Ezreal has generated a lot of hate in the forums, mostly from those claiming that he’s too weak to be competitive. While I still think he has some farming trouble, I do think he’s incredibly strong against most heroes, particularly mages, and can carry a team to victory in the hands of a smart player. To help ease the learning curve, Phreak put together a tutorial video for Ezreal.

There are a couple things every beginning Ezreal player should notice. First, Phreak is never in the thick of the fight. He’s always floating behind his team, dropping mystic shot every couple seconds for big damage and healing as much as he can, focusing on physical damage toons for the attack speed buff. Ezreal is crazy squishy, so getting in the fight is something you really want to avoid.

Secondly, he takes one rank of each skill early to get his attack speed buff as high as possible, even in early fights. While you do miss some burst damage this way, it creates a bit of a surprise for the enemy when your attack speed is suddenly 60% higher. I recently laned against a Twitch in which this saved my life endless times. He would open up thinking he had an easy kill. Mystic shot, Essence Flux, and Arcane Shift and suddenly he was well below half health in terrible position. Ignite and another Mystic and that’s pretty much all she wrote.

Lastly, and this is something I didn’t realize until I had played him for some time, your Mystical Shot passive lowers the cooldown on your ultimate. That means you should be using your ultimate at every chance you get and then heading to farm to bring that CD down quickly. This thing alone will change the way you play. It rightly encourages you to use your ultimate instead of holding it and reinforces the fact that you should be farming with Mystical to help your ult refresh.

If you can take most of what Phreak says to heart you’ll find Ezreal to be a very strong toon with the potential to carry your team. Unfortunately, his skill ceiling is high enough that it takes a very skilled player to make the most of him, so most queue Ezreal players will be underwhelming.

I’ve only had the chance to spend a few games on Ezreal but he’s driven a lot of discussion on the forums so I thought it would be appropriate to post some impressions. Ezreal is definitely strong, but he’s likely going to be queue dodge material for a lot of people due to a very high skill ceiling. That’s mostly because he has four skill shots, but he’s’ also a terrible farmer in the wrong hands.

Let’s talk farming first, actually. Ezreal has big problems farming early game because he has no AOE farm skill like many other carries. You rely primarily on Mystic Shot, which can be difficult to land on the right creep, especially in a crowded side lane. I’ve personally been maxing Arcane Shift and Mystic Shot first, though I’ll probably try an Essence Flux build today. In either case, you need Mystic to keep your farm up and some sort of mana regen to allow some spell spam. If you can master farming on Ezreal you’ll be able to play him quite well.

While Ezreal can be built like a physical carry, he should be played in a support role, much like Nidalee, though with less early killing power. You should never be initiating fights unless you feel supremely confident in the win. He’s best used at the back of a fight, buffing and debuffing his team and enemies and pushing damage through with little risk of getting hit. He is extremely squishy, and while Arcane Shift might get you out of a fight for a quick second, it has a short enough range that it probably won’t save you against any ranged toon unless you see the gank coming and use it preemptively.

One of the big benefits of Ezreal is that he falls into the mixed heal/DPS category shared only by Nidalee. Mix in a Soraka, Alistar, or Taric and you have a team that will be very difficult to bring down, especially considering the state of anti-healing in the game. Depending on your lane comp, Essence Flux might be the way to go.

Overall, I can appreciate Riot’s stance on nerfs and buffs for this toon. We likely won’t see him at his full potential for a few weeks, though I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the player base calling for nerfs when that happens.

I was lucky enough to pick up a Test Realm account in the giveaway so I’ve been spending a little time getting to know Ezreal and the new Twisted Fate. Both characters seem like they’ll be pretty powerful, though I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw some changes to Ezreal before he goes live.

At first I thought Ezreal was extremely weak. From looking at his skills he can really go either AP or damage. From what I’ve been able to tell, though, his real power lies with a damage build. As with most carries, Ezreal is squishy. Insanely squishy. Twitch level squishy. He doesn’t hit as hard as a lot of carries, though, instead relying on skills and attack speed for damage output.

I’m a big fan of skill shots, especially because the heroes that have them tend to have great range. There’s also something extremely satisfying about landing that perfect snare or arrow to get a kill. Ezreal does get great range from his skills, though I think Arcane Shift needs about 20% more range. It doesn’t feel particularly effective and the cooldown is long enough that you’ll get one, maybe two casts off. Even then, you might unwittingly land next to a creep and lose the damage on whoever you’re chasing. While his Essence Flux is good for fighting physical damage dealers toe to toe, it has more limited range and doesn’t pack the punch I’d like to see. It would be really great if he got a slow from it, but more on that later.

Ezreal’s big problem is farming. Because he deals such low damage you have to be extremely attentive for last hits. I see him as a solo toon in almost every situation, both because his ult deals heavy damage and because he can’t afford to get behind. Luckily Mystic Shot is cheap – 30 mana at rank one – so you can spam it to pick up creep kills pretty easily.

As far as build goes, I think your best bet is to take one rank of Mystic Shot and then main Arcane Shift, alternating for Essence Flux when you can. Flux cannot be used to self heal so it’s pretty worthless as a solo and Mystic Shot’s damage doesn’t improve enough per rank to be worth the extra mana cost in the early game. From there you need to farm everything you can to get to a decent item loadout. I’m a firm believer in the trinity force on this guy. Sheen procs off your Mystic Shot in the same way Parrrley does, delivering the extra damage right when the shot hits. Phage gives you the slow you’ll need to catch runners and the extra health is always nice. From there, get to a big damage item like a Black Cleaver or an Infinity if you can. Your Mystical will be hitting quite hard and with a lucky slow you should be able to rip right through most players.

As with most carries, you should be waiting for the fight to start before getting in the mix. Supporting your team from the back is a perfect spot for Ezreal, using range to your advantage to pick up some kills. If anything, I’d like to see him get a little move speed buff and a range buff to Arcane Shift. Beyond that, I think he performs well in a lot of situations so long as you’ve taken the time to farm what he needs.

A friend of mine really likes Master Yi. I try to understand, I really do, but at the end of the day all I see is a toon with no escape mechanism and no team utility. If your opponent is bad enough he can be fine, even great, but if your enemy is mildly competent you’re going to have some trouble. To some extent his problem can be blamed on the fact that he’s melee, and melee toons have it rough. You have to throw yourself in harm’s way and hope you can live through the CC and burst long enough to get your damage in. As one forum poster put it, “when will melee DPS be viable?”

Here’s what Phreak had to say:

Melee DPS poops on kids in Treeline. It’s going into matchmaking soon. Melee DPS being underpowered is simply a function of 5 people being able to burst down 1 melee DPS super quickly. Champions like Udyr, Tynda (sic), and Mundo are able to kite in and out and heal or shield themselves, ignoring a lot of the burst out there. Yi can do similar things with meditate, I suppose.

Mostly, I feel like melee DPS does really well in small battles, and then in the larger ones seems to require a good support champ like Morgana or Kayle to keep him alive vs 5 champions. Otherwise you need to use supreme discretion to get in and out. Generally you should grab Cleanse. Ghost isn’t a bad option either. IMO it’s a different playstyle.

I agree with him for the most part. Melee toons have to choose their battles very carefully, which is why a full melee team rarely succeeds. But played well, I think melee is just as viable as any ranged. Most ranged suffer, in fact, from a reduced health pool or slightly lower damage. I’ve had some excellent games with Nasus, a toon with no escape to speak of, simply through smart play and the Ghost/Cleanse combo. It’s all about picking your battles, and making sure your teammates can help support you on your way to close the gap.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of an ability power beatdown, the kind where you can’t seem to leave your tower without getting insta-gibbed. There are few things that make me want to play mage more, but it’s not always a walk in the park. Mages walk a very fine line between blowing up the opponent and dying themselves because of low defense and a tiny health pool. Played well, though, mages can be very rewarding.

Playing a mage well requires you to plan further ahead than any other toon in the game. You should have a constant awareness of how much damage your skills will do by the number, not just how much you think you can pull off you enemy’s health bar. A Malphite at half health is very different from a Tristana at half health. For Malph, you have to break his shield before he actually takes damage. Trist, on the other hand, can jump away in most cases. Whichever you choose, you better be confident your spells can either take them down or hurt them badly enough that they’ll run. Part of being a mage is putting yourself into compromising positions for kills. If the kill doesn’t go off, be assured that you’re the next target.

If you’ve come up through the ranks playing mostly physical DPS toons or tanks, I would highly recommend making a smurf account to learn your mages. The playstyle is radically different from the other champions in the game, and learning at a high ELO can be difficult. Once you have a general feel for being the squishiest thing on the map, pick up a few games with friends before heading into the solo queue. The extra experience will give you the edge necessary to enjoy early success