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How I would have changed GP's Nerfs in Patch 8.4

ImRoosevelt·2/24/2018, 10:45:14 PM·5 votes·1,103 views

Hello there ^^

As a Gangplank One-Trick for almost 3 Seasons now, I actually enjoyed the fact that he was in a pretty balanced state for 1 1/2 seasons (with the last nerf in 6.17, which was really needed at that time), but his changes in 8.4 really confused me.

Gangplank was always a pretty decent pick to play, but with the introduction of Kleptomancy, he just did his job (surviving lane-phase and completely outscale the enemy team at Mid-Late game) too good in my eyes. I absolutely agree that you have to make changes to him, because he really was in an opressive state at the current time.

But now with his Q-Cost increased to 60/55/50/45/40 from 40 at all ranks and the faster barrel decay time (from 60 at all ranks to 25!, which is absolutely worse), he turned from a fair laner with huge deficits while his barrels are down, to a champion that can't fight anyone to at least fight back if he is getting engaged on. His medium match-ups are a bit hard right now, thanks to the mana cost of his Q, and his counter-picks...well let's just say if you can get 10 to 15 less CS than him, you are actually doing pretty good against it.

1: _I know people hate Gangplank for his opressiveness in lane thanks to his Q-Poke with the Sheen-Proc, but that could have been changed with one simple effect: _

**Giving him back his Mana-Refund on Minion-Kills. **

As far as I know his Q was intended to farm minions to get more Gold (more Silver Serpents since his Rework), so why not building on top of that? Make his Q cost 80 Mana (which is even higher than the Nerf that happened in 8.4), but refund 50% of it's mana if you kill a minion with it. With this simple adjustance you punish the Q-Abusers with a really high mana-cost for poking the enemy, while also making his Q his main farm-tool again (how it was used/intended to be).

With this simple, but yet inpactful change you shut his early poke down, while also keeping Gangplank 's theme as the money-grabbing pirate.

2: I agree with his E being too opressive on lane opponents, but 25 seconds at all ranks are just way too short:

Give his barrels a faster recharge time and make his barrel decay to 30 seconds instead of the 25 right now

Now let me explain this aswell. At the early ranks your barrels are your primary defensive tool. I agree that 60 seconds for one barrel was really too long, but 25 is just horrendous (I hope I wrote that right, I am not a native English speaker so excuse the mistakes ^^). In the early levels (1-7) your barrel-tick's length are at 2 seconds. This means before you can use the barrel itself you have to wait 4 seconds. 25 minus 4 is 21, if you mess up let's say you can only make use 20 seconds of that barrel.

While people who dont know how to play Gangplank , with just spamming his barrels until he has none left, wont notice the 5 seconds increase of time, us Gangplank Mains will be thankful for this change. That's where the faster recharge time comes in place. Currently his barrel recharge time is at 18/16/14/12/10 from Rank 1 to 5, so my suggestion is to make it 14/13/12/11/10. With this he is still a bit more vulnerable due to the lower barrel durations, but also giving people who actually know how to play Gangplank a little bit of potential to get kills if your opponents make mistakes in lane.

I know this discussion could be a bit biased, but I think with this change you can make our beloved pirate from that opressive Top-Laner, to a scaling champion who is actually able to fight back again.

And because we are all civilised people, I dont want this discussion turn into a salt-fiesta, so let's keep calm and talk about stuff ^^

Also thanks to the Riot Support Team for actually answering my Tweet, with saying to post it here in the forums! I really didn't think about that ^^

Have a nice day!

-Suwa Hiroto

11 Comments

Salron2/24/2018, 11:39:52 PM6 votes

Season 7 D3 GP main here

E barrel duration is managable in lane but it should scale back up to a higher duration later into the game Q mana nerf was in the right direction but I think they went a bit overboard with it, not unplayable though

My biggest issue with the changes was the removal of vision from barrels

This was completely uncalled for and doesn't really do anything to address what made him strong in the last patch, it just makes GP feel VERY awkward to play and really should be reverted imo

Or at the very least give vision on the keg exploding

Additional nerfs i would've put in would be reverting the buffs to his Q and passive that he got last year for no reason

The upcoming removal of bandit from support items will also be an indirect nerf to GP as well as the buffs to his counters (bruisers) coming soon

T4underbolt2/25/2018, 5:11:43 AM3 votes

Those nerfs just lowered go possibility to auto win lane by harrasing with q. The part where he stays one the barrel and you can't even engage him stays the same. 25 seconds is still too much. You can sit on a barbell with this duration just like you did before and doing combo of 2 or 3 barrels doesn't require that much time. He was dominant for too long. Time for go players to actually use hand when playing him instead of brainlessly spam one button and winning lane for free. He is hard late game scaling champion. He is supposed to be very weak early.

LyingOnLine2/24/2018, 11:43:49 PM1 votes

/le shrug/

Seems to have worked out the way they wanted it to anyways.