I dont have a problem with the IDEA of graves

But, what a surprise, CertainlyT manages to overload yet another kit.

I bet the idea was "Lets make a melee champion, but hes not melee!"

He has the best of both worlds. The raw stats of melee but all the perks of ranged.

In fact, hes TANKIER than most melees. Why should a ranged champion have more raw stats than a melee?

But I also bet the idea was "Its ok cause he has to reload!", except he can spend that time kiting, and most of the game graves has a three round clip anyway.

If graves is gonna keep his raw stats, they need to nerf the autos to keep him in melee range. We can scrap the autos being blocked by creeps and jungle camps idea (It was cool on paper, but when does that actually matter in league? rarely.) but keep the champions, and increase the cones radius by about 60%. Along with this, each pellet does less damage, but theres more pellets. This means graves has to actually be up close to annihilate a target, but he can blanket an area with his shotgun.

And of course, remove the knockback on jungle camps.

Because thats what shotguns do right? They have spread.

With his current autos you pretty much never do less damage. They have to be at the VERY tip to do less than 100% of your AD's worth of damage. Even if you miss half your pellets it still will do over 100% late game.

So what we have so far, is Graves increases the area of effect of his shotgun, he can blanket an area with damage, but is less focused on single target damage. This is good! You pretty much have to be point blank to hit someone with every pellet, which is how it should be.

What does this mean?

This turns graves from a raw % AD damage output into a new niche, he spreads his damage over an area. While giving him a faster jungle clear and allowing him to sweep in teamfights rather than nuke someone in 2 hits regardless of how tanky they are.

Lets give an example. Lets say graves currently shoots 4 pellets over a 4m area. The only time you lose damage is when you miss about half your pellets, and even then its about normal AD in damage, but now he shoots 8 pellets over a 8m area, with critical strikes raising it to 16 (but not increasing the damage)

If hes played as a crit AD, hes given an incentive to be in point blank range to utterly obliterate someone, but now his damage is spread out.

Thoughts?