Lucian, the Purifier - First Impressions

After playing a couple games as Lucian as well as against him, I decided to share my first impressions on this new champion and my opinion on his overall design. As a disclaimer, I do not claim to be a professional or exactly high rated player so the following is just a list of my own personal opinions and thoughts.

Overview:

Lucian is a very high damage output AD carry despite not having any real attack speed steroids. All of his abilities scale pretty well with attack damage. He is a fairly mobile champion with a slow cleanse dash as well as a flat 40 movement speed buff from attacking targets marked with his Ardent Blaze. He has excellent trading potential in the laning phase due the amount of burst from his abilities and passive combined. His passive also procs on-hit effects so he will be able to life steal more effectively than most ADs.

Builds and Set up:

With Lucian's high scaling abilities, I feel that an early Blood Thirster into armour penetration with a Last Whisper are optimal. Lucian's passive will allow him to benefit a lot from the extra attack damage he gains from Blood Thirster as well as the life steal proccing on the second hit. Lucian does not have any real attack speed steroid to make the critical strike bonuses from an Infinity Edge as valuable. While his ultimate does scale off of attack speed, I feel a combination of attack damage and armour penetration will increase the damage more than an extra 2 or 3 hits from the ultimate.

For runes I would refer to my general AD carry runes which can be found here. One change I may consider running is swapping out life steal quintessences for flat attack damage ones if I have a high sustain support such as Sona or Soraka. Since I generally rush a Blood Thirster as my first item, the extra life steal from the quintessences may be a bit overkill.

For masteries, refer to my general AD mastery page which can be found here.

General Play:

Due to Lucian's fairly short range (550), I feel that he has a difficult time damaging anything other than the enemy front line. However, due to his high damage output with his kit, he can shred down tanks quite quickly. The AD carry is generally responsible for taking out the enemy front line as quickly as possible which Lucian excels at. Whether you use The Culling to quickly burst down the target or a combination of spell rotations and double auto attacks, you should be able to kill their tank line faster than they can kill yours. Rushing a Last Whisper after your Blood Thirster will help you shred through their tanks much quicker as well.

Lucian also does a great job at kiting targets. If an enemy jumps onto him, he can quickly dash away, mark them with an Ardent Blaze, and then proceed with The Culling while moving backwards with that extra movement speed bonus. Enemies will not be able to tank his ultimate for long which makes diving him very dangerous.

Final Thoughts:

While Lucian is definitely a fun champion to play, I feel that he needs a lot of team coordination to excel with. He does not have amazing attack range like Tristana, and he is not as durable as Graves. However, he does have a lot of sustained and upfront damage output if you make use of his passive. Running Lucian with a team comp with multiple threats will allow him to have a bit more free reign in teamfights since the enemy must consider other targets they have to focus. Champions like Karthus or Lissandra, who have a large amount of zone control and deal ridiculous amounts of damage if left unattended would be a good fit with Lucian.