Either Graves or Lucian should be reworked

TotalJerk·Sep 8, 2015·2 votes·492 views

As people (Riot included) have said, they play so similarly that no matter how you balance them, people are just going to flock to whichever one is perceived to be better overall. It's always been either "Graves is the good Lucian", or "Lucian is the good Graves", depending on who got nerfed most recently. They essentially occupy almost the exact same niche.

My vote goes to Graves, he's the older champion and actually even has a canon reason to get changed: He lost his gun in the Bilgewater event. You could give him a new gun that behaves differently and make his gameplay changes reflect that.

7 Comments

SwizzleSep 8, 20152 votes

I love the smell of shitposts in the morning

Hayaishi2Sep 8, 20152 votes

They are quite different.

Graves is AOE burst in your face ADC. Lucian is run 'n gun weave AA between abilities, light on his feet, finesse gunsliger.

But to plebs like OP who only see their kits as:

Q- Damage ability W- utility ability E- Dash R- High damage ultimate

If you see their kits that way then you think they are the same and your opinion is wrong.

TotalJerkSep 8, 20151 votes

Lucian has burst and AoE as well, Graves also "light on his feet". The largest difference between them is their passive. I didn't say they were the same, I said that they were too similar, they are probably the most similar champions in the game. They have a Ryu/Ken or a Fox/Falco thing going on where they essentially have the same basic moves, but are distinguished mainly by their properties.

The "burst in your face" thing could easily be exaggerated to give Graves his own more distinct niche. That's part of why I suggested him for changes.

Hayaishi2Sep 8, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Lucian has burst and AoE as well, Graves also "light on his feet". The largest difference between them is their passive. I didn't say they were the same, I said that they were too similar, they are probably the most similar champions in the game. They have a Ryu/Ken or a Fox/Falco thing going on where they essentially have the same basic moves, but are distinguished mainly by their properties.

The "burst in your face" thing could easily be exaggerated to give Graves his own more distinct niche. That's part of why I suggested him for changes.

With light on his feet i mean that Lucian feels like he is agile thematically Graves is more like the "i'm going to decimate you with my shotgun, no games just shooting" kind of a guy

5000000000000000Sep 8, 20151 votes

Isn't Lucian supposed to be the generalist ADC? Although tbh, his range is too short to be a generalist...

MalchaSep 8, 20151 votes

But they aren't the same.

Graves is meant to feel like a burst AD caster. It's a part of why the attack speed boost is built into his kit, so that you're not as pressed to build attack speed and can focus on raw damage.

Lucian is much more heavily centered on auto attacking and critting.

They benefit from different things. Thematically crit is not as important for Graves, neither is attack speed. He's not casting that often so trinity isn't really a central item to him, but it can be somewhat useful.

Lucian however deals less damage on skill cast than graves, and his ult deals more damage over time but is much more conditional. Lucians ult is designed to put a lot of damage on approaching targets, graves is designed to decimate an entire team. Lucian needs crit and on hit effects to really shine. Graves is all about raw AD and Armor Pen.

The fact that they seem like the "same" champion isn't due to their design or a need to be redesigned, it's an issue with ADC itemization. Graves has always had this problem (his success is solely dependent on changes to ADC itemizations and less on his actual kit, much like corki), the game does very little to help AD casters stand apart from everyone else who's AD. However there's nothing wrong with the vision for Graves or the vision for Lucian. Most of this will be addressed when we start seeing updated ADC items.

If you really believe at the core, these two champions are the same, or rather were intended to be the same and that it isn't a sign of issues elsewhere, you don't know the champions very well.