Lucian is one of the most versatile picks in League of Legends, and is almost never a bad choice when it comes to choosing an ADC. Not only can he solo carry his team if he gets ahead, but he also has good mobility. I will be telling you how to get ahead while playing Lucian and dominate with The Purifier.

Introducing Lucian's Kit

Passive: Lightslinger

This is the bread and butter of Lucian’s kit, and is his best tool when it comes to trading. It allows him to get two auto attacks in the same time as it would take a normal ADC to do one, allowing him to not only farm easier, but to trade more effectively than the average ADC.

Q: Piercing Light

This is a line based skill shot that goes through any target it hits, also dealing damage to any targets behind. This is good for last hitting minions, and also makes it easy to poke in lane at the same time, due to the fact that they can’t hide behind their minions for protection.

W: Ardent Blaze

This ability is mostly useless on Lucian due to the fact that it scales in AP, which is something Lucian wants to avoid building. It's a bit of handicap, however it does have one special use: using it to trigger your passive. This gives you extra auto attacks in a fight or trade, which is why you don’t usually take a point in it until around level 4. Apart from the use alongside Lucian's passive, you'll most likely only be getting a tiny bit of additional damage done with this ability.

E: Relentless Pursuit

Relentless Pursuit is Lucian’s main mobility spell, allowing him to dash in any direction. This is why he is such a viable ADC in most lineups, as he doesn’t need much (or any) peel depending on how many diving champions the enemy team has chosen. This is what separates Lucian from other ADCs, allowing him to play more aggressive due to the fact that he will always have an escape ready. The cooldown of Relentless Pursuit is lowered for every shot of Lightslinger. The cooldown reduces one second for shots on minions and monsters and two seconds for shots on champions.

R: The Culling

Lucian fires a barrage of bullets in a target direction dealing a large amount of damage from a long range. This is good for clearing waves and poking, as it has a short cooldown that is worth using whenever you need to clear a wave or do lots of damage at the start or the end of a teamfight.

Laning

Laning with Lucian can be difficult, bit with a bit of practice and time, it will become easier. Because Lucian is such a high skill cap ADC, he has no bad matchups if you play him correctly and you're utilizing his passive well. This is one of the main things to learn with Lucian, so I'm going to mention a few useful combos to use on your opponent and to know when playing him:

Strong Level 2 All-In

Start with an auto attack, followed by Piercing Light, weave in a Lightslinger auto attack followed by a Relentless Pursuit dash, and finish it with one more Lightslinger auto attack.

Level 6 Fight

Start off by using Relentless Pursuit, followed by a Lightslinger auto attack. Use Piercing Light, and use your passive again. Use your Ardent Blaze to deal a small bit of damage, but to primarily activate your Lightslinger auto attack again. After this, use your dash again once it's back up to activate your passive again, and then use The Culling to finish them off

Certain matchups may require more all-ins than others. For example, an all-in versus an Ezreal will be much better than an all-in versus a Draven. Your support decides a lot in a lane. For example, Thresh is a good support for Lucian, because he can force fights against poke lanes if he lands the hook. Karma is a good support with you if you are aiming to win lane, as she can provide lots of poke with you and give you shields so you can kite better.

Builds

Build 1- Black Cleaver Build

Core Items

Ghostblade: Youmuu's and Black Cleaver are what makes this build so dominant in the meta right now. This is mainly due to the armour penetration and how strong that stat is right now. Youmuu's is essential on this Lucian build and should be the only item you buy first. The active is also really good for all-ins and can turn a bad fight into a good one.

Black Cleaver: This is essential for the CDR. The 20% can be very important early on, because it means you get your Relentless Pursuit and Piercing Light back quicker so you can maximise your damage output. The armour penetration on the passive means that if you do damage to someone 6 times in a short period you gain 30% armour penetration on that person.

Berserker Greaves: Your item choice here depends on what runes you are using. If you are running Scaling CDR Glyphs, you should build Greaves. If you're not running them, you should buy Ionian Boots of Lucidity.

Secondary Items

Phantom Dancer: This should be your 3rd major item because it gives you movement speed. The passive also makes you a lot more mobile because you can move faster when near enemies. The 30% crit is crucial to this build as it is most of your late game damage.

Infinity Edge: The 20% crit and increased critical damage is important with Lucian because it means you can output much higher damage during fights. These items feature in both builds because they are core to Lucian.

Situational item

Maw of Malmortius: AP assassins are a real problem when you're playing Lucian especially fed ones. This should stop them from one-shotting you and lowering your damage and teams chance to win the fight drastically.

Mercurial Scimitar: This active is the main reason to buy this. The CC removal is really useful against some champions such as Veigar and Annie. The lifesteal is good but not as strong as Bloodthirster so while it can be brought for sustaining teamfights but Bloodthirster is normally better.

Bloodthirster: You should buy Bloodthirster if you're consistently doing damage but are constantly being dove on. It also gives you good sustain because you can lifesteal back any poke you might take.

Lord Dominik's Regards: Tanks can be a real problem when playing Lucian, so you need this item sometimes to deal with them. You should buy this if those tanks are building lots of HP or if they don't have any healing. It is normally not required unless they have 2 or more tanks. If they have 1, you can usually just ignore him unless he's fed.

Mortal Reminder: This is to be brought against tanks and teams with lots of healing, such as Soraka or Swain. The Grievous Wounds can mean a lot, so you might want to get an early Executioner's Calling versus Soraka in lane.

Build 2- Early Crit Build

Core items

Essence Reaver: This is a good first item because every time you critically strike it gives you mana. The cooldown reduction it also gives you is good because it means your dash is on a much lower cooldown. Although this doesn't give as much early game power as Ghostblade, it will help more late game.

Rapid Firecannon: You need 30% crit second with this build, so Rapid Firecannon is normally a good choice because you can get auto attacks from further away as well as poke and siege better. You can also get Phantom Dancer if they have lots of diving champions and Statikk Shiv if you need more waveclear.

Ionian Boots of Lucidity: The cooldown these give you is really good early and the summoner spell cooldown means you can Flash away in teamfights more often. Heal's cooldown being lower means you can trade much more often.

Infinity Edge: This will be your main source of late game damage. The 20% increased damage will be really useful. After this you should have 70% crit so you can maximise your damage output in teamfights.

Situational items are the same as in build 1.

Teamfights

Lucian is a decent teamfight ADC, but not as good as some others like Sivir, Caitlyn, Jinx, Kalista and Kog'Maw. However, what Lucian really wants is small skirmishes where the fight is as disjointed as possible. Why? Because his dash will allow him to stay in a good position when the fight is hectic. The main thing to remember in fights is to use your dash wisely. A good dash could result in a fight won whereas a bad one could result in you getting one-shot and your team losing the following fight due to a lack of damage.

Matchups

Lucian doesn't have any awful matchups and he can be picked into almost any lane and go even. The one champion Lucian can have trouble with is Draven because Draven also excels in the early laning phase. Lucian is also probably the best blind pick ADC because of these reasons. A lot of matchups for Lucian depend on power spikes. His strongest power spikes are level 2 and when he gets his Ghostblade if you’re using the default build or when he gets 3 items for the crit build.

Runes

If you are using the Ghostblade build, you will normally want to take 10% worth of scaling cooldown runes. However, with the crit build, you normally want basic ADC runes, which are:

For masteries, you have 2 options: Fervor of Battle or Warlord's Bloodlust. You will normally want to take Fervor unless you're against heavy poke at which point you want Warlord's Bloodlust. These are the normal ADC masteries, other than some specific circumstances such as Jhin who you take Deathfire Touch on and Miss Fortune who you take either Deathfire or Thunderlord's on.

Conclusion

Lucian is a key champ in any ADC's pool, as he is good to blind pick and is rarely not in the meta. He is a good champ to learn, and it is important that you at least understand how to play Lucian for your team if you want to have success.

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