You need to bait his dash and dodge his Q. Do these two things and he's toast.
Graves excels when he can get away with fighting people at melee range (be it your tank or your backline, he 2-shots everything) without taking enough damage from the backline. If his team has a disrputive diver like Jax or Malphite, Graves is gonna have a party since he doesn't get popped for going melee.
However, especially in lane, all he can do against you is slow you with W and close in with E, and poke you with his Q.
Q is easy to avoid as long as you don't line yourself up with a wall, and depending on your ADC, there are various ways of countering his E.
- Vayne just uses her own E and knocks him backwards again.
- Lucian dashes away and keeps his distance, then retaliates. (Best to dash away diagonally to avoid any following Q/Rs Graves might use while still staying away from him.)
- Cait is MADE to ruin his day, since her biggest combo works best when the enemy tries to engage with her. When he dashes you can just E > Q > headshot. If you already have a headshot ready, use it right before you E (the skills used in that order animation-cancel each-other so the combo flows very well). Also you can just sit on a trap all day and add an extra headshot right before you E.
- Kalista just LOLOLOLs around him, and in case of emergency she can just toss a Q somewhere and dash away.
- Tristana can either W or R him in a case of emergency but these do no damage so generally as a Tristana you'd better E him, pop Q and kite him while doing millions of damage, if you can dodge his burst a bit you should win the trade.
- Jinx can W > E him and then use rockets, but landing W right as he dashes requires some prediction. Usually he'll walk up to you before using E so when he does that just pop W at him, E on top of you and kite. Generally if you can't outtrade him I don't think she's a very good pick, only pick her if she's your main and you just prefer to face Graves with something you know well (which is always better than counterpicking with champions you've played 5 times).
- Varus should have already poked Graves down to very low HP with his Qs so the moment he closes in just R him and kill him.
- Quinn can reactively use Vault whenever he dashes at her.
- Ashe gets shafted. She might have a chance with ulti.
- Ezreal gets shafted if he doesn't escape with his E.
His Q can be dodged by sidestepping its second part (the first part will usually hit you but it's not important) -- just NEVER stand between Graves and a wall. MIND YOUR TURRETS, THEY COUNT AS TERRAIN.
If your champion has a dash, never burn it on his Q. Save it for his ulti -- and when you think he's gonna all in, DODGE DIAGONALLY. There's no point in dashing 400 units backwards and getting hit by his QR combo anyway (or dodging completely sideways and getting caught out of position).
Late game his Q does more damage than his R.
Keep in mind that his R knocks him back -- if you survive or dodge (more likely than survive it) his EQR combo he will have great difficulty to catch you again!
Hope I helped!
