Talk:Ezreal/@comment-216.55.112.130-20120321163216/@comment-131.156.211.13-20120323175621

I agree with NeonSpotlight's assement. I'm just making an expansion of the points: Ezreal doesn't actually lack burst damage. Rather, that's Ezreal's biggest problem: He's hyper-focused on burst damage, while all the best late game carries have very high constant damage.

(why some other carries have so much more immediate burst damage baffles me; Vayne in particular has the best Ranged Carry kit since it gives her incredible constant damage, utility AND scaling burst damage. Small wonder the scrubs want her to be free every week)

Early-Mid game carries have more utility to both survive and to close ganks, but fall off pretty badly later. Ezreal has one spell that does this (Arcane Shift). In practice, I find Ezreal to play much closer to a ranged Fighter who can double as a Carry (due to his passive). I say Fighter instead of Assassin, since Assassins generally have high base skill damage and crowd control, but lower ratios or AS than carries. Ezreal has high ratios and NO crowd control.

Any sort of utility could help smooth over his game, so he becomes a Jack-of-All-Trades Carry who is balanced by the fact that his skills are all Skillshots, and innately less fallible.

Honestly, I think Ezreal's biggest detractor is Vayne. Why?

Because she is basically that Jack of All Trades Carry already; "balanced" by her very low initial HP totals (yet, she recovers faster than any carry I've seen. If her team stabliizes, she can reach late-game damage rather easily without being fed early).

Ezreal isn't much tougher than Vayne, yet lacks most of her strengths, and it's made him the worse pick in general. There are nuanced strengths he has over her (Shift jumps walls; tumble doesn't, his ultimate has global-range), but ultimately, he's just a weaker carry than Vayne since she takes less skill to play (non-skillshots) but still keeps pace in terms of damage and average mobility at all stages of the game and eventually eclipses him entirely.

Every other Carry has some sort of niche they fill more specifically. Tristana has Range and some of the best constant DPS in the game, but most of her kit scales with AP, and is relegated to utility late-game (it's a good kit though). Caitlyn and Graves have stronger early/mid game but fall off compared to any of the AS-whores. Kog-Maw has dual-builds and some CC but no escape mechanism apart from his slow.

Ezreal's burst damage is decent late game, but the problem is that late-game has little use for burst-damage champs, with only a handful of odd exceptions (any of the stat-farmers for example; especially Nasus).