With the champion spotlight finally out for League of Legends‘s upcoming new ranged AD champion, Lucian, we can get a more clear understanding of how he will actually play than his reveal announcement showed us. He looks to be capable of thoroughly dominating the laning phase in the right hands, while being fairly forgettable in those less-skilled. Here are a few ideas to maximize his potential early on.
Always Watch the Minions
This is basic stuff for any champion, but for Lucian is even more important for a very important reason. Every ranged AD needs to watch where minions are defensively. Keeping a minion between yourself and an enemy Thresh or Blitzcrank can easily be life or death. Lucian, however, has something in common with Miss Fortune: they can both use a minion to hit much farther with their q than they can auto-attack.
Piercing Light is not quite as tricky as Double Up, but it is also more reliable. Target a minion between you and the foe and as long as they do not react in the half-second they have to see Lucian start the animation, it is guaranteed to hit.
This is something Lucian players must always be aware of.
By watching the enemy’s minions and knowing how long the animation on Piercing Light takes and how far it reaches, you can gain both poke and fighting potential that is amplified far beyond what Lucian’s auto-attack range would indicate. Also be sure not to forget his next auto-attack after using the ability with fire twice, so use it to harass/fight harder or to last-hit more securely after a bit of harassment.
Practice Aiming the Ult
This is worth playing a couple of bot games to get down right. Lucian’s ult has tremendous damage potential, but the damage is spread over time and concentrated into a very narrow area. Even worse than the small area is the inability to redirect it once started, meaning it is extremely possible to start the ability and almost immediately have to cancel it, effectively wasting the ult itself.
As with the game itself, positioning is absolutely key for this ability more than any other of Lucian’s kit. Practice aiming it to enable Lucian to pour the fire into combat without having to get too close to ensure a hit. It is better to hit anyone than to chase a specific target close enough to get caught. The spotlight shows a decent example while chasing Leona, but chasing in the jungle is often simple to aim. It is the more open engagements that will require care.
And speaking of simple…
Learn the Simple Stuff First
In the champion spotlight they show off how Lucian can use his ult to refresh the cooldown on Relentless Pursuit by activating it before ignite finishes killing someone. While such is definitely an extremely effective use of the ability if it prevents Lucian from dying, it is also extremely specific regarding the circumstances under which it would be a viable tactic to attempt, requiring an instinctive understanding of Lucian as a champion, what his abilities do, and of the state of the game itself.
If in the example shown in the spotlight the opposing team’s support had been someone with a shield ready to cast, such as Lulu or Janna, the ignite could have been stopped and Relentless Pursuit would not have refreshed, thereby almost certainly wasting the ult given its limited field of fire.
Lucian has a lot of abilities that can play off of each other, but that also gives him a seductive complexity that takes much longer to master than the simplicity of each individual ability would indicate. Learn the individual abilities before you start trying to apply them in more complicated synergies.
Above all, have fun.
Lucian is new, exciting, and has an undeniable style to him. Pick him up and take him for a spin, maybe we will get a chance to show each other a few tricks on the Fields of Justice.
