Proposed changes to Graves

Hello everyone! Today I wanted to talk to you guys about Graves, and his current situation in today's meta.

First of all I want to answer why I would like to see these proposed changes come to Graves. The main reasons I want to do these changes to Graves are due to the fact of him getting overnerfed, doesn't bring much to the table compared to Jinx/Sivir/Lucian, and having a tanky passive that made him extremely good at everything in his heyday along with huge burst damage and having the base 550 range of many other ADC's back then.

However, now that he's been overnerfed he's barely seen any play at all in competitive, and every other carry does what he used to do but better. Jinx having insane steroids on her abilities, along with range, two damaging nukes, and a CC. Sivir with her utility and her burst damage, and Lucian with his ability to out trade many other ADC's now; what Graves used to be like.

So here is what I propose for changes to Graves.

Stats:

Health 410 + (84)

Health Regen 5.5 + (0.7)

Mana 255 +(40)

Mana Regen 6.75 + (0.7)

Range 525 (Ranged)

Attack Damage 51 + (3.1)

Attack Speed 0.625 + (2.9%)

Armor 15 + (3.2)

Magic Res 30 + (0)

Move Speed 330

Stat Changes Revert his mana pool nerf and his aspd nerf that he received. And lower his range to 500. The range nerf is getting done so Graves can fit the theme of bad ass from the west with a shotgun. The rest of the changes I have planned will show why I want his range nerfed and how it'll work out with him.

The reverted nerfs to his mana pool and aspd just weren't warranted even after the mana cost nerf on his Buckshot. The aspd nerf was just the nail in the coffin for him and an unneeded nerf to an already weak Graves at that point.

New Passive: Close Quarters Graves receives 10/20/30% armor penetration for enemy champions within 300 or less range of him.

Reasoning I changed his old passive (True Grit) with this new passive, due to the problematic issues of Graves getting unexpectedly tanky and also the design issues around True Grit. With the lower range on Graves and now this new passive, it allows him to counter act people diving him in team fights (assassins, and tanky fighters with dashes) along with him being able to be the high risk high reward hero he's supposed to be by having to be all in against people in laning phase, instead of just being unexpectedly tanky and winning out without even trying.

NOTE With the removal of his True Grit passive, I would like to see a buff to his base MR and his base armor and scaling armor. Since he was given numbers around having a passive that gave him free resistances, buffing these base stats should help compensate the loss of his tank passive.END NOTE

My fear about this new passive is the range on the activation of it, OR the amount of free % armor pen he gets. Either or can be fixed by extensive testing.

Q: BuckShot His main damage spell. Lower the mana cost and increase the damage of each bullet when Graves is closer to the target, and decrease the damage when hit with a bullet from range. Forces him to get into the fight more often, and allows him to have the counter attack to the diving assassins and tanky fighters in later game teamfights and objective skirmishes. Also forces him to trade at closer range more often than just harassing from range.

Fears for this buff, is to not make the damage upclose astronomically high. He just needs a small buff to it when closer and he should be fine.

W: Smokescreen Increase projectile speed and increase the slow on the spell up to 45% at max rank. As of now it's pretty much negligible for people to walk right out of it when it's launched. Comparing this to Jinx's snare, she has a faster projectile speed of it and it snares. Grave's takes a while to travel and by the time it get's there enemy champions just walk out of it.

E: Quickdraw Revert the previous nerf to it. The nerf was unwarranted along with the ASPD nerf. Being at a lower range and allowing him to have his previous attack speed, really don't see any harm in this buff coming back. Allows him to duel more often than not, and allows him to fight when being dove on in teamfights and by all-ins in laning phase with all the tanky supports that are out today as well.

R: Collateral Damage Let it do full damage throughout the ultimate. The damage from the explosion of the ability is really low. In most cases when playing Graves as he is now, the ult is pretty much useless to cast since it does nothing to how tanky people get nowadays for how cheap tanky items are. Letting it do the full damage throughout should be a decent buff to this ability.

On top of all this a fix to his auto attack would be a nice buff as well. Right now it's extremely clunky and could be given a look at.

All in all these are the proposals I make for Graves. The entirety of his being is changed into getting into the fight more often now instead of being at range; paying homage to the shotgun character that he is. It rewards the high-risk high-reward play he should of had, and forces the enemy to reconsider their choices of diving him since he can take the fight to them if they do decide to dive him in the backline.

Please go ahead and discuss this. I'm happy to hear suggestions from the community and see what we can come up with for Graves!