Riot has, yet again, overhauled crit and other ADC based items. Whilst this effects Graves a lot less than actual ADCs, it still effects him because he reguarly buys critical strike chance and can situationally go crit.

Stormrazor is now dead to rush as it doesn't give a 100% crit. Instead it's only bought after you purchase an energized zeal item like Rapid Firecannon or Statikk Shiv. For now I think the new Phantom Dancer is the best choice for Graves as a second or third item. If you choose to go further into crit you can buy Infinity Edge or Essence Reaver too now.

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Pros + Easy/Fast/Healthy first clear + Great early/mid game damage + Incredibly powerful burst + Very tanky if a fight drags on + Smokescreen is borderline broken + Easy to pick up and learn

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Cons - Short range - Item dependant vs Champs - Animation Cancels aren't easy - Passive takes getting used to - Once in a fight, hard to leave - Falls off late game

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Maxing R > Q > E > W is the only way you should max your abilities. Collateral Damage is self explanatory as you get it whenever you can like with every champion ult. End of the Line first because it's most of your damage, its AD ratio goes up with level making it even more important to max first. You max Quickdraw second because lowering its CD is very important for duelling but more importantly it increases the amount of resistances granted per dash. Smoke Screen last because it's utility and doesn't offer much for the early/midgame except the blind and the slight slow.

TAKE YOUR Quickdraw AT LEVEL 1. This is because in the jungle, an auto attack will deal similar damage to your Q at level 1/2. With the fact you'll be auto attacking a single monster (meaning Q won't have an AoE advantage) and that its cooldown will be lower than the Q you'll want this first. You'll also begin to stack your true grit from level 1, and if you clear the jungle properly you'll never drop a stack. There is no reason to ever not take E level 1 in the jungle. You'll always be starting at a buff and you'll always be auto attacking.

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		Ability Description
	New Destiny	12-Gauge: Each of Graves's basic attacks consumes 1 shell and sprays 4 pellets in a cone. Enemies hit take (70 - 100 (based on level)% AD physical damage) plus a third of that damage damage for every pellet that hit them beyond the first. Critical strikes spray 6 pellets over a 50% wider cone and deal 40% × (1 + bonus critical damage) AD additional physical damage. Graves's basic attacks deals 25 % reduced damage against turrets. If positioned properly Graves can hit multiple units with a single attack. Buckshot: Pellets stop at the first enemy unit or structure they hit, meaning Graves is not guaranteed to hit his primary target. Each pellet will apply on-hit effects but enemies will only be affected by them once per shell. Non-champion units hit by more than one pellet are knocked back. DOUBLE BARREL: Graves' shotgun, Destiny, holds up to 2 shells. After spending both shells or sitting on one for 4 seconds without attacking, Graves will take 2.079 seconds, reduced by 0.4% for every 1% bonus attack speed to reload with the fastest reload time being 1.22 seconds needing 104% bonus attack speed.

This passive seems a lot more complicated than it actually is. Graves can only auto attack twice before needing to reload, and his reload speed is based on his attack speed. His delay between firing both shots is also lowered by attack speed. When you attack a target Graves will fire in a cone, like a shotgun to deal a lot of extra damage if all the pellets hit. Crits are the same but more. Most importantly however is the Buckshot part of his passive, this is what lets him jungle. As all jungle monsters have a very low attack range you'll always be hitting at least 2 pellets onto them. This means that every attack will push them back. This allows Graves to attack and then move before his next shot to nearly NEVER get hit in the jungle. Plus with how much damage a 4 pellet shot can do, it makes his clear very good.

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		Ability Description
	End of the Line	Graves fires a round in the target direction that deals 45 / 60 / 75 / 90 / 105 (+100% bonus AD) physical damage to all enemies it passes through and leaves behind a powder trail. Cooldown: 13s/12s/11s/10s/0s Mana Cost: 60/65/70/75/80 After 2 seconds, or after 0.25 upon impacting with a structure or terrain, the round detonates dealing 85 / 115 / 145 / 175 / 205 (+ 40 / 70 / 100 / 130 / 160% bonus AD) physical damage to all enemies in a wide perpendicular area and in a reverse wave along the powder trail. If a unit is hit by both the inital round and the blowback from the detonated round they will take a total of 130 / 175 / 220 / 265 / 310 (+ 140 / 170 / 200 / 230 / 260% bonus AD) physical damage.

Basic straight line skillshot that deals pretty mediocre damage on the way out, and insane damage on the return for a combined damage total higher than a lot of rank 1 ults (including his own Collateral Damage. Your goal with this ability is to bounce it off of a wall to do it's damage in .25s for some insane burst. Gank a lane, hold onto this ability until they're by a wall and bounce it to guarantee the damage.

It's also great for waveclear if you need to hold a lane as minions won't dodge the second half of the ability allowing for low level/low AD back line clear. When jungling just throw it out after your first clear to one shot (nearly) most camps.

You should max this ability FIRST for its damage goes up with levels, and it does insane damage. It helps with your jungle clear, ultless ganks and everything.

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		Ability Description
	Smoke Screen	Graves fires a smoke canister at the target area, dealing 60 / 110 / 160 / 210 / 260 (+ 60% AP) magic damage to all nearby enemies, briefly (.5s) slowing them for 50% upon impact, and creating a cloud of smoke for 4 seconds that applies nearsight of outside the area to all enemies within. Cooldown: 26s/24s/22s/20s/18s Mana Cost: 70/75/80/85/90

His only utility skill, Graves gets one that's borderline OP. It has a strong slow that lasts a fraction of a second, long cooldown, high mana cost and low damage canister that applies one of the strongest status effects in the game for 4s.

Nearsight makes an enemy only be able to see 900 units around their character (which is very small) and everywhere else on the map (warded or have an ally there or not) is placed into the fog of war, even people attacking into the area.

The amount of disruption this skill offers is a game changing basic ability. I would rank it up there with Event Horizon and Parallel Convergence for game changing non-ults potential.

I always max this ability LAST as it the premier one point wonder. 2s CD and a higher mana cost on a spell where you only use once maybe twice a teamfight anyway, and only once ever in ganks.

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		Ability Description
	Quickdraw	Graves dashes in the target direction, resetting his attack timer, reloading one shell and gaining a stack of True Grit for 4 seconds, stacking up to 8 times. Dashing towards an enemy instantly grants 2 stacks of True Grit. Cooldown: 18s/17s/16s/15s/14s Mana cost: 40 Each pellet reduces Quickdraw's cooldown by 0.5 seconds upon impacting an enemy for up to 2s and 3s on a critical strike. TRUE GRIT: Graves gains 5 / 7.5 / 10 / 12.5 / 15 bonus armour for a maximum of 40 / 60 / 80 / 100 / 120 bonus armour. Attacks/Abilities versus non-minions will refresh the duration of True Grit.

This is what allows Graves to be able to become insanely tanky without resistance based items. He's the only ranged champion in the game that want's to get into melee range and this ability is what lets him do that. It's also what lets Graves skip out on Armour/MR runes as you'll nearly always be dashing around in the jungle and always dashing forwards towards enemies making you insanely tanky.

In the jungle you'll want to try and always keep your true grit stacks up for your first clear. In the "first clear" section of the guide, I cover how to keep your stacks the whole clear.

Always try to get an auto reset off, Graves's auto attacks deal an absurd amount of damage so getting an extra one before needing to reload will increase your DPS by a lot. It's also mandatory for the animation cancels.

With the nerf in 7.7, your biggest weakness is magic damage. I would suggest taking MR per level blues for this exact reason.

I max this ability SECOND. I always start with this skill at level 1 as stated above for the pre level 3 jungle clear, but maxing it second for the CD/Resists. Once you get some CDR+stay in a fight for longer than 5s you'll become really, really tanky.

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		Ability Description
	Collateral Damage	Graves fires an explosive shell in the target direction, dealing 250 / 400 / 550 (+ 150% bonus AD) physical damage to every non-champion enemy it passes through as well as the first enemy champion it collides with, while also being knocked back in the opposite direction. Cooldown: 100s/90s/80s. Mana cost: 100 After hitting a champion or reaching the end of its range the shell explodes, dealing 80% of its original damage in a cone.

Graves has one of the most satisfying ultimates in game thanks to the animation and the sound of the explosion. Aside from that, it deals some incredible damage in a large AoE. Very simple as well. Press ult into direction of victim, let someone else clean up the stain that was once a player.

Whilst the knockback is more annoying than helpful in a lot of cases it means you can use it to escape a bad situation when your Flash and Quickdraw are on CD. You can also cancel the knockback which I cover how to do in the combos section of the guide.

I max this ability 6/11/16 (whenever I can) like 95% of other ultimates in the game.

Fleet Footwork

Fleet Footwork has incredible synergy with Graves. Being able to heal dramatically in fights and gain extra mobility whilst doing so is incredibly underrated. It also has full effectiveness against jungle monsters making it very powerful if you take damage during a gank or skirmish, you can continue to farm your jungle in relative safety.

Triumph

Triumph is the only option here. Overheal is only good in lane with a healing support/high self sustain and Presence of Mind is important for mana hungry champions with game changing ultimates. Graves is neither of these making the heal and extra gold by far the most valuable

Eyeball Collection

Legend: Alacrity is the only option in this tier. Graves get dramatically better with some attack speed. This rune, the offence flex rune and the items you buy all make Graves attack so much smoother. There is never a situation where you would go one of the other options.

Coup De Grace

Whilst Last Stand can be useful thanks to the fact Graves takes a lot of damage, Coup de Grace will be more consistent overall making it the best choice. You should never take Cut Down as you regularly buy Black Cleaver and outlevel many champions making it a lot harder to gain the bonus damage.

Sorcery Absolute Focus Water Walking

Absolute Focus: With the change to Celerity you now only have 1 consistent option. Absolute Focus helps with your early jungle clear and makes your midgame significantly more powerful from the extra longsword or 2 woth of attack damage you get. Waterwalking: As a powerful control-esque jungler you are in a prime position to fight for neautral objectives like the scuttle crab, dragon or rift herald in the early/mid game. This rune is an absolute must for junglers like this and Graves is probably one of the best users of it.

Offence: Attack Speed +10%

Flex: Attack Damage +6

Defense: Health +15-90

As Graves you need the extra attack speed to make your first couple of clears feel better. If you don't take the attack speed and before you stack up some Legend: Alacrity it feels terrible waiting a long time between auto attacks. You also should only take the scaling health rune as you don't need armour thanks to Quickdraw and the extra magic resistance, whilst nice, can be purchased easily from items like Mercury's Treads and Hexdrinker.

Flash gives you an infinite number of possibilities thanks to sheer utility it provides. Offensive flash forward, defensive flash away, flash over skillshots, flash into skillshots for your team... There is nothing you can't do with Flash. The only downside this spell has is that it's got a long 5 minute cooldown. That being said, every champion will take it except people who can use Ghost like Hecarim or Olaf and champions that can get away with it based on their kit/playstyle ( Shaco is the only champ like this). You are not a Ghost user so you take Flash.

Smite is always taken because you're a jungler. You need it to buy the jungle items like Hunter's Machete and Skirmisher's Sabre - Warrior. Aside from the items you need to buy, it also gives you better clears (with healing) and killing big camps faster. It's also required to reliably get objective monsters like Baron/Dragon. If you don't take Smite and the enemy team has one, you will be at an insane disadvantage. You should ALWAYS take Smite if you're jungling.

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After the scuttle changes your priority has shifted from farming permanently to dueling with over neutral objectives. Usually you'll get a leash from your bot lane, then clear the wolf camp and then go to the top side scuttle crab. As you're Graves you can not only bully most opponents easily you also kill the scuttle incredible fast thanks to New Destiny removing it's defence buff.

That being said, if you have vision on the enemy jungle you can skip doing a scuttle early and simply invade or push them off their scuttle. There are some champions you cannot do this too (notably Pantheon) but most can't deal with your armour from Quickdraw and the damage from New Destiny. Ontop of both of those, you don't take damage from camps unlike most other junglers so odds are you'll have a health potion and flat health advantage.

After you take your scuttle I would suggest moving towards your red buff if you started blue on red side, or gromp if you started red on blue side. Slightly confusing I know but below is a picture of the rough clear you'll take colour coded by team. Keeep in mind, as I said before, keep your clears dynamic. You don't need to do the same clear every game and sometimes you'll get invaded level 1 or the enemy will start at one of your buffs. Just keep vision around you and you should be okay to make the correct judgement call.

Probably the most important part of the game for the junglers outside of deep vision and neutral objective control in the mid/late game. After your first full clear, you're level 3 and have full HP with 2 points in Q ready to go. Your first target is almost always going to be the top lane or the mid lane. This is because you usually always end in the topside jungle on both teams. Either the red side raptor camp or the blue side blue buff. If you're on red side make sure to walk below krugs/above the baron pit because the scuttle is most likely taken by the blue side jungler.

If there is no gank opportunities, you should then either do krugs + the camp you didn't do, or simply invade. Most champions have to run away from Graves in the early game because of the damage you deal and how tanky you are. Just make sure to keep your eyes glued to the minimap as you step into enemy territory, if the enemy team are missing from their lane you should immediately retreat unless your team is also coming. Graves is strong in the 1v1 early game, but a 2v1 or 3v1 will still kill you instantly.

It's really hard to put into a guide how to/when to gank and when to counter jungle so the most important thing to get used to is paying attention to the minimap when you're walking around/clearing the jungle. You're Graves. You won't die to a camp if it hits you 3-4 times whilst you add up the junglers CS and try to determine their pathing.

Same with counter-jungle threats. You're Graves. You can brute force a jungle fight simply by the fact you do a lot of damage and that you'll nearly always be full HP. Try to roam with your laners to get wards into the enemy jungler allowing you to more safely counter-jungle or simply track his movement.



I must emphasise to FARM YOUR JUNGLE. ON RESPAWN IF POSSIBLE.They take 1:40 to respawn. Or 100 seconds a camp. With how fast you clear the jungle with a Long Sword or two, you can seriously rake in XP/Gold faster than nearly every jungler. This also means you can contest their jungle camps for income but more importantly to put them behind. If you see a jungler have 12cs and gank your top lane with double buffs whilst you finish off the red buff, you should IMMEDIATELY run to the raptor camp and take it from them.

Counting did get changed in the pre-season mostly because of the new Legend runes and making jungle CS consistent (you could have a lead of 20 or so CS if you took all raptors and krugs, but have the same xp/gold as someone who only took gromps and wolves). However in the early game it's still possible.

Every camp is worth 4cs so if a jungler ganks a lane with double buffs and 12cs then odds are they took a scuttle ontop of their 2 buffs. Likewise, if they have 12cs but only a single buff then you can very easily contest the buff they didn't take. As soon as the enemy jungle appears on the map you should always have a glance at them and their score/cs to check for buffs/route and plan accordingly.

Midgame is where Graves does most of his champion killing. As he'll have an item or two, which really increases his damage. You'll still want to be clearing your jungle as much as possible to keep up with gold/farm (make sure to not let your laners take too many camps. One or 2 is fine, but you're a carry jungler.)

More importantly however you'll want to aggressively look for skirmishes that will end with giving you gold/exp and objectives. The best way to do this is to spam ping where you want to go. For example, the enemy Red Buff is spawing in 30s. You spam ping "on my way" to the buff and ping for assistance on your nearest ally. 9 times out of 10, they'll shove and come with you. Then, being Graves you can one shot the buff and deny a huge chunk of xp/gold/pressure from the enemy team.

The aim of the midgame is PRESSURE.Your goal is to create map pressure by killing, warding and being aggressive on objective. A good thing to do is take an enemy camp then immediately go to a lane and push it in and get a few hits on the tower. After 2-3 times you'll either have the tower or the enemy team will attempt to collapse. At this point, do the same tactic on a different lane. Repeat until all lanes are unsafe to farm for the enemy.

You should also apply counter-pressure. Letting an enemy team do this to you is a big problem as I'm sure in your games you've noticed one team groups and the other follows suit. With the second usually losing/behind. Try to break that cycle by forcing fights at neutral objectives (Drag/Rift herald/Baron) or by split pushing. You're Graves so you can most probably 1v1 any champion on the enemy team. There are exceptions, but even a Vayne can't duel you in the mid game because you one shot her and have too much damage reduction from redsmite + PD + Tabi or a mix of those 3.

Always try to look for kills as it's very important to stay ahead of the enemy team. You're a carry, you need gold and the best way to get gold is to show the enemy team your New Destiny.

This is 5-6 items, bot lane carries become actual champions and the bruisers/tanks no longer hurt much. (Much). It's Graves weakest time-frame in a match. This is simply because at a certain point it becomes difficult to one shot someone through lifesteal, heals, shields and peel. More over, you're VERY short ranged. Getting cosy in melee range is what you want, but good luck sticking to a 5 item Vayne before she turns you into a crossbow pincushion.

At this time, your big objectives are Baron, Inhibitors, Elder Dragon and towers. As a jungler, you'll be paying close attention to your Smite charges and always have one ready to go in case a neutral objective fight breaks out. Regularly ping your smite cooldown to let your allies know that you can/can't force a baron/elder or if you should just bait/fight.

Your job in late game fights is to deal massive damage but also soak aggro. You want to be the champion who goes in second behind a frontline in order to dive straight into the middle/backline where you'll hold a target in your aggro "taunt" until your other more glass cannon champions can finish off the fight. It's all about outmatching and outlasting here.

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Outmatching is basically picking favourable fights. You'll take those 4v5's where you're the 5. You'll prey on the squishy weak ADC who still can't deal with you. You'll bait the support into overextending for wards. You'll outmatch your enemy team. Creating a pick can win games almost single handedly. How many matches have been decided by the loser, not the victor? Be the one to spot the loser and calculate how to best pry that loss out of them.


When 2 even teams with solid vision control, or lack of, clash the victor is usually who can stay standing. Being Graves this is pretty much in his lore, but in the rift it's a very real way to win long matches where if you've crossed the point of being able to carry, simply not being broken by tilt/anger/frustration can coax a victory. It's also a great way to teamfight! Being the one to survive means you get to delay the loss, or push the victory. At this point in the game you can win if you're the last man standing simply by how fast you push/take towers.

Don't let this fool you though, as it's your team that needs to outlast as well. Being the last man standing on your team, when 4 of them are alive isn't going to cut it. Take the hook for the bad Lucian. Flash for the ult KS on the Vayne JUST to make sure she can't get split second healed. Be the one that keeps your team together until the very end.

I've won countless games simply by being the one in control. Graves is designed from the ground up to be in control throughout the game. Whilst you can't easily straight up kill someone at this point in the game, you still have enough damage to always be a very real carry-like threat.

So in summary, Graves is an early-mid game carry jungler whom is very tanky and has insane burst at the cost of any real CC and the ability to carry when late game comes around (unless you outmatch and outlast). Right now Graves is pretty much the best jungler in the game. This is because most meta laners have CC, but also because power farming whilst staying healthy is the way the jungle works right now. Lee Sin, Warwick, Rengar, Elise and Gragas all fit this bill. Graves has the best early clear out of them all combined, and has the most AD damage of them all as well. Not to mention he's badass.

Headers: Janitsu. His stuff is a lot nicer than anything I could make artistically.

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ATM there is only one person, because this guide is built from the ground up by myself. That being said, edits/changes can always be added to here.

Here is a link to the Patreon.Again I'll link to it and again I'll emphasise it's 500% optional. If you like my stuff and want to help me out, then I would appreciate any amount of money.