LoL AP Ezreal Guide

LoL AP Ezreal Guide by DarkEndless

Masteries

When I glanced over the preseason 6 changes, I had to admit that I was worried for the future of AP Ezreal. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Something about me: I’m an AP Ezreal main and have played thousands of games with AP Ez, including in ranked play. After playing quite a few games with AP Ez in the pre season, I’m fairly certain that he’s far stronger than before. Here is why:

1. Changes to mana regen have allowed Ezreal to choose the meditation mastery, couple it with scaling mana regen seals, and then not have to worry about building a mana regen item.
2. Changes to Lich bane mean that it’s the best rush item for Mage Ezreal right now. CDR is one of the most desirable stats for the build, and now reaching the cap got even easier.
3. 45% CDR and Thunderlord’s Decree. Death fire touch is straight trash on AP Ezreal because it only has a half-effect on his W and R and doesn’t even apply to his Q (Not sure why this is, because the sorcery mastery does increase his Q damage…?). So instead, the Cunning tree is the way to go. Thunderlord’s more than makes up for the loss of the arcane blade mastery from seasons past, and it adds an explosive edge to Ezreal’s early all-ins or AA W AA level 1 harass.
4. One of Ezreal’s most easily exploitable weaknesses is his waveclear. The counter to this is in trading with your opponent. If they’re using their skills on minions, you can use your skills on them and force them off the wave. In prior seasons, poking with W from a distance was the standard trading tool. But now with thunderlord’s, AP Ezreal has a far easier time all-inning earlier. Your lane opponent can’t push if they’re dead, and they’ll be reluctant to push if they’re missing most of their health.

My go to build is as follows:

12 ferocity/18 cunning masteries. Take CDR, thunderlord’s, and mana regen. Everything is pretty straight forward for an AP Caster. I can post a picture later if necessary.

Runes: Flat AP quints, flat AP Glyphs, scaling mana regen seals, and magic pen marks. Substituting your glyphs and a quint for 10 flat CDR and then getting sorcs instead of Ionians is alright, but I prefer the early power from raw AP.

Items: I prefer Doran’s ring for the HP and mana sustain. I think it’s better than dark seal, because there are better items than Mejai’s in the full build. It’s still certainly viable if you think you can snowball though.

Doran’s > sheen > Lich bane > Ionian boots > Deathcap > Void staff > Nashor’s tooth or Morellonomicon (if you need morello’ passive – otherwise Nashor’s gives you more damage. Both cap your CDR at 45%) > Probably Zhonyas (Luden’s or even gunblade are also viable.)

Ezreal’s laning phase is entirely dependent on landing skillshots. If you land them, it can be downright oppressive. Ezreal has an extremely high skillcap, and so with proper positioning and skillshots, you can win nearly any matchup.

Something unique to AP Ezreal is that his opponent does not have a clear counterplay dynamic against his skills. Against AD Ezreal, you hide behind your minions so he can’t hit you with Q because his W does shit for damage. AP Ezreal will wreck you with essence fluxes if you hide behind minions, and this allows you to harass or CS with Q.

Hopefully this was useful to someone. If you have any questions, I’d love to answer them.