The Complete Draven Guide
Draven is one of the hardest champions in the game, but by the end of this guide you'll learn how easy it is to snowball and carry every single game you are in.
Don't let his difficulty steer you away, he is an incredibly fun champion and investing your time playing him will be greatly rewarded.
Draven's Abilities Explained
Passive - League of Draven is your money printing machine. You get stacks of Adoration by killing units, catching axes and last hitting 6 minions in a row. When you get a kill (and ONLY a kill) you Cash out and get 40 gold PLUS 2.5 per Adoration stack. However, you lose 75% of total stacks if you die.
Q - Spinning Axe is your strongest spell but also what makes the champion so hard. When you press this button, Draven will start to spin an axe for 6 seconds which will empower his next Basic Attack to deal extra damage; once thrown it will bounce towards the direction you're moving or near you if you stood still. Catching it refreshes it and you can hold up to 2 at the same time.
W - Blood Rush increases the difficulty a bit more since you have to now manage your mana carefully. This spell gives you Movement Speed, Attack Speed and Ghosting (you can move through units). Whenever you catch an Axe the cooldown resets.
E - Stand Aside is a simple spell. It throws a fan of axes that knocks enemies aside and slows them for 2 seconds. Useful to have a bit of peel or cancel spell casting.
R - Whirling Death is an execute tool. This actually turns the Adoration stacks from your passive into damage. Not only does this global spell already deal tons of damage, but if it lowers an enemy's champions HP to a number lower than your stacks they will die instantly.
Things to remember
I briefly explained what the spells do but now I will give some important info you should know when learning Draven:
- You move faster than your axes so you have to wait a little bit when they're landing. Knowing this can make kiting both easier and harder; because you're faster you don't have to go towards the axe straight away but your opponents are also trying to aim their spells in that direction.
- You can't hold more than 2 axes at the same time, but the amount of axes you can have in the air is "infinite", this is called juggling.
- Be smart with casting your W - Blood Rush and don't just spam it.
- Because of the execute in your Ultimate don't be afraid to just ult to learn the thresholds. You could end up killing someone from half HP.
- Minor detail but your Ultimate deals less damage per target hit capped at 40% damage (60% reduction).
Summoner spells
The obvious reason to take Cleanse is enemy Crowd Control; if you can't move you can't catch axes. But there's also another very important reason to take it, you can remove Exhaust with it.
Exhaust hard counters Draven so being able to remove it instantly is huge.
Best Runes to take
Lethal Tempo is the best keystone specially for those who aren't as experienced on the champion. Similarly, Sorcery is the best for the secondary path since Absolute Focus + Gathering Storm is more consistent. Domination is viable but I find it overkill.
The minor changes you could do are:
- Swap Triumph for Presence of Mind if you are not going to build Essence Reaver.
- Coup de Grace, Cut down and Last Stand are all good just depends on the enemy team comp for which one is best.
Best build for Season 14
Hands down the best starter item every game is going to be Doran's Blade. Draven loves every stat it gives.
NEW Korean Build
A new build that has been appearing in Korea, where you go Eclipse - into Essence Reaver - into Shieldbow then IE and LDR, this build uses ingenious hunter in runes to reduce all the item CD's and gives you a ton of survivability with eclipse and shieldbow shields, it allows you to play a lot more aggressive and tank a lot more than normal, overall its quite a fun build that I'd recommend you try. (UPDATE THIS BUILD HAS NOW KINDA BEEN KILLED AS RIOT STEALTH NERFED ECLIPSE FOR RANGED)Full Draven Guide
If you want to learn all the Tips & Tricks for Draven check out this video where I explain all of his mechanics and matchups. Learn how to play Draven from an LEC Pro Player.
Some stuff may be outdated but all the information in this Tacter guide will always be correct and up to date.
Draven BUFFED
Draven recently got a huge buff, with 5 damage on his Q at all ranks, he is now one of the strongest adcs in the game, here you can see some educational gameplay on how I abuse this champion to stomp in Challenger.Draven Skins Tierlist
