League of Legends Guide: Top 10 Tips to Get Better at Graves

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League of Legends. Photo Courtesy of Riot Games. /

Graves is currently the best jungle champion in League of Legends. Here are ten tips to help you become a better Graves player.

Graves, the Outlaw, was rated as the best jungler in League of Legends in our latest tier list. With many players looking to abuse him for some free elo, here are 10 tips you should know that will make you a better Graves player.

These tips are taken from the Graves main subreddit, Challenger Graves players like Tarzaned, and the Summoners School subreddit. We’ve also looked at guides from other high elo junglers like our old pal Kingstix.

1. You Do More Damage the Closer You Are to the Target

The first interesting mechanic concerns Graves’s passive, New Destiny. Graves’ basic attacks consume ammunition that he must reload, but each auto attack he does sprays four pellets in a small cone. If Graves crits, the shot fires six pellets, but over a slightly wider cone.

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One mechanic that you need to know is that it is possible that you will miss with some of the pellets if you fire from maximum range, because of the cone-shaped auto. Missing a pellet means you lose that damage and if you are attacking a non-champion, you will not get the knockback if they’re only hit by one pellet. However, you can fix this by getting right up close and personal with your target to make sure you’re hitting them with all of your shot’s pellets, thus maximizing the damage dealt.

2. Use Walls to Your Advantage

Graves thrives in small jungle skirmishes because his damage abilities and auto-attacks are AoE, letting him hit multiple members when they’re not spread out. That spread that caused you to miss some enemies at long range now becomes an advantage as your shots will hit multiple enemies clumped together.

In addition, hitting a wall with your End of the Line actually makes it detonate faster. The round explodes after 2 seconds normally, but explodes after 0.25 seconds if it hits a structure or terrain. This means that hitting a wall with End of the Line will detonate it quicker and get that second burst of damage out quicker.

3. Master His Key Combo

One of the biggest tricks to getting good with Graves is learning to animation cancel. Because he has that reload mechanic and attack speed only affects how fast he reloads, there will be a lot of instances where it feels like you are kiting for a while waiting on that reload or for your next auto to come up.

However, you can animation cancel after auto-attacking with this combo:

Auto > Q > E > Auto (assuming you have two shells at the start of the combo)

This combo is crucial to getting the most damage out quickly and is great for both clearing your camps and in fights. You can also do the same combo with his ultimate instead of the Q.

There is also another combo that will let Graves auto once again even when he’s out of shells thanks to his E. To do so, you instantly E > Q after running out of rounds and this will let Graves attack even though he just ran out of shells. You’ll get one shell back for an extra attack and quick damage.

4. Keep Your True Grit Up

Graves’ E – Quickdraw is his single most important ability. Not only is it his only mobility tool and an auto-reset (more on that in a second), but it also has his second passive, True Grit.

True Grit grants Graves a stacking bonus armor, which can stack up to eight times up to 160 armor at max rank and stacks. You gain a stack of True Grit on using Quickdraw (two stacks if you dash towards an enemy) and it lasts for four seconds.

That will probably seem like not a lot of time, given that at the first rank Quickdraw’s cooldown is 16 seconds. However, the cooldown is reduced 0.5 seconds per pellet that hits an enemy. As you recall, Graves fires four pellets minimum, meaning each auto can potentially reduce the cooldown by two seconds.

Again, this is why hitting all your pellets is so important on Graves, because it lets you get Quickdraw up faster to keep that True Grit stacking. You should also know that auto-attacking monsters and enemy champions refreshes the duration of True Grit, but it does not apply more stacks.

5. Master the Auto Reset

So this isn’t really a “combo” but the Quickdraw/auto-reset is a key skill of his kit to master. Quickdraw is not only a dash and lets you stack Graves’s True Grit, it will also reload one shell every time you use it. This is why Graves players start with their Quickdraw, so they can get those extra attacks off an allow them to clear the jungle faster.

The combo is to auto > E > auto. This lets you get off two autos while only losing a single shell (technically you reloaded and fired another round, but you get the idea). This combo lets you also kite the camp (because you will knock the minions away and be dashing away from them) and stack your True Grit to reduce the incoming damage you take from the monsters.

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