Lot of good mages out there
The main thing to know about Ezreal is that no matter how weak or strong he is according to the "meta", you can ALWAYS carry games with him if you are good enough.
Even though he is one of the hardest champions in the whole game there's some things we can do to make it a lot easier, such as knowing what items to buy and when to buy them. That's where this guide comes in.
Summoner Spells
Given how Ezreal's attack range is 550 and having the ability to either blink forwards or to safety, Exhaust is an amazing choice. Not only does it give really good survivabilty with the damage reduction but the slow can be incredibly helpful for hitting your spells in the most dire situations.
Spells and levelling
Your passive gives you 10% Attack Speed per stack and goes up to 5 max; you get a stack by landing a spell.
Ezreal's Q - Mystic Shot is his most important ability. It might seem like a simple spell being just a linear skillshot that deals damage to the first thing it hits, however it also reduces ALL of your cooldowns by 1.5 seconds when you do so. This is what makes him a hard champion since it requires you to NOT miss.
W - Essence Flux will mark the first enemy champion it hits and only deal the damage when they get hit by any other ability from you. Once popped you get a mana refund of the spell used plus another 60.
Ezreal's E - Arcane Shift is probably his most iconic spell essentially being a slightly worse version of Flash but also dealing damage to the nearest target.
R - Trueshot Barrage is an AoE spell with global range. There's many uses for it which I will cover at the end of the guide but by itself is nothing more than a Magic Damage skillshot.
Runes
Conqueror is your main keystone since spells always give the 2 stacks of Adaptive Force. You will have solid damage early game, strong skirmishing and very good scaling.
The rest of the runes in the main path are no-brainers. We take the mana rune, the life-steal one and Cut Down since we look to poke people down from full HP.
As for your secondary runes, Inspiration tree has been the best option for a long time. Biscuit Delivery is non-negotiable since it's needed to play the laning phase properly. As for the 2nd rune we will be taking Jack of All Trades. We can get the 5 stack bonus as soon as our first recall and even though you might not get the full 10 stacks on any of your games it still always gives Ability Haste with each of them making this a very good rune on Ezreal.
Items
It might seem surprising but there isn't really any matchup where you wouldn't start with Doran's Blade when playing Ezreal.
Tips & Tricks
- Regardless of what keystone you took Ezreal's early game is incredibly strong, even at Level 1. Your Q has a very low cooldown and being able to get up to 50% Attack Speed from your passive easily makes you one of the strongest Level 1 characters in the game. You will be a lane bully in almost every matchup so long you can get Priority.
- The damage part of your E will always prioritize targets marked by your W. This is the best way to guarantee the damage from both spells.
- Almost every time you're going to use your Ult look to be either in Fog of War or a bush that isn't warded; This lets you hide the Cast Time animation and give the enemy less time to react.
- Your Ult has a much lower cooldown than it seems thanks to your Q passive lowering ALL cooldowns by 1.5 seconds whenever they hit anything. This on top of its already low cooldown and all the Ability Haste you build makes you Ult very spammable.
- Your Ult is very versatile since you can use it for more things than just damage. It's very normal for Ezreal to use it on a wave so you can push faster since you'll bring down the cooldown anyways. You also get 1 stack of your passive per unit hit meaning you can instantly get all 5 stacks with it.
- You can always Ult squishy or clumped up targets before a fight so it comes back up during the fight itself.
- Ezreal has multiple Flash mechanics: Q + Flash will always follow your cursor but come out in the position of your Flash, however if you have accurate timing and delay the Flash it will be shot from your old position. W works the same way. The damage portion of your E will shoot out from your landing position even if you E + Flash letting you move twice the distance and practically ignore the cast time. R + Flash is a bit different from the rest, if you R + Flash the Ult will always shoot out from the position in which you casted it and towards your initial direction; however the direction Ezreal will be facing is not where the Ult is going and if you Flash into Fog of War the cast animation will be completely hidden.
- If you cast any spell instantly after your Basic Attack shoots out then your Trinity Force damage will be applied to it even though it's already in the air. This is mainly used when you're pushing waves or hitting turrets but it's INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT to know whenver enemy champions are trying to bodyblock your Q damage so you don't hit a priority target (e.g the tank support is standing in between you and enemy ADC, or the ADC is hiding behind minions) since this lets you keep the passive stacked up, reduce your cooldowns, get the Q damage off AND land your Sheen proc on the target you're trying to kill.
- Whenever hitting towers/objectives or whenever laning to save some mana try to hit spells as the passive is going to run out so you can upkeep as much Attack Speed as possible.
- There is a mechanic within League of Legends' skillshots called the "Lollipop Effect" where whenever a skillshot is in the air and reaches the final position it will scan around it and just hit a target that happens to be very close to it even though it "missed". If you develop a feel to it you can use it to your advantage since this can actually let you hit people with your Q who are technically standing behind minions.