Champion Guide

Graves Guide

By LoLSuggest

Jungle

Play Graves as a farming bully: clear fast and healthy, abuse his strength from level 3 with red buff, invade and out-duel weaker junglers, and turn item spikes into objectives. Our standard build is lethality, with bruiser and anti-tank paths as alternatives.

Recommended Setup

Our recommended Graves build

Our recommended runes, summoner spells and items. Compare build win rates on the stats page.

Items

Starting Items

Core Items

Situational Items

Dark Harvest with Sudden Impact, Grisly Mementos and Treasure Hunter, plus Triumph and Legend: Alacrity, is the standard page; Fleet Footwork pages are alternatives. Start Scorchclaw Pup with a potion. The main build is lethality every game: Serrated Dirk and Caulfield's Warhammer into Hubris and The Collector, then Lord Dominik's Regards, Immortal Shieldbow and Infinity Edge. Youmuu's Ghostblade is a great Hubris alternative, Black Cleaver mixes in bruiser stats, and a full bruiser path goes Umbral Glaive, Sundered Sky, Black Cleaver, Jak'Sho and Bloodthirster. An alternative setup opens Eclipse, then Black Cleaver into tanks or The Collector into squishies.

Runes

Primary Tree

Secondary Tree

Summoner Spells

Strengths

Fast, healthy clears and strong scaling.
A great early duelist who can bully and invade other junglers.
Can solo carry and adapt between lethality, crit and bruiser builds.

Weaknesses

No real crowd control, so ganks rely on lane setup.
Short range — poke and slow-heavy comps like Ashe, Xerath or Seraphine are painful, and minions or tanks can block his shots.
Falls behind hard if invaded early or out of tempo.

Laning Phase

Full clear efficiently (Red, Krugs, Raptors, Wolves, Gromp, Blue) and path toward the lane with the best gank setup — strong CC laners or enemies without escapes. You're strongest from level 3 with red buff, so a gank there is great when it's on, but don't force plays at the cost of tempo. Ward the enemy jungle and invade tank or farming junglers like Sejuani, Amumu, Shyvana or Karthus. When ganking, avoid common routes and vision, hug the wall near their escape and save Smokescreen until they've used their dash or Flash.

Mid & Late Game

Abuse your power spikes — level 6, level 9 with Q maxed, Youmuu's or The Collector — by fighting, invading or taking objectives instead of farming. Help laners fix bad waves, take plates, keep a Control Ward for objectives, and after breaking a tower, invade the enemy jungle. Track the enemy jungler to win 2v2s and 3v3s.

Key Tips

Quickdraw stacks True Grit armor while clearing, so you reach max armor before the first Scuttle fight.
Don't open fights with Quickdraw — dashing too early forces a reload after two shots.
Collateral Damage is a finisher, not an opener; its knockback can also carry you over walls.
Dash diagonally to stay in range without letting targets escape.

Matchups

Matchups and synergies

Our picks for difficult opponents, favorable lanes and strong allies. Compare matchup win rates on the stats page.

Best Allies