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Ezreal In the Preseason

Zair Umbras·11/13/2015, 6:24:43 AM·3 votes·703 views

Okay, first off, I understand I'm not the 'best Ezreal' or that I play him the way he's 'meant' to or what ever, but he used to be my form of Caster Marksmen, so just hear me out.

With the new changes, we've seen some nice things like Essence Reaver and Trinity giving the 40% CDR that Ez, Corki, and Lucian all love. It's amazing getting that much CDR in only two items WHILE still being able to build glyphs for defense and/or quints for offense. It's a push towards a better overall gameplay for a squishy champion and most would agree this was a wonderful buff! But....

Reaver and Trinity seem to be.. too... Too... Crit focused. For Lucian and Corki (Though I don't like Trinity right now since Statikk hasn't upheld his end of the bargain with Corki's passive affecting Trinity!) crit is a great stat that scales with their kits well given they're very, very AA reliant. And I know, "Ezreal AA's a lot! Just watch the old videos of when he was common!" Yes. He does AA often in team fights, but BEFORE the fight starts and in lane, Ezreal is a poke-based champion with some good engage and disengage mechanics. Safety has been the key for Ezreal and it's what's really kept him relevant since his kit doesn't scale to the end game as good as other ADCs who have special mechanics with crit like Cait's headshot now does more with more crit chance and damage, crit chance and damage affect Ashe's AA's AND slow, Corki's passive now crits making him do a lot of magic damage and solidifying him as the go-to for AD heavy comps, Draven is known for that epic crit luck to 2 shot squishies, Graves' AA's now shoot out more bullets when he crits and shoots out 2 more with the Infinity Edge on crits, etc. etc. All the other ADC's have really good synergies with crit, but... Ezreal not so much.

Something about building crit and losing out on AD just feels horribly wrong on Ezreal. Lost the AP on Trinity, lost AD on Essence, and Reaver no longer procs the mana on his Q to keep him around half mana. The new Ezreal just... It feels so wrong. I've played him on the PBE, and a couple times on live and building crit just feels so damn wrong. Before I was pretty okay with it since his Q was proc'ing the Deathfire keystone, but that's since been removed so he's left with Warlord's and Fervor. Fervor isn't too bad since it synergizes with his Q to a decent amount, though the 80 damage every 1s isn't nearly as powerful for him as it would be for a more AS oriented champion like Yi, Twitch, Kindred, etc. and Warlord's isn't exactly amazing, though it is the better the of the two. Given the fact Warlord's is already being looked at for nerfs, it might not end up being a very good pick up.

I know playing Ezreal as more of a caster rather than an AA bot seems to be a very unpopular playstyle, but ever since S2, that's... the best suited playstyle I've found for him and it's done incredible. It's been strong for a long time and he's a Marksmen first, Mage second, but if you're just an AA-bot, there's no mage left.

Just figured I'd give my feedback. It just feels wrong. Just feels like his identity as the Caster Marksmen is being taken down for no real reason.

3 Comments

masterdragon48111/13/2015, 6:36:37 AM1 votes

Well I definitely see where you are coming from. You are right, Ezreal doesn't really scale with crit at all, and played as a poke adc, he tends not to even use autos (and therefore the stat). Changing Essance Reaver in the way that they did also hurt his mana regen, again because he doesn't utilize auto attacks the way every other carry usually does.

An interesting fix (in my eyes) would be to give ezreal's Q the ability to crit; for 1.0 damage. I don't think the ability, especially with its low cool down and high range, should actually be able to crit, but giving it the crit property (like ashe now has) will allow him to access crit while supporting his successful playstyle.

As an aside, I hope they don't go overboard on nerfing Warlords bloodlust, all I really want to see is it only proc on champions, like every other keystone mastery there. Anything more than that would just be premature; this will reduce a HUGE amount of sustain in the early to mid game on champs that shouldn't have that much sustain yet.

bourbonowns11/14/2015, 4:42:18 AM1 votes

I have experienced the same and am very upset about it. Trinity Force got straight up gutted unless you really, really wanted crit. -5 AD, -15% attack speed, -30 AP, and a higher cost. Essence Reaver (which used to be good on Ezreal ALREADY) now gives -15 AD and costs much more than it used to, and it does not restore mana on Mystic Shots. His old core cost 6900 and now it costs 7500 for less stats, and like I said earlier, Essence Reaver only healing mana on crits leaves me OOM extremely often because how often do you get to auto attack on Ezreal before teamfights erupt? Very fucking rarely. The mana restoration on Mystic Shots is what made this item worth it in the first place.

I have done the math and going Essence + Trinity, overall Ezreal is losing -22 damage from loss of AD, -14 damage from AP, and -20 on Trinity Proc on his Mystic Shot damage ALONE. This is a loss of 55 damage on his most spammable ability, and his W, E, R actually are noticeably weaker from the loss of AP. Why did Riot think losing Attack Speed, AD, AP and lifesteal in exchange for some crit and CDR would be a positive change for Ezreal? They thought this item combo would be so damn good on him they actually NERFED him while handing out significant buffs to other ADCs.

I have honestly never felt weaker playing Ezreal than this patch. If you want him to be able to auto attack and crit, that's nice, I wouldn't complain, but at what cost? His autos are weaker due to a significant loss of AD on his core items. He doesn't get a substantial amount of Attack Speed from Trinity anymore so his autos are hilariously slow, then you make his spells deal 10-20% less damage on top of this.

I would do anything to get old Trinity and old Essence Reaver back. It does not matter having more crit and more CDR when they took away so fucking much from him in exchange.