Ezreal is one of the oldest champions in League of Legends, and is one of the first champions that I played way back in Season 2. Ezreal has had virtually the same kit since his release, and has been played in nearly every position due to his versatility and high potential kit. Whether you play this champion AD, AP, Jungle, Mid, ADC, or any other playstyle all together, you’re going to have to be good at hitting skillshots and using Ezreal to his full potential. In this guide, I’ll guide you through playing Ezreal in the bottom lane as an ADC.

Abilities

Passive: Rising Spell Force - This passive grants Ezreal bonus attack speed for 6 seconds every time he hits an ability, which stacks up to 6 times. This ability is one of the numerous reasons why hitting skillshots as Ezreal is so important. The attack speed Ezreal gains from this ability is really important because in your build, Ezreal does not end up building much in the way of it. This passive is useful in teamfights where you’ll be able to land a few abilities and is also useful for taking down turrets, because you can stack your passive on minions and get your attack speed up very quickly.

Q: Mystic Shot - His Q ability sees Ezreal fire a bolt of energy in a straight line that does physical damage to the first person hit and applies on-hit effects such as Red Buff. Additionally, if his Q hits an enemy, all of Ezreal’s abilities are reduced in cooldown by 1.5 seconds.

This is Ezreal’s most important ability by far and will be the ability you use the most, and you will use it a lot. This is essentially like a second basic attack, except that it is much longer and will do more damage. In fact, Ezreal’s build is largely shaped by this ability due to the fact that you’re going to want to be spamming this ability as frequently as possible. With the 45% cooldown reduction that you will be picking up, if you are able to hit a Q, the cooldown of Mystic Shot will be just 1 second, which gives you an insane amount of damage that you can pump out very quickly. The ability to hit this ability often and quickly is what separates the bad Ezreals from the good Ezreals.

W: Essence Flux - His W ability is called Essence Flux, which is a fairly tame ability that acts like Ezreal’s Q ability, except that it can go through targets, deals magic damage, is slower than the Q ability, and grants friendly champions hit attack speed.

This ability is probably the least important ability in Ezreal’s kit, unless you’re going to be building AP. However, for the ADC role that I’ll be guiding you through, this ability isn’t that strong because it does not scale off of AD and does magic damage. The main use of this ability you will find will be stacking your passive, because if you hit a friendly champion with this ability, you’ll gain a stack of your passive. You can also hit yourself by Shifting into it, which will give you a stack of your passive as well.

E: Arcane Shift - This ability causes Ezreal to blink to a target location and fire a missile that deals magic damage to the closest enemy. This bolt scales off of AD and AP.

Essentially, this is a better Flash on an extremely short cooldown. At rank 1, the CD is 19s, and this decreases to 13s at rank 5. However, if you are able to hit a few Qs, and with 45% CDR, it’s not unreasonable to get this ability down to around a 4s CD. Now, if a 4s Flash that does damage doesn’t sound extremely fun and make you realize the potential this champion has, I’m not sure what will. When I said the ability to hit Qs separates a bad Ezreal from a good Ezreal, it’s his E ability that separates a good Ezreal from a great Ezreal. Many people think that because this ability is a Flash, they should only use it when they are in danger and to escape sticky situations.

Usually, they are right, and this ability is a great safety mechanism. However, you’d be surprised how often the right call is actually Eing forward into the enemy to all in them. This will catch many people off-guard, and the amount of burst damage you have with E>Q>auto can heavily chunk a squishy opponent. But be careful, you can be punished and easily blown up if you E forward at the wrong time. Again, this is why this is an ability that can determine your skill with the champion, knowing when to go aggressive and when to go defensive with this powerful ability.

R: Trueshot Barrage - After a 1s windup, Ezreal fires a large projectile in a direction that does magic damage to enemies it passes through, dealing less damage per enemy it passes through. This ability is global. We’ve probably all been killed by a stray Ezreal ultimate one time or another, and yes it’s just as fun for the Ezreal as it is sad for you when you die. This ability is pretty straight forward, but there are a few niche things that are worth noting that can make your use of this ability much better.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is this ability's 1 second cast time. This means that you’re not going to want to use this ability in the middle of a teamfight when you should be casting Q, but rather at the beginning before the fight, when you can’t get in range to Q, or at the end of the fight to catch stragglers. Another big thing to keep in mind is that your ultimate cannot be canceled! Some ultimates like Caitlyn’s can be canceled by the enemy before you have a chance to fire, but Ezreal’s cannot be canceled by CC! This means that, just before you get CC’d, it’s a good idea to ultimate so you will at least be doing something during the duration of the CC instead of standing there doing nothing.

Skill Order

The skill order for Ezreal is as follows. Firstly, you’re going to want to max Q because it is your damage output ability and scales well with AD. You’re going to max E second, mostly for the decreased cooldown to keep you safe and allow you to play more aggressive. W will be the last ability you max because you won’t be using it for the damage most of the time, but for the attack speed boost instead.

Runes

These are the current Runes taken by Ezreal, and are very important to his playstyle.

Primary - Inspiration

Kleptomancy- Kleptomancy is a fantastic keystone on Ezreal. Kleptomancy grants you gold and sometimes a consumable when you auto attack somebody after using an ability. However, for Ezreal, Q immediately procs Kleptomancy, not requiring an additional auto attack. This allows Ezreal to easily proc Kleptomancy and grants him tons of gold and lane sustain. Ever since the change of Runes, Ezreal has been able to abuse Kleptomancy instaprocing it off of his Q in his favor.

Magical Footwear- Since Stopwatch has been heavily nerfed, Magical Footwear becomes the best rune in this tier. Not having to spend money on boots saves Ezreal a lot of money, and allows him to rush towards his other important items much quicker.

Future’s Market/Biscuit Delivery- This is probably the only rune tier that is up for deliberation. Magical Footwear used to be in this tier, and that is what people would take, but it’s since been moved to the second tier, which makes choosing this rune much more difficult. All three of these runes could be argued for in some way. If it is a difficult lane, such as Caitlyn or Xayah, you should take Biscuit Delivery to allow you to survive through the lane. If it’s a winnable matchup, I actually prefer Future’s Market, as it has proven pivotal in allowing me to hit my item spikes faster. The last option is Minion Dematerializer, but Ezreal’s focus is not on wave clearing, so I wouldn’t suggest this option.

Cosmic Insight- This Rune grants you CDR which is Ezreal’s best stat by far, as he abuses it very hard. For this reason, this rune is by far the best in this tier, as Ezreal is able to utilize the tons of CDR this rune gives you very effectively.

Secondary - Sorcery

Manaflow Band - Ezreal is a very mana dependent champion, and Manaflow band allows Ezreal to be able to spam his abilities that much more by granting every 60s a free ability cast and some mana refunded. For champions that rely so heavily on mana, Manaflow Band is very valuable.

Transcendence - This rune grants the user 10% CDR at level 10, which is very important for Ezreal. Next, when I explain the build, you’ll see why this rune is so important, as it allows Ezreal to get 45% with ONLY Lucidity Boots, this rune, and Trinity Force!

Build

Boots - For Ezreal, you’re always going to be picking up Lucidity Boots. This is because Ezreal strives to get to 45% CDR as soon as possible. As well, by grabbing Lucidity boots, you can get to 45% CDR very efficiently. This requires you to only have to pick up Trinity Force to get you to 45%, which is when Ezreal hits his big power spike.

Manamune - This should be the first item you look to purchase, and you should always try and purchase Tear of the Goddess on your first back to get to stacking that as soon as possible. This item is very important for Ezreal, as it is where a large chunk of his mana pool comes from and grants him a large boost of damage when he is able to upgrade to Muramana.

Trinity Force vs Iceborn Gauntlet - One of these items will be the second item you build after Manamune. Both of these items contain Sheen, which works extremely well with Ezreal due to Sheen's passive working off of Ezreal’s Q. Which item you end up going depends on circumstances. If you are behind, or need to go for a more defensive build, you should build Iceborn Gauntlet, as it offers more armor and defensive stats. If you are ahead, or can afford to build more greedily, Trinity Force will be the way to go.

This is Ezreal’s core build. After you finish these 2 items, obtain boots, and reach level 10, you will be the strongest champion in the game if you are not behind. What you build next is often up to circumstances, but most people end up building a lot of lifesteal and avoiding a crit build to really emphasize the safety that Ezreal has. Here are a few items that are worth building on Ezreal.

• Bloodthirster
• Mercurial Scimitar
• Blade of the Ruined King
• Mortal Reminder
• Guardian Angel
  
  

Conclusion

Ezreal, one of the highest potential champions in the game that when utilized to his fullest potential, can solo carry a game. It’s important to realize how much this champion can do, but also how safe he can be in the process.

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