Why Graves?

Despite the plethora of nerfs Graves has received since his rework, he still possesses a strong kit for Solo Queue due to his fast clears, exceptional dueling, and incredible snowball potential. As a carry jungler, his main role is to acquire as much gold as possible so he can hard carry his team if necessary after two to three items. Strengths aside, who doesn’t like playing as a shotgun-wielding outlaw?

Strengths:

• Amazing damage
• Mobile
• More durable than the average ADC due to the free resists on his E
• Strong at all stages of the game
• Fast clears

Weaknesses:

• Very gold reliant; has to powerfarm or get lots of kills to be relevant
• Ganks poorly, especially without red buff
• Provides little utility if he gets behind
• No reliable way to initiate fights

Abilities and Summoner Spells

Flash is very important for Graves so he can blink out of sticky situations and reposition when fighting. You should always take Smite in the jungle to assist in your objective control and give you access to the powerful Smite enchantments.

 New Destiny: 12-Gauge: Each of Graves's basic attacks consumes 1 shell and sprays 4 pellets in a cone. Enemies hit take physical damage plus damage for every pellet that hit them beyond the first. Critical strikes spray 6 pellets over a 50% wider cone and deal additional physical damage.

Pellets stop at the first enemy unit or structure they hit, meaning Graves is not guaranteed to hit his primary target. Each pellet will apply on-hit effects but enemies will only be affected by them once per shell. Non-champion units hit by more than one pellet are knocked back.

Graves' shotgun Destiny holds up to 2 shells. After spending both shells or sitting on one for 4 seconds without attacking, Graves will take 2.079 seconds to reload during which he cannot attack. The reload timer is reduced by attack speed, the fastest reload time being 1.22.

 End of the Line: Graves fires a round in the target direction that deals physical damage to all enemies it passes through and leaves behind a powder trail. After 2 seconds, or after 0.25 upon impacting with a structure or terrain, the round detonates dealing physical damage to all enemies in a wide perpendicular area and in a reverse wave along the powder trail.

 Smoke Screen: Graves fires a smoke canister at the target area, dealing magic damage to all nearby enemies, briefly slowing them upon impact, and creating a cloud of smoke for 4 seconds that applies nearsight of outside the area to all enemies within.

 Quickdraw: Graves dashes in the target direction, resetting his attack timer, reloading one shell and gaining a stack of True Grit for 4 seconds, stacking up to 8 times. Dashing towards an enemy instantly grants 2 stacks of True Grit.

Each pellet reduces Quickdraw's cooldown by 0.5 seconds upon impacting an enemy.

True Grit: Graves has bonus armor and bonus magic resistance. Attacks versus non-minions will refresh the duration of True Grit.

 Collateral Damage: Active-Graves fires an explosive shell in the target direction, dealing physical damage to every non-champion enemy it passes through as well as the first enemy champion it collides with, while also dashing in the opposite direction.

After hitting a champion or reaching the end of its range the shell explodes, dealing 80% of its original damage in a cone

Ability Order

At level 1, I generally take Quickdraw first so my clear is healthier, as the faster I can get those stacks the more resistances I can have. At level two, I put a point into End of the Line, as the AOE helps with clearing. At level 3, you can put a point into Smoke Screen if you wish to gank, but if not you may as well put another point in End of the Line until you hit level 4 so you can clear faster.

After level 5, your ability order should be R>Q>E>W.

Runes and Masteries

I take 3 Attack Speed Quints, Armor Seals, AD Marks, and Attack Speed Glyphs. The Attack Speed Glyphs are optional, as you can switch them out for flat/scaling MR if necessary, but I personally like them because they help your clear and make Graves feel much more fluid in his reload animations. I used to take Armor Pen (now Lethality after the changes) but their early game is so bad I have just switched to flat AD marks.

After the removal of Strength of the Ages and the nerfs to Armor Pen, I have chosen Warlord's as my mastery of choice. Since my build doesn't usually build lifesteal until 3-4 items, I like Warlord's because it still gives me some lifesteal and can really turn a close fight in your favor. If you prefer to have a stronger early game, or opt for a burstier build, you can instead go Thunderlord's, as follows:

Thunderlord's makes you burstier, and makes early invades/fights much more effective. However, I prefer Warlord's due to its better scaling and stronger impact, as my aggressive playstyle often leads to 1v1 and 1v2 duels that the extra sustain from Warlord's helps more than the stronger burst of Thunderlord's. Choosing between these two masteries is largely up to playstyle and preference, however.

Core Items (DPS Build)

Skirmisher's Sabre-Warrior: Skirmisher's Sabre really helps in duels, as it reduces the damage the enemy does to you will also giving you true damage procs. Warrior is better than Bloodrazor because Graves doesn't utilize straight attack speed to well, and the nice chunk of AD and CDR allow Grave's skills and autos to hit harder in the early/mid game

Death's Dance: The passive further assists you in duels, while the Crit and Attack Speed make you hit harder and reload faster. If you feel the need to for a Hexdrinker or an early Black Cleaver to assist in taking down the fed tank, you can sit on a Zeal and finish it later.

Black Cleaver: After the removal of Strength of Ages, the health and stats from Black Cleaver have made it a core item in this build. Each pellet in an auto attack applies a stack of the armor shred passive, so a single close range shot will fully stack the Cleave passive and just shred their armor. Graves also benefits a lot from the Phage passive and the CDR, as they allow him to kite or chase easier.

Ninja Tabis: Armor is a hard stat to get in Graves builds, and Berserker's Greaves with Phantom Dancer is overkill on attack speed for Graves. Ninja Tabis ups his durability, especially against ADCs, and allows him to be more aggressive in positioning during teamfights.

Situational Items

Mercury Treads: I buy these half the time, as the Tenacity is so nice on Graves and really helps you to survive against Morgana bindings or other CC thrown around in a fight.

Maw of Malmortious: Used to be a core item on Graves, but has now been relegated to a situational item after the armor pen was removed. Synergizes well with Mercury Treads and Guardian Angel, as the shield scales off of your MR. I usually buy this against a fed high burst mid laner (Syndra, Lux) or against a team with multiple sources of magic damage.

Bloodthirster: HUGE amounts of lifesteal and a powerful shield make this my go to lifesteal item on Graves. The shield can help you survive some upfront burst, and Bloodthirster + Warlords gives you a huge pool of "effective health" or, in other words, health you would have when fighting. If you have a small health pool, but can lifesteal half of it back in an auto, your effective health becomes very high.

Mercurial Scimitar: Good chunk of AD and lifesteal, but the real reason you buy this item is for the QSS active. The movement speed can help you chase or reposition in a fight, and the cleanse active is perfect for avoiding long CC (think Sejuani ultimate or Morgana binding) that you NEED to escape to survive.

Guardian Angel: Solid mix of resistances for a very cheap price makes this a wonderful buy if your team needs more of a frontline or if you find yourself getting focused in fights.

Mortal Reminder: I don't usually buy this Mortal Reminder or Lord Dominik's Regards unless the enemy team has a lot of healing or has multiple tanks I need to shred with my team.

Infinity Edge: I usually buy this item when snowballing, or when I really feel like I need more damage, as this item has an awkward build path and is very expensive. IE plus a Phantom Dancer makes your crits come often and hit extremely hard, especially from close range, and allow you to absolutely demolish squishies and tear through tanks if necessary.

Goals

Your First Clear

Generally, Graves' early clear involves just farming and watching his lanes for countergank opportunities. If you figure out which side the enemy jungler starts on, you can go to their other side and start at their buff and even sneak a couple of their camps-denying them a huge chunk of experience and gold. When clearing, you want to keep your True Grit stacks as much as possible. Use your Quickdraw to reset your auto attack timer and to refresh your stacks while walking from camp to camp. If you can keep your True Grit stacks up, your initial clear and subsequent clears should be incredibly healthy-oftentimes, you can full clear without even using a pot.

If you don't plan on an early invade, start at your Blue Buff and from there go Gromp>Wolves>Raptors>Red>Krugs, leaving your camps if you see an opportunity to gank or assist your laners. When you have Red Buff, you are essentially a God-very few junglers can 1v1 you if they do not have a Red Buff of their own, and early ganks are easy with the slow and extra damage.

Early Game

FOCUS ON FARMING. I can't stress full clearing/farming enough. Graves is very dependent on gold to be relevant, and since his ganks are subpar due to his lack of CC you should be emphasizing farming over ganking. If your jungle is empty, you can look to punish the enemy jungler as well-steal his bottom side camps when he ganks top, or invade aggressively if you see him enter his jungle at low health. Graves wins the early game by crippling the enemy jungler more than crippling the enemy laners. If you do wish to gank, focus on your laners with hard CC or enemy laners with no flash or escapes. Graves has a lot of damage, but few ways of keeping the enemy in range for his damage.

Mid Game

This is Graves' strongest point. He should have an experience lead over the enemy jungler, and with a little luck should have picked up a couple kills by this point as well. Graves excels in skirmishes because of his high damage, and since there should be less crowd control being thrown around in 2v2's and 3v3's his short range is much more difficult to punish. Few people can duel him, especially once he completes Phantom Dancer, allowing him to split push or solo secure objectives if necessary. Abuse your strength to force fights/objectives if you have it, and if you don't have any advantages then farm until you see an opportunity to create an advantage.

Late Game/Teamfights

Graves is still strong at this stage in the game, however he is much harder to pull off. Diving the back line is very risky, as you are not durable enough to survive if you get CCed. Try to kite back with your team, shredding the tanks and building True Grit stacks and then diving in when the enemy's CC is on cooldown and they are low enough for you to burst. If your team is unable to teamfight, you can try to create skirmishes by split pushing and helping to establish vision control. There are few champions who can duel a six item Graves-even if you're feeding, if you have your items nobody can really stop you.

Tips and Tricks

• Graves can ult himself over certain walls-you can use this trick to escape Dragon pit or dash over the thin parts of jungle walls.
• Graves autos can be blocked by minions, towers, or other champions-this is a big one. Be careful about diving or ganking when the enemy is hugging his tower or in a huge wave of minions.
• You get more True Grit stacks by dashing towards the enemy.
• When fighting, you can dash past the enemy and body block them so they have to walk farther from you to get out of your range. This especially helps in top lane, where the lane is so long anyway that they have to walk far to reach their tower/safety.
• A good combo when ganking is E/flash>Auto>Shoot W>Shoot Q>Auto. The Smokescreen will keep them from seeing your End of the Line, and the slow will keep them in its range so that the second proc damages them as well.
• When dueling a melee character, weave in and out of your Smokescreen, moving as erratically as possible. The nearsight will keep them from seeing where you're going, making it easier to kite them and harder for them to land skillshots.

Conclusion

Even if Graves may not be what he once was after all the nerfs during Season 6, he still holds a powerful place in the jungle. He is a fantastic champion for Solo Queue because of his incredible damage potential and general self-reliance. Graves defines the very mold of a "1v9" champion, as his kit allows him to rely only on himself to crush the enemy; a good Graves requires very little peel and has a powerful kit for outplaying the enemy. A good Graves can completely take over a game, utilizing his damage and fast clear speed to obliterate the opposition-either by choking them of resources, or by simply critting them for 1200 damage after three items. Either way, if you're looking to climb and wish to climb without relying on your teammates, Graves is perfect for you.

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