Culling Wins with Lucian in Season 6

From playing Ashe to Lucian

In Season 5 I made it no secret that I was an advocate of playing Ashe and I have learned a great deal from primarily playing Ashe and marksman and my main role. Transitioning into Season 6, I found that my positioning had improved a great deal as well as my skill shot awareness, possible side effects from playing an immobile carry in a meta that utilized a lot of aoe stuns and initiations.

The biggest reason why I began to move away from playing Ashe this season is the change her to Ranger’s Focus (Q). In patch 5.22 Ashe could no longer generate stacks of Focus from her other abilities and could only gain stacks of Focus through auto attacks. This wasn’t so much of an issue in lane, as you could always have targets to generate stacks, but became quite an issue outside of the lane. Ashe could no longer generate stacks by poking enemies with Volley (W) or with her Enchanted Crystal Arrow (R ) and was forced to rely on auto attacks for stacks. This was a problem primarily due to two reasons: Ashe’s power spike with Ranger’s Focus was significantly prolonged in a team fight and Ashe players had to play closer to the danger if they wanted to reach Ranger’s Focus’ power spike earlier. In comparison many marksman have steroids they can use on demand which means that those marksman would have an higher damage output earlier in a fight than Ashe.

It was primarily due to the extra risk involved in Ashe’s interaction with Focus stacks that I moved onto playing Lucian. Lucian took a dip in popularity near the end of Season 4 as that was when many of his most significant nerfs were implemented. This included reduced damage to champions with Lightslinger (P) at early levels along with a decreased duration to use it, higher cooldown on his Culling (R ). Along with the introduction of Kalista, Lucian took quite to dip in popularity. But with the marksman overhaul in Season 6 Lucian became one of the marksman to stand out once more.

Lucian as a Marksman

Lucian is a marksman that utilizes his abilities to optimize his damage in short skirmishes and duels. With a strong early and mid game Lucian is able to bully his lane opponents but falls off a bit in the late game.

Lucian generally works well with all types of supports but his kit utilizes aggressive supports more than passive ones. Braum, Bard, Alistar, Nautilus, Leona, and Thresh are some supports that come to mind when considering supports for Lucian.

With a kit oriented around dealing large amounts of damage in a short amount of time and less than excellent late game scaling Lucian is a marksman that lives to deal damage to champions. This may sound odd as all marksman live to deal damage but Lucian is more or less bottlenecked into dealing the most damage to champions he possible can. Other marksman such as Tristana, Jinx, Ashe, or Kog’maw are champions that offer some form of utility to their team in the form of sieging towers or scaling well as the game time rolls on. Lucian on the other hand is designed to deal large amounts of damage and unlike Ashe, Lucian needs a steady stream of gold to remain more or less relevant in a game.

What can you learn from playing Lucian?

Similar to how my positioning as a marksman has benefitted from playing Ashe my aggressive timings have improved while playing Lucian. As stated before; Lucian is a champion that needs to deal meaningful damage to elevate his relevance in a game but due to having 500 range Lucian players need to pick and choose their timings carefully.

Lucian is an incredibly awareness intensive champion as his short range often puts him in an area where he is threatened by enemy abilities. Lucian players often have to stay on their toes as the margin for error is smaller than with other marksman. A marksman with long range such as Ashe has the luxury of being able to remain a health range away from the enemy while using her auto attacks. Shorter ranged marksman such as Sivir and Vayne have a spell shield and Tumble respectively. These abilities grant a window of time in which the marksman can evade or neutralize dangerous abilities. Unlike Vayne and Graves, Lucian gains no defensive benefits from dashing into the enemy which encourages players to make the most of their dashes.

With that said, Lucian is an incredibly mechanically intensive champion that requires focus and awareness to utilize but with more practice Lucian can elevate a player to a higher level of mechanical skill.

Builds

Image courtesy of LoLKing

Lucian’s two core items are Essence Reaver and Rapid Firecannon. The changes to Essence Reaver benefitted many caster marksman but perhaps fits Lucian most of all. Benefitting champions who utilize CDR, crits, and mana, Essence Reaver offers everything Lucian needs to perform in the mid and late game.

There are two ways to go about building Essence Reaver and RFC on Lucian; one build path is fairly straightforward as you complete Essence Reaver then RFC after which you will maximize Essence Reaver’s passive and obtain 30% CDR.

The second build path is to purchase BF Sword, Caulfield’s Hammer, and then work towards completing RFC. This build provides a smoother power curve and makes full use of Essence Reaver’s bonus CDR per crit chance passive once you have completed it. From research it seems that very few professional marksman players follow this build path but is a build path that Korean marksman players take in comparison to other regional marksman players. Completing Essence Reaver only provides it’s unique passives and no other bonus stats. Therefore this may be a more efficient build path that more players will take in the future.

Infinity Edge and Last Whisper’s two build paths are both items to always consider when playing a marksman. As always, Last Whisper should be built if the enemy team has large amounts of armor or parts of a larger armor item while Infinity Edge should be considered as a third item alternative if the enemy has less armor.

One of the last items marksman will typically buy are The Bloodthirster and Mercurial Scimitar. MC has been upgraded quite a bit to now provide lifesteal and more attack damage. In addition to its cleanse active this item is an all around solid purchase as it is well rounded in defense and offense against a team with CC or magic damage. Bloodthirster remains largely the same as it was last season providing the same amount of lifesteal and a shield that will build up as your lifesteal over heals you. This item is a great alternative to MC should the enemy have few CC threats but have higher amounts of damage.

 

Tips and Tricks

 

In a the above video Arthelon shows a few mechanic tips and tricks to maximize damage on Lucian such as auto attacking before casting Piercing Light (Q) and using Ardent Blaze (W) and immediately casting Relentless Pursuit (E). The W+E combo is stronger this season as RFC gives marksman bonus range. Along with the bonus movement speed from Ardent Blaze, Lucian can catch up to targets from quite a bit further away. Additionally Lucian can cast W+E into a RFC empowered auto attacking and transition to The Culling (R ).

What I have found to be the most difficult part about playing Lucian surrounds the usage of Relentless Pursuit. Used well it can give you an aggressive edge, overcoming range differences, used incorrectly and you leave yourself vulnerable to counterattacks. Therefore one should always consider the possibilities when dashing in to pursue an enemy. Similar to Vayne, Lucian can dash to the side of his target rather than straight into them. This type of diagonal movement places Lucian closer to his target but with more distance and time to react to any counter engagements.

I’ve come to find that a lot of Lucian’s success and failure lies upon the player’s ability to successful land Piercing Light. With a cast range slightly longer than his auto attack range and what is estimated to be 1100 unit beam, players who can reliably land Piercing Light can easily overwhelm the enemy with its power. Due to the way that the ability functions, when Lucian moves the direction of the beam can change drastically. A method I found to work is to pace adjacent to a minion while watching the enemies in lane. When they start their animation to last hit a minion you begin to cast Piercing Light.

Skill Order

Players unanimously max Piercing Light first and in most situations Relentless Pursuit is more valuable as it gives you the flexibility of a dash. Many players put their third point into a second level of Piercing Light as opposed to unlocking the use of Ardent Blaze. A second level of Piercing Light gives you 30 damage for an additional 5 mana whereas Ardent Blaze deals 60 damage for 50 mana. Choosing Ardent Blaze at level 3 means that you have a higher damage output overall while a second level in Piercing Light is more reliable as Ardent Blaze is difficult to land in certain situations with minions. Relentless Pursuit is maxed second for better per level ranks it has compared to Ardent Blaze.

Teamfights

 In SSG v SKT Bang opens a fight by Culling Crown's Viktor while remaining relatively safe. Image courtesy of OGN.

My personal take on playing Lucian in teamfights when the enemy has CC is to wait out an engage and until some ultimates have been used, during this down time I cast The Culling. Like Vayne, Lucian deals a lot of damage at close range but is also in range to take a lot of damage. Also similar to Vayne, Lucian has to deal damage to remain an effective member of the team but where he differs is that sometimes you have to throw self preservation out the window. If you can get close to a high value target and kill them quickly it can be worth the exchange of your own champion. In other words being too afraid to dive into a fight is worse than diving in and ending up short of your goals.

The use of Relentless Pursuit can be tricky to master as it has aggressive and defensive benefits in a teamfight. When dashing aggressively consider the usage of dashing in a diagonal direction to dash a short distance to the target as opposed to dashing forward.

 

Summary

This season looks to be a very solid season for Lucian as Essence Reaver and RFC help him round out this strengths. While playing Lucian can be challenging he is a stepping stone to a high level of marksman play that marksman players should strongly consider. Playing Lucian can help a player develop perceptions on aggression, local awareness, and how to maximize your DPS through aggressive positioning.

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