Lucian the Purifier in season 6

Statistically Lucian has been appearing in every third game ever for about the last 4 months.
Let's find out the reason.

Lucian: The LoL S-tier Marksman, a guide by a challenger player

Summoner Spells

Flash
Flash
Heal
Heal
OR
Flash
Flash
Exhaust
Exhaust

Runes

Mark of Attack Damage
x9
Seal of Armor
x9
Glyph of Magic Resist
x9
Quintessence of Attack Speed
x3

Items

Starting items
Core
4th item and 5th item
Situational
example full build

Abilities

Lucian
Lucian
Lucian
Lucian
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18

MASTERIES

5/5
0/5
5/5
0/5
5/5
0/5
Ferocity: 18
0/5
5/5
5/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
Cunning: 12
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
0/5
Resolve: 0

INTRODUCTION

Hey everyone, To introduce myself, I am Eddard, I have been playing LoL since season 2 and I have been in master/challenger elo for around 3 years. My love for marksman started, when first joined League, I played Vayne exclusively up to level 30 and then picked it up other AD carry champions along the way. I peaked challenger in season 4 and 5 and currently in season 6, I already have a stable position in it. So enough about me, let’s get into, why you came here to learn a thing or two about Lucian.

If you want to master Lucian or any other champion then LoL coaching from Boosteria can be useful.

LUCIAN IN LoL: PROS AND CONS

I chose Lucian for my first Marksman guide as he, has a pretty average skill floor (the amount of skill needed to execute him properly) and a very high skill ceiling (the amount of skill needed to execute him perfectly. Lucian had 30+% pickrate among all elo’s since the season 6 marksman rework and is up to this point an S-tier Marksman (at the start of season 6 it has been Corki, Kalista, Lucian and Ezreal – but that has changed since Kalista got butchered at patch 6.6, Corki found his way into midlane and Lucian has a favorable match up against Ezreal)

Lucian guide season 6 by challenger

SO WHAT MAKES LUCIAN STRONG?

  1.  He has a very strong Laning phase; he can pair up with any support and beat most lanes. I will get into more detail on lane match ups later in the guide
  2.  Thanks to his critical strike and cooldown reduction build he doesn’t fall of later in the game (as he did in season 5) and he is strong in every stage of the game.
  3. After two items his passive-Lightslinger gives his dash about 7 second cooldown, and that scales down to 4 later in the game, that makes him able to kite frontline and engage on the backline if he sees the opening.
  4. Another plus for Lucian is his strong wave clear: his piercing light has a pretty short cooldown and he can also use his ultimate to make the enemy team scrap sieges.
  5. Fervor of Battle: the keystone for Lucian can be stacked really fast with his short cooldowns and Lightslinger passive.

NOW, ON OTHER HAND, WHAT ARE LUCIAN’S WEAK SIDES?

  1. 500 range, his short range is one of the downsides of Lucian, it forces him to be careful about his positioning
  2. Provides almost 0 utility for his team, Kalista has her ult knock-up, Sivir has her ultimate speed buff, Ezreal has his 2 second cooldown 30% slow field and Lucian has, well damage.
  3. This con is a part of the previous one; since Lucian doesn’t provide much utility he needs a lot of gold to get him going making him a pretty selfish marksman.

Okay, now, that we have covered what are the strong and weak parts of Lucian, but before even entering the rift we need to look at some pre-game settings.

 

SUMMONER SPELLS, MASTERIES & RUNES FOR LUCIAN

If you haven´t already, look at the start of the guide, where you can find summoner spells, masteries, runes.I will be talking about it here a bit more in-depth as well as discussing itemization.

  • So first up summoner spells, Flash is the most important spell in the game, it allows you to reposition and dodge enemy skillshots. There are few exceptions of champions that don’t take flash, but Lucian isn´t one of them. As for second spell that should be in 99% of the cases Heal. It has become Meta for marksman´s because of the fact that, they are in a duo lane and it offers defense for their support as well. If you are running a support like Janna or Soraka, they can also take the Heal allowing you to pick up Exhaust, but that needs to be discussed with your support.
  • For masteriesthe 18-12-0 page is pretty standard for most ad carries. The keystone is obviously Fervor of Battle as it is very strong at the moment, giving you up to 112 damage per auto at level 18. As I already said in What makes Lucian strong-he has a pretty easy time stacking it and that allows him to pump out a lot more damage earlier in the fight than the enemy marksman. Another viable choice of masteries is to go 18-0-12 taking recovery, tough skin, veteran’s scars and insight, combined with lucidity boots giving your flash a 225 second cooldown. I run this when the enemy team has a lot of assassins or crowd control.
  • Moving onto runesthe set above works for almost every ad carry including Lucian, another viable option is to go 5 mana regen or 5 attack speed blues.

Lucian runes masteries and runes season 6

 

LUCIAN’S ITEMIZATION IN SEASON 6

  • Starting items are pretty standard, I advise against starting cull. If you fight early in lane and go back with about 500-600 gold you can pick it up.
  • Core – the items Lucian wants to get every single game. With the marksman rework in preseason 6 Essence Reaver became a really strong item on Lucian, together with lucidity boots capping his 40% cooldown reduction. As Lucian is primarily a spell caster and not an attack speed reliant carry, he can really use it to have strong damage. You probably see Lucian´s in your games taking rapid-fire cannon or statik shiv, but from my experience Phantom dancer is an awesome item and I build it every game on him. Players don’t give much weight to being able to 1 on 1 the enemy marksman, as they want to preferably kite in teamfights, but make no mistake, if you are apart from the rest of your team a huge threat to the enemy marksman, it gives you a great advantage. And that’s what Phantom dancer does, it allows you to win a 1 on 1 in most cases and I strongly recommend picking it up.
  • What to get next? – Now you just finished your Essence reaver and Phantom dancer and picked up lucidity boots with it, what should be your next item? In my opinion, you have these 3 choices:
    • Infinity Edge – getting 250% damage crits and 70% crit chance is probably one of the deadliest item combos in the game. Providing you enough damage to duel almost anyone on the enemy team. It has some drawbacks of course, by the time you get the 3 major items, it’s probably around 27-29 minutes in the game and your team starts to siege and teamfight, meaning the lack of lifesteal can really hurt you, when getting poked down or getting chunked at the start of a team fight.
    • Bloodthirster gives you 75 attack damage and 20% lifesteal to sustain yourself through poke or a prolonged fight. Can’t go wrong.
    • Mercurial Scimitar – getting a defensive item early mostly cuts down your damage severely, but thankfully that isn´t the case with Mercurial. It gives same attack damage as BT and only 10% less lifesteal, while giving you the opportunity to get out of any cc or a ticking debuff. I get this item when facing champions like Lux, Zed or Leona.
    • 5th and 6th item – 5th item is pretty simple, as it is the one you didn’t chose (if you got Infinity Edge 3rd, get BT or MS and if you got BT or MS get Infinity Edge) As for the 6th that is just situational depending on the game, you could get Steraks Gage to deal with burst or one of the last whisper upgrades to shred tanks. Up to you.

Lucian item build season 6 itemization

 

LUCIAN IN LANING PHASE

Lucian is one of the strongest laners as of now, thanks to his low mana cost q and Lightslinger passive that allow him to do short trades. A really good tip, that improved my dps is to set a button for normal cast q (I think that you normally use smart cast) as you can then see the trajectory of your q and you can hit it easier. The basic trading combo should be AQ-A for short trades and Q-AA-E-AA-W-AA for longer ones. Basically try to weave an auto after every ability.

LUCIAN: LANE MATCH UPS

I will go through marksman matchups that you can encounter (I won´t include every marksman since some are seen very rarely). To each one of them I will include a few tips and levels (opportunities) when I think you should fight, or not-They are based on you both being even and are relative (Of course don’t try to fight 6 kills ahead enemy marksman).The matchup difficulties are lane only also.

Ezreal – Difficulty 2: One of the easiest matchups, Ezreal has a problem with fast clearing waves which means you can always push him in and deny a lot of farm, this grows even bigger when he gets tear and you get BF (or 2 longswords). You also should have a pretty easy time dodging his 3 skillshots with low-CD dash. Levels to try and fight him in: 1-18 

Vayne – Difficulty 3: It’s pretty easy match up as same as Ezreal, Vayne can be pushed in pretty easily. Bork (item she rushes 95% of games) is also build very clunky- you will have BF and swords to her cutlass. If she gets a few kills or the game got to 30+ minutes, be careful of fighting her, after all she is one of the best duelist’s in the game. Levels to try and fight her: 1-10 then depending on how strong she is but I advise against.

Jhin – Difficulty 5: He is a bit tricky due to his strong pick off abilities, and insane late game damage. He mainly wants to trade in average trades-you cannot allow him that. Either do super short trades or super long ones; he can’t win a long fight since he has to reload and he can´t win short ones, because your burst is bigger. Also try to not stand near low health creeps, as you could find yourself chunked by a grenade. Another tip is for his ultimate, if you can, always stop and go either to left or right, don’t go in a line. Levels to fight him in- 1-13 then you can still 1v1 him but be careful of him getting away and w into ult

Corki Difficulty 4: This matchup is pretty simple early on, both you and him operate on burst trades and yours is stronger until he gets a couple of items. Then he becomes a problem, his abilities combined with thunderlord deal a bunch of damage and you will have tough time returning it. Try to get a lead early and also try to signal your jungler or support when Corki used his w, it has a 26 sec cooldown rank 1.Levels to fight him : 1-8, then 15-18

Kog’Maw Difficulty 2: Rage blade build path is very clunky, same with Vayne and Ezreal you can push him in early and acquire a decent cs lead. Kog maw also got nerfed in 6.5 so when he gets his items he isn´t as broken as he once was but I still would suggest you to not try to fight 1v1 when he gets 2 items.

Draven Difficulty 9: Probably the worst matchup for Lucian (Kalista was hard too, but she is nerfed now). His raw damage is just very hard to deal with, try to call for a gank early on, in my experience Draven players tend to get reckless when they don’t get an early kill. Making them really easy to gank. If you need to fight him anyway try to, poke with your ult before as he has no means of dodging it. Levels to fight him in: 15-18.

SUPPORTS THAT YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH AS LUCIAN

Almost every support can pair up with Lucian, as he is very versatile in his playstyle. If you aren’t sure about your playmaking skills as a support, go for a backline support like Janna or Soraka, they provide him buffs that allow him to go ham in lane and teamfights. On the other hand if you do trust your playmaking abilities, you can pick up Braum or Thresh and have a really strong combo in lane and good pick off potential.

SUPPORTS THAT YOU WANT TO PLAY AGAINST AS LUCIAN

Mostly champions with skillshots, that you can dodge-which depends on your ability to dodge and their ability to hit- Blitzcrank, Vel’Koz, Zyra, Bard or if you have a defensive support, then being against a weaker one. You have Janna, they have Nami. You have soraka, they have Sona.

SUPPORTS THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO PLAY AGAINST

Those are probably Tier 1 supports: Janna, Soraka, Braum, and Alistar.

LUCIAN IN TEAM FIGHT PHASE

Teamfighting with Lucian is not the hardest with his mobility but also not the easiest with his 500 range. As any other marksman you want to mainly focus on kiting back from the enemy team´s frontline. But as I mentioned already Lucian has a lot of burst and his short-CD escape, so he can dash into the backline and burst the enemy marksman or midlaner, but then if you dive in and get cc´ed and die, you sacrifice a lot of your team´s damage, the balance in defensive and offensive play in teamfights is something you need to able to see yourself.

CONCLUSION

Thanks to everyone that read my guide until the end, or just scrolled down and looked at the conclusion, I will be back with more Marksman guides. I also realize that it´s pretty long, but I hope you didn´t find it boring at times.

 

 

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3 COMMENTS

  1. DutchAttacks

    Lucian is so stylish champion, great champion design is the one of main reasons why i love league so much :)

  2. Fetva

    I have big problems playing against Draven, but it feels like it more depends on your support than on you when you are playing against him :o

  3. GorgeousLee

    Lucian is my favorite ADc ever. He is so cool, that i just can not stop playing as him. but the Sion. Sona or Janna is the real pain in the ass. They will do everything to ruin my game, and I just do not understand what to do with them. I could use a couple of tips from you.

    Thanks for your guide, I hope it will be updated with the current patches!

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