[26.5 Update] Diamond/Master Draven ADC guide

Draven Guide

Diamond/Master efficient, how to win and snowball steadily according to enemy composition. TBD regarding higher elos, I'll climb and come back here to update the guide.

Welcome to my first guide about the champion I played the most throughout the years and throughout the elos. I will enrich it step by step for it to be and remain as accurate as possible! I am currently doing some Match-up cards to explain specific interactions Draven vs ADC and Supp champions.

Build Summary

Detailed rune page explanations below!

Always go for these. No matter what.

Boots are now relevant to complete for Draven, as they do not count as an additional item. Berzerk if you go ham or play Conq, else adapt to ennemy team.

My item builds focus on not having to get a BF back for first item so you are always gold efficient and back with tempo.

To build in THIS order, build recommended for 90% of your games.

Run these when you know your mid-game based on R more than DPS, more explanations below.

Optional items to go for as 4th/5th choice, vs Yas/Yone + ADC, Randuin's has a lot of value, versus hard engage, Edge of the Night can do the trick, heavy CC/Suppress implies QSS, Spirit visage is very good as a last item with an enchanter support to increase healing/shielding from their spells and your own lifesteal.

I would recommend Flash + Heal in most of the game for the clutch movement speed early game vs no CC. More related to convenience on my side.

Second option would be cleanse against heavy CC like Leona, Lissandra, Ashe, Lillia... or versus Yuumi (to cleanse the ignite/exhaust)

Barrier for people who would rather force people to build anti-shield. I do not enjoy it at all.

What's the point of playing Draven, what does he do, and a few tricks.

Draven is known to be a tilter snowball crazy inting champion.

That used to be true in season 7-10, before he started to get slightly reworked. In season 7-10, most of Draven players would really feel and be more or less useless if they weren't super ahead early in the game, which would also create a lot of frustration for enemies when he would, since it was kind of not playable at all. This induced that people would do a lot of gank-forcing on draven, forcing dives and denying him ressources just to make sure he would be 0/5 and not just 0/1. This way of playing against it can make Draven players tilt very quickly and entirely lose their mind.

Indeed, in his character design, Draven is not meant to be a scaling ADC so-to-speak, he has relatively low range, relies on kills to get gold, has no spells dealing dmg in %HP. In addition to that Draven has no dash nor stealth, making him quite vulnerable to various types of engages.

But! In season 11, Riot made an important change, to make Draven more of a snowballer with fight impact rather than a cheesy tilted pick. Since then, the number of stacks you have as of your passive League of Draven represents the execute threshold from your R Whirling Death. This makes Draven not necessarily needing to get kills early, but instead be a short-term scaling monster, creating botlane pressure but without the need of greeding for kills.

As draven, having 30-50 cs lead at min 10-11 without any kill (nor any death) is incredibly dangerous. At this stage in the game, with decent farming and Axes skill Spinning Axe, you should be around 150-200 stacks. Which means that your next R would execute anyone being below 450HP, which is insane at 10 minutes in the game. Taking a drake or grub fight knowing this is literally suicide.

In addition to this change, the Bonus AD ration from Spinning Axe was increased over the years to reach +105% Bonus AD when the ability is level 5. This represents intense scaling on items (and gold spent).

Draven has strengths AND weaknesses.

Despite people calling out Draven for being stupid and overpowered over the years, as mentioned above, this is increasingly more untrue over the last seasons. Durability patch, the nerf of character's Base AD... Draven is still strong in early game, but there is nothing comparable to the Season 7-8 Draven laning which was literal bullying (and unfair, to be honest).

Weaknesses:

Q Spinning Axe is the only way for Draven to be able to trade properly. With only one Axe, Draven is not as scary as it seems, and his movements are quite predictable when picking up axes. Denying Draven from attacking any target for 5,8s you will force him into reactivating Q Spinning Axe (and lose 45 Tear of the Goddess) or to lose both his axes if he was on CD.

Draven is quite mana reliant when not mastered. You can run out of mana quite rapidly as Draven if you are spamming Spinning Axe and Blood Rush.

People hate you. Allies. Enemies. The Draven tale is that you will more likely int rather than carry your teammates, and in the eyes of enemies, they need to make you tilt as hard as possible to make you RageQuit or go out of your mind.

Strengths:

Q Spinning Axe makes you the strongest auto-attacker before 3 items. You can get decent trades against Jhin's Whisper and Caitlyn's Headshot, whereas it is nearly impossible for other champions.

People hate you. Allies. Enemies. The Draven tale is that you will more likely int rather than carry your teammates, and in the eyes of enemies, they need to make you tilt as hard as possible to make you RageQuit or go out of your mind. But you can use this to your advantage. Do not spam ping too much, and accept the fact that people want you dead. Every minute you spend forcing people on botlane to cover or defend buys time for you team to play elsewhere when you're weak sided.

Using R Whirling Death is very useful to push waves or prevent any dive while chunking opponents, it is not only a finisher.

Despite having quite obvious trade kit (auto attacks), Draven can be compared to a soccer player. You either try to follow the ball (in-game picking up Spinning Axe) or you can drive and have the ball where you want to have it. This takes practice to become effortless, but you'll get to it.

I wrote above that Draven is QUITE predictable regarding the need of picking up axes. Just as a soccer player, you can juke and bait ennemies into thinking you're going backward or not with Spinning Axe location. Plus the AoE of the axe on the floor is larger than it visually is, which allows you to dodge spells and still pick up your Spinning Axe. Free to you to also let an axe drop to bait out CC like Light Binding or Dredge Line.

Some tips and tricks:

When having 2 Spinning Axe spinning, and your Q Spinning Axe CD up, you can create trade patterns that enemies will not expect. For example, people will have in mind 2 options when you attack them as Draven. In their mind, you will either attack them once and go back, or you will go in like crazy. A very efficient pattern is to attack once, move forward for a second auto while picking up Spinning Axe, and then make a second auto while going backward, or go forward and go back letting the axe drop to bait CD, they press Spinning Axe again and you get back to your status quo of having two spinning axes. The less readable you are, the more dangerous it will be for your opponent to punish or to play accordingly.

Level 1, people think Draven is unbeatable, but this is false if you got only 1 Spinning Axe. You need to stack 2 of them in order to be winning any trades, ping back your supports willing to trap in the most advanced brush of the lane, because you will most often take a terrible trade, with minions aggro + 1 Spinning Axe. Ping back your supp and tell them to wait your second Spinning Axe activation, you can ping the remaining cooldown for them to engage at the perfect timing.

You can chain your Stand Aside or Whirling Death to your auto attack to the point where it is almost an auto attack reset. It takes time to practice but when mastering it, it makes a real DPS difference.

Blood Rush's movement speed allows you to attack enemies undertower and avoid taking a lot of turret shots when timed properly, abusing it makes it very frustrating/dangerous for your opponent to farm undertower.

Baiting spells is something Draven is very good at, especially if you're against Samira and her W Blade Whirl which makes you lose one Spinning Axe per auto during her W.

A point which is important for the third build presented below, is that the Spinning Axe is active for 5,8 seconds if you do not auto attack or press Spinning Axe again. Therefore, you have a threshold of Ability Haste (RIP cooldown reduction) where you can spam Spinning Axe without attacking and remain with 2 rotating axes for the whole game. The threshold is 39 ability haste. Back in the days, the Draktharr's Shadowcarver build allowed draven to ramp up to 40 ability haste with only Draktharr's Shadowcarver providing haste and mythic passive haste. Nowadays, you almost need to run Axiom Arc (cf. Build 3) if you want to attain this threshold or now the Faim insatiable !

Skill Order

Well the skill order is super classic, nothing else is worth it.

Q Spinning Axe max is basically mandatory for the CD of the spinning axes and the increased bonus ad ratio.

Maxing up W Blood Rush second even if you can reset it by catching an axe is mandatory because it heavily reduces the mana cost, and you want to be burning as little mana as possible as Draven.

Runes

Explanation for tree

is for me the most mathematically correct rune to go for as Draven. The ramp up damage from the AD given by Conqueror on each auto attack and spells is very impressive, even if you will mostly not beneficiate from the full stacked conqueror passive (omnivamp) since you will most likely kill people or die before you reach 12 stacks. But I recently decided to opt for eventhough it is not my favorite option.

is basically the clutch factor in lane + gives you gold for assists which can also make the difference. You can see people going for but the more you play Draven, the less you need it since you'll be much more efficient with your mana (not overspamming W and not losing that many axes in fights).

is the most feel-good rune for Draven, since you will almost always be willing to run lifesteal items (Bloodthirster, Faim insatiable or Mercurial Scimitar), playing with makes no real sense and decrease your early game power.

is for me the most efficient rune on Draven, especially in soloQ. I used to value much more in the past, but I end up doing much better with Last Stand, being able to force out fights bot, and benefitting from being low in health. In post-game stats, the amount I get from is at least twice higher than what I usually get from . In addition, it synergizes very well with since you can afford going for very long trades, and in the mid/late game, you'll always be buffed by your runes (>70% HP you get , <60% HP is taking over).

and are my main go-to runes for what is explained above regarding . I sometimes opt for which synergizes very well with Draven's W Blood Rush. Usually, going Gathering Storm as an AD champ is not recommended compared to other options, but you can consider that any AD you get is doubled by your Q Spinning Axe (105% bonus AD ratio) so it makes it worth it in my opinion and experience. I would recommend going when facing long range match-ups when having an enchanter support.

Builds (3 main builds I would recommend and one niche build)

Hubris → Bloodthirster → Infinity Edge → Lord Dominik's Regards → Chasseur de monstres → Lunettes Hextech C44

Hubris → Lunettes Hextech C44 → Lord Dominik's Regards → Cimeterre mercuriel → Chasseur de monstres → Infinity Edge

Hubris → Opportunity → Edge of Night → Serylda's Grudge → Axiom Arc → Veillée de Youmuu

Faim insatiable → Overlord's Bloodmail → Sundered Sky → Sterak's Gage → Hexplaque expérimentale → Salutations de Dominik

Explanations :

Build 1:

Hubris is currently crazy broken, offering very good scaling on takedowns + AD and lethality for a ridiculously low total cost. Rush it in any game, anyhow. I like going a lethality item first rather than Bloodthirster since you can avoid sleeping on golds and overstaying to get B. F. Sword early on. I recommend going Bloodthirster second item, or Mercurial Scimitar (if they have both point and click CC + Magic dmg), or Endless Hunger (if they have CC and AD dmg). Going these items first and second allows you to trade without having to gamble your trading efficiency with crit chance in early game. It allows you to know exactly how much you can deal in a specific trade-window and make more reliable decisions.

Once you start building crit items like Infinity Edge or Lord Dominik's Regards you will smoothly get to 100% crit while already having lifesteal/omnivamp and high Flat AD.
When you get to 6 items, you basically are very, very powerful, the reverted Lord Dominik's Regards with the Giant Slayer passive coupled with Fiendhunter Bolts makes you a real tank killer if necessary (one of the usual Draven's Weaknesses).
I recommend running it most of the time, since in most games you will face a tank/bruiser and you kinda need to front to back as Draven. This build allows you to kill any squishy too obviously. If you are facing only squishies and long range, then go for Rapid Firecannon or Phantom Dancer.

Build 2:

Exlanations will come

Build 3:

Build 4 (niche):

This build might seem like an ultimate bravery stuff, but it is actually quite amazing in a lot of contexts. Overlord's Bloodmail is literally an OP item when combined to / or and the HP Bar you're building up during the game. You will easily get 70+ AD from it +40 when you get to 30% HP. When you pick Draven as first pick and you end up matching up against Jax, Vi, Xerath, Samira and Alistar for example, you basically want to wait for -20LPs. BUT this build allows you to tank so much while dealing a lot in teamfights. You will end-up by having 4K+ HP, with 400+ AD (800+ DMG with Spinning Axe) and increased tenacity with Sterak's Gage, huge regen with Faim insatiable and Sundered Sky. You will get a very good mid/late game since the enemies will be less encline to engage on you, while having to respect your damage (scaling with + ) anyway, you essentially turned an unplayable game into a realistically playable one.

This build makes you benefit from Flat AD given by Faim insatiable and more over the crazy clutch factor of its omnivamp when getting a kill or an assist. You go from 5% (equivalent of ) to 20% omnivamp (working on your R and E also) coupled with a stacking or . Going this item first allows you to trade without having to gamble your trading efficiency with crit chance in early game. It allows you to know exactly how much you can deal in a specific trade-window and make more reliable decisions.

Why would we go Faim insatiable ??

To better understand this item value for Draven, we need to come back to an important aspect of Draven's Spinning Axe. In order to permanently have 2 rotating axes (even if you're not hitting anything), you need to get at least 39. Having thisamount can be achieved with Faim insatiable's passive providing scaling with bonus AD, having enough AD with and + all your items.