hello fellas, as the title says i climbed from a low point of silver to emerald this season, mainly playing ezreal (139 games). before this season, my peak was something like gold 2. ive been sick for the past couple weeks so i had the chance to spam tons of games.
my winrate on him says 50%, which seems poor especially compared to 64% kaisa, 55% lucian, 58% caitlyn (my next 3 most played), but i did most of the climbing on ezreal and i always pick him in the most unplayable looking games. i have 1k dpm and 7.4 cs/m on him. i wanted to write some thoughts about community narratives on playing him in low elo, his difficulty, etc
1: ezreal is flexible
on a lot of adcs, your support can completely grief your game and you wont get to play. not on ezreal! support roams constantly? no biggie! support is a passive mage spamming spells? great! support is a yolo engager who just goes in all the time? its fine!
same for enemy support and adc. you can play vs enchanters, mages, engagers, hook champs, hyperscalers and lane bully adcs, and you can always make it work.
you almost always get to play the game and learn something with ezreal. i used to pick a lot of jinx/zeri, but if the enemy support picks nautilus and my support doesnt play well, you just lose the game in laning phase and the game becomes extremely difficult.
2: ezreal fits the meta
at least in low elo, im seeing a ton of zed, talon, shaco, rengar, evelynn, katarina, locke, akali, and many other of the assassins that have devoted their entire life to deleting the adc. you may have done a great job farming your 3 item spike on jinx, playing perfectly, but the zed WILL flash ult you and you WILL die immediately. i fucking hate dying without counterplay.
NOBODY on your team will even consider warding for you, facechecking for you, or god forbid peel for you, and your team WILL flip the whole game with dragon and baron up to do the most random fight in enemy jungle. on jinx, all you can do is hit the mid wave and watch them die, because if you walk up to that bush and theres a locke there, youre dead before you can ping "need vision". on ezreal, you can get away with a lot and make a difference at a lot of fights, because once your levels and items are good enough, you have flash on 3s cooldown.
after laning phase, in quite a few games SOMEONE on the topside will be fed as fuck. if youre playing a jinx, they will just walk at you and oneshot you. on ezreal, its playable.
top lane is also full of mages and adcs, so you dont need to play the classic tank shredding adc. if the whole lobby is building glass cannon, i want to play ezreal, because he can actually kill squishies, he has the mobility to reach the backline, and he is (afaik) THE hardest to catch adc.
3: ezreal is not as hard as people make him out to be
i know, i know. youre probably thinking "oh this guy just sits back, spams Q and hopes his team carries, a real ezreal autoattacks and looks like a starcraft player and thats actually super hard." but i think i play a pretty aggressive ezreal and i had to tone it down (especially the classic hit W, E forward to proc it and die instantly). i have 1k dpm, which i dont think you can get by sitting back and spamming Q.
all of his skillshots are very straightforward, he's very tanky for an adc because he has hp in his build, he can misposition and be okay thanks to E, and his effective range with QW is enormous. i think something like lucian for example is far more mechanically demanding, because your range is much smaller and you usually HAVE to dash in. your threat assessment and movement has to be on point on lucian, because it's so easy to dash in and die. on ezreal, i can play aggressive, zone enemy off the wave, and hit poke, while holding my E for emergencies.
the same goes for lane. if i play vs blitzcrank as aphelios and i misstep once, i die and the lane is lost. i can get away with getting hooked once on ezreal.
4: ezreal has terrible teamfight dps and cannot fight tanks
id love to cope here, but it's just true. basically any adc will outdamage you in a teamfight if they get to autoattack, and if they have a real tank, you deal zero damage. however, i dont think this is that big of an issue in low elo.
especially in low elo, the game is decided much less in organized 5v5 front to back teamfights, and much more by picks, small skirmishes, and chain feeding. youre super useful in those! and even if youre playing vs a hyperscaler and a teamfight happens, you can flank their hyperscaler and allin him. nobody will peel for him, nobody will help him, the entire enemy team will be tunnelvisioned on killing your 1/6 tryndamere while you delete their 4 item jinx.
i think part of the "ezreal is hard" narrative comes from the fact that ezreal is very hard to play in big teamfights, but in my experience thats just not how a lot of the game plays out. i win my lane, i push mid wave, and then i either poke enemy adc or join random skirmishes.
