Very rarely, there’s a League of Legends update that buffs certain champions but lowers their win rates. Patch 14.8 has done just that to one of the game’s classic junglers.
In the latest update, Riot Games’ developers tweaked Graves by giving a minor buff to his passive and base statistics. These weren’t substantial changes, but they should, in theory, still boost the champion’s win rate, at least a bit. It turns out, though, his stats in solo queue have dropped when compared to Patch 14.7.
At time of writing, Graves is sitting on a 48.19 percent win rate in all ranks, according to a League stat site U.GG. In the same category, the champion recorded a 48.51 percent win rate by the end of the previous update. While this isn’t a major downgrade, it’s still confusing to see Graves’ stats drop despite getting a small buff.
In Patch 14.8, there were other changes that impacted the jungle, so maybe that’s one reason behind Graves’ bizarre performance. Riot directly buffed the Baron and tweaked Voidgrubs, making both of them more demanding to take down. Perhaps this slows down the Outlaw in the mid game, where he’s supposed to be the most proficient.
The other fair assumption is that the meta in League isn’t currently favoring Graves and his kit. Jungle players currently seem to be focusing on either tanks or AP-based assassins and spellcasters, like Skarner, Rammus, Nidalee, and Evelynn, just to name a few. Each of them has found themselves on top of the jungle rankings in Patch 14.8, so Graves could just be easily countered or outshined by other popular picks.
The current Patch 14.8 is also the update that the 2024 Mid-Season Invitational will be played on. So even though the average solo queue player might not know the best way to use Graves, he could still appear on stage in China. We’ll find out if that’s the case when MSI starts on May 1.
