Proposed changes to Graves

Lemano·Jan 30, 2014·3 votes·1,225 views

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!

13 Comments

MichichaJan 30, 20143 votes

I don't know if you read the proposed changes the Rioters had in mind 2 days ago, but they pretty much said exactly what you said. They wanted to add armor pen, reduce his range to "shotgun" range, and make his ultimate have a consistent amount of damage. They proposed adding the armor pen to his Quick-draw but making it BONUS armor pen (like they did with Yasuo)I like these in-depth ability explanations and even did one myself for Warwick. Based on your re-work idea, I would keep the passive and add the armor pen to his ult. For his decreased range, he needs a bit of tankiness in order to fit his niche pick, counter tanky dive bruisers. Adding armor pen to his ult should give him a Yasuo sort of feel, getting a BUNCH of damage from it afterwards. I feel like reverting most of the nerfs would make him to strong, but i do think buffing the Smokescreen is a must.

LemanoJan 30, 20141 votes

No, I haven't seen their changes at all. Sounds pretty awesome, atleast he's getting looked at. My idea of forcing the armor pen as a new passive and taking away the True grit passive and buffing his base stats, is that with giving Graves the extra armor pen as a passive, it's literally putting the same problem back that he used to have; too many stats and things a hero can do, and being good at literally everything. Atleast with this he has a drawback of being forced into a low range fighting ADC, instead of being a low range ADC with good everything.

Making him like Yasuo I think is fine, but the feel of him being a low range hero, I'd prefer it as a whole new passive in general to get that feel of a burly shotgun wielding hero that has to be up close and personal.

Good construction criticism and thoughts, thank you!

Diddle GodJan 30, 20141 votes

[deleted]

LemanoJan 30, 20141 votes

nothing constructive at all...thanks :[

Diddle GodJan 30, 20141 votes

I think this is an awesome idea...hopefully he becomes relevant and back in pro play i love seeing graves =)

SinnedJan 30, 20141 votes

I don't like the further range nerf. If anything I'd suggest to bring it back to it's original range. I just hate how Jinx's autos (minigun) are better than graves auto's. Jinx has the BEST close range adc autos in the game right now, and I find that silly. Considering graves up close and personal fighting style. I feel that Riot likes this though, so i'd suggest to further nerf graves close range autos, but buff his close range skills.

To make graves more threatening I'd suggest a change to his Quickdraw. Change it so that it gives Armor Pen and remove the attack speed buff. Bam. Lots of problems fixed. He wouldn't be the auto attack monster with the range unnerfed. And his Q would gain a lot of damage.

SO a couple things for his playstyle.

With his range BUFFED he would be able to cs without getting bullied too hard. He won't be able to duel if he's at ranged since he doesn't have his steroid anymore and his skills do less damage from afar. CS at range, come in when dueling. It makes sense thematically.

With his massive auto attack nerf he is FORCED to go in to fight.

With his skill synergy buff the opposing adc is FORCED to kite graves or deal with his skill's massive damage.

Graves would not need to build regular adc builds but can opt to build AD CASTER builds.

LemanoFeb 2, 20141 votes

the whole point of the changes is to make it fit him thematically. he is the shot gun wielding duelist he's supposed to be. having to be forced into a fight with the short range he has and the buffs to his Q and his R along with his base stats allow him to be able to take harassment from AD's that have higher ranged.

you're only seeing him without a support and comparing him against an AD with a support. with the range change and the changes discussed he can handily go in and burst anyone down that he wants and actually come out on top if played correctly. however, if you do mess up the all in, it can be taken advantage of by the opponent offering counter play, when before there was no counter play by him having the tanky stats along with the humongous amounts of damage.

by nerfing his close range autos, you're forcing him to get lower range on his autos...so the whole point of you saying to buff his range is making no sense. forcing him to have lower range and having higher damage when being close to people is what i'm proposing. i don't think you read what i wrote down at all. he's supposed to be the duelist in lane, and force you into trades, that's the whole point of the changes i brought up in my original post. change it so people who play graves are forced to make decisions based on how he's supposed to be played (up close and personal) while also allowing him to deal with the tanky divers, and heavy assassin meta that's out today.

MizztJan 31, 20141 votes

As a former graves main, i strongly disagree lowering his range and changing the damage distribution of his q and ult since they're still strong if used correctly. His mana pool isn't much of a problem in relation with his abilities mana cost and potential damage output. At the end of the day, graves is still a marksman and if he were to be changed into a high risk, high reward champ then his kit would need to be changed along with his base stats. At the moment, armor pen isn't all that important as his shotgun motto of burst damage is evident

LemanoFeb 2, 20141 votes

his Q and his ult are getting buffed. his range is getting nerfed to fit his thematic, and a ton of other things are getting buffed relative to his range nerf.

his mana pool is a severe problem along with his high manacosts on his main damaging spells, that force him to conserve more than dish out damage. you run out of mana after casting around 2-3 buckshots not even counting if you're using quickdraw to get in for harass or escaping ganks. his high mana costs constrain him severely, compared to Lucians relatively low mana costs and high mana pool, and jinx's flame chompers, zap, and range.

armor pen is really important on an all intensive AD kit that has AD ratios in a meta of sunfire cape, randuin's omen, thornmail. sorry but that's just wrong with what you're saying. the burst is highly negligible when you shoot buckshot and collateral damage to do literally no damage to a tanky hero with those items. armor pen is a highly valuable stat especially on a kit that has main damage spells that use AD as their primary stat growth.

MizztJun 1, 20141 votes

You do have some interesting point and I am a little late in this reply, BUT I stick to my case.

Graves players have the challenge of figuring out when does using Buckshot Maximize damage output towards the enemy champion because of the reduced dmg through multiple enemies. His passive compensates for any retaliation if used properly together with his Buckshot therefore relieving any manacost problems. In short, His Buckshot already deals tons of single dmg no less for multi dmg and his passive makes up for the manacost along side with his mechanics.

Concerning Armor Pen, It sure is important to get armor pen for tanks or anyone with armor. However, Graves is possible the most tanky marksmen in the champion roster. Knowing this, his counterpart AD enemy will probably have less armor than him. He doesn't need the extra armor pen as he has huge base damage, again if played correctly. And about the whole thing againts tanky champs, as Graves you shouldn't be focusing tanks anyways. His skill sets was designed to destroy and burst down lethal non-defensive champions. So you can always build armor pen with items anyways later on in the game

udunsonJan 31, 20141 votes

I'm definitely worried about lowering the range on graves. In lane it seems like some ADs have the range and poke to get you down, with a well timed cc from a support it can be game over for the carry. I'm open to any changes really, obviously it would be tested first. Even some reworks just don't go out at smoothly as planned, and end up getting scratched, or delayed severely.

evawinFeb 18, 20141 votes

Da bes idea evar. :U

But seriously, giving Armor Pen would really up Graves' gameplay, especially for an ADC.

LunaerisFeb 13, 2014

Honestly I don't see much need to rework Graves, yes he isn't god tier right now. I feel like Graves is fine as is. Perhaps some mana cost reductions are in order, but I for one find him extremely viable nowadays. Especially considering he can outburst Jinx lvl 2 if you choose Armor Pen runes of Life Steal runes. Reducing his range would make him go the way of Quinn Quinn (RIP Valor D:). His range is bad to begin with, and he would probably become unviable in bot lane if changed. He is played in the LCS right now, infrequently, but he was played recently. His team lost, but he was played.