Hello bros. It's your boy Strike - Best Graves EUW here. BACK WITH SOME BUFFS (Yay)

If you want a quick run-down just look at the item builds and scroll down to the Prowler/Shieldbow Section. The guide is still in it's prototype phase since every 2 weeks jungle changes drastically. When I have time I will perfect it.

I have been playing Graves for many years now hitting Challenger in S10/S11/S12 peaking rank 4 and holding best graves on several websites. So far hitting Grandmaster in s13. I am back on the grind and with this guide I will give you my tips and tricks for you to master and play graves optimally in s13.

Graves is a shotgun short-range marksman that can be played as an assassin/bruiser/crit marksman. Currently, the meta style you can play him is crit and will be the ones I go through in this guide.

Although Graves has fairly basic abilities their is a big gap between an OK graves and a good Graves. These stem from understanding his limits/animation cancels and executing his playstle correctly with good builds.

The guide will have a few chapters and go quite indepth. For more things Graves visit my youtube, I do gameplays/guides/mechanics and other league/jungle related content:

https://www.youtube.com/@strike3073/videos

Lets get into it.

Graves can start blue and full clear or start red and full clear. Both are fine. It depends on the side of the map you want to be. Is your botlane ezreal yuumi and you know they won't have priority + you can't gank...while top is Riven vs GP? Start on the side your botlane is and path to the top laner who has the volatile snowball matchup.

In other words, you path clearing all the camps in the way towards the lane you want to end up at.

However, your path can be changed. Vs champs that can invade you, start red. Red is the premium combat buff early and not having your red vs someone who does feels really bad. It also helps you gank. In addition, you can start red specifically to invade enemy jungler - More on this later.

Make sure to go 2 points Q skipping your W level three if you are full clearing. This will allow you to finish your full clear before 3:30. Only go W lvl 3 for invades/early ganks.

That is about as deep as early game pathing gets I'll highlight some invades you can do on graves though.

Pathing has become quite one dimensional with full clear being the most optimal (most of the time) However, with the removal of 20% damage debuff on enemies camps, counterjungling is more meta than it was. Below I highlight an example.

E.G You see hecarim start blue lvl 1. And you start red getting a strong leash from your shen. Whilst the hecarim seems to have started solo (You see him on the early ward you placed). Due to the leash discrepancy, you are up tempo + hp. Since graves has an E, he can dash over the wall and invade hecarim on gromp (He knows hecarim loves to full clear). At the gromp Graves can kill the hecarim particularly if you have ignite.

The objective of invades in S13 particularly early on is to setback a jungler (full clear ones mostly) from getting a safe start for them to execute their full clear into gank strategy. Or if its a gank jungler, to prevent him from ganking.

Invades early on are not really about developimg massive farm leads particularly on graves who clears really slow until noonquiver/items. In other words we wanna delay our invades until noonquiver preferably.

In other words. Invading is niche but under right circumstances where you have a vulnerability you can exploit (due to superior leash/matchup/summoner spell advantage/lane priority) it is highly effective.

Below is a video where I showcase invading/pathing to get a lead over my counter kindred
Play Video

With the recent Crit Buffs that Graves has received his meta builds have been augmented with crit. How does it work? Well Graves previously had a multiplier of 20% bonus damage per pellet on crit (Formula I am not entirely sure on) which NOW scales upto 30% bonus damage per pellet on crit at level 18. So from 20-30 from level 1-18.
Graves also fires 6 pellets on a crit as opposed to 4, vastly increasing his damage although each subsequent pellet after the first one hits does between 23%-33%

He has three main mythics in my opinion. Prowler for giga snowball and Shieldbow for more safe/scaling snowball. (Galeforce is also pretty good somewhere between the two)

All builds build a collector first. Graves requires lethality to do any forms of meaningful damage. Collector has A) Lethality B) Good buildpath and C) Crit. Graves is also a reload based champ and enemies tend to live on 5% which is very bad for him as he has downtime (reloading/waiting for his abilities) Collector ensures this doesn't happen.
Furthermore, mythic items tend to be better options (particularly prowler and shieldbow) when you can proc at least 1 of it's mythic passive.

In other words all three builds go Collector -> Mythic -> Cleaver/Infinity Edge. This is the core. HOWEVER. If you are snowballing you can skip cleaver since enemy won't have much armour and just go Infinity instead. You must go armour pen after this item (BC/LDR/MR)

Why Cleaver? It is a Stat-Stick that provides armour penetration/damage and survivability. It only has a bad buildpath that is only downside. One thing to also note. Graves pellets proc Black Cleaver individually, if you melee auto hitting all four pellets, you reduce target armour by 20% (4 pellets). If you melee auto and crit hitting all 6 pellets. You proc 30% Cleaver Reduction INSTANTLY. This is why crit and cleaver synergises ridiculously well and why you should not go entirely full crit and slot a cleaver in.

After this you have options, you can go Mortal Reminder if the enemy is very tanky. You can go Infinity Edge for more burst or navori for higher ability damage/movement. You then buy vice versa for the next item.

You then sell boots for RFC/PD late game to maximise damage. You can also Sell collector for BT. Be advised, it is a loss of DPS/execute for more survivability.

When Shieldbow When Prowler? Shieldbow -> Safe Scale into a good dps good survivability carry. It's mythic passive and shield when you are low provides ridiculous survivability coupled with the lifesteal. This build is very good into people that can burst you, or if there is a lot of unavoidable damage and vs opponents that lack the damage to kill you (yes you tanks). It is also beginner friendly. This build also tries to get an early Noonquiver before the collector is bought. So something like noonquiver -> dirk is best early item spike.
Also use the fleet page with cosmic insight/boots and take Ghost. This is because, shieldbow build already has survivability, it wants some sticking pressure with ghost because it doesn't instantly one shot someone and extending the fight since you can't die is very optimal too.

When Prowler? Prowler is the high dps -> One shot carry build. You take Dark Harvest runes (see above) - Can also go fleet/first strike and rush collector instant. It is DPS within reason build currently I believe boasting ridiculous lethality numbers with crit (Remember our Eclipse collector lord dominik build) This is a further augmentation of it.
You take this build if your comfortable with Graves and want to complete 1v9 with big damage numbers. Be advised. You will prob do less damage than Shieldbow/Gale cause you will die a lot

When do we go galeforce? If you are snowballed you can go galeforce and take infinity edge third. It has some more survivability as you can use gale to dodge and can movespeed from its mythic passive. Furthermore, if targets have no armour since you are snowballed a 3rd item Infinity edge with 60% crit allows you to destroy all opponents and lets you get 100% crit way more easily than with prowler. All three builds have their uses. Pick which one you prefer (although I believe shieldbow is most consistent by far)

Both builds lack MR. For shieldbow if you need, you can go Wits End/Spirit Visage/Force of Nature. For Prowler build you simply go the OP maw of malmortius.

For more things Graves you can find me on youtube. Enjoy the buffs bros.

I will also be perfecting this guide over time. It is still in prototype phase because busy + Riot perma changes jungle every two weeks

Also side note, I think Ghost is best in slot right now instead of flash

That is all for this guide. I will be updating it and improving it as time goes on...I will update it for upcoming patches as I know he will change a little. I will also add some more chapters and format it better so stay tuned for it. (Mechanics and late game section coming soon)

Other than that have fun, I love Graves and play it every season...and stay safe junglers we get a lot of slack XD

Like and comment! drop stuff you'd like me to add

https://discord.gg/QgxzebM8nP my discord server if you have any questions im active their daily!