Gragas and a BUG
This is more likely an oversight than a bug, but Gragas has the ability to Body Slam people with his back for some reason.
IE: If you are running away and a pursuer follows Gragas closely enough, when he body slams away from them, he will hit them with his bare back (and end his body slam). This doesn't happen often, but it happens enough that I want to post about it.
While I'm here though, I would like to say that I think it's great that his escape has been nerfed by:
- Making Body slam have a long cooldown when you whiff.
- Giving Gragas the lowest base movement speed he's ever experienced (in proportion to the rest of the cast).
Because he does have amazing escape. But I would like to point out that although these are both great things to help tone it down, there's a weird part:
- Gragas is supposed to be a drunken Brawler who starts fights.
If that is true, then why does this currently exist?
- He currently has the lowest base movement speed he's ever experienced (in proportion to the rest of the cast). It makes sense to have it low to nerf the escape, but why not have it higher when he wants to engage? Gragas would greatly benefit from a minor increase in movement speed when moving towards enemy champions. Preferably, very minor ones, perhaps increasing with his ultimate rank (so that his ganks aren't overwhelming early on). His initiate is fine in the early/mid game, but late game is where it mainly suffers (unless you have flash up to body slam-> flash).
- His body slam, being one of the most counterplayable initiates in the game, especially when there are more people around to block it, currently has its slowest travel speed that it's ever had in the late game. It also currently has the fastest travel speed it has ever had in the early game. It feels great early on, when others' base movement speeds are lower, but when they get faster and have tanks blocking for them at the late game, combined with the fact that most characters with dashes can reactively avoid his Body Slam, it feels like such a poor way to start a fight (again, providing his flash is down).
All in all it's pretty simple from this point of view. Making his escape worse by lowering his walking speed and his Body Slam's travel speed static has made his late game initiates suffer a lot (when flash is down). Gragas Body slam having minor scaling with Gragas' level (not the skill level, because then he wouldn't have a one-point wonder skill, which non-hyper scaling characters almost always have) would allow it to match up well in the late game. OR Gragas' Body Slam's travel speed scaling in a minor way with movement speed buffs (not boots or permanent % increased from items). For example Sivir ultimate, Righteous Glory's activate, Lulu's Whimsy.
Body Slam currently has a travel speed of 900. If increased by level then something like this would be nice. 880-965 travel speed based on Gragas' level (5 units faster per Gragas' level). If increased by movement speed buffs (not boots or permanent boost) then something like this would be nice: Let the travel speed be affected by 20% of the effect of temporary movement speed buffs. For example: with righteous glory giving a 60% movement speed boost, it would give him one body slam attempt that would travel 108 units/second faster (900 base to 1008 with the buff).
As a side note: because Gragas currently has great carry protection abilities, it would be nice if a tank Gragas could put a bit more of a dent in tanks with his Drunken Rage. Making it ignore a small % of MR would help a lot to make this big guy chug down those opposing tank's massive HP bars (pun).
As another side note: Because the current Gragas has the worst ability to bother an ADC when he CANT reach them (body slam was blocked or dodged or interrupted), due to the removal of his major AoE attack speed reduction, he feels very helpless against ADCS when his easy-to-counterplay-by-most-supports skill (body slam) is used up. Because of this, another means of affecting them in a meaningful way would be helpful to fill this new blind spot that he gained:
- Allow his ultimate to refresh the duration of Barrel Roll's slow, so that if you chose to knock someone away from a fight, they have a longer time coming back to the fight instead of just a second and a half ish.