Ezreal
[About Me]
My name is Victor and my ingame name is Orchids. I am a gold division I player
and I play with platinum and diamond players, meaning I have a good
understanding of how this game works and how the meta functions. I also
theorycraft a lot and spend a lot of time teaching summoners in the
/r/summmonerschool subreddit.
I have been playing Ezreal since season 2 when he was considered “trash.” Now,
he is considered one of the top picks in the game, and though his popularity
has fallen due to recent nerfs, he remains a strong champion for solo-queue
where his ability to snowball unbelievably out of control makes him a great
champion for soloqueue.
This guide is written for Level 30s with Tier 1 runes and a full mastery page.
I assume you already have a basic understanding of how this game works.
[Champion overview]
Ezreal used to be considered weak because of his late game power and short
autoattack range meant that he was easily outscaled. However, there are
several caveats to this.
First, the League of Legends meta has shifted towards early game dominance and
taking towers. Winning your lane hard and getting kills, then pushing down
towers as fast as possible has become a new, popular, strategy as favored by
the Koreans and relies on a strong early game. Ezreal’s early and midgame is
where he shines allowing him to snowball and take these towers early makes him
a good choice. His free escape mechanism forgives many mistakes and he
extremely fun to play. Finally, season 3 also gave Ezreal several buffs to
itemization with many items that proc on-hit effects.
Play Ezreal if you like
-mobile AD carries with high amounts of skillshots
-an ultimate that can snipe people off the map
-a snowballing champion that can rack up kills with an aggressive support
-slowing your enemies every 3 seconds with phage or frozen gauntlet
[Skills]
Passive: Rising Spell Force
INNATE: Hitting a target with any of Ezreal's abilities increases his own
attack speed by 10%. This effect lasts for 5 seconds and stacks up to 5 times.
Explanation: This is why Ezreal can get by without building berserker greaves
for a little bit. It’s also why you need to practice landing skillshots with
Ezreal. Every time you hit someone with a skillshot, your attack speed
increases, until it hits a 50% atk speed increase with 5 stacks. You can also
use your ultimate to proc all 5 stacks at the beginning of a teamfight, making
this a highly important passive to master.
Q: Mystic Shot
RANGE: 1100
COOLDOWN: 6 / 5.5 / 5 / 4.5 / 4
COST: 28 / 31 / 34 / 37 / 40 mana
This skill NEEDS to be smartcasted. Smartcasting is where you press q and it
moves in the direction of your cursor without having to click. It takes a bit
of practice, but you’ll see your damage improve significantly, as that one
second it takes to not click or click can save your life or get that kill.
This is an amazing skill for laning. Landing a few of these can instantly
force your opponent out of the lane. It has a long range and high damage –
it’s difficult for your opponent to respond and you can slowly whittle down
their HP over time. You can also use it to reduce the cooldown on your E. By
spamming it, you’ll have arcane shift up earlier. Just be careful, because it
costs a bit of mana, so make every shot count.
W: Essence Flux
RANGE: 900COOLDOWN: 9
COST: 50 / 60 / 70 / 80 / 90 mana
ACTIVE: Ezreal fires a wave of energy in a line. Any enemy champions it passes
through are dealt magic damage, while any allied champions it travels through
have their attack speed increased for 5 seconds.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 70 / 115 / 160 / 205 / 250 (+ 80% AP)
ATTACK SPEED BONUS: 20% / 25% / 30% / 35% / 40%
I put one point in this at level 4 just to have it, but it’s really not that
useful until teamfights. In team fights, you want to hit as many teammates as
possible with this skill to give yourself the atkspeed buff from your passive
as well as boosting your teammates attack speeds. This skill used to be pretty
OP because it’d reduce your opponent’s atkspeed but it doesn’t do that anymore
Arcane Shift
COOLDOWN: 19 / 17 / 15 / 13 / 11
COST: 90 mana
ACTIVE: Ezreal instantly teleports to a nearby target location and fires a
homing arrow at the nearest enemy unit, dealing magic damage to it.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 75 / 125 / 175 / 225 / 275 (+ 75% AP)
TELEPORT RANGE: 475
ARROW RANGE: 750
This is Ezreal’s free flash. Combined with summoner flash, it means you have
potentially two escapes that you can use per fight. It’s pretty short, with an
11 second CD, but that seems forever in fights. As an AD Carry, you have to be
careful when using it. If you use it too aggressively, you can easily get
caught and die. Ezreal is very squishy. In general, I tend to use it to escape
from bruisers who try to jump and burst me down.
Trueshot Barrage
RANGE: Global
COOLDOWN: 80COST: 100 mana
ACTIVE: Ezreal charges for 1 second to fire a powerful broad energy missile
that travels in a line across the whole map, dealing magic damage to each
enemy unit it passes through. It will deal 10% less damage for each subsequent
target hit, down to a minimum of 30% damage dealt.
MAGIC DAMAGE: 350 / 500 / 650 (+ 100% Bonus AD) (+ 90% AP)
MINIMUM MAGIC DAMAGE: 105 / 150 / 195 (+ 30% Bonus AD) (+ 27% AP)
PROJECTILE SPEED: 2000
It’s a strong ult that you should use in two situations. The first is when you
start a team fight. You should immediately ult in order to get five stacks on
Ezreal’s passive. The second is to snipe low hp enemies. Try to aim behind
enemy towers because people usually aren’t paying attention when they recall
and you can pick up some easy kills that way.
Skill Order
Q, E, Q, W, Q, R, Q, E, Q, E, R, E, E, W, W, R, W, W
The justification for taking W at level 4 is if you can hit your jungler and
support with W, you’ll get a 20% atk speed buff to start off ganks, making it
pretty useful. Or, you can hold off taking the W until later. It’s completely
up to you. Maxing Q is important for the poke in lane and we max E next to get
the cooldown lower. Maxing R is obvious, because your ultimate is extremely
strong.
[Runes, masteries, summoners]
Summoner Spells:
FLASH
Flash is OP. Enough said. Having two flashes lets you play highly aggressively
( flash twice to get in range to kill low hp enemies), or defensive (escape
from the Irelia jumping on you, dodge skillshots, etc)
IGNITE:
Ignite is good for highly burst lanes and for countering healers like Soraka.
Get it if you’re going to be highly aggressive or if you don’t need cleanse or
barrier.
CLEANSE:
Always pick up cleanse if they have two stuns or more. The free CC cleanse is
OP and helps you escape from really bad situations. I will always pick up
cleanse if bot lane is a taric or someone with a targeted stun. It is great
for escaping from ganks.
EXHAUST:
Exhaust is great if they have multiple divers like Vi or Jarvan. If you’re
worried about assassins like Akali or Kha’six bursting you down, grab exhaust
and drop it on them and laugh. Then kill them.
BARRIER:
My new favorite spell, barrier creates a small shield that can easily bait
your enemies into diving you or staying too long to fight. Make sure not to
activate it too late because the duration is short and if you don’t use it
early enough, you might die. It’s great against burst comps or lanes like
graves that do a high amount of damage in a short time.
ALL OTHER SUMMONER SPELLS ARE BAD AND SHOULD NOT BE TAKEN
[Runes]
Quints
For Quintessences, you’re going to want one of two things. Attack damage
Quints foe easier last hitting or Life-steal quints for more sustain in lane.
Life steal quints are personally, what I prefer, since you can trade with the
opponent AD carry then heal right back up.
Marks
AD marks, flat AD. Ezreal scales so much off flat AD, that there is really n
reason not to use these.
Yellows
Armor Seals – these are not an option. When trading with an enemy AD, you need
to reduce the damage they do through armor seals. Otherwise you’ll lose every
trade. Ezreal doesn’t need mana regen yellows or anything else because if you
play correctly, you won’t run out of mana.
Blues
Two options – scaling magic resist or flat magic. I’d take flat magic if you
anticipate a bot lane with a high amount of burst magic damage such as lulu or
their mid likes to roam. If they have a late game AP carry, I would take
scaling magic resist instead.
MASTERIES:
Masteries really aren’t that important. They’re really up to summoner
preference. However, on Ezreal, I tend to go 21/0/9. The 9 points in utility
go to
-improved summoner flash: flash on a lower cd is good
-3 in meditation – Ezreal has mana issues, this fixes them
-3 in mastermind – more cd on flash good
-1 in improved recall – need it for the last point
-1 in runic affinity – having longer red and buff times is good
For the offense tree, just pick the AD masteries and the ones that sound good
to you. I tend to put
-4 in Fury for attack speed
-4 deadliness – atk damage is good
-1 in weapon expertise – armor pen is amazing
-3 in havoc – incrases your damage
-2 in lethality – crit strike damage good
-1 in frenzy – atk speed is good
-3 in armor sunder – armor penetration is one of the best stats in the game
-1 in executioner – the damage it gives is amazing
[Items]
NOTE! For itemization, don’t treat my word as set in stone. If you’re ahead,
feel free to build all offensive items. However if you’re behind, think about
what kind of damage they have that is owning you. AP carry getting fed? Think
about getting that MR defensive item early. Bruiser killing your team? Maybe a
chain vest is good. Don’t forget that you don’t have to build everything into
something at once. You can buy the negatron cloak and just sit on it until
later, if you need the magic resistance immediately. Better that you do less
damage because you bought some resists, than zero damage at all because you’re
dead.
STARTING ITEMS:
Boots, x3 HP potion
It’s ok if you need sustain or are facing another Ezreal in a mirror match.
It’s not that great anymore because you can’t win trades against other AD
carries and it’s a really safe build, but Ezreal is an aggressive champion. I
wouldn’t recommend it.
Cloth Armor, x5 HP potions.
Start this way if you hate playing against Caitlyn. It helps heal back some of
the ridiculous harass that she has and the cloth armor means that you take a
lot less damage from her, since she’s all AD.
Longsword, x2 HP potions
A more popular start these days. It’s a quick rush into a lifesteal scepter,
which also gives a pretty big damage bonus at level 1 with 2 hp for healing up
harass.
Doran’s blade
My favorite start, I use this on almost every AD carry. It requires you to
know the limits of your champion though, because if you take too much damage,
you’ll automatically lose lane, since you don’t have potions. If you run this
start with life steal quints you should be fine.
[CORE]
Berserker Greaves
-best option for Ezreal. He needs attack speed especially after all his attack
speed nerfs
Bloodthirster
-No doubt about it, this is THE best item for AD Ezreal. All your skills scale
off attack damage and bloodthirster give you a HUGE amount of lifesteal. I
usually don't recall from lane until I can get my BF sword. BT is the first
big item I usually get on Ezreal.
Statik Shiv
-This item is amazing because it boosts your crit chance, procs with your q,
and shoots lightning bolts. Every time it gets a hundred stacks (it gets
stacks when you move or attack or use a skill) it shoots out a bolt of
lightning THAT CAN CRIT. The reason that this item is so amazing on Ezreal is
that when your q lands, it also hits them with the lightning. You should buy
the avarice blade part first, since it’s a GP/5 item, then finish the zeal and
buy Shiv.
Iceborne Gauntlet OR Trinity Force
-Trinity force used to be the must have item on Ezreal because of its slow,
but continually nerfs mean that it’s not as popular. However, it’s still good
and it has its place, but I don’t like it as much anymore. Ezreal benefits
from every stat, so if you’re ahead, feel free to pick it up. If you get
Tforce, get the phage component first.
-Iceborne Gauntlet is the new Tforce. What is does is slow every time you cast
a skill, and that slow is an onhit effect, meaning hitting someone with a Q
will slow them and people in a small area around them. This is THE best kiting
item for AD ezreal and will let you run circles around people.
-Last Whisper
No choice, you have to buy this item if you want to kill tanks. If they have a
lot of armor, this is the only way you can do damage to them.
[Optional]
Merc Treads
-get these if they have way too many stuns on their team and you need the
tenacity. Shouldn’t buy these in general though and never for just the magic
resistance.
-Black cleaver
A rather selfish buy, it’s OK if you want to pick up an early brutalizer to
snowball your lane, but I much prefer last whisper
-Blade of the ruined king
Get this item if they’re stacking HP. If they don’t have any armor but a lot
of HP, this item will SHRED them. It does a ton of damage and has a great
active that can peel bruisers off you since it does percent damage while
slowing them.
-Infinity Edge:
Probably your last offensive item. It’s pretty good, but requires good
positioning. Get it if you aren’t dying much/are murdering everything.
[Defensive Items]
Warmogs – Warmogs is really popular after the Koreans bought it on EVERYONE.
It’s good because it gives you a lot of HP to survive burst and allows you to
stay in fights longer lifestealing. The only problem is that you don’t have
any resistances, meaning mages pretty much one shot you.
Banshee’s Veil – A good item to buy if they have Blitzcrank or Karthus.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t really recommend it.
Quicksilver sash – my favorite defensive item. When activated, it’s a free
cleanse. You should get it if they have stuns or suppresses like Amumu or
Malzahar.
Guardian’s Angel – it’s ok after nerfs. Get it in conjunction with another
defensive item like warmogs and you’ll be unkillable, but your damage output
will suffer. If it’s reaching late game, as soon as the passive is down, I’d
sell the GA for something like Warmogs since the passive is really the only
reason to even have this item.
Zhonyas – HUEHUHEUHEUEHUH. No, but seriously, you can get this item if you
have a retarded team/they don’t peel for you. They have a malphite that dives
you and bursts you down every fight? Just use zhonyas and negate all their
burst. They might laugh at you for building AP, but it’s the active that’s
important. It also gives a nice amount of armor.
[Lanes]
[Tips against AD carries]
Varus – Pretty easy matchup. It’s easy to dodge his arrow. Just don’t let him
get three hits on you and proc his passive. Think of him as a Vayne with a
strong early game but weak late game.
Caitlyn – good caitlyn’s will make your life hell. She has the longest range
AD carry in the game and good caitlyns will autoattack you at max range
without giving you the ability to respond. Call for ganks and try to poke at
max range with Q.
Miss Fortune – never fight a miss fortune, her w stacks up quickly and allows
her to do a ton of damage early. Her ult is aoe and can catch you offguard so
keep that in mind when dueling. Poke her at maximum range with you q and
you’ll be fine, since her attack range is pretty short.
Graves – 525 attack range and he has to be up close and personal to do damage.
Our favorite type of ad carry to fight as Ezreal. Abuse your q and just poke
him out of lane. He’ll have a hard time responding.
Tristana – win early and win hard. Tristana can put out a ton of early game
damage so it’s a contest of skill. Make sure to dodge her W, or you’ll get
slowed. She has a surprising amount of burst so don’t get caught off guard.
Don’t let this monster carry get to late game or you’ll lose.
Vayne – Surprisingly, Vayne is extremely hard for Ezreal to kill. She’ll beat
you in trades with her passive W and proc for true damage. If you get
condemned against a wall, you’re probably dead. Be careful and whittle her
health down.
Ashe – one of the easiest matchups, spam a few Qs, and Ashe will be poked out
of lane. She has no mobility so ganking her is really easy too.
Sivir – Pretty easy to kite and harass. She’s really fast, so be careful, and
she has a spellshield that can block one of your qs. Otherwise, she’s nothing
special.
Corki – high mana costs, force him to Valkyrie once or twice and you’ve won
lane. You can abuse Corki horribly, especially after his nerfs.
Quinn – Quinn’s a real lane bully. Don’t let her proc her passive when it’s up,
and don’t get blinded. Otherwise, you’ll probably be able to win trades with
her pretty easily.
[Tips for support]
Taric – 90% of people in solo queue only know how to play taric. Knowing how
to deal with him is important. Take cleanse, and bait him into using stun. In
general, don’t bother cleansing if he stuns you too far away for their ad
carry to follow up. One way to separate good tarics from bad is when he stuns.
If he wastes his mana stunning you far away from his ad carry or under tower,
just let him waste mana. When fighting a taric and his carry, ignore the taric
because of his ridiculous armor and focus on killing their carry.
Zyra/Lux – Highly aggressive supports. They are great to have on your team and
hard to play against. You have to dodge their snares or they’ll follow up with
a full combo and since Ezreal is really squishy, it hurts. They’re pretty easy
to kill though, so if you hit them a few times, they’ll be forced to go back.
Nunu – Don’t get hit by snowball, it really hurts because Ez has low attack
speed to begin with. Spam Qs and he’ll be forced to leave lane or consume a
minion. He has no response to ranged harass. Ezreal doesn’t really work well
with Nunu since Nunu is a rather poor support after nerfs.
Nami – most important thing is to dodge her Q. It stuns you for a ridiculous
time but it’s also really slow. When playing with a name, when she buffs you,
be sure to harass. Her buff is really powerful.
Leona – The snowballing support champion. She goes in balls deep and is great
to have when playing as Ezreal. She has so much CC, it’s really easy to kill
other champions, so follow up on her intiations. When playing against her, you
need to take barrier or cleanse. Barrier to shield her burst or cleanse if
you’re bad at dodging stuns. If she doesn’t get kills in the laning phase,
she’s really easy to kill.
Soraka – extremely boring lane. You actually might have a difficult time if
you don’t pick a bursty support like taric or Leona. The important thing is to
kill her early before she can give her carry infinite mana and HP. Shut this
lane down and she’ll be useless for the rest of laning phase. Sorakas love
passive lanes. Don’t give her one.
Janna – Her AD shield is amazing and is great for poking. Her knockups can
keep aggressive supports like Leona off you and her W is great for slowing.
When playing against Janna, you can poke her out of lane pretty easily. Just
dodge the tornado and don’t forget her ult is a huge knockback and heal. Don’t
get knocked into tower.
[Stages of the game]
Goals as Ezreal
-Kill the opposing laner
-Get farmed up so you can carry the game
-Take the opposing tower as quickly as possible then push down towers around
the map
-secure dragons
[Early Game]
Focus on farming. There’s no point in getting kills, if your CS is terrible,
and they can still theoretically win lane if you focus too much on getting
kills. You should whittle down their HP through poking them with Q, then
finish them off. CS should not come at the expense of harass. Be sure to watch
your minimap to make sure you know where their jungler is.
[Midgame]
Help your team take objectives. Push down all the inner and outer towers. Take
dragons. BUY WARDS. Now’s the time you start grouping up and winning
teamfights, which will hopefully secure you your late game advantage.
[Lategame]
Buy a few wards. You are one of your teams primary sources of damage, if you
get caught, the game’s probably over. Try to engage after your tanks go in,
and stay close to them. Have them stun whoever is trying to kill you. Whether
you picked Trinity Force or Iceborn Gauntlet, ABUSE IT. Use it to kite
endlessly whoever is trying to kill you. Spam it in fights and keep your
stacks up on your ultimate. Realise that sometimes it’s better to hit a tank
and whittle down his hp, then suicide and try to kill their AD carry and just
die, which usually gets your team aced. Just try to do as much damage as
possible while staying alive. You can’t do damage if you’re dead.
[Conclusion]
Good luck wrecking people with Prodigal Explorer on the Fields of Justice! If
you liked this gudie, or want to drop an email, you can email me at orchids AT
thearsmagna.com
[Credits]
-http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/League_of_Legends_Wiki
-http://www.gamefaqs.com
-Akali guide for layout and formatting
