There are many reasons as to why Graves is a great support choice. Unlike other supports, Graves can do more than just heal. In fact, he has several ways in which he can survive even the worst situations. Here are just some of his abilities, which can give you an edge when playing against enemy champions.
Graves Build - The first thing that you should know when learning how to play Graves is that his kits revolves around building up basic health and mana. This means that you should build up your health bar quickly so that you can sustain your own health. You can use the rune table to your advantage by building up some quickdraws early on in the game.
As a Graves build, you want to be a bit of a jack of all trades. In particular, you want to be a strong physical damage dealer with strong snares, slows, and strong initiation. The reason you want to be a jack of all trades is because Graves has no escape mechanism and relies on his crowd control to get him where he needs to go. If you can play Graves effectively, you can easily kite the enemy back using his knockback and root effects.
One of the main issues that Graves players face is not being able to kill their opponents quickly. A great way to prevent yourself from being killed is to make sure that you have the right items. For instance, if you're playing against a Syndra, a good strategy would be to put your ultimate on top of your health bar and then use the mines to keep her at bay. Graves can really ruin the enemy team if he is able to hit a few key points such as their back or their shield.
When you learn how to play Graves, one of the main things that you will need to consider is your playstyle. A lot of Graves players will either stand behind their pets or simply use their spells on the side, which can cause problems when playing against someone with a huge spell casting capability. One of the best ways to counteract this is to either burst the spells of the enemy champion or to get on top of them quickly using your ground based damages. Another thing to consider is that Graves Runy has a weak early game so you should try to get objectives as early as possible and take advantage of the slow speeds of Graves' abilities.
One other important aspect of playing Graves is the ability to effectively use his traps and mines. Graves is an effective jungler and as such is very good at trapping and ganking players while they're jungling. You can learn how to effectively use his traps by reading the spell descriptions. Graves has a series of spells that deal area of effect damage and you can use them to get out of sticky situations. Using your traps effectively will also help you regain lost health in tealights.
It is important that you stay safe while playing Graves. Knowing where the opposition's position is will help you get onto a good position for ganks as well as counter jungle camps. If the opposition is going to camp under your house then you need to either get on top of them quickly with your traps or place them so they are all around your tower. The most important point to remember when playing against an enemy like Graves is not to get caught out. This hero can be extremely frustrating to deal with if you're unable to figure out where he's going to move. Many Graves players will just run around the map looking for possible ganks and kills and they'll rarely engage the enemy if they think they might have a chance at getting a kill.
The last major aspect of playing Graves is that it is extremely effective to build up your mana bar quickly. Graves needs and to both sustain himself and deal damage with spells and his mana levels will fluctuate depending on what he's doing. Most enemies will have a low and level, and while you can follow them around using your spells and auto attacks they will eventually run out of mana and you'll be able to get in range for a nice kill. Knowing when to engage and when to back off is a big part of learning how to play Graves correctly and it's important to master the ability to do both.