u/critezreal

The standard core of ER>Lucidity>Navori has too much attack speed, so the damage lacks AD. Black cleaver doesn't give up-front pen yet one of Lucian's playstyles is up-front burst. The solution to these 2 items is Grudge 2nd. It lets you reset your E quickly, while also giving more pen and AD than Cleaver.

To juice up the E resets I've been taking legend haste and transcendence and Joat are options too. I learned the Joat tech from Crownie in his youtube video.

After Grudge I can go crit/Bork. If I need a dps build then I could not build Grudge. Grudge is for the haste build that resets E. It's in my non-conclusive opinion the superior haste build. Grudge lets you chain slow ppl with ult. ER>Lucidity>Grudge. Legend alacrity and Berserkers are viable too.

Tldr: Most adcs have 100% attack speed steroid while Ezreal has 0%-50% AS as a steroid, so he got powercreeped in the crit department, but Q AD ratio got buffed from 100% to 130%, so his spellcasting builds are still viable.

Crit Ezreal used to be viable from S1-S4, S5-S7 probably, and S8-S10 probably. In early seasons Ezreal used to build Trinity, Last whisper, Bork, IE. with Lucidity boots. The build dealt good damage with autoattacks and had 20% cdr.

In about S5, Essence Reaver was released which could give up to 30% cdr in combination with crit from Triforce. So you could get 40% cdr from 2 items to cap out on cdr. Blue Ezreal was the meta build in S5 and beyond. Blue Ezreal was invented by TPA Bebe who won Worlds in S2.

In S9 or so, I made a build using the old Lethal Tempo. It took advantage of the fact that Lethal tempo could give 110% attack speed for like 4 seconds, so you could easily proc it on Ezreal and spam autoattacks with a build of Muramana, ER, Infinity Edge. This build was good enough and the standard Muramana build was meta.

1. ADC buffs. The reason Crit Ezreal doessn't have a big niche as a hypercarry adc is because his steroid is too weak. From S1 to S15, Miss fortune's attack speed steroid got buffed from 50% AS to 100% AS. Ezreal's AS steroid went from 0-50% to 0-70% to 0-50%. His damage output with a crit build is not comparable to other Adcs probably. He has a weaker steroid which generally means less crit damage. His steroid goes from 0% to 50%. This is important because if you only hit one Q and miss W in a teamfight, you get 10% AS. So your steroid is not 50% but 10%-30%. The steroid is not the same as normal AD carries. Kaisa another mobile AD carry gets an 80% AS steroid, and has a decent lane combination with CC supports that stack her passive.

2. Muramana buffs. Muramana used to consume mana to empower abilities and autos. You would end up running low on mana in some situations and lose out on the Muramana on-spell proc. Muramana was changed so it doesn't use mana for the damage proc, which makes it overall deal more damage since you won't run out of mana and damage. Runes like Manaflow also empower Muramana. Items like IE got nerfed from the original IE which gave 80 AD 25% crit and 50% crit damage. So it's no longer OP. Crit items got nerfed and Muramana got buffed, while the haste rework meant you could stack more than 40% cdr on Ezreal which scales better with Ezreal's cd refresh for exponential growth.

Ezreal also used to be able to dash into his pre-rework W which would give him an AS steroid of 20%, which would synergize with IE.

Power creep past by.

So the reasons I think Ezreal used to be able to build crit was because a) his crit steroid used to be equal to other crit ad carries. b) The Trinity ER core capped out cdr before ability haste was a thing. c) old Lethal tempo gave more burst attack speed which enabled Ezreal who could use it well compared to other ADCs like Lucian.

In order to bring back the relic of crit ezreal, I propose that Riot make Ezreal's passive have a 100% scaling with crit. This doesn't make the Triforce build op because it builds no crit. Now going Tri-Muramana-LDR-IE will deal big damage.

One problem I found with Rising spell force (Ezeal's passive) is that it scales with ability haste not crit. The more crit you have, the less stacks you get. If Riot made Ezreal's passive stack with autoattacks, it would scale with crit builds. For instance, giving 5% AS per auto/Q. up to 50% at lvl 1 and 100% at lvl 18. This way if you went Berserker greaves it'd actually make sense. This would be op since it'd stack on minions, so probably not the best idea.

If Rising spell force synergized with Berserker greaves, it'd bring back the old Crit Ezreal and make Crit Ezreal comparable to other crit carries ilke in the old times. I.e. 50% AS with 50% scaling with AS and 100% scaling with crit that don't multiply with each other. Kind of ike Jhin. Or I guess just the crit scaling would be strong enough. A buld of ER-Ldr-IE could be good. You would have QWER so you get 4 stacks, which is most of your steroid. And it feels like the old S4 Ezreal with hybrid cdr and crit which had good spell damage and good autoattack damage.

After watching old Ezreal gameplay, I was also thinking about mana potions. But the game has been built around mana items fitting in builds so I guess they don't fit into the game anymore. I'd say cheese like 5 potions will eventually be removed because it's too cheesy and forces one meta.

I wonder if a crit build would still have strong Qs. I guess it really would be like S3 Ezreal.

I think an AD Navori would be better since most of the users are spellcasters like Lucian Xayah. The only AS user is Kogmaw. Tristana works with both AD and AS versions of Navori. Master yi would work with both.

Some builds I can think of with a buffed Ezreal would be ER-Lucidity-Ldr-IE. It gives good poke and has haste to stack passive attack speed.

Testing 1st items, 2nd items, and hybrid builds (3rd items).

ER vs. Trinity. Level 8, D Bow (+5 haste to replicate legend tenacity). ER+long sword: Q damage: 294. Dps AQWAEAQA: 407, 400.

Trinity: Q: 307. Dps: 349, 373, 385, 373, 385. Trinity does 20 less dps but has 333 more hp. ER has more mana. Trinity is stronger, while ER doesn't run out of mana at 1-3 items.

Trinity Bork lvl 12. 3 Q dps: 292+29 lifesteal. Dps: 618+62 lifesteal.

Trinity Muramana. 3 Q dps: 360. Dps: 713. Bork is mainly an option vs. poke and tanks.

Trinity Muramana Archangels. Lvl 15. Q dps: 553. Dps: 837.

Trinity Muramana Seraphs. Q dps: 585. Dps: 844.

Grudge 3rd. Q dps: 562. Dps: 929.

Shojin 3rd. Q dps: 511, 533, 525. Dps: 792.

Blackfire torch 3rd. Q dps: 511. Dps: 837.

Actualizer. Q dps: 437, 447. Dps with active: 861, 935, 869.

AD deals more dps with autoattacks but AP has bigger ults. Seraph's has a shield which makes it equal to Grudge but with bigger ults.

Winters approach 3rd. + 25 AD. Q dps: 478. Dps: 802.

Fimbulwinter 3rd: Q dps: 516. Dps: 805.

Conclusions: First item has some variation. 3rd item Seraph's does similar damage but has huge ults, so Seraphs 3rd should be good into non-tanks.

Kraken rush. Combo to test is WAAAAQ+autos. Level 8. Q max. Dps: 306.

Bork dps: 258.

Rageblade dps: 257.

Stormrazor dps: (without passive) 259.

Yuntal: (without passive) 246.

ER dps: 260.

Collector dps: 262.

Hexoptics dps: 266.

Kraken is my favorite. I didn't test with boots but it should help the no attack speed boots. So the damage would be better with berserker greaves.

Level 12. Kraken PD Long sword. dps: 521.

Kraken Mortal reminder Long sword: 542. PD has more movement speed so the builds are similar.

Kraken Bork: 491.

Kraken Terminus: 493.

Kraken into crit seems best. Bork would be good into tanky teams and poke teams.