Current Graves is a throw pick, and here is why.

Graves has been in a lot of metas for a long time. He's seen a rework, and a ton of nerfs and buffs over the years. And every single time everyone thinks he is overpowered, and cancerous. For a while he was a Lucian rip off, then a jungler, then a burst assassin, then a top laner, then a bruiser, then literally the best jungler in the game. I get it, people are tired of seeing Graves. But that's no excuse to have him virtually unplayable right now. So today, I want to go over what made Graves so good, why he is so bad right now, and maybe how to fix him in a healthy way. I will admit I haven't played non reworked Graves so keep that in mind.

s7-9 (When I played him) Graves past strengths included:

1. Easier to play than most junglers. His kit was simplistic, as long as you could farm efficiently and understood his shotgun you could play Graves with proficiency.
2. Extremely safe and fast clear speed. Graves clear is kinda crazy for a marksman, but it made sense, even with his beefier stats, his itemage was very expensive compared with other junglers, and especially considering the ahem "quality" of his ganks.
3. Versatile. Lethality, crit, tank, bruiser, electrocute, press the attack, fleeting footwork you name it you could make it work on Graves. I even saw a guy pull off AP comet Graves. This made him very hard to build against, because he could go deaths dance, duskblade phantom dancer and still be a crazy good duelist.
4. Very tanky for a marksman. This isn't as true now, but he used to be very durable, as he had to be and I will explain why later.
5. Great objective control. Good Graves players would utilize his W during objective fights to nearsight the enemy jungler, setting himself up for a free smite or steal if he could pull it off.
6. Target access and burst damage if built right. You need that 43/0 Jinx dead? Duskblade stormrazor hybrid will take care of that for you. You need some tanks melted? Black cleaver and last whisper got your back.

Overall though his greatest strength in my opinion is his ability to gain large leads by sheer quantity of farming. Like it or not, there is one meta in League of legends; Gold generation meta. Whoever gets more gold the fastest has the greatest chance of winning. Skill aside, Graves would most likely beat anyone in a 1v1 just by item advantage. Not only that he isn't reliant on his power spike to make an impact, he could remove the other jungler simply by farming his AND their jungle at the same time. He was the quintessential power farming jungler. Ah, those were the glory days. So what happened? Why is this champion coasting at a awful 48% winrate? And what made him so broken at high elo? Well let me break it down with some brief history.

Graves had been a top tier jungler basically from season 7 backwards. With a highest winrate of something like 56%, and the lowest being 42%, he's seen some great times and awful ones. In patch 8.11, Graves got probably the hardest nerf he's ever received, -3 base AD nerf, and a ult damage nerf. Not to mention he also had the magic resist removed from true grit, the change to steraks gauge, the crit rework, jungle exp nerfs, stormrazor's addition (His highest winrate period btw.) and stormrazor's removal. Long story long Graves entire kit is balanced around farming and scaling. Stormrazor by and large allowed him to come online at 1 item, instead of 4, and effectively skip his scaling. Not only did this work quite nicely for him, you must also remember that he could much more effectively contest early objectives and duels over scuttle with the enemy jungler, putting him in a place like most level 2 and 3 gankers. Combine his farm speed, high damage, and objective control, Stormrazor Graves was a terror on the Rift. Imagine a full build ADC you couldn't effectively 1 shot. Graves was truly busted at this stage. But even before Stormrazor he was highly contested at higher elo, and even pro play. But why? Why pick Graves over a gank heavy, or teamfighting jungler? He only brings damage, basically melee at that. So what was the big deal? I'm going to let you in on a little secret. The higher you go in ranks the less and less people die. The safer people play, the more people farm. By and large the game gets less exciting the higher you climb. No more 20/12 midlaner going around at the 60 min mark blasting people away, or your 0/42 Rammus running it down mid. High ELO boils down to one thing: Farming and midgame teamfighting. That's all that matters. You die? You loose 700 G of farm. So you don't take risks. Ever. And coincidentally, the farming duelist Graves thrives in this environment. Safe enough early to reasonably avoid death, while having great scaling and a crazy fast clear. He would get scuttles before you, he would get dragon before you, he would hit 6 before you and he would be full build long before you. And this I believe this is why people despised Graves for a very long time, and would drastically oppose bringing him back into the meta.

How did we get to today? What is the cause? Oh boy, sit down cause this is gonna be a long one.

Graves win condition is outfarming, outscaling, counterjungling and out dueling his opponent. He does this by building a large farm and EXP lead transitioning into items, basically removing the other jungler from having an impact. His best item was completely removed (stormrazor). Stomrazor was by and large a huge reason why he was the best jungler. He could start snowballing with it, when his kit was made for scaling and macro pressure.

Graves can no longer do almost any of these things.

1. He can't out farm many junglers anymore. With the massive exp nerfs to jungle, the addition of scuttle crab to force fights (he might be able to win, however that isn't factoring roams from the enemy team.) the meta shifted towards level 2 and 3 gankers. Not to mention the entire game's meta has shifted to early game pressure, there really isn't a place for hard scaling champions like Graves, Shyvanna, Kindred etc etc.
2. Counter jungling became the norm, not the exception. Lets face it, most games are just clear red side, gank, kill scuttle, and transition into vertical jungling. Even with the recent scuttle change, vertical jungling is still an extremely common strategy thanks to Riot's questionable decisions with the jungle rework. Cough Blast plants and scuttle Cough
3. Dueling at scuttle isn't as important any more, especially due to Vertical jg meta, so he can't flex that strength there.
4. Farming jungle is borderline a meme. THIS is the largest hit to Graves viability, there isn't really a reason to farm anymore. If you can't get your lanes ahead very early on, you are pretty much inting. The game is decided in the first 15 minuets in most cases. I don't care if you have 250 cs by 10 mins, you will still be massively behind the 6/0 Akali mid. Both in mechanics and in pressure.

He can't play to any of his strengths. So what else does he fail at?

1. Trash tier ganks. Unless your opponent is massively overextended, they will by and large shrug off your damage and walk away.
2. Not tanky enough. With the removal of his magic resist on true grit, he pretty much cannot gank mid, and is forced to buy a MR item, further complicating his build path creating a situation where almost none of his items synergize. Most builds are some whack hybrid of a Maw, lethality item, IE, essence reaver, and attack speed boots.
3. Not enough damage to burst without at least 3 items. This roughly translates to no ability to snowball. Stormrazor largely fixed this, but again it was removed, and for good reason. But he never got compensation buffs that mattered. Especially since they removed his auto R E auto combo. Meanwhile Riven can still cancel her entire kit while being tanky and doing bust in an AOE. (Off topic but I genuinely despise Riven.)
4. Terrible mobility. Graves E is possibly one of the worst mobility spells in the game. That was fine when not many champs had dashes, but that isn't the case now. Couple that with his complete inablility to deal damage if even remotely behind, and it's easy to see why it's trash. The resets are far harder to get thanks to his passive, which brings us to...
5. Highly conditional damage. Graves passive is simultaneously the best and worse part of his kit. I adore how his shotgun works like a skillshot auto attack, and bumps minions. However this is also his biggest weakness. IF someone stands near a squishy target they can body block your autos. This also hurts his ganks, nothing feels worse than flashing under tower to get a free kill and dying because your auto hits the tower instead of them.
6. Unbelievably item reliant. Notice how whenever Graves was broken tier, it was never due to a kit buff, but instead item additions and changes. It's because Graves is nothing without his build, shitty CC, bad mobility, low burst.
7. For a late game champion, Graves falls off like a brick. Say you do farm all game, you somehow manage to get off a few good ganks, your team did well and you all made it to full build. Every adc in the game will beat you. Why? Because you have extremely limited range, and very little mobility. When everyone 1 shots everyone else, you could do 100 Billion DPS, but it doesn't matter because Lucian kites you forever, Jinx and Jhin has like 500 movement speed and self peel, Cait has traps and her net, and lategame Kaisa is the best duelist in the game, with more mobility than you and invisibility and a massive shield. (I just remembered that Kaisa exists again. Jesus what a monster.)

All of this compounds 10 fold when the game is over at 20 mins anyway. He has no utility aside from a nearsight worse than Quinn, low mobility, not tanky to survive being melee, no concise or synergistic item build, and no damage without 3 items.

If I will put my own opinion here, I think the hatred for Graves is massively unjustified. He is outclassed by every other jungler in the game, and has a very healthy kit. Lets be honest here, have you ever died to Graves and thought "Oh god there was nothing I could have done this champ is so cancerous." Probably not. And if you have, need I remind you that Sejuani can ult you over a wall, CC you over and over, dash, is massively tanky, and does a tremendous amount of damage. And when everyone can 1 shot everyone, 3 seconds of total CC is a 100% death sentence, and not the guy who is running after you begging you to let him shoot you point blank with a shotgun.

Graves is one of the worse champions in league of legends right now, and picking him feels like game over at champ select. He is not viable anywhere, and feels unrewarding to play well because his strengths are useless. I don't want Graves to be overpowered like with Stormrazor every again, but I want him to be at least playable. I

So until jungle gets reworked, Exp comes back, farming gets good, damage gets lower, lategame is more common, Graves will be a throw pick, and 20 damage on his least important ability will not fix that. I don't want complete rework, I love his kit beyond belief, but a few changes here and there to make him more powerful while being healthy are desperately needed. Give him back his MR, change his ratios to be early to mid game focused, give him some good items, anything. What do you guy's think? How could we make Graves good again?