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Any tips on countering Graves?

EvilUnicornLord·Oct 30, 2016·9 votes·1,127 views

Because I'm not one to immediately say "OMG, CHAMP SO BROKEN RITO FREAKING DELETE THIS JERK ALREADY!!!i!", I'm going to kindly ask you guys how one is supposed to go about playing against Graves top lane with a tank and/or fighter.

The natural tactic of countering a ranged champion with a melee one is to, simply, get in their face and slaughter them (no matter how hard it may be to stick to them). I've seen Garen versus Graves, they only had Doran's at this point (Garen with a Doran's shield and Graves with a Doran's Blade, naturally), both full health, both level 3, and they started a trade far enough away from minions to not draw aggro.

Garen got in his face with the standard Decisive Strike and then proceeded to spin around him with Judgement and tanking End of the Line with Courage. Additionally, he picked up Exhaust instead of teleport since that might give him an edge and used it on Graves while beating him up.

Graves stood in place and proceeded to just auto attack Garen and did not use any ability other than End of the Line.

By the end of the trade, Garen was dead and Graves had well over half of his health left.

Might I remind you again that I am not calling any champion "broken", I'm just wondering how to counterplay Graves assuming I already locked in as a melee fighter and/or tank.

24 Comments

Asayake 5150glowOct 30, 20166 votes

In your situation Garen should have dissengaged - after his combo, he has next to 0 damage left, and Graves is auto attack based, meaning his early game is gonna be stronger since early is all about auto's. Considering Graves autos do about 200% damage if all 4 shots hit... not a good idea to duel him.

Generally you don't wanna tank End of the Line. It's got a long delay for a reason, so even with Courage it would've been better just to dodge it.

Dorans blade should be stronger than Dorans shield in a flat out fight theoretically, since Shield gives regen which works out of comba and Blade gives lifesteal which only works when you're hitting something.

Graves doesn't really work like a normal ranged champion, in that he isn't super squishy. To fight him... well, you need a grasp of how much damage he does, and how much you do, and whether or not you'll win a trade/all in. If you can't normally, just hit him when you've more minions (and he is close enough to actually take aggro, doesn't matter if you have minions if they aren't in range.) and you'll probably out damage him early.

The match up heavily depends on who you're running as well.

Cat cafeOct 30, 20162 votes

Graves will usually push in do to his AA spread, so freeze the lane and ask for ganks.

Graves is good early game, but tanks should win mid game if graves doesn't get a lead.

MunchCrunchLunchOct 31, 20162 votes

top lane pantheon destroys him. also its hard for him to deal with nasus when he gets tanky very hard

Tychusfindlay919Oct 31, 20162 votes

Flat true damage.

He gets tons of resistances but doesnt build hp.

You guessed it.

Darius

Handy Sandy Oct 30, 20161 votes

can i see a video of this

EvilUnicornLordOct 30, 20161 votes

Did not film it, sorry.

GULAG 4 UOct 30, 20161 votes

seriously people, why are yall downvotin him when he's just asking for tips? He isn't even being cocky nor anything.

EvilUnicornLordOct 30, 20161 votes

Thank you!

Very Hard EngageOct 30, 20161 votes

armor stackers

Rammus Ok.

Tychusfindlay919Oct 31, 20161 votes

{quoted}

armor stackers

Ok.

Except graves' dash spam allows him the free resistances to ignore rammus's usual anti auto attack shenanigans.

Very Hard EngageOct 31, 20161 votes

graves can do literally nothing against a rammus Q, rammus is guaranteed to land on top of graves and start whaling on him. unless graves flashes or dashes over a wall. even then rammus still might catch him pending on when he started to Q.

Tychusfindlay919Oct 31, 20161 votes

{quoted}

graves can do literally nothing against a rammus Q, rammus is guaranteed to land on top of graves and start whaling on him. unless graves flashes or dashes over a wall. even then rammus still might catch him pending on when he started to Q.

He doesnt need to do anything. He just needs to keep dashing for more and more free resistances, and eventually he'll just completely nullify whatever damage rammus has with just warlords bloodlust and all those resistances.

Very Hard EngageOct 31, 20161 votes

a full armor rammus does much more than you think, he has a whopping 240+ ad when he builds only armor. + thornmail + sunfire...

rammus can duke it out with nearly anyone. graves is in that list unless you run an obscure lifesteal build. item 3812 needs to deal damage to lifesteal. and you aren't doing much of anything when rammus ignores 85% of your damage....

Tychusfindlay919Oct 31, 20161 votes

{quoted}

a full armor rammus does much more than you think, he has a whopping 240+ ad when he builds only armor. + thornmail + sunfire...

rammus can duke it out with nearly anyone. graves is in that list unless you run an obscure lifesteal build. needs to deal damage to lifesteal. and you aren't doing much of anything when rammus ignores 85% of your damage....

Except rammus will not ignore such an insane amount of damage

item 3036

And warlords + deaths dance + maw of malmortius will have rammus needing backup for graves. And a pure armor rammus is gunna suck dick in teamfigts against AP mages in graves's team.

Very Hard EngageOct 31, 20161 votes

nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooo

idk what you're smoking, but try it out, 6 item rammus vs 6 item graves.

graves doesn't come close to winning.

even if you shave a whole 50% armor off rammus hes still left with over 280 and still has over 75% damage reduction. thats why 6 item rammus is so potent. you outright need cleaver, lw, and 2 lifesteal items to handle a full armor rammus. at which point, you're left with no self bulk at all.

Tychusfindlay919Oct 31, 20161 votes

{quoted}

nnnnnnooooooooooooooooooooo

idk what you're smoking, but try it out, 6 item rammus vs 6 item graves.

graves doesn't come close to winning.

even if you shave a whole 50% armor off rammus hes still left with over 280 and still has over 75% damage reduction. thats why 6 item rammus is so potent. you outright need cleaver, lw, and 2 lifesteal items to handle a full armor rammus. at which point, you're left with no self bulk at all.

Even if rammus goes pure armor, that's just asking for the AP damage dealers on graves's team to rip rammus a new asshole.

Very Hard EngageOct 31, 20161 votes

4000+ hp combined with his ~170 MR..... he can still tank mages. hes going to survive through any mages combo. only sustained damage dealers will kill him quicker than average. its a trade off for sure, youd rather have 1 banshees veil or a armor/mr combo item, but rammus still gets the job done, the trick is making it to late game without hemorrhaging.

The Space CowboyOct 30, 20161 votes

I take Graves top once in a while and it always goes well for the first few minutes, try to avoid fighting for that time. Come back into lane with tank items and or damage if your sustain is better than his. Precede to chase him out of lane. He can still kill you if you don't kill him fast though, so bring help if you can't cut through him.

oSEXYPLATYPUSoOct 30, 20161 votes

man i cant think of the last time i saw Graves

hmm well he is an marksmen who needs items/gold to have good damage... if he is jungle pick a strong duelist jungler and invade him take his camps / kill him

he is stronger the longer you fight ,, he is short range/burst not dps... out range him/stay out of his range... and have burst champs that blow him up and dont fight in a sustain fight due to his passive ...

Zane ZephyrOct 30, 20161 votes

Graves is literally the one ranged person that WANTS to be in your face. The brunt of his AA damage is dealt when you're right in his face. Stay behind your minions and fight him when he's reloading. Try not to have extended duels with him because if he has warlord's bloodlust he's going to just drain tank you with the stats he gets from his E. Normally just hit him with what you can and then back out. Also try to bait out his Smokescreen beforehand since it has a 26 second cooldown early on and it will take away some of his mana and his dueling power.

Sire HippingtonOct 30, 20161 votes

Try to play it save till you have all the skills you need for ganks(so lvl 3 or 6 usually) and then surrender your tower and gank mid, TP bot or call your jungler and camp graves. Especially pre 6, graves is a quite easy target for ganks. Ideally you want to hold on to your tower till your team has tower FB though, as giving graves free Tower FB is not the best one can do. 1vs1, there is nothing you can do with nearly about any melee vs graves(asumeing he plays well), and as a fighter you also can't outscale him, as tank you atleast can offer more to midgame teamfights and have some cc to create picks.

Also, for your example, Garen sucks early in the game since the rework. The only thing he can do is use the AA-reset of Q for some burst and then run away in most matchups. He starts become good post lvl 7, cause he needs the execute ult to be a threat once his E is over, and he needs some levels till his e really does some damage(it gets one extra tick every 3 levels, so level 7 is already 2 tick more than on level 3) If he did that vs a xin or riven, he probably would have died. However, he actually has all the tools needed to kite, and if he uses them well, melees can't do shit, they trade even at best, and then he can zone them till their CDs are back up and sustain with lifesteal while they can't.

Ruin LanceOct 31, 20161 votes

dodge his q/r, build armor. graves recently got a really big nerf to his E (it takes 2x longer to stack up than before) so he's not really the same tank marksman assassin bruiser thing he was before.

Aroha MaiOct 31, 20161 votes

Take his cigar away...Oh wait

TalisidOct 31, 20161 votes

Generally graves is weakest against teams with a lot of hard CC. When he can't auto attack to lifesteal tank or use his E to boost his resistances he dies very fast.

With that said, he's generally considered to be a bit overpowered, especially when he can get solo lane farm in the jungle with his very high clear speed. He's not at broken status or anything but he's difficult to deal with.

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