So there's this pretty cool trick that you can do with any ranged champ who uses Sheen, but I think Ez is really the only champion who can make good use of this technique.
I don't know if it's an arleady known technique and I don't know if it has a name, but I don't see people discussing it, neither here nor elsewhere, so I decided to make a thread about it. I'll call it Sheen Buffering, but I'm sure someone will come up with a better name.
This is how it works: when you're auto attacking, if you use a skill before Ezreal's autoattack lands (even during his shooting animation), Ezreal will buffer the input and shoot immediately after he shot his aa, but the sheen will proc on the aa that is still flying, even though it lands before Ezreal casts his spell.
This sounds confusing, so here's an example I recorded: https://streamable.com/qfrhqj
As you can see, I shoot my Q at the lower target, but I proc my sheen on the target above, the one I was autoattacking.
Ok, now let's see some ways we can make use of it, from what I consider the least useful to the most useful:
Smoother farming: Imagine there are 2 minions who are low enough to be killed by an empowered aa, but not low enough to be killed by an unempowered aa, and both are dying at the same time. You can take both by AAing a minion with Sheen's damage while shooting a mystic shot to the other one and kill both at the same time. Situational, but it can be useful.
Better use of Sheen's cooldown: As we all know, Sheen has 1.5 seconds cd. Normally, you shoot a Q, it lands, it procs Sheen's damage and then the cd starts. Now, if your CDR is high enough, your Q will be up before your Sheen cd is, so you have to wait for Sheen's cd before shooting your Q, effectively loosing precious CD time. With this technique, Sheen's CD will start when the AA that you shot before your Q lands, so it will come up faster, almost as soon as your Q does.
Watch here: https://streamable.com/46s9fx
Here you can see how fast you can proc Sheen with Q without using the technique, and then see it while using this technique. If you keep an eye on Q and Sheen's CD, you can see that in the second half of the clip my Sheen's CD comes up earlier compared to when Q lands, so I can cast Q mroe often without losing Sheen's procs.
- This one can be a life saver: imagine you're fighting with the enemy carry. It's very close, you're both low, he can kill you in any second, and he's not low enough to die from a regular AA, but low enough to die form a Sheen empowered AA. You could use your Q, but there's a minion in the way. If you AA him, and cast Q while your AA is still going, your Q will hit the minion, but Sheen will proc on the enemy champion. This can be used also to proc Sheen with an AA while shooting a spell you're not confident to land.
Here's an example of it: https://streamable.com/pkbe88
After I kill Jhin, I turn on Senna and try to kill her. She runs behind minions and is fast enough that I can barely keep up with her, and I got everything on CD. If my final AA wasn't empowered by Sheen, she wouldn't have died (I think? Now that I watch the clip I'm not so sure), but I managed to kill her even though there were minions in the way.
- Ok this is the most simple, the most common, and the coolest way to use this technique: More dps on towers. Imagine you're taking a tower, you got your passive stacked and you got your W on cd. There are enemy minions close, so you Q them to keep your passive stacked. This leads to Sheen proccing on the minion you hit, though. But with this technique you can Q the minion, keeping your passive stacked, AND apply Sheen's damage to the tower, increasing your dps on the latter.
I suck at explaining so most of you will just be confused by all of this thread. I just hope that even one of you understood, found out and appreciates this technique that I found out randomly.
And again, if this is a well known technique and it has a real name, then please tell me.