Wild Rift Guides

Graves Jungle Wild Rift Guide

Graves jungle counters include Lillia, Rammus, and Nunu & Willump. See the best build, runes, matchups, and game plan for Wild Rift Patch 7.3.

How to play

  • Keep farming between fights Use your 3rd ability while clearing to dash and reload one shot, then keep attacking the camp.
  • Fight where your shots can reach Minions and monsters can block your attacks, so move around them before targeting a champion.
  • Use smoke to disrupt their damage dealer Place your 2nd ability on an enemy damage dealer to limit their vision, and fight from outside their reach.

Strengths

  • One of the fastest clears in the jungle, fueling constant invades, power farming, and early objective tempo.
  • Heavy point-blank burst from his shotgun, so he wins most early duels and ganks harder than almost any farmer.
  • Built-in mobility and rising resists from True Grit (3rd) let him brawl, dash out, and re-engage where fragile carries would die.

Weaknesses

  • Hard engage and point-and-click crowd control stop him from repositioning his shells, which is his entire damage pattern.
  • He depends on an early lead: fall behind on clears and he lacks true hypercarry scaling to climb back.
  • Shotgun damage falls off at range, so disciplined kiting and disengage starve him of the close fights he needs.

Build Snapshot

Rune Setup

Summoner Spells

Graves Jungle Counters

Who counters Graves Jungle in Wild Rift (WR)? These champions beat Graves in the jungle matchup, with how each one wins. Learn to play around them or ban them in ranked.

  • Lillia: Lillia drifts out of your short shotgun range while her burn stacks on you from a safe distance. You cannot catch her without burning Quickdraw (3rd), and her sleep sets up a burst before you can close.
  • Rammus: Rammus turns your shotgun against you: Defensive Ball Curl (2nd) reflects the autos your burst relies on, and his taunt drags you into your own damage. Your AD barely touches a champion built to punish it.
  • Nunu & Willump: Nunu's percent-health bite chunks you faster than your burst dents his health bar. He sustains through your damage, blocks your shotgun angles with his size, and his snowball catches you when Quickdraw (3rd) is down.

Champions Graves Is Strong Against

Graves's best matchups in Wild Rift. Graves holds an edge against these picks in the jungle role, so look to press the advantage and contest objectives.

  • Shyvana: Graves reaches early river fights with End of the Line (1st) and armor from Quickdraw (3rd), while Shyvana wants uninterrupted camps until Dragon's Descent (Ult) unlocks her reliable engage. Invade with lane priority, use Smoke Screen (2nd) to deny her straight auto-attack duel, and take the first objectives before dragon form and passive stacks turn the farming lead into combat power.
  • Kha'Zix: True Grit (3rd) adds armor during Graves's dash pattern, and a point-blank End of the Line (1st) plus shotgun attacks can out-damage Kha'Zix after his isolated Taste Their Fear (1st) opener. Fight beside a camp to disable isolation, save Quickdraw (3rd) for the Leap (3rd) landing, and use Smoke Screen (2nd) on his exit before he can reset through Void Assault (Ult).
  • Lee Sin: Lee Sin contests your early game, but your shotgun burst and True Grit (3rd) armor out-trade his combo when you stand your ground. Your point-blank damage finishes the skirmish his combo cannot.

Early Game

Your first clear is your whole identity, so clear fast. Use shotgun knockback to limit damage from non-champion monsters, cast End of the Line (1st) into nearby terrain so its return explosion happens after 0.25 seconds, and use Quickdraw (3rd) to reload a round while repositioning. Smoke Screen (2nd) only deals a small burst when it lands and does not keep damaging camps, so do not treat it as the spell that clears the buff or monsters behind it. Take the full clear instead of breaking off early for a lane; finishing the rotation puts you at the river on tempo with ammunition and Quickdraw (3rd) ready. That tempo is what wins scuttle, and scuttle is where your early game is decided. You out-duel almost everything that contests the crab, so path to it and take the fight when it comes. Keep True Grit (3rd) stacked through the skirmish: every Quickdraw (3rd) dash gives you a stack, dashing toward an enemy champion gives two, and attacking anything that is not a minion refreshes them. Fully stacked that is a large chunk of armor, so a Graves who keeps them up walks out of a river fight the enemy jungler expected to win. Scuttle also puts you on level five, and from there the game settles into a loop: gank while your camps respawn, clear them the moment they are back, and go again. Use the river brush to set up a smoke ambush if their jungler paths toward you.

Mid Game

Let lane priority decide which first objective receives your damage and tempo. Place Smoke Screen (2nd) on the enemy jungler so nearsight limits what they can see outside the cloud; it does not silence them or directly reduce their damage, and targets inside their reduced vision can still be attacked. Fight close enough for multiple pellets to connect, and use Quickdraw (3rd) to reload or reposition as the contest changes. With a first item and an early lead, contest when your team can support the fight; when it is even, trade toward the objective your composition values more. Between objectives, invade the enemy jungle on the side away from their team, take their camps, and turn a counter-gank attempt into a duel you usually win through burst and True Grit (3rd). A Graves who is not actively pressuring the map at this stage is wasting his lead.

Late Game

Late game Graves is not a split pusher and not a scaling monster who out-damages a finished crit carry in a long fight. He is a flanking executioner. Stick with your team near Baron and the late dragons, take camps on the way so your damage stays current, and look for the angle that deletes one priority target rather than the one that puts you in the middle of their frontline. Smoke is your survival tool as much as your damage tool: drop it to break line of sight with whoever is chasing you, dash out, and re-enter once their engage is spent. If you fell behind, your job shrinks to clearing waves and punishing picks. If you are ahead, you are the reason their carry never gets to cast a spell.

Teamfights

Wait for the front lines to commit, then collapse on the squishiest target you can reach without walking through their whole team. Smoke the carry so they cannot see out of the cloud, dash in through the gap, and dump the full spread at point-blank range where every pellet connects, because that is where Graves does the damage that ends fights. True Grit (3rd) lets you survive the dive longer than the enemy expects, but you still cannot take a full lockdown chain, so time your jump for after their key crowd control is used, not before. If the dive is not there, play the flank: hold smoke to peel a diver off your own carry or break a chase, and let your dash keep you firing from the side, never from the front.

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