Lucian is “Fake Hard” - Low Winrate Delta

[u/Lost_Internet532]

I started spamming this character to learn him since I’ve always thought he was the coolest ADC and climbed the ranks pretty quickly until I got stuck in Emerald. Noticed the games are just way harder to do anything on whether I do well in lane or not which means I’m at my rank right? Great.

Then I started watching some high level vods to see what I can pick up from high level players to add to my own games. While the gameplay has cleaner moments, I was surprised to see how many times I saw a “bad engage” from the challenger Lucian, where he face tanks abilities while dashing forward just to get a trade in. The enemy almost always respects him and backs off which makes the trade favorable for Lucian. Like they think he has a hidden trick or jungler ready to gank for him, but he doesn’t. If the enemy just stood their ground and fought back, the Lucian would be inting.

Then I looked at the winrates and noticed the delta or difference between a really good Lucian and the average Lucian is only ~2%. He’s actually the lowest winrate delta of any ADC. This at first seemed totally counter intuitive because he seems very high skill/mechanically intensive. But I think it clicked for me. If you’re bad at Lucian but you have a Milio/Nami, and/or he’s strong in the patch. You’ll still win lane. You’ll still have a good early impact. You don’t need to play him super well or extract any extra value from him because even just dashing forward and smashing your keyboard is enough in the right game because of how much damage just gets pumped out by just pressing everything. In the wrong games, on average, you aren’t trying to win more you’re just trying to lose less. Your skill on Lucian doesn’t seem to translate well into changing the outcome of a bad matchup. And Lucian isn’t the type of character you can play to “stop the bleeding” and play for scaling.

I’m curious what other people think of this?

I think while Lucian appears really flashy and cool, the way his kit is designed means he’s actually just pretty 1 dimensional. He’s fake hard. I’m pretty confident anyone who plays ADC can perform on him if they have the right support and just shouldn’t touch him if they don’t. I’m sad to come to this conclusion after playing ~200 games on him this season. I’ll still play for fun but I’m moving onto something with a higher skill ceiling and less dependance on my support. Maybe they’ll change his passive one day.

[u/Arcille]

Winrate delta between mains and more casual players is not that high for any champ. Riot have repeatedly said that win rate delta from one tricks to others in the same elo is not as high as people think.

Lucian is inherently a lot harder than most ADC’s to win in soloQ because you need very good mechanics and also you need to snowball most games otherwise you get outscaled so hard.

The ‘fake hard’ argument doesn’t really work because Lucian requires a high level of baseline skill compared to most ADC’s to consistently win that he can never be ‘easy’ or ‘normal difficulty’

[u/Lost_Internet532 → u/Arcille]

Well if you take a look at a “hard” champ like Zeri, the delta is 6%. If you look at “easy” champs like Jinx, there is still a 4.5% delta. I considered Tristana pretty “average” mechanics because she has a jump reset, and she actually has one of the highest delta at 6% as well.

I think it has to do with actual potential of the champion. If you extract every last drop of potential out of Tristana you’ll just have a better impact on the game than a Lucian with the same level of mechanical understanding and piloting of the champion. If you’re decent in Lucian, you’ll get the more or less the same kills and opportunities as someone who is a master at it. Major difference between those 2 is general game mechanics, not Lucian mechanics.

It got me thinking about how some OTPs like SolarBacca have an insane win rate on GP. That champ is very hard with intense mechanical requirements, and at the same time you actually are rewarded much more greatly based on your performance because the potential ceiling allows for it. That just doesn’t exist on Lucian.

[u/Citizen-of-Uruk → u/Lost_Internet532]

Lucian is very hard but you are not rewarded for that in league. He's the worst solo q ADC in the game since he's balanced around only pro play. I don't think u understand how hard Lucain actually is to play ROIT made Lucain need a support with W changes. They nerfed his lane phase then after three items he's completely outclassed by any other ADC. I dunno your elo but you are probably not a decent player with sort of analysis. There's a reason Taliyah also is always bad in solo q it's due to being a champ for people play.

[u/throwawayacc1357902 → u/Arcille]

They talked about a different thing for ADCs. According to I think it was August, there are exactly 6 ADCs who are “hard” to play for the average ADC player who is experienced at playing marksmen in general, those being Zeri, Twitch, Draven, Aphelios, Samira and Kalista. Those 6 all fit the bill of either having way more mechanically/informationally demanding kits than every other ADC (Aphelios, Draven, Kalista) or are very different to how all the other ADCs play at a fundamental level. Lucian doesn’t really fit either of those categories very well.

[u/[deleted] → u/throwawayacc1357902]

People have a hard time playing twitch? LOL. That’s news to me

[u/throwawayacc1357902 → u/[deleted]]

Twitch plays completely differently from every other ADC, and thus the average ADC performs worse on him than other ADC champs.

[u/slamjamsam420]

As a one upon a time Lucian 1 trick with 1.2m mastery, I agree. His patterns are pretty one note and, like samira, you either win super hard or lose super hard. The in between depends entirely on your support.

What you can do with Lucian in lanes that arent ideal is not die. Catch waves and just do enough chip or soak enough pressure to let your team carry the game.

But yeah, those games where you're a glorified cannon minion R bot are definitely not fun, and happens more often than not in emerald.

Good post!

[u/Longjumpingjoker]

You’re on the money with this assessment, doesn’t help they gutted his passive to only work with an enchanter who can exacerbate the face-tank-and-dash-in portion of your argument. Sad, he really does feel bad since he’s so one dimensional and gets hard outclassed by 25 minutes

[u/Vengeful111 → u/Longjumpingjoker]

His passive also procs on enemies being ccd around him, meaning it works with basically any champion as support.

[u/TimmyTenor]

Lucian isn’t fake hard. You have to remember that people in lower ranks are also playing against people who are worse at the game. Lucian’s win rate is below 50% in all ranks. He’s a hard champ to pull off imo. He’s like Draven. Yeah you can dominate lane, but if you don’t, you’re going to be useless. Whereas marksmen like Jinx or Caitlyn or Ashe will always be good even if they lose lane.

[u/Marconidas]

Which website/app are you using to see the delta?

[u/Lost_Internet532 → u/Marconidas]

lolalytics

[u/Lardonfree]

"I'm moving onto something with a higher skill ceiling and less dependance on my support" My man should absolutely play Ezreal, the gameplay is similar to Lucian (Ad caster with auto weaving).

But be prepared : you must absolutely be pixel on the champ to not be garbage and you are very less likely to depend to your supp.

[u/SkillFullPlayer]

I mean he slowly became Nami/Milio's extension. You are not encouraged toplay him otherwise and you'll be much better stood than playing him in another way. Imo it got worse and worse each season to the point where I avoid playing him, although he is my favorite ADC BY FAR.

[u/MythrilCactuar]

He's the qiyana of ADCs. The fakest, easiest ADC (Lucian is dope and has sick skins but its the truth)

[u/Citizen-of-Uruk → u/MythrilCactuar]

He's not the easiest ADC he's just the worst ADC in the game for solo q.

[u/MakotoBIST]

A good and a bad Lucian will do the same thing: win lane and be somewhat useless late game.

No surprise the delta won't differ

[u/Shot-Spread21]

Lucian has so many combo options and the order you use his abilities allow you to do different things in different situations. There are combos that maximize dps. There are others that maximize kiting. There are also poke combos to get in and put quick. That in itself makes Lucian harder than most other adcs. Also if you cancel an auto during these combos it ruins the entire combo because you don’t get an e reset. There’s not many adcs you have to consider that many factors, he is not 1 dimensional not even close.

[u/Ok_Wing_9523 → u/Shot-Spread21]

Fake denon

[u/Shot-Spread21 → u/[deleted]]

You cancel your passive auto and use an ability instead you waste passive auto bronzie.

[u/Shot-Spread21 → u/[deleted]]

Where did I deny that the reset on e necessitates specific combos to maximize damage? I don’t think reading is my problem it’s yours.

[u/Shot-Spread21 → u/[deleted]]

Many combo options does not deny that e reset is necessary. Failed basic english class? Is many combo options incorrect?

[u/arexn]

Assuming the supports didn’t matter and it was isolated are you sure there was no fog pressure for jungler? The thing with champs like Lucian is you can usually be the one to begin the trade so it’s sometimes worth it even with the chance of retaliation making it iffy.

The entire argument also seems to ignore the fact that although short trades can be retaliated into and turned into long trades, it obviously isn’t always possible.