How To Play Lucian Like An LEC Pro

Lucian Build has recently seen a Enormous rise in priority in professional League of Legends within the course of the Summer Season and leading up to this World Championship. In fact, he is currently among the most highly contested picks at Worlds, sporting a pick/ban rate above 73 percent. Let us take a peek at what makes the Purifier such a notable pick in the modern meta.

Abilities on Lucian

Lightslinger is Lucian's passive. After casting a spell, Lucian's next standard attack shoots an additional shot. This makes Lucian's burst and trading hurt exceptionally potent, as he could land an ability and two basic attacks in rather rapid succession. Lightslinger is also able to critically strike and use on-hit effects, which synergises perfectly with the present meta build.

Lucian's Q, Piercing Light, deals damage to targets in a direct line. This is Lucian's most important trading and wave clear tool. You are always going to see Fnatic's Tim"Nemesis" Lipovšek taking transactions with Piercing Light so as to deal a great deal of burst damage to his opponent. Additionally, it is possible to hit multiple enemies with Piercing Light, meaning it can deal huge damage in a group fight if the enemies lineup and get struck by it.

Ardent Blaze is somewhat more of a utility spell. While it does deal some damage, its main use is the motion speed provided when Lucian or his ally strikes a target that has been struck by the spell, allowing Lucian to catch up to, or even kite away from, his opponents. Ardent Blaze also grants vision at the explosion, which makes it helpful for safely assessing unwarded areas such as bushes.

Relentless Pursuit is Lucian's E. Possibly the biggest skill expression tool within Lucian's kit, Relentless Pursuit only allows Lucian to dashboard in a selected direction. The cooldown is also reduced for each Lightslinger shooter that is landed, and reduces more if it strikes an enemy champion, meaning its cooldown could be reset with a well-executed combo or skill string.

During all in's, Rogue's Emil"Larssen" Larsson will use Relentless Pursuit to dodge away from key abilities that would otherwise result in a missing trade, and maybe death. The outplay potential provided by Relentless Pursuit is huge, and often is the deciding factor in who wins and loses any one-on-one duel.

Lucian's ultimate, The Culling, quickly fires Lucian's guns in a straight line. Lucian can also be able to throw Relentless Pursuit through The Culling, allowing him to dodge key skills while still dishing out damage from a distance. The Culling has a much longer range than Lucian's normal auto-attacks, making it excellent for melting enemies that are just out of scope, or by a bit of a safer distance. The Culling additionally deals double damage to minions, so in case a minion wave needs to be cleared incredibly quickly, it's an option -- but maybe not the wisest use of the supreme ability.

Here in the clip below, Nemesis creates a massive outplay against Rogue, keeping Renekton Build from ever hitting him thanks to amazing kiting and use of Relentless Pursuit, while being able to melt Sejuani with The Culling.

Lucian Skill Order

Our gamers concur with the standard skill order for Lucian. Piercing Light ought to be maxed out first. It's the main wave and trading clear instrument, and scales the best out of all of Lucian's abilities. Follow up with points in Relentless Pursuit. More points means a decrease cooldown, which makes it simpler to reset its cooldown with skill chains. It's sort of a two-for-one. Otherwise for the incredible damage scaling and early game electricity offered by Piercing Light, Relentless Pursuit could be a competition for maxing first.

Ardent Blaze is left for last as, although its damage scales well, the foundation cooldown on the ability is too high. It's also an Area of Effect (AoE) capacity like Piercing Light, but in a far more restrictive fashion, meaning that it's not a robust or efficient wave clearing tool. It also doesn't scale with your Attack Damage, which makes it pretty obvious that it should not be maxed any sooner realistically. As always, put points to The Culling at rates 6, 11, and 16.

Best Lucian Runes

The runes used on Lucian are fairly unanimous among all pros, with some slight deviations depending on the enemy group comp. Press the Attack is your move to keystone. Lucian has a very simple time triggering this rune using Lightslinger that also synergises nicely with Press the Attack's harm increase once triggered.

Follow up with Presence of Mind, Legend: Bloodline, and any of the three at the bottom row based upon the enemy group comp, usually shooting Cut Down against tanks, or Coup De Grace against more squishy teams. Lack of Mind assists Lucian together with his mana issues by restoring mana and raising Lucian's maximum mana pool, which allows Lucian's first core thing Muramana to deal more harm. Legend: Bloodline provides some much needed lifesteal, which assists in winning trades and all out fights in the future.

Inspiration is your go-to secondary tree for Magical Footwear and Biscuit Delivery. Magical Footwear allows more gold to be spent on core ancient items without needing to worry about spending the excess 300g on boots. Biscuit Delivery grants maintain in lane, and also increases Lucian's maximum mana pool such as Presence of Mind.

Effective Lucian Item Build

We're going to look at what Nemesis built on Lucian Build in his latest game against Team SoloMid throughout the group stage of Worlds 2021. He starts out with a Corrupting Potion for laning maintain, before following up with an early Pickaxe and Null-Magic Mantle. His first core item is Manamune, that is followed up with Mercury's Treads. He picks up Essence Reaver soon after, and grabs an extra Null-Magic Mantle because the enemy has a lot of magical damage. He moves straight to get an Infinity Edge, also ends his build using a Rapidfire Cannon.

This construct provides unbeatable scaling, with Manamune transforming into Muramana, along with a mix of cooldown reduction, critical strike chance, attack damage, and incredible passive effects provided by the other things in the construct, synergising perfectly with one another and Lucian Build himself. This construct enables Lucian to take over the match in the later stages and become the biggest difference maker in dictating the results of fights.

Laning with this Lucian Build

Lucian has a quite dominant laning phase against most winners, especially melee ones. He could zone them from the minions, and at times even deny minion encounter due to just how easily he can punish and out-damage them in a trade, thanks to the range benefit he has. He has a bit of a harder time against ranged champions, but remains capable of holding his own.

Lucian Build is considered a lane bully and can force opponents into accepting bad trades which they will not win. He can also dodge skillshots with Relentless Pursuit, and punish the enemy for missing by trading difficult onto them. As a lane bully, Lucian includes a great laning phase against many champions. You will often see Larssen abusing his competitors early, getting midrange stress and allowing him and his jungle duo Kacper"Inspired" Słoma to restrain the map.

Team Fighting as Lucian

Lucian Build can be a big deciding factor in the outcome of a team fight based on how well it's played. Far too often do we see a fight turned on its mind because of an outplay from Larssen or Nemesis on the Lucian Build pick. Lucian's job at a group struggle is to deal as much damage as possible to the best targets available to him. Sometimes, this can be wailing on the frontline while slipping around the battle with Relentless Pursuit, or it can be using a deep dive onto the backline, assassinating a squishier goal using all the immense burst damage he could output when performed properly.

As seen below, Nemesis cleans up the teamfight using a wonderful flank against Rogue, showcasing Lucien's art.

Conclusion on this Lucian Build

Lucian is a remarkably powerful AD lane bully who synergises best with an AP danger in the jungle. This synergy is what we often see, and also yet another motive as to why he is such a strong pick in the meta. If you're searching for a solo lane, or even a marksman that has a large quantity of power expression and can hard win his lane, then try out Lucian Build.