Lillia vs Graves — Top Lane Matchup Guide

How to win lane as Lillia against Graves · 56% win rate over 25 Emerald+ games · Updated 2026-07-27

Verdict: Lillia is favoured — Lillia owns 5 of the 7 game windows to Graves's 1. Lillia wins 56% of games vs Graves in top lane (25 Emerald+ games analysed).

Favour timeline — who owns each window

StageFavouredWhy
Level 1Even / skillGraves' shotgun auto out-trades your single-ability level 1 — farm Q from range and concede the opener, neither of you wants to commit yet.
Level 2LilliaYour Q sweetspot stacks move speed and your E slow lands, so you kite him and the Dream Dust burn ticks while he reloads.
Level 3LilliaLayered Q sweetspots plus the compounding DoT mean every shotgun step-up costs him HP he can't sustain, and your speed keeps you out of his auto range.
Levels 4-5LilliaFull-rank Q and the burn at its strongest let you grind him down on your move-speed stacks while his autos and E dash are on cooldown.
Level 6GravesHis E dash plus W smoke blind let him all-in through your delayed Lilting Lullaby sleep and burst you before it lands — this is his window, play for anti-engage.
First itemLilliaYour Liandry's/Riftmaker or Blackfire spike turns W and Dream Dust into percent-HP melt that beats his tanky-ADC durability — force skirmishes here.
Two+ itemsLilliaGraves doesn't out-statcheck your burn like the hard scalers do, so your DoT and isolate-sleep keep winning fights and roams at two-plus items.

Early game (levels 1–5)

Level 1 you concede — you only have Q and Graves' shotgun auto chunks you, so just farm Q from max range and eat nothing. The lane flips at 2-3: once your Q sweetspot starts stacking move speed and your E slow lands, you become uncatchable and the Dream Dust burn ticks every time he steps up to auto. Bait his two-bullet burst, then chase on your speed stacks — he has to reload, and that reload window is when your DoT is free damage he can't shoot back.

Read the rest of this matchup

The full Lillia vs Graves report continues with the mid-game plan, the late-game and teamfight plan, every power spike to play around, and the win conditions for both sides — plus cooldown tracking and the live enemy-jungle tracker inside the app.

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Playing the other side? Graves vs Lillia guide →
All Lillia top lane matchups →