Lucian Build Guide by Herkkuparila

Introduction

Greetings this is Herkkuparila with my guide to Lucian. There were a lot of people who didn't think much about Lucian when he was released, but I wasn't one of them and now that I see more and more people playing him I decided to make a guide about him, hope you enjoy!

Pros/cons

Pros + Lightslinger is an amazing damage tool + Relentless Pursuit Gives you a lot of mobility and some CC immunity + Has a high skillcap + The Culling is good for finishing opponents and for pushing lanes. + The Culling allows stealing buffs, dragons or barons from a safe distance + Very strong in early game and mid game.

Cons - Very hard to play well - Relentless Pursuit only affects slows - Piercing Light has a short range - Ardent Blaze has limited uses and can prove hard to aim. - The Culling is hard to aim in order to achieve the best result - Very mana hungry. - No innate CC. thisisheretomakethelistseven thisisheretomakethelistseven thisisheretomakethelistseven thisisheretomakethelistseven thisisheretomakethelistseventhisisheretomakethelistseven

Masteries

When playing ad carries a good rule of thumb is to insert 21 points in offense tree in order to get Havoc 's immense damage increase, and when that damage increase is added to Executioner and Double-Edged Sword you get up to 9.5% damage increase which really makes a difference.

But if you don't like Executioner for some reason then masteries like Blade Weaving or Spell Weaving are good replacements due to the caster type of nature of Lucian and since his passive applies on-hit effects allowing faster stacking in Spell Weaving .

The new defensive tree is otherwise pretty bad, but Block and Unyielding give some damage reduction for early levels when combined with Hardiness you get noticeable defensive stats for the laning phase.

I use the 21/9/0 mastery page but 21/0/9 is also viable, be sure to pick Fleet of Foot and Meditation for Lucian to increase his mobility and mana sustain.

Runes

I personally use the above loadout, but if you like to, you can variate between Greater Quintessence of Attack Damage, Greater Quintessence of Life Steal or greater quintessence of armor penetration.
All of these have their own benefits but I like Greater Quintessence of Life Steal the most. Of course you should use whatever you like the most because runes are most often personal preferences, these are just my suggestions.

Summoner Spells

Flash: Flash has so many uses and is clearly the best summoner spell in the game, even though you have Relentless Pursuit that works kind of like a Flash you shouldn't leave it out.

Barrier: A standard Summoner spell for ad carries, it's better in my opinion when compared to Heal because the shield's health can't be reduced with Ignite

Cleanse: Useful against strong CC champions like Leona, Ashe or Sejuani. Remember that Cleanse doesn't work against suppresses like Infinite Duress or Nether Grasp

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I am going to list some more spells that are viable for Lucian but I will leave out those that you should never even consider.

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Cleanse works well if you want to get early kills but it will lose it's usefulness in late game. Killing an enemy with Ignite when The Culling is active will reset the cooldown on Relentless Pursuit

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Heal helps you in sustaining yourself on lane and is good for the entire team in late game, but you lose a lot of its power when someone casts Ignite on you.

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Exhaust helps dueling and surviving enemy dives in teamfights, but it has a low range and only works on a single target so it won't necessarily save you.

Skills

• lightslinger: The usage of Lightslinger is what separates bad Lucian players from the good ones. The double shot activates on-hit effects on both shots, but the second shot deals 50% damage to champions and buildings.
  Even though the damage reduction is a bit of a downside it matters not since everytime you proc your Lightslinger on an enemy it's the same as caitlyn's Headshot which deals huge damage, and you get this bonus damage for 4 consecutive shots if used properly.
  Your passive also allows you to focus on getting attack damage instead of attack speed.
  
• piercing light (Q): This skill also determines a good Lucian player but not as much as your passive. This is for harassing the opponent on lane or to push the minions quickly (remember that it deals 75% damage to minions).
  Although Piercing Light has a short cast range, the damaging beam flies much farther than that. This is why it's important to fire Piercing Light through minions if you want to harass the opponent from far away, remember that the beam won't always hit even if you aim it directly to the target, skills like Tumble or Quickdraw will make it easy to dodge the beam even if it's directly aimed at them.
• ardent blaze (W): This skill has somewhat limited uses but that doesn't make it useless. You can use it to get a passive stack, harass the opponent or for what it's really meant to do and that is kiting.
  When the enemy is marked with Ardent Blaze all your auto-attacks and skills proc the movement speed boost, this works with every single shot from The Culling so it's important to fire Ardent Blaze before firing your ultimate if you are running away.
  Ardent Blaze has great synergy with Trinity Force because of the Phage effect but that only applies to auto-attacks.
  An important thing to remember when aiming this skill is that it will explode at the end of the range or when it hits an enenmy unit (a minion, champion or a jungle monster, just to be clear).
  
• relentless pursuit (E): This skill should be maxed last because it doesn't give any extra damage to your burst when leveled remember that it's cooldown resets when you kill an enemy during The Culling.
  Relentless Pursuit removes all slows from your when used so it's very useful against champions like Nasus or Thresh so it's wise to use it sparingly in order to remove slows on you.
  Relentless Pursuit also allows you to go through some certain walls making jukes and escapes possible, here is a map about the walls that you can go through with your Relentless Pursuit
  
• the culling (R): The Culling is very underestimated as a damage ability but actually it deals tons of damage when aimed well, but remember to time it well since CC will interrupt it.
  You can use Relentless Pursuit and Flash for a quick reposition during The Culling and just as a reminder your Relentless Pursuit will reset it's cooldown when an enemy is killed during The Culling. Although The Culling scales with attack speed it doesn't work with the active Sword of the Divine but it does work with Youmuu's Ghostblade, keep this in mind when building Lucian.

Items

Berserker's Greaves are good on ad carries and Lucian is no different but if you are facing a team with a lot of CC you might want to get Mercury's Treads or Ninja Tabi depending on what kind of opponents you are facing.

The Bloodthirster gives you great survivability since your Lightslinger's double shot procs the lifesteal and also the attack damage from The Bloodthirster gives you an insane power spike for you, and especially for Piercing Light. Although Blade of the Ruined King is good on Lucian you should never rush it as your first item, The Bloodthirster just beats it in pretty much every aspect.

Trinity Force is very good on Lucian because you can make good use of every stat that it gives, it increases your burst, kiting ability and gives a little bit of extra survivability. If you don't like using Trinity Force then Statikk Shiv is a good replacement item.

The Culling has a high base damage but to make it really strong you need a lot of armor penetration and Last Whisper gives exactly that. Last Whisper is overlooked by new players but when you look at the stats you will see that its stats give you almost as much attack damage as B. F. Sword and the passive that allows you to ignore 35% of the enemy armor is just so much extra damage that you shouldn't pass it. If you still aren't convinced then consider buying The Black Cleaver since The Culling will stack the armor reduction in no time.

Some people say that critical hit isn't really for Lucian but I wouldn't say that. With Trinity Force and Infinity Edge combined you get a total of 35% critical hit chance, which isn't really much but with your passive you get a lot of extra chances for scoring a critical hit. Also the critical damage increase of 50% helps covering for the damage reduction of Lightslinger's second shot.

This is the defensive item I personally prefer but it has some weaknesses, like having the enemies that just killed you waiting over your dead body for your revive to kill you again, but still I find Guardian Angel the best defensive item. Of course if you are snowballing with stats of 17/0 with the team score of 17/0 then you might want to skip the defensive item and go full damage with an item like Blade of the Ruined King or if you are really ballsy then Sword of the Occult but the latter is not recommended.

Farming with Lucian

If you already know how to farm/last hit with ad carries then you can skip this section.
Farming is a key element for ad carries and luckily Lucian has all the prerequisites for easy farming. Why, you ask, well since Lucian's passive Lightslinger deals full damage on both shots to minions this means that after using a skill, possibly for farming, you get an ensured last hit with the double shot from Lightslinger.
Lucian's farming also benefits from his fast auto-attack animation (auto-attack animation means the time how long it takes for the projectile to fire off when you issue an attack command.) when for example Ashe has a rather slow attack animation, so you should have less trouble in timing the attacks for last hitting.

Remember that The Culling deal 400% more damage to lane minions, so if you need to go back to base but don't want to lose the huge minion wave incoming, don't hesitate to blast the minions with The Culling, it has relatively short cooldown and clears the minions in a blink of an eye. Keep in mind that The Culling is a large portion of your damage in levels 6-13 or something like that so using it on minions may cause in a disadvantage in a lane fight should one occur.

Laning phase

When laning your Piercing Light is your main damage source but if you spam it you will run out of mana and push the lane very fast, neither one of the situations are very favourable. Remember that with efficient use of Lightslinger you are able to out damage almost every other adc in early game.

After you hit level 6 your kill potential is increased radically, but since The Culling can be juked and interrupted you want to wait for the enemy to use their CC or movement abilities so they will have a hard time dodging or stopping the damage output. The Culling won't proc lifesteal so avoid using it when you are in need of survivability.

Even though you have the chance of winning a lanefight with no problem you should think about things like:

• Enemy mid laner (is he missing?)
• Enemy jungler (where was he last seen?)
• Can you wait for an ally to gank?

After you have given some thought to these examples, you might think differently about initiating a fight when the enemy mid is missing and the enemy bot lane is clearly over-extending (probably baiting) if you can read the situation right you can make better calls that will improve your chances of winning the lane.

Lane opponents

Personally I don't believe in counters but there are champions that are easier to lane against than others (by a counter I mean a champion that instantly wins a lane against a certain champion, I think that all lanes can be won with skill.)

because of the rework on Phosphorus Bomb which causes delay before reaching its target you can easily dodge it with Relentless Pursuit, if you dodge Phosphorus Bomb your burst will be more than enough to out trade Corki by a mile. Hitting The Culling can prove to be difficult because of his Valkyrie.
Corki is easy to lane against.

Twitch is very squishy but if you allow him to stack Deadly Venom on you he can eat up a large portion of your health. Twitch will outscale you in the late game, so you should do your best to pressure him on lane. Twitch has no movement abilities so he has hard time dodging skills.
Twitch is easy to play against.

Vayne has a weak early game but she outscales you in late game, avoid being close to walls so she can't Condemn you for a stun, if she can't stun you her damage is greatly decreased.
Bursting her will force her to lose farm or her life. Keep pressure on her in early game but don't make the mistake of underestimating her. Respect her damage but recognise that you exceed her damage in early to mid game.
Vayne is easy to lane against

Sivir has a very short range which you should use to your advantage, but if she manages to block Piercing Light with her Spell Shield you will most likely lose the trade. Relentless Pursuit allows you to juke her Boomerang Blade which is her strongest damage output.
Sivir is easy to lane against.

Jinx beats you in a prolonged fight due to Switcheroo!'s attack speed bonus, but she has no chance in beating you when you go in and burst. Bursting is important because her Switcheroo! also gives her a longer range, allowing strogn poke.
Keep an eye out for Zap! and Super Mega Death Rocket! since they deal a ton of damage but both of them can be juked with Relentless Pursuit.
Jinx is easy to lane against.

Tristana can't match you in early game but she will outscale you in late game due to her range.
Shut her down with consecutive Piercing Light's and after she drops low on hp burst her down. Play very aggressively early on since she can't match your damage output, this gives some breathing space when the game progresses. Her range will reach up to 703 range (you have 550) so it is crucial to deny her farming and/or snowballing.
Tristana is an easy opponent to lane against.

Ashe has longer range than you and her Volley deals significant damage, keep an eye on her passive and steer clear until she uses it on a minion.
A key element in winning the lane is to dodge Enchanted Crystal Arrow and trying to fight with Ashe a lot.
Ashe is medium to play against.

Ezreal can only outdamage you if he lands his Mystic Shot this is rather easily prevented by staying behind allied minions. Firing Piercing Light behind the minions will allow you to harass Ezreal without giving him chance of returning damage. Don't underestimate Ezreal's early game burst though, if he lands a good Trueshot Barrage you will be a goner but luckily you have Relentless Pursuit for dodging.
Ezreal is medium to lane against

Graves has much faster burst than you and if he gets close it will also deal more damage, but if you manage to keep some distance your burst will outdamage him. Since Graves has smaller range you can poke him through minions with Piercing Light and auto-attacks.
Graves is a medium opponent to lane against.

Miss Fortune can poke you from a far with Double Up and since you have no CC her Bullet Time will deal insane damage without interruptions. When she comes in to fire Double Up you can try to dodge it with by dashing towards her, if you pass the minion she targets the Double Up you will be safe from it. After he loses the damage from Double Up you can outdamage her.
Miss Fortune is a medium opponent to lane against.

Varus needs time to burst you with Blighted Quiver but can also poke you with Piercing Arrow from far away. Your mobility allows you to dodge his skill shots and if he misses either Piercing Arrow or Chain of Corruption his damage will be greatly lowered. Varus has no mobility abilities so hitting The Culling and Piercing Light should be rather easy.
Varus is medium opponent to lane against.

Caitlyn will use her range to poke you from afar and if you get hit by Yordle Snap Trap there will be a Piltover Peacemaker on your face.
When facing a Caitlyn you must make efficient use of Lightslinger and it's crucial to dodge Piltover Peacemaker with your Relentless Pursuit, with good use of Lightslinger this lane will be tolerable, keep in mind that if Caitlyn misses Piltover Peacemaker then her damage output will be reduced greatly.
Caitlyn is hard to lane against.

Draven's range is as long as yours so if you go close in order to proc Lightslinger you will catch more damage from Spinning Axe than you can possibly deal back at him. Keep an eye on his axe's landing zones and aim your Piercing Light at them, he will receive free damage or drops the axe, both are favourable situations.
Draven is hard to lane against.

Supports

Supports are in a key role when at bot lane, technically they carry the adc in the laning phase so that the adc can carry the game in late game. This is why good synergy allows easier laning phase. These are just supports that I prefer mind you.

• Nami can lock enemies down with Aqua Prison, heal you with Ebb and Flow, increase your burst and CC with Tidecaller's Blessing and lastly save your hide or initiate a fight with Tidal Wave.
  Nami is my favourite support to have by my side when I play Lucian but her down sides are the mana costs and her squishiness.
  
• Thresh is the heinous villain that stole your wife, but that doesn't mean he couldn't support you properly. Dark Passage for escapes, Flay and The Box for peeling and Death Sentence for locking enemies down.
  A good Thresh will keep you safe and has the CC to feed you kills.
  
• Leona's passive Sunlight gives stronger burst and every other skill in her kit is just for locking enemies down for you. She has great potential in peeling for you but if she goes to initiate a fight there won't be anyone to peel for you.

Teamfights

Technically any given champion can carry a game but it's mostly done by the ad carries or ap carries and as an ad carry you are very squishy so positioning yourself is the key for playing adc efficiently in teamfights. Stay behind your team's frontline, they create a "wall" that will scare off the weaker champions from diving you.

After you manage to position yourself properly you must know what to focus and although it might sound unreasonable you must focus the tanky champions that are closest to you, you are not allowed to go in and attack the enemy adc (unless he is mispositioned). If you go past your team's frontline you will most likely be torn to shreds which leaves your team with one less damage dealer (a crucial one at that).

So this was just something that affects every single adc, but what about Lucian? Usually in teamfights there are two scenarios that affect you as the ad carry, either you are focused or you are not focused, in higher Elo it's mostly that you are focused but mistakes happen to the best of players too.

Let's say that you ARE being focused, since you can't stay in the melee range of someone like Olaf you need to kite him (run away and hit him with auto-attacks and skills in between moving) and Ardent Blaze helps you in doing that with its movement speed buff combined with Trinity Force and Relentless Pursuit you will be so mobile that there are not many champions that can catch you, keep hitting the chaser with Piercing Light and auto-attacks until he gives up on the chase.

After the chase has ended you can become the chaser (read the situation before you go in) and finish off the Renekton, Olaf or whoever was chasing you. If you manage to kill him you must return to your team and start dealing out damage to the enemies closest to you, again the same protocol (don't leave the safe zone to focus enemy adc).

And if you are NOT being focused you can freely deal damage to the enemy team with The Culling and Piercing Light. Make efficient use of Lightslinger in teamfights too! And even though you are not focused you still need to keep yourself in the safe zone, I can't emphasise how important it is to be in the safe zone.

After the teamfight you hopefully are alive and your team has scored an ace. If you still have The Culling ready for some reason, you want to use its 400% extra damage on minions to push a lane and get turrets until the enemy team respawns. (If you get an inhibitor but the enemy team still has some time until respawn be sure to grab Baron or Dragon since a teamfight may not be worth unless you get objectives with it.)
So let's sum up what to do in teamfights with Lucian.

• Stay behind the frontline for protection
• keep yourself in a safe zone, don't focus the enemy carries if they are well positioned
• When focused keep kiting the enemy team even if it means separation from your team.
• If you are not focused then raise hell with your skills (Remember to keep a safe zone)
• Get objectives after the fight. Inhibitor > Baron > Turrets > Dragon

Tips, Tricks and Trivia

• Thresh's hidden passive against Lucian grants him 100% wifesteal, beware.
• The Culling doesn't deal bonus damage to jungle monsters but it allows you to damage baron or dragon from a safe distance making stealing a good chance.
• Ardent Blaze's rays will fly farther than the indicator would show, use this information to your advantage when trying to finish an enemy.
• If Lightslinger kills a minion but still has the second shot left, it will automatically fire the second shot at another low health enemy.

Summary

Go play Lucian. Anyway hope that you liked this guide, make sure to tell me in the comments what you thought about it. And maybe some day you get to show your Lucian skills against me should we play together someday.

Change log

29.12.2013 Guide was made
30.12.2013 Improvements in various section
30.12.2013 Teamfight section updated and Farming with Lucian section added.