"If you're buying, I'm in!" - Gragas in the LCS
Riot·7/4/2014, 1:28:01 AM·0 votes·4,674 views
Once upon a time, League’s drunken fat man was king of the mid lane, his barrels feared by all as both high-impact initiations and instant carry erasers. However, his rework took away the ludicrous burst that made him such threat to carries, dragons, and barons alike. However, he has recently seen play as a top laner thanks to his new kit. What has helped Gragas make the move to top lane? His new kit is more coherent, and establishes him as a drunken brawler, not a bursty mage, and he feels right at home in top lane.
More importantly, given the cooldown on Drunken Rage, it means that Gragas restores about .5% of his max health/second, or 67% more than Dr. Mundo’s passive provides, and giving him about 30% of his max health back every minute, allowing him to stay in lane almost indefinitely, assuming he avoids major trades. At level 6, when Gragas’ base health is near 1000, that’s like having half of a health potion running constantly. Given that most top laners will spend their chump change on potions, it looks like Gragas is the one taking home all of the tips.
Drunken Rage
Overall, the rework was aimed at taking away the burst of Gragas’ barrel abilities. As compensation, Drunken Rage and Body Slam received significant buffsy.
Drunken Rage gives Gragas a huge amount of damage on his next attack, most notably a large chunk (8-12%) of maximum health damage on his next auto-attack. In addition, he gets a hearty helping (10-18%) of damage reduction. The combination of a % health heal and % health damage gives Gragas a similar laning phase to Warwick: hard to remove from lane without running him out of mana, yet also bringing strong trades to the table.
Body Slam
Gragas’ other major skill, Body Slam, gives him a large amount of spammable CC via his AoE knockback. As long as he lands his Body Slam, the cooldown is reduced from 12 seconds to 9 seconds. Given that it is a flat reduction in cooldown, it actually scales better the more CDR you have.
The focus on spam means that it is much safer for Gragas to build tanky and with a focus on CDR. EG’s Innox and LMQ’s Ackerman both built him as such, prioritizing items such as Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, and Rod of Ages. These three items supercharge Gragas’ abilities in many ways.
Rod of Ages gives him a large amount of AP, health, and mana, increasing his trade values and sustain, while giving him the mana to stay in lane even longer--especially with that item’s health and mana restore on leveling up. Meanwhile, Iceborn Gauntlet amplifies his trading pattern by giving him additional on-hit damage, as well as another slow to help him stick to targets more consistently, whether peeling for carries or chasing. And as a nice addition, it adds even more AP to his trades. Finally, Spirit Visage gives him more sustain, rounds out his tankiness, and gives him another helping of CDR.
Individually, the items are strong, but its their synergy that brings out Gragas’ real top-lane strength. With the three combined, he has 20% CDR and a healthy mix of all defensive stats: 1050 health, 60 armor, and 55 magic resistance. And that’s not to mention an extra 120 AP. Add Gragas’ 18% damage reduction from Drunken Rage and you’ve got one tanky brawler.
With the basic 20% CDR build, he has access to his damage reduction 62.5% of the time, and can make use of his % health damage every 4.8 seconds. Additionally, 20% CDR gives him a base cooldown of 9.6 seconds on Body Slam, and if it hits a unit, it drops to 6.6 seconds, a 31.25% reduction. Of course, CDR from runes and masteries only amplifies the usability of those abilities.
Moreover, with the added tankiness, Gragas can get deep into the middle of the enemy team to use Explosive Cask to split them up.
Overall, the new Gragas feels a lot more like a drunken brawler. You can’t really control where he goes, he staggers around bumping into everybody, and he just keeps on drinking.
A Whole New Man
First, let’s take a look at just what makes new Gragas so different. Happy Hour Gragas’ passive is pretty simple: Everytime he uses an ability, he restores 4% of his maximum health. Happy Hour has an 8 second cooldown, longer than or equal to the cooldown on his Drunken Rage - which costs 0 mana - so essentially, Gragas’ passive can be broken into 2 elements. First, it can provide burst healing of 4% of his maximum health. This may not seem like much, but in close, early lane trades it can make all of the difference. For example, it’s well known that a clutch health potion can save you from a level 1 or level 2 ignite death, and a health potion only heals 50 damage over 5 seconds. At early levels, Happy Hour could heal you for 25 damage instantly. However, late game that amount of health will only scale up, all the way to almost 80 health, and that’s with no health items, runes, or masteries.
More importantly, given the cooldown on Drunken Rage, it means that Gragas restores about .5% of his max health/second, or 67% more than Dr. Mundo’s passive provides, and giving him about 30% of his max health back every minute, allowing him to stay in lane almost indefinitely, assuming he avoids major trades. At level 6, when Gragas’ base health is near 1000, that’s like having half of a health potion running constantly. Given that most top laners will spend their chump change on potions, it looks like Gragas is the one taking home all of the tips.
Drunken Rage
Overall, the rework was aimed at taking away the burst of Gragas’ barrel abilities. As compensation, Drunken Rage and Body Slam received significant buffsy.
Drunken Rage gives Gragas a huge amount of damage on his next attack, most notably a large chunk (8-12%) of maximum health damage on his next auto-attack. In addition, he gets a hearty helping (10-18%) of damage reduction. The combination of a % health heal and % health damage gives Gragas a similar laning phase to Warwick: hard to remove from lane without running him out of mana, yet also bringing strong trades to the table.
Body Slam
Gragas’ other major skill, Body Slam, gives him a large amount of spammable CC via his AoE knockback. As long as he lands his Body Slam, the cooldown is reduced from 12 seconds to 9 seconds. Given that it is a flat reduction in cooldown, it actually scales better the more CDR you have.
The More the Merrier
With his new kit, Gragas is a lot less about straight up burst, and a lot more about spamming abilities. The more Gragas can spam Drunken Rage, the more % health damage he can dish out, and the tankier he’ll be. The more Gragas can spam Body Slam, the more CC he brings to the team.
The focus on spam means that it is much safer for Gragas to build tanky and with a focus on CDR. EG’s Innox and LMQ’s Ackerman both built him as such, prioritizing items such as Iceborn Gauntlet, Spirit Visage, and Rod of Ages. These three items supercharge Gragas’ abilities in many ways.
Rod of Ages gives him a large amount of AP, health, and mana, increasing his trade values and sustain, while giving him the mana to stay in lane even longer--especially with that item’s health and mana restore on leveling up. Meanwhile, Iceborn Gauntlet amplifies his trading pattern by giving him additional on-hit damage, as well as another slow to help him stick to targets more consistently, whether peeling for carries or chasing. And as a nice addition, it adds even more AP to his trades. Finally, Spirit Visage gives him more sustain, rounds out his tankiness, and gives him another helping of CDR.
Individually, the items are strong, but its their synergy that brings out Gragas’ real top-lane strength. With the three combined, he has 20% CDR and a healthy mix of all defensive stats: 1050 health, 60 armor, and 55 magic resistance. And that’s not to mention an extra 120 AP. Add Gragas’ 18% damage reduction from Drunken Rage and you’ve got one tanky brawler.
With the basic 20% CDR build, he has access to his damage reduction 62.5% of the time, and can make use of his % health damage every 4.8 seconds. Additionally, 20% CDR gives him a base cooldown of 9.6 seconds on Body Slam, and if it hits a unit, it drops to 6.6 seconds, a 31.25% reduction. Of course, CDR from runes and masteries only amplifies the usability of those abilities.
Moreover, with the added tankiness, Gragas can get deep into the middle of the enemy team to use Explosive Cask to split them up.
Overall, the new Gragas feels a lot more like a drunken brawler. You can’t really control where he goes, he staggers around bumping into everybody, and he just keeps on drinking.
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most other champions that are AP are mages, assassins,tanks, or supports so yeah its nice change to have a viable ap bruiser that fights into the meta and htat is actually good competitive play. so stop crying because your "op" got changed and can no longer 100-0 people anymore in 2 skills.
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. I guess the pros just value RoA so much, and it's not efficient to build it second... Oh well, Gragy is just so awesome.
YOU STOLE MAH DRINK! DIE!!
tend to give him the strongest power spike early, allowing him to push for dayz and spam barrels and w all day, never leaving lane except to buy or gank. as the game goes on later, gragas can itemize for full on bruiser ap tank, diving on the back line and knocking away the front line, or simply using his ult to give his team a positioning advantage.
