Graves Champion Course

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1.1. Hey in this video we will be covering the basic Graves combos that you will need to know to get started in your games. These are just beginner combos and we will be covering the more advanced maneuvers later on. We'll begin with all the flash combinations Graves has with his abilities. The point of these combos is simply to make the cast time faster, not to do anything different. For example, first up is Q flash. While you could flash first, and then press your Q, it is slower than this alternative. The point of this combo is to buffer your Q before you've flashed, so that it comes out the second you move forward. And that's the same premise that all the next flash combos will follow. Here's W flash. It's just slightly faster than pressing flash and then W. This will just give your opponents less reaction time to avoid your W and increase your chances of catching up as long as they get hit by W the slow applies instantly And then finally we have R flash. Again, it's just slightly faster than pressing flash and then R. This may seem completely useless here, but trust us that knowing R flash will come in handy as we get into the more advanced combos later into the course. Now there's 2 more basic combos you need to learn. These are just the correct sequences for your abilities to animation cancel one of them, so your combo comes out smoother. First is W into E. The wrong way of doing this is pressing your E and then W. Do you see how slow that is? Compare it to pressing your W first, and you can see why it's important to learn this You're effectively cancelling your W's animation with your E, allowing you to gap close and blind your opponents much faster than if you had done the alternative order. Along the same note as the previous combo, you should know that pressing Q first and then W is faster than pressing W and then Q. Not only is this combo faster to execute, but a good note to keep in mind is that your W's slow can often allow you to land the detonation part of your Q, even if you don't have a wall to proc it off of. So, use this whenever you're chasing down an opponent through a lane or something similar.

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2.1. Graves is a really versatile champions in terms of his build paths. He has 3 different options he can go. There's the bruiser, crit, and lethality variations each with their unique strengths and weaknesses. Starting with Bruiser Graves, you should go for more bruiser items if you're lacking much front line in your composition and the enemy team has a lot of melee champions. Items like Goredrinker, Black Cleaver, Death's Dance, Frozen Heart, Maw will allow you to tank a ton of damage, which will let you be the front liner that your team may need. The one weakness to the bruiser build is being kited easily. Avoid building these items if the enemy team has a lot of long-range champions that can keep their distance. Next up is crit Graves. This build variation is best when your team lacks consistent damage and your opponents are very beefy melee front liners. We'll talk about this more later into the course, but crit Graves can do a ton of DPS because his crits actually give him more pellets in his auto attacks. This means that critting enemy frontliners will absolutely shred them. Going items like shieldbow, phantom dancer into infinity edge and lord dominik's regard will make you one of the highest DPS champions in the game. However this build does have some big weaknesses. Much like the bruiser build, it is very susceptible to being kited and you're really squishy. Only do this when you really need a lot of damage in your team comp, and it's by far the rarest of the Graves builds. Finally, there's the Lethality build. As you've heard, Graves is really easy to be kited around by long-range champions. This build won't make that weakness go away, but it does give you a massive burst option so that if your opponents ever mess up in the slightest, you can one-shot them. The point of the lethality build is to be able to ambush your opponents with an auto Q R combo and instantly delete them. This is especially useful vs squishy ranged champions, and you should go this build whenever the enemy team doesn't have a lot of melee champions that would warrant one of the other 2 builds. As for the items, you'll go Eclipse, Edge of Night, Seryldas Grudge, Collector, and Ghostblade will be your best friends with this build. Although you can just go one build every single game as Graves and do completely fine, the more and more you play him, the more you'll realize how beneficial adapting your build every game is. Follow these simple rules and you'll be crushing games in no time.

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3.1. When you pick up Graves, you might be a little frustrated at how clunky you'll feel, compared to how expert Graves players look. Everything they do looks super smooth, meanwhile you're flailing around. Probably the biggest reason for this is that you need to learn how to use your E as an auto reset on Graves. Here's how quickly 2 auto attacks come out normally when you play Graves. Notice the big delay between each auto attack. However, look how much faster the 2nd auto attack comes out, if you use your E between the autos. That isn't the only thing making high elo Graves players play smoother than you though. They're also cancelling their initial autos animation with the E. To do this, you buffer an auto, and the exact moment that you do, you press E. This is because your auto attack registers immediately, and you don't actually need to let it complete its full animation. So to look super smooth, you do Auto, immediately E, into another auto. Now to really take this to the next level, you should know that you can actually shorten your E's dash too. Here's a regular one, and here's a shortened one. The point here is t hat the less time you spend dashing, the faster your damage will come out. So a really smooth Graves will look like this: Auto, shortened E, auto.

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4.1. As you all know by now, Graves has a shotgun and reload mechanic for his passive. To really understand how to maximize the damage you deal, let's break down how this actually works. When Graves auto attacks, he splits the auto into 4 different pellets. You will not get maximum damage, unless all 4 pellets land on the same target. The minimum range for that to happen, is around here. You don't have to be super close to your opponent, but you can't stand at max range auto attacking either. We will say that normally you shouldn't tunnel vision on getting max damage out of your pellets in fights. Position accordingly, based on the champions that you're up against. The only thing we want to say, is that you just shouldn't stand at max range all the time. Just like in real life, obviously a shotgun won't be as effective at a massive distance. As a quick side note, this is relevant for whenever you're taking an objective such as Dragon or tower. You kind of always want to stand really close to them, so you're getting max pellet damage. Another key thing to know about your passive is that whenever Graves crits, instead of just getting more damage, he actually gets 2 more pellets added to his auto attack, for a total of 6. Remember how we said that this is the max range you can stand at to get all your damage off? Well, if you build crit on Graves, then you need to stand a bit closer to your target, since the pellets are more spread out because there's more of them. That being said, the crit builds on Graves tend to be a bit squishier than normal. Don't tunnel vision on standing too close to maximize your DPS. It's jut something you should keep in mind if you're playing crit Graves and can afford to stand really close to your target.

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5.1. Graves Q is a massive part of his damage, but players often waste it mindlessly not getting both parts of the damage off Often you find yourself wasting Graves Q with opponent either walking out of range, or not getting hit by the detonation damage To avoid this mistake, you just need to be patient with your Q. Wait for them to use their gap closer, or for them to have run towards terrain, where you can angle your Q to instantly detonate on them. Here's an example of what we mean. Graves is coming in for a gank, and just auto attacks his target without using Q. Once the Akali uses E backwards, he continues to chase her, until she's next to a wall. And only then does he fire his Q to detonate and finish her off. Remember that you are plenty dangerous, even without your Q's damage. You should constantly be thinking about how to force your opponents to use their movement abilities without your Q. For example, smokescreening this Sylas forces him to E out of it, and now Graves can once again set it up his Q on a wall to detonate it.

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6.1. Graves W is one of the most valuable abilities he has at his disposal but is commonly tossed out without a second thought In this video we will be covering how to effectively use your W to zone the enemy When using Graves W because of its long cooldown you want to make sure you use it with purpose We can breakdown how to use graves W into a few crucial situations, disengages, zoning, and ganks Graves is a strong pick but you will not always be in the winning position, when this happens you will need to know how to effectively back away from an engaging opponent by utilizing your W properly. Here we can see Graves prematurely throwing out his W before being engaged upon, this made it easy for the enemy to break through the W and continue run him down A more effective use would be to wait until they are ontop of you and then utilize both your W auto and E in combination to not only blind the enemy but also reposition and runaway. Next we have using your W for zoning, these are more specific situations such as team fights or objective control but their purpose remains the same Here we can see a Graves doing dragon, as the enemy tries to enter the river he utilizes his W on the ramp entrance. This forced them to walk into river blind where he can threaten a turn or it forces them to sacrifice the dragon Now for the more common utilization of your W - ganking. Its important to remember that Graves W not only blinds but also slows. A common mistake newer Graves players make is just throwing it when their W is in range. Your W has a much higher range than all your other spells. However, this isn't actually helpful, since your opponent can just run out of it before you're even in range to hit them. You ideally want to wait until you're actually in range to auto attack and pressure with your Q, before throwing your W in most cases.

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7.1. One of the most powerful things about Graves as a jungler is his ability to traverse the map with his E. Hopping over walls to steal jungle camps and run his opponents around is a massive advantage in the jungle. There isn't really much to teach you about how to jump over walls. It's obviously pretty intuitive, but here are some crazy wall jumps you need to know. The first one is for both red buffs. To dash over this massive wall you want to walk right here. Once you're hugging the wall, E this way and you're now in the red pit. For the other red buff wall, you'll want to walk around here to where this tree trunk is. Then place your cursor here and voila. Now for the other big wall around the red buff, there's a specific spot you need to stand in to cross it. On this side, find the flowers growing around the middle of the wall. Position yourself in there, and then E towards the blast cone on the other side. And to get back it's the same thing. Just put your cursor on the flowers and you're good to go. As for the other curved wall for the blue side red buff, this one is a bit tricky. First, lock your camera by holding down space bar or whatever keybind you use. Then, click on this the bottom left part of this tree to approach the wall. Afterwards, find this crack on the other side of the wall and put your cursor slightly under it, and you'll cross the wall with E. The other side is fairly similar. Walk to the crack and put your cursor on the rightmost tree of the leaf to cross over.

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8.1. We all know the frustration of having your auto attacks be blocked by another enemy unit and denying a last hit or kill. In this video well be covering the unique auto interaction between Graves and wards, that will allow your auto attacks to pass through and hit both targets at once. Normally your buck shot pellets will be absorbed by the enemy unit standing closest to Graves denying your ability to auto anything behind that target With that said there is a unique interaction when clearing wards that allows your auto attacks to pass through and hit the target behind while also hitting the ward Its important to keep in mind that this only works when attacking the ward as the auto will apply both to the ward as well as the unit behind or in front of the ward In this way you can use the camp to body block while clearing the ward and dealing damage to the camp at the same time This is useful in situations such as maintaining an efficient clear while removing enemy vision from your jungle As well as the ability to both clear enemy vision while also hitting anyone that tries to contest your vision denial.

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9.1. Graves E has immense value if stacked and maintained in a fight. You can have a maximum of 8 stacks, the armor per stack increases depending on the number of points you have put into your E For example at level 13 you can gain 128 bonus armor which has a value of 2560 gold Now reaching max stacks to gain that immense gold value is the trick First its important to note that Graves actually gains 2 stacks when dashing toward enemy champions this mean you can gain max stacks within 4 casts of your E. Also each pellet graves lands on an enemy will reduce his E by 0.5s, If you land all 4 pellets each auto will reduce your E by 2 seconds Most importantly as you fight it will be hard to maintain autos onto enemy champions as they move around so you want to make sure you are auto attacking any surrounding non minion enemies, whether its dragon, baron, scuttle, or jungle camps to keep refreshing your stacks.

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10.1. As you've seen by now, Graves has some fairly weird interactions combining spells and auto attacks, so this following trick won't surprise you. Basically, Graves gets quicker when he's out of shots and needs to reload. Take a look at the normal cast time for Graves to E and then Q this dummy. Now compare that to when Graves does so while he's out of shots. It's noticeably faster right? This same concept applies to his other 2 abilities. Here's E then W taking forever And here's a reloading E+W going off instantly. Finally, there's E into R the slow version. And the reloading E into R going off much faster. Keep in mind that this isn't some super critical tactic you need to know to play Graves well. It's just an extra way of speeding up your combos, and you should often just consider saving your abilities until you're actually reloading your gun. Otherwise, don't think about this too much.

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11.1. When playing Graves, you'll really love the dash backwards on your ultimate when you actually want to dash backwards. But when you're trying to deal damage, this is the most annoying mechanic in the game. While there aren't very many ways to cancel the knock back, there are some ways to mitigate it, so that it's not as annoying for you during your damage rotation. First, let's take a look at how slow it usually is to incorporate your R into a rotation. Let's say you're auto attacking someone, but then you use R for damage. The problem is that it locks you out of doing anything. So, you have to wait for the full knock back before you can E towards your target again, potentially giving your opponent time to escape. There's a simple way around this. First, you auto attack. This is critical, for some reason it just won't work unless you auto attack first. Then, right after your auto, you do the same thing as before. You press R and then E. But, the auto attack cancels the R lockout, which means that you E forward at the same time. Notice the difference between the first combo, compared to this one. You're wasting no time at all with this mechanic, and you can keep auto attacking your opponent down. This works with your Q as well. It's the same concept as with your R. If you try to E and Q, look how slow that looks. But if you incorporate an auto attack first and then QE, it looks super fluid and you're not wasting any time with long and clunky animations. Combine these 2 concepts together, and you have a super fluid damage combo that you should absolutely practice getting down. Here's what it looks like without understanding this combo. Super slow, clunky and easy to outplay. Now here's what it looks like bringing all these concepts together: Start with auto, Q, R, E, and finish with auto. It looks super clean and gives your opponent zero time to react.

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12.1. Now normally you'd think you can't use your R to catch up to your opponents. It just knocks you back, so it has the opposite effect right? Well, this may sound really silly, but there are definitely times where you can actually ult backwards to catch up to your enemy. If your R damage isn't enough to finish someone off, and they're not in range, then just R backwards, foregoing your ultimate's damage. By doing so, you're actually in range and can finish your target off with auto attacks. After that, now there's also 2 R combos that can actually help you cut your opponent off from escaping. Let's say that you're running someone down, and they're running to the safety of their tower. You obviously don't want that, so you can do one of these 2 following combos. First is the R flash we mentioned in the basic combos. As you run them down, put your cursor behind yourself. Press R, and then flash past your opponent. This will make it so that you still hit them with your ultimate, but instead of knocking you backwards, it's instead putting you in between them and safety. The second combo to cutting someone off is actually similar to the one we talked about in the prior video. You can auto R E and ult behind your target. To do this, you need to be relatively close to your opponent, so that you actually reposition behind them. Also, make sure your cursor stays on them the entire time. Then all you need to do is auto RE quickly and it should work.

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13.1. Remember how we talked about builds earlier on into the course? Well, what build you chose will definitely impact how you'll choose to play out team fights. If you went the more bruiser oriented route, then you'll want to play like a bruiser. In fights, you'll want to get right into the mix of things and try to frontline for your team. You're incredibly tanky, so your main role is to absorb damage and just be nuisance making it difficult for enemy carries to deal damage. As for the crit build, this plays very much so like an ADC. Like we mentioned in the build guide, you are squishier with this build, meaning you need to be much more careful otherwise you can be punished easily. Play front to back, focusing the enemy frontline with your massive DPS. Finally, if you went the lethality route, then you'll be playing much more like an assassin. This build does the least amount of damage to front liners compared to the other Graves builds, however it can instantly delete enemy squishy champions with a quick auto Q and R combo. We'd suggest picking up a sweeper, trying to find brushes to camp in, and kill the enemy backliners as they try to go to the fight or catching them off-guard as the fight is ongoing.

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14.1. One of the simplest fundamentals for ganking on any jungler is to avoid going to lanes where the enemy laner has a huge wave stacked up. Despite being at a 1v2 disadvantage, your opponent can often turn the tide of the fight because of how powerful minions are in the early game. This concept is especially important when you play Graves. On top of waves being very dangerous in the early game, Graves has another disadvantage in the fact that his auto attacks get blocked by creeps. Without a doubt one of the most consistent mistakes we see from newer Graves players is not respecting minion waves enough when they gank. For example, as Graves comes in to help his Wukong, his ally died before he could really get into position to aid him. After that, Graves should immediately know just how easily Mordekaiser can outplay him with the wave. Look how Mordekaiser keeps using minions to block Graves' auto attacks. And it was especially important for Graves to evacuate this fight earlier, since another wave was coming to help Mordekaiser. Now it's completely hopeless for him, and he has to commit his flash to escape. Just keep minion waves in mind before and during your ganks. They can often completely negate your damage, and if you think that's a possibility, then you may as well just not pursue the gank, otherwise you'll waste a ton of time which you could have spent elsewhere.

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15.1. Keep in mind that Graves is balanced around having his reload mechanic. Although he has to reload between every 2 auto attacks, it goes without saying that those 2 shots really pump some damage which balances things out. Which brings us to one of the biggest issues we see from lower elo players. Your E may seem like it's just for repositioning, but trust us when we say you should think of it as a DPS ability first, and a movement ability second. Being able to reload and get an extra auto attack in your rotation is insanely valuable. You should not underestimate the damage that this can provide. However, it feels like lower elo players constantly mess this mechanic up. Either as they clear the jungle or as they gank lanes. It feels like they tunnel vision way too much on the dash part of the E, rather than the damage opportunity they're giving up. Just keep that in mind as you start playing Graves. Don't over-focus on the mobility of his E, but instead treat it as another damage ability. You can see in this clip the Graves wastes his dash losing out on the extra auto that would have killed Lulu and kept him alive

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16.1. A lot of players often tunnel vision on a certain style when they pick their jungle champion. For example, there's the Elise, Rammus, and Xin Zhao players who don't clear very many of their camps, and instead look to just gank as much as possible in order to build their leads. Then there's the junglers like Karthus, Master Yi, or Nidalee who tend to forego ganking in order to prioritize farming to get massive CS leads over their opponents to win that way. This is a very common problem we see among new Graves players. They either gank way too much or way too little. Keep in mind that Graves has below average ganks. He doesn't have a lot of upfront burst early on, and offers no CC to help set up a play. In no world should you ever play Graves as a ganking jungler. And although Graves may like farming and scaling, he clears significantly slower than most full-clear junglers. You will never keep up trying to out-pace a Shyvana, Karthus or Lilia in their clears for example. As you do not possess the ability to match power farmers and dont have the early game 1v1 potential of conqueror junglers, you want to instead look to utilize your laners and any early skirmishes they have to begin snowballing and gain a scaling advantage. As you can see this Challenger Graves does not look to afk farm or invade the losing jungle matchup but rather plays toward the skirmishes that breakout around the map. In the first few levels you can see him leaving his jungle and collapsing on bot before then rotating mid. This is how you want to kick start you lead and from there you can begin to take over the game. Make sure you balance these rotations and skirmishes with enough farming otherwise you will fall too far behind to be useful.As you do not possess the ability to match power farmers and dont have the early game 1v1 potential of conqueror junglers, you want to instead look to utilize your laners and any early skirmishes they have to begin snowballing and gain a scaling advantage.