Is the Black Cleaver bad for Graves? Continue his criticism streak, after his first victim – Nidalee, now it’s time for Graves.
As the meta of Worlds 2020 shapes, we can notice our 2 jungle king and queen: Nidalee and Graves. Today, we will take a deeper look into Graves, the champion is frequently chosen as the team’s second marksman carry to add early game physical damage. In addition, the ability to farm well, fast jungle clear, and cost relatively little health also helps Graves to cope with Nidalee, the strongest and most contested jungle champion currently.
Black Cleaver For Graves – Is It A Must?
One of the popular build for Graves in World Championship 2020 is the Black Cleaver after Graves finishes his Jungle Item. Black Cleaver is the perfect item for Graves, with the good stats for this champion like Health, damage, and the cooldown reduction. But the analyst-commentator LS, he believes the Black Cleaver for Graves is not always a good choice.
When Selfmade of Fanatic build Youmuu’s Ghostblade, LS is indeed really happy and tells everyone on his Twitter that finally someone builds Graves correctly.
- LS: “I have to say again that Youmuu’s Ghostblade is built by Selfmade, finally someone builds Graves correctly, OMG I’m going crazy.”
- Fnatic.Bwipo: “ I have a lot of stress when I practice, I’m playing Orn at 15 but I have to beg my teammates to pack up for me to upgrade. Selfmade always build Edge of Night and Phantom Dancer “
- Fnatic.Selfmade: “You can’t use your upgradeability when I play Graves”
Talking about the jungle meta of Worlds Championship 2020, all the champions who were chosen have the tendency to be favored if they can deal a lot of early damage to ensure the early game fighting, in order to avoid snow-ball situation. That’s why Nidalee, Graves are the most picked jungle champions at the moment. If these two champions are banned then other options that provide damage such as Evelynn, Lee Sin, Lillia should be considered.
In Graves’s case, the Black Cleaver is essentially a safe item for him. It provides a small amount of attack damage, a small but acceptable amount of health, and even reduces cooldowns. These stats sound perfect, but in a 1v1 fight, Graves’s damage output with the black Cleaver is not that impressive.
On the other hand, LS suggests Graves players should go for Lethality and Youmuu’s Ghostblade built to deal more damage. Remember that in the early game and mid-game, when your enemies don’t have a lot of defensive items, the armor reduction effect as a percentage of the Black Cleaver isn’t as strong as Lethality. So the Lethality items, especially Youmuu’s Ghostblade, will help Graves finish off any squishy enemies he finds.
Perhaps all the professional players in World 2020 have gradually realized the limitations of the Black Cleaver and they are making changes. Cayon of DAMWON Gaming is a great example: checking back at how he performed with Graves, we can easily imagine how good Youmuu’s Ghostblade is. It is likely that this approach will become a meta for Graves, even helping this champion shine brightly at this year’s Worlds.
Conclusion
Of course, we can’t accuse Black Cleaver for being weak. This item also has itself strengths and weaknesses, but it’s funny how all the community is starting to create meme about this item.
Despite his opinions against this item, sometimes, he has to admit Black Cleaver is indeed a better choice. In Game 4 of FNC vs TES, FNC doesn’t build any kind of items to reduce the power of Sion, Nidalee, and Senna, which leads to their loss.
In the end, unlike other champions where you spend most of your time buying the same and the same items. Graves is such a great champion that allows him to build whatever he likes, depends on the situation of the match. If you are facing tons of high armor or armor-boosted ability champions such as Sion, Poppy, or Rammus, then, Black Cleaver is definitely a wise choice. If not, then Graves can max out his potential at an extremely short time marks via Lethality, a broken stat but is hardly seen on higher ELO.