League of Legends Column: Lucian overview

Hello! Trilby here, and I’ll be presenting the overview for the new champion for League of Legends: Lucian!

I’ve given him a fair amount of use since his release a week and a half ago, and now I’ll pass on what I’ve learned about this Purifier.

 

Skins and pricing:

To own Lucian, you’ll either need to cough up a hefty 6300 Influence Points, or 975 Riot Points. As with all new champions, Lucian comes with just one extra skin, to make yourself look that little bit more spruced up on the killing grounds. Lets take a look at what you can get:

Hired Gun Lucian: 975 RP.
Looks nice, no?

As far as I’ve seen on the skin, it changes the colour of your spells to a flaming orange/red. It’s nice enough to make you stand out as you’re running and gunning about the place.

Introduction and Spells overview:

Lucian is a run-and-gun sort of ADC, running in when you least expect him to, pumping you full of bullets, and then dashing back out again. He relies on a mix of his abilities and his basic attacks to assert his dominance over a lane. His spells have great harassing potential, but be wary, or you’ll be caught out without mana. He’s very mana-hungry if you’re not careful. I’ve seen him being used pretty decently in top-lane, but his strengths come to the fore when he’s paired up down bottom with the right support. We’ll cover that later, but first lets run through his spells.

• Passive: Lightslinger.
• After using one of Lucian’s abilities, his next auto attack within 6 seconds will strike twice. The second shot deals 50% of Lucian’s AD, but fully applies on-hit effects. Minions and monsters take full damage from the second shot. The second shot can critically strike.

Lucian’s passive can be pretty powerful, if used correctly. Every time you use an ability, it’s best to fire off a basic attack before using the next ability. Early on, if you shoot at the opposing ADC after popping off an ability, you’ll knock their health down a nice fair chunk. It’s a perfect harasser, and using it correctly will allow you to deal insane amounts of damage.

• Q: Piercing Light.
• ACTIVE: After a 0.35 second delay, Lucian fires a laser in the direction of the target enemy, dealing physical damage to all enemies in a 1100-unit line. Minions take 75% damage.

Lucian’s Q is a little tricky to use to begin with, but once you get used to it, catching the enemy with your beams of glory will be pretty easy. The problem with it is you need to target something to use it. The radius for selecting a target is about half the size of the actual beam length, so to hit an enemy who’s hovering out of your range you have to be clever. Try and position a minion between yourself and the enemy so the beam will clip them. (Don’t forget to follow up with your Passive to maximise your damage, if you can). Paired up with a support like Blitzcrank, it’ll have the enemy wavering in where they should be hiding. If they hide behind the minions, they’ll have your Q poking them, or if they stay to the side of a wave, they’ll be at risk of being grabbed.

• W: Ardent Blaze.
• ACTIVE: Lucian fires a shot that explodes in a cross pattern upon hitting an enemy or reaching the end of its path, dealing magic damage and marking enemies hit for 6 seconds.If Lucian damages a marked target with his basic attacks or abilities, he gains 40 movement speed for 2 seconds. This does not consume the mark.

Ardent Blaze is a skillshot ability, which is handy for both chasing your enemies, and running away. It’s also a decent spell for checking suspicious bushes as it provides you with a very brief burst of vision in the spot it lands, so you could quite easily check Dragon or Baron from over their respective walls if you haven’t got a ward down in those regions. Ardent Blaze’s “Star” pattern will always form a plus symbol, with the bottom spoke pointing towards where the spell was fired upon, so to hit a champion, you either have to fire the spell straight at them, or position yourself and shoot to the side of them, so one of the side-spokes will catch them instead. Take note that you can gain the speed buff from any form of damage from your basic attacks or your abilities. This means that if you’re trying to run away from a sticky situation, you can hit an enemy with Ardent Blaze, and hit them, gaining two seconds of speed. Each time you hit the enemy with a shot, it’ll refresh your boost, so you can outrun most champions pretty easily. The same applies for chasing them down too.

• E: Relentless Pursuit.
• ACTIVE: Lucian dashes a short distance and removes all slowing effects. Relentless Pursuit’s cooldown resets if Lucian scores a kill or assist during The Culling.

Relentless Pursuit is Lucian’s dash ability, perfect as a gap-closer, or as an escape tool. With this, you can close in on an enemy and finish them off. Combined with Ardent Blaze, you can dash in close to them, hit them with your double-shot, and then you can happily chase them. Or if you’re being chased through the Jungle, you can use your dash to hop over several small walls, such as the ramps to the river from Mid Lane, the ramp up to Blue, or over the Dragon/Baron walls. After a little experimenting, I’ve found that you can jump over the Blue and Red Buff walls, and the wall between top and bot lane’s first and second turrets. One thing about this spell that makes it so useful, is that it removes all slows from you, which will have the enemy Nasus cursing throughout your game. Do be careful about when you use it, because the Cooldown on it is pretty hefty, and you could end up caught out.

• R: The Culling.
• ACTIVE: Lucian starts firing shots in the target direction for 3 seconds, each shot dealing physical damage to the first enemy it hits. The amount of shots fired scales with his attack speed. The Culling deals quadruple damage to minions but not monsters.While using The Culling, Lucian’s basic attacks are disabled and he cannot activate Piercing Light or Ardent Blaze. He can, however, move freely and activate Restless Pursuit.The Culling can be reactivated to end the effect early and it is interrupted by crowd control effects that inhibit basic attacks.

The Culling is Lucian’s Ultimate, and used in the right way, can be incredibly potent, but if you’ve built wrong it can be pretty underwhelming too. It scales off both Attack Speed and Attack Damage, but in my opinion, you should focus on building up your AD, rather than your AS, because with your AD, it’ll make your Q and your W more potent alongside your Ultimate. Lucian’s Ultimate is better off used as a closer, rather than an opener for Teamfights. It’ll be able to mow through a couple half HP champions at the end of a teamfight, whereas at the start, the tank will probably soak up most of your shots. The Culling is great for if you’re being chased, especially when combined with your Ardent Blaze, since each shot that lands on them, will refresh your speed boost. Preferably though, it’s best to be used in team fights, or to kill off a low HP champion you’re chasing.

Builds, Pairings and Combos:

In general, you’ll want to build around AD. Some people will insist that an Attack Speed build would be better, but I’ve not seen an Attack Speed build work yet. It’ll just make you a very weak champion overall, with a pretty hefty Ultimate. You shouldn’t build around your ultimate.
Generally, it’s best to build a Bloodthirster straight off, as well as your Beserker’s Greaves, followed by a Last Whisper (Or Trinity Force if you choose to build a Black Cleaver), an Infinity Edge (Or a Black Cleaver, if you’re against a heavy Armour Builder), Runaan’s Hurricane and a Situational Defensive Item, although I typically go with Guardian’s Angel.
Runaan’s Hurricane is a particularly good item to have on Lucian, as his Passive will cause you to fire off a total of six shots, allowing you to burst through minion waves easily, and it’ll give you a decent amount of damage in team-fights too.

There are three supports I’ve found to maximise Lucian’s Potential.

Firstly, Blitzcrank:
Blitzcrank paired up with a Lucian is a deadly force. With Blitzcrank’s hook, it’ll make the enemy very uncertain. Either they’ll have to sit behind the minions, and take your harassment, or sit to the side, and get grabbed. Generally, this means they’ll have to take your harass, which means you’ll have plenty of scope for dominating your lane. If the enemy get grabbed by Blitzcrank, you’ll have a lot of time to pull off your Combo (Which we’ll discuss a little further on). On top of it all, Blitzcrank can knock up the enemy, as well as silence them, making them easy prey for you.

Secondly, Leona:
Leona is a very good support to have on your side. Considering Lucian has nothing in the way of Crowd Control, Leona is a great compliment to you, since she has three stuns on her side, as well as a slow. These stuns in quick succession will let you either burst them down with your combo, or with your Ultimate, if you’re in a teamfight.

Thirdly, Thresh:
As ironic as it is, Thresh is the best support to have with you. Every time I’ve been paired with a Thresh, I’ve gotten several kills early on, and we almost always get the first tower down quite quickly. Thresh really allows for Lucian to shred the enemy, what with being able to hook/stun an enemy, as well as provide two slows for them, it gives Lucian the same advantage he has with Leona, but with Thresh’s lantern thrown into the mix, he boosts himself up to be my favourite support. With his lantern, it makes getting kills far easier, with little to no threat of being killed yourself. If the enemy has been knocked down substantially, and is now recalling under their tower, you can quite easily dash in, and finish them off, before zipping right back out of tower range, thanks to Thresh’s lantern. Thanks to a Thresh-Lantern, I was once able to dash over the wall to Dragon and steal it, before jumping back to safety with the use of the Lantern.

Onto the Combos now. Primarily, you’ll be wanting to focus on using your Q for whenever you’re in a fight. Hit the enemy with your Q, follow up with an Auto-Attack, and rinse and repeat until their either dead or running. If the enemy has flashed out of range, and they’re on decidedly low health, either throw your Ardent Blaze after them, or dash after them, if you think you won’t need it to escape from anything while it’s on Cooldown.
Your Q, combined with your passive, will burn down any enemy that you can keep pinned down for long enough. If you’re lucky enough to have Red, this will almost certainly make the enemy very unwilling to duel you. This combo will help you no matter the situation, be it 1v1 or in a team-fight. Just be careful at lower levels, because you could run out of mana quite easily, but it should only take two Q’s alongside your passive to cause an enemy to start to try and escape. Make sure you always use your passive after you use an ability.

The Good, the Bad, and the Downright Ugly:

The Good:

• Extremely good burster, thanks to his passive.
• Great harasser.
• A brilliant Houdini, great for escaping perilous situations through the use of his E.
• Fantastic farming potential.

The Bad:

• Can be pretty squishy.
• Very mana-hungry, if used improperly.
• Underwhelming Ultimate.
• Badly balanced, if you focus on building Attack Speed.

The Ugly:

• Support Dependent, best if he’s paired up with a support with Crowd Control.
• His progression can drag quite badly, if he’s forced out of lane too often.

 

My Impressions, and closing words:

In closing; I feel that in the right hands, Lucian can be a pretty potent ADC. His ability to burst down champions, and cut through swathes of minions with minimal effort make him a force to be reckoned with. The way he can dart about the battlefield to cut off opponents, and quickly disappear from sticky situations makes him incredibly versatile, and very fun to play. Although, if you’re forced out of lane, it can become more of a chore than anything, since you’ll quite quickly go from the Carry to the Carried.

I would say that there are certainly more powerful ADC’s out there, such as Varus, Vayne or Ezreal, but with a little modicum of effort, he can be quite a massive and dangerous champion, although without a decent support, his usefulness will become very diminished. He’s certainly fun to play, but in my opinion, it would be more beneficial to go with a different champion. Although it would be worth noting that two Lucians against each other can create a bigger laser show than the Luminescent Lux. Although if they both throw off their ultimates at the same time, it suddenly turns into a 1980’s top down arcade shooter, with hilarious results.

And with that, I look forward to the next champion Riot will produce.

Got any questions? Any feedback? Leave them in the comments, and I’ll get back to you!