Red -> Krugs (smite)-> Raptors -> Wolves -> Blue -> Crab -> Gromp
INVADING
Ah the thing that makes graves so oppressive to play against. His extremely fast clear and range make it so that hes perfect for invading, since you can either 1v1 the enemy jungler or get out fast with E. When you invade try to put a control ward in a bush to help your team track the enemy junglers movements. It is usually also ideal to leave one creep up on the camps to that the enemy doesnt get exp from levelled up camps.
The level 2 invade:
DO THIS AGAINST CHAMPIONS WHO FULL CLEAR AND YOU NEED TO PUT BEHIND EARLY! take your red buff and e over dragon/ baron pit to get to the enemy blue buff. If they started blue you can force their flash or kill them on gromp. ALWAYS TRY TO SMITE THEIR GROMP, TIME SMITE WITH YOUR Q DAMAGE. graves can kill almost all champions at lvl 2 especially since they will waste spells to clear the camps. If they did not start blue, just clear blue and gromp and stealthily hide in a bush at blue to ambush them! most junglers will be low when they get to blue so you can pick up a free kill!
Sneaky Second Gromp:
Use this tactic if you full clear towards YOUR red and the enemy full cleared towards THEIR red. after taking crab you should have a small amount of time before the enemy gromp spawns a second time! you can easily hop over the wall and steal this before the enemy gets back for it. Just don't greed for wolves, as you will usually get caught and die
ping your team to go into enemy jungle with you and try to clear enemy jungle camps on cooldown, this gives you extra resources and takes them away from the enemy jungler. This works if you are ahead because if you meet the enemy team you should win the skirmish and get an easy tower, baron or dragon off of the won fight. Make sure you ping dragon timers 1 min in advance, get thre in time to set up vision and just take the dragons ASAP so you can get to the juicy souls.
IF BEHIND
Well, your life becomes pretty sad as a jungler when you're behind. Your team mates will probably take your camps, you laners will take lane cs, and the enemy will also take your jungle... This usually make you starved of resources and can lead you to falling behind. Just try to win fights on objectives and slowly claw your way back into the game off of enemy throws and picks.
when you build as a bruiser graves acts a front to back threat. stay with your ADC and kite back, killing their front line. Your black cleaver will help your ADC do even more damage and your inate tankiness should let you survive. Look for Ws on high value targets like mages or enemy ADCs, as they have to step out of it to carry on attacking.
ASSASSIN
If you built lethality look for an opportunity to hit your Q R combo on as many squishy targets as possible. When fed it can solo win a teamfight by blowing up a squishy instantly
- Double E stacks: E towards enemies for double stacks! during objectives you can usually do this without any drawbacks!
- Oneshot combo: When enemy is against a wall, Auto QR to instantly blow someone up
- Use E as an auto reset
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