Lucian is a marksman that resides in the bottom lane. He is a high damage dealer and strong early to mid-game champion. Lucian is one of the strongest laning ADCs next to Draven but isn’t as difficult to master.

Strengths and Weaknesses

Lucian is an early to mid-game ADC, so he thrives in those stages of the game. Lucian hits an early power spike in his build with his Blade of the Ruined King and another large spike after finishing Black Cleaver. Lucian’s main strength is his early game dominance and it is almost unmatched by all other ADCs

Lucian’s weakness is his scaling and his range. Lucian falls off after the mid-game into the late game. ADCs such as Vayne, Kai’Sa and Jinx, all late game carries, can lose the early game to Lucian and still win late due to their late game scaling that Lucian doesn’t have.

Lucian’s other weakness is his range. He has one of the lowest ranges among the ADCs and this is very punishable by poke champions such as Ezreal and Caitlyn. His E ability is a great gap closer but, when it is on cooldown, he is very susceptible to poke.

Runes

Lucian is an AD carry so he will be using the Precision tree as his primary rune tree. Lucian will take Press the Attack as his passive Lightslinger, which makes his next auto after using an ability a double-shot, will allow you to activate Press the Attack quickly. With one activation of his passive and an additional auto, he will easily proc Press the Attack.

The next selection in the Precision tree will be Triumph or Overheal depending on your team composition. If you have a healing support such as Sona, Nami, Rakan, Soraka, etc., you will take Overheal as it will give you extra health in a shield for the excess healing from your support. If you don’t have a healing support or team composition, then you go Triumph.

The rest of the rune tree will be the same as most Precision-taking AD carries, Alacrity for the additional attack speed and Coup de Grace for extra damage on low health enemies. The secondary tree will be Inspiration. In this tree you will take Magical Footwear for free boots and Biscuit Delivery for better sustain in lane.

Build

Lucian takes Blade of the Ruined King for his first item as it gives him life steal, attack speed, attack damage, and additional on-hit damage. This works well for Lucian as it gives him sustain and the damage he needs to burst down his enemies. You will also take Berserker’s Greaves as your tier 2 boots as it will give you attack speed. Next is Black Cleaver. This is a great item for Lucian as it provides you with health, attack damage and cooldown reduction, which benefits Lucian as he wants to cycle through his abilities a lot. Black Cleaver also gives armor penetration which helps Lucian take down tanks.

The next item in Lucian’s build is up to you based on the enemy team composition. Lucian can go Rapid Firecannon for the enhanced auto that increases range and damage when charged or you can take Phantom Dancer. Both items give the same stats, just different passive abilities. Phantom Dancer gives you movement speed for 2 seconds after each auto and grants you a shield when you take life threatening damage. They both give you critical chance and attack speed, so what you take is based on the in-game situation.

For your fifth item, you will take Infinity Edge which gives you 80 attack damage and 25% critical chance. The best part of Infinity Edge is the passive, which makes your critical strikes do 225% damage instead of 200%. For your last item you will usually build Guardian Angel, but if you’ve built Phantom Dancer and the enemy team has a lot of crowd control abilities, then you will go Mercurial Scimitar for the ability to cleanse crowd control on you.

Early Game

Lucian’s biggest strength is his early game and mid-game. In the early game when paired with an aggressive support, Lucian can be deadly at level 1. Lucian’s ability to proc Press the Attack easily is very problematic for the enemy team. Lucian is good at trading in lane because he can auto, Q, double-shot and back off using his E, or the movement speed from enemies marked with W.

In the early game, look to trade as much as you can while trying not to take too much damage from minions. Look to trade when your minion wave is large and/or the enemy minion wave is small. When your support engages on the enemy laners, you should all-in on them, as you have kill potential from level 2 onward. Only back when the enemy laner is dead, you’re low on health, or you have pushed the wave in and have gold to use to obtain items.

Mid Game

Mid game occurs when you have taken your tower and the laning phase has ended. Since you are in the bottom lane, you are in charge of controlling the bottom part of the map with your jungler. The middle game is when you start focusing on helping other lanes and getting objectives such as Towers, Drakes, Rift Herald, and eventually Baron.

You will be very useful in teamfights, just make sure to keep your distance and kite. When you aren’t teamfighting, you should be pushing lanes and farming creeps for gold and experience. Look to catch the enemy ADC out of position and any other squishy champions on their team.

Lucian’s presence in teamfights can be the determining factor of how a fight goes, so don’t tunnel vision on farming and pushing lanes. Make sure to keep an eye on your mini-map and, anytime you see the enemy team grouping up near an objective, you should do the same and group up with your team.

Late Game

At this point in the game you should almost be full build, if not full build. Lucian is still very useful at this stage as he can burst down the carries of the enemy team very quickly. He falls off in the teamfight perspective as other ADCs such as Ashe, Vayne, and Kai’Sa have stronger late game spikes and teamfight ability. Try to stay behind your tanks and kite out the frontline. Once your team engages, focus on killing the carries. If you focus on killing the tanks, the enemy ADC and other carries will kill you and maybe win the game off of the fight.

In the late game, each fight gets becomes more important than the last, as the death timers increase with each minute that passes. Make sure to maintain vision on objectives and keep pushing waves. When the waves are pushed in, the enemy must decide to let the minions destroy their towers or contest baron. Most times you can stall out the fight letting the minions advance on their base, but don’t force fights, because you can lose baron and lose the game. Look to go in on someone’s engage and you get the baron and the win.

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