I am a platinum player on EUNE (Drak3n) / (Mrobby) and I have a great understanding on how to play graves with low mechanical skills, if you think Graves is a hard champ you are very wrong. and you are probably copying the best players who are factually better than you and can carry hard with difficult to execute builds. therefore you must play a different (easy) gamestyle to make sure that you arent a 10,000 kilos anchor on your teams chances of winning (buy goredrinker, get PTA and buy defensive items to carry games easily). this guide will explain the basics and how to play graves and be effective even if you are terrible mechanically or if you get put behind every game.

Graves is a weird champ to pick up since he is a ranged fighter/marksmen hybrid, he was classified as a specialist back then since he is quite a niche champion with lots of different strengths and weaknesses. he is not necessarily hard if you understand how to play him though. but he is definitely rewarding and fun to play if you put time into him, the gap between the best Graves and average Graves players is massive. but dont get discouraged. even MY mechanics were enough to reach plat and lets be honest im not mechanically gifted. I just play to mitigate my weaknesses and enhance my strengths and stick to very basic fundamentals of jungling and laning.

Pros

-Easy to clear Jungle on him
-Strong early and mid game presence
-Tanky marksmen's hybrid
-No unwwinable matchups (only hard ones)

Cons

-Struggles hard when behind (less strugling with this build)
-Struggles sometimes against ranged champs
-Passive AA have short range and can get blocked by entities (minions, champs, pets etc..)

Runes for graves are pretty variable. but the major ones that i think are viable are these. most people think fleet is the best but i disagree, PTA is a far better rune in terms of scalling and damage, and therefore I exclusively take it over every other rune, its easy to use and combos well with your auto-attack/ability spamming nature of Gore-drinker Graves.

- Press the Attack: Arguably the best rune, the best chinese Graves abuse it hard

- Dark Harvest: If you need to one shot low health targets. great with lethality

- Electrocute: If you need reliable burst damage. pretty mediocre though

- Fleet Footwork: If you hate being kited too much, if you love cookie cutter runes.


Your scaling is good but some champs will be more useful in their roles if it comes to late game, so try to force plays if you get a lead. and if you don't you shouldn't stress or tilt about it since you can always win if enemy team throws harder than you did, (thats the secret rule of league, you cant lose if enemy team cant actually find a way to win)

Crit is hard nerfed, dont buy or base a build around it. only buy crit if you are selling items or are insanely ahead.


Other than that have fun playing bruiser PTA graves and winning easy games.

You are welcome.