Hey! Guess what! During the first levels 1 through 7 Graves' main damage comes from *GASP!* His abilities! Who knew!

From levels 7 through 14 his Abilities start to see a huge decline. His Q does not scale with AD, obviously, and his R does not either. During this time he is sort of 'meh' in the sense that yeah, he can still use Q and R to do damage, but he must, MUST supplement the damage with Quickdraw. He dashes in, uses Q and R for his 'damage' and then has to either hope that A.) His team CC's the person he is attacking, or B.) The enemy does not look at him. If they do? BOOM Dead.

Now 14 through 18? Hooo boy. If the game has gone on this long Graves is no longer viable in the way he needs or is shown to play. He has to operate more like an Assassin. He does not carry, he does not do damage with his auto attacks OR his abilities unless the game gods have been kind and someone on bottom thought "Hey, Graves is weak up close! I'm going to try and get in his face EVERY SINGLE TIME."

He relies on his steroid to attack as fast as humanly possible. Only problem is, unlike other champs who build huge amounts of attack speed and are AD carries, Graves does not have a reliable way of getting out of battle.

What? You say he has his dash? Sure at level 18 with a full item build you can probably attack fast enough to get his dash on a 5 second cooldown as long as you are shooting, but that's still dashing in, potentially getting nuked just as fast as any squishy AD in melee, and still have to get out without being CC'd hopefully.

School'd

Both Q and R scale with AD.

His abilities scale with AD and Armour Pen his damage is the same as any other AD carry with the same build if not higher thanks to his attack speed boost.

Okay I accept that his attack speed boost also removes his escape but he can choose not to use this or choose not to use this after the 5 or so seconds when it comes off cool down or he could simply use the ton of movement speed from phantom dancer to kite.

I really hope you were trolling

It's his theme. High burst for getting into close range.
It's hardly broken.

If he stayed far away, his Q is weaker, and his R is easier to dodge.




Balanced.

Read his post right after posting. I really hope he's trolling too...

Graves burst is nice.

Not nearly caster/assassin levels.

His DPS is pretty good. His range is low and he's got to be in a much more dangerous position to use it.

Very, VERY, simple.

I completely agree with the OP. I'm not sure why some people aren't seeing it.

He has major burst potential and huge utility. He has just so many little things at his disposal. They really add up

His ult alone deals an AOE 900 damage + 2.6 per bonus AD.
His Q deals a minimum of AOE 240 + 0.8 per bonus AD.

His passive is one of the best (if not THE best?) defensive steroid in the game.
His E has enough utility as a dash alone - but it also adds an 80% attack speed steroid at level 5.
His W would be fine with just a slow, just the vision block (this is insanely strong if used right), but it does both of these AND damage (yeah, the damage is small, but it's also completely unnecessarily awesome).

The point is this: he could do with much less and still be fine. If you don't think that's overpowered, then what is? He's not straight up broken, but he really does just get too much in his kit compared to others.

Oh, and whoever said his damage comes from his abilities early game and that they don't scale with AD... WTF is he smoking?

^ Twitch has more burst early, and better DPS late.

Okay, his abilities scale with AD, that doesn't mean he has any, ANY burst mid and late game. His Q and R do not hit well at all and his R is more useful if saved for any champs that do straggle away from the fight if his team has won.

That does not exclude the fact that his range in general was nerfed way too hard and given nothing to compensate for it. Most champs who are ranged AD have a bit of a gimmick to make up for it.

For example: Twitch has his stealth. Yeah it can be negated by oracles and potions, but those potions, for one, are not cheap. Same with Vayne but she also has a relatively short cooldown on her tumble and she has the ability to knockback champs that are on her tail.

Teemo has speed and blinding dart which, I may add, is FAAAR better than smokescreen. My god I'd take that in a heartbeat. He can also, if htey are stacked, slap down a minefield of shrooms between him and a chasing enemy (exaggerating I know).

Even some of these AD champs are sometimes called underpowered. Maybe some are, maybe some aren't, but Graves is severely lacking in the utility department with his range being nerfed.


This is true. If a graves stacks a lot of attack speed items he can effecitely get in and out of the fight a little easier. Will he be doing any damage? No, not at all. If his abilities scale off attack power, chances are he is giving up a lot of AD to have those two phantom dancers.

And I know a lot of people think his passive is awesome...but really it isn't. It really isn't. Even at level 18 it's just 30 armor and mr. He still has to build warmogs to be affective at all in terms of survivability and also would have to get atma's, which I heard that combination was nerfed so he took a hit there too.

I'll tell you this much: Graves' passive and his range were not what needed fixed. He was perfectly fine until they touched his range. That is what killed him.

And a massive, long-lasting AoE slow.

Also if you're having a problem with Graves early game just have a tanky DPS on bottom along with a laner that pushes hard as hell and your problem is solved.

Heimerdinger and his turrets will severely outclass Graves anyday, considering they fire faster and do just about as much damage as he does.

you've obviously never seen an AP annie! FTW!