Lucian
Matchup Summary
The Lucian match up can be pretty difficult at first, due to heavy ranged lane bully playstyle, as well as his abundance of mobility based tools. Within the early stages of the game, Lucian can be very hard to abuse with his early game strengths, however Renekton's job should be trying to play a sustain based playstyle with items such as Doran's Shield and Second Wind, as well as using his first few levels to keep up his HP. Renekton's objective is trying to rush Plated Steelcaps and reaching level 6. Once Renekton reaches these conditions within the game, Lucian's damage and heavy harass playstyle falls off, allowing Renekton to have more playability within the later early and mid stages of the game. Once Renekton has boots and his R, he can force and win fights against Lucian with ease, allowing him to side lane and play teamfights more effectively.
Detailed Tips
- 01
Respect Lucian Poke - Lucian’s early poke damage can be pretty high due to his fast damage combos, in combination with his double hit passive, making him a very offensive early lane bully. When playing into Lucian, we want to make sure we can always keep our HP up, until we reach our level 3 or 6 powerspike. To help us make the lane a lot easier, playing D Shield and Second Wind allows us to easily sustain against his damage, while helping us reach our lane powerspikes a lot easier.
- 02
Respect Lucian's E Mobility - Lucian’s overall mobility can be pretty high, as he’s able to use his dashes to help him instantly dash away, on top of using his auto attacks and passive to help him reduce his dash cooldown. Later on in the game, Lucian can also buy Navori to help him get even more dashes within fights. With that said, try to play around his E by abusing him with your own dash combos if he uses it towards you, or if you’re trying to force a fight, try to double dash towards him to follow is E location, allowing you to get into range and unload on your damage if he’s in lethal range.
- 03
Play For Manaburn - Lucian’s high mana use playstyle allows him to quickly burn mana at a fast rate, forcing him to buy essence reaver as a first item. Before he’s able to purchase essence reaver, Renekton can utilise his high HP sustain playstyle to help him burn out Lucian’s mana. Using Second Wind and D Shield, alongside basic empowered Q combos allows Lucian to expend a lot of mana to use his abilities against Renekton, allowing him to eventually force kill trades on Lucian without him being able to defend or fight against it.
- 04
Rush Plated Steelcaps - Plated Steelcaps allows Renekton to negate Lucain’s damage with ease, while providing additional movement speed to stick onto him. Overall, rushing Plated Steelcaps allows Renekton to completely face tank Lucian’s damage, taking away Lucian’s overall ability to ever kill Renekton post level 6.
- 05
Play Wave On Your Side - Playing the wave on your side essentially means playing wave states on your side of the map, via abusing wave manipulation tactics or freezing on your side of the map. Simply use this to help you combo on your laner, taking away any space from them being able to trade you back (This also helps prevent the enemy running you down with their extended or sustained movement speed abilities). You can also use this wave state to run down your opponent with your abilities up, helping you obtain kills a lot easier vs stalemate or ranged match ups. Look to do this when your opponents are below 50% HP, or potentially make a mistake to provide you an all in opportunity to run them down.
- 06
Quick Trades - E > Q > AA > W > AA > E Out / E > Q > W > E / E Q E - These combos allow for Renekton to get quick damage off in being able to keep health up and whittling his opponent down, use these to get your laner low and look for a low HP kill with flash.
- 07
Abuse Renekton's R Powerspike - Prior to this point in the match up, if Renekton has farmed safely and rushed defensive boots in the match up, Renekton is now ready to fight his opponent in an all in. Renekton's high base damage and stats from his R, allows Renekton to completely stat check his counter match up. Simply wait for the enemy to make a mistake, then go all out and kill your opponent.
- 08
Build Eclipse, Stridebreaker or Profane - Go Eclipse for consistent power through mid game and damage mitigation with the shield. / Go Stridebreaker to cripple Lucian’s mobility and provide teammates with additional utility. / Go Profane for full damage focused playstyles.
- 09
Mid Game + Teamfighting Tips - Lucian’s overall role within the mid to late game is usually playing around split pushing within the side lane, until he’s able to get his core crit items to help him deal mass DPS within teamfights. Lucian’s playstyle is usually benefited when playing around enchanters, which entirely depends on his support's overall pick if he’s able to abuse that to his advantage. Being that Lucian was picked solo lane, his overall playability highly depends on getting towards his 4th-5th item spikes before being able to offer any major damage. With that said, we should try to use our overall early to mid game power to help us take over the map, while Lucian’s main focus is scaling through obtaining items. When it comes to side laning, our item spikes will allow us to easily deal with Lucian through most fighting situations. Within teamfights, try to avoid being gunned down by his R, as it allows him to easily melt his targets the later the game gets. Make sure to catch Lucian out of position when he dashes in towards his targets, as his playstyle requires him to get into close quarter range to use his damage, making it an easy target for Renekton to shut down.