Hextech Gunblade's active is too powerful and needs to be looked into

Lakinther·Jan 24, 2020·17 votes·8,652 views

To a squishy target, that active deals 1/5th of the targets hp and it is accompanied by a 40% slow for 2 seconds. For the item's core users, its already very strong due to the healing and the active makes it blatantly broken. Think about Akali. If you can start a fight by removing 1/5th of enemy adc's hitpoints and follow that up with an execution on R, its gonna feel really bad for the ad carry player. Akali has been receiving constant nerfs since the rework, but her core item was never touched. Yet to this day Akali remains OP, atleast in high elo/competitive. Akali hasnt always been the only abuser tho. Remember ap Ezreal last season? The reason why Ezreal's Ap ratios got nerfed was that Ezreal players started building hextech gunblade and it was actually just broken. Come mid game, after landing your W, you could proc it with your E and add the Hextech gunblade active damage, and the target would lose 75% of their hp. And after the slow, a followup Q was easy to hit. Again, Ezreal's ratios were nerfed ( which i actually don't have a problem with, but this is to show the point ) but the item that enabled that playstyle was not touched. A third example would be Katarina. While she is not playable in competitive, in soloq she can be quite okay, in especially diamond and underand again that hextech gunblade active is just too good in helping her slow down opponents and burst them and often leaves targets helpless.

Maybe removing the slow from the active would be enough ( i dont think so, but it would be worth investigating ). Either way i would wanna see riot experiment with nerfing/removing the active and in return compensating the champions when necessary. Perhaps without that it would be way easier to balance a champion like Akali. In any case, i cant recall a single instance when the item was core for a champion that was in a healthy spot. We can all agree that Akali has been broken. Everyone who remembers Hextech Gunblade Ezreal can attest to it being absolutely broken ( the ap ratio nerfs even prove it). To fix Katarina's problems you need to rework her, but she aint in a healthy spot either.

Please, experiment.

21 Comments

WoonStruckJan 24, 20205 votes

You forgot about how much of a problem gunblade made kayle.

AirKingNeoJan 25, 20202 votes

kayle is literally the least problematic champion who uses gunblade.

WoonStruckJan 25, 20203 votes

literally only because the pace of the game is sped up so drastically combined with klepto's removal.

She was a pretty huge fucking problem before klepto was removed, and if the game ever slows down (it probably won't), she'll show to be just as big of a problem again.

AirKingNeoJan 26, 20201 votes

dude, every late game champion would be broken if the game slowed down.

Also yeah, klepto is problematic, no shit.

but Kayle and Gunblade are the least issues in the game. The OP is just complaining about it because of Akali.

WoonStruckJan 26, 20201 votes

No, literally every champion that started first-buying gunblade has been an issue.

Kayle without gunblade would have been much less of an issue, even with klepto in the game.

The item is problematic on every champ its ever purchased on commonly. It should be deleted or have its costs and stats reevaluated entirely.

AirKingNeoJan 29, 20201 votes

kayle isn't even an issue right now and hasn't been since klepto was removed.

ŚhunpoJan 25, 20203 votes

Just remove it from the game.

From your friendly neighbourhood Katarina one trick

Katarina GremοryJan 25, 20201 votes

[deleted]

ŚhunpoJan 25, 20202 votes

No. I will continue to play Kat, jerk it to anime women and listen to mumble rap while watching Flyerbek montages as much as I want thank you very much!

On a serious note, Gunblade is stupid broken and it's time they make it a legacy item that only comes out for events.

TomiMan7Jan 25, 20202 votes

Remove the slow, nerf the dmg to start with. Then maybe imcrease by 100 gold.

Z3SIeeperJan 25, 20203 votes

The slow is probably only there because it exists on Bilgewater Cutlass.

Also removing the utility shouldn't be the first answer imo, I'd start with damage. Also it already costs 3400g, it's pretty expensive.

TomiMan7Jan 25, 20202 votes

Pretty expensive yet still insanely cost effective, even without the passive IIRC. So bumping up the cost shouldnt be too much. Also it has waay to smooth build path. Granted it has to have one given its 2nd tier components but still. Also the active range shouldnt be more than 550 range. Gut that item.

Crescent DuskJan 26, 20201 votes

{quoted}

Remove the slow, nerf the dmg to start with. Then maybe imcrease by 100 gold.

Remove the damage, leave the slow. If it costs that much, it can apply an attack speed slow+slow in exchange for doing 0 damage.

TomiMan7Jan 26, 20201 votes

It doesnt slow arrack speed, it slows movement speed.

Sire HippingtonJan 25, 20202 votes

I think the entier hextech item line could use to loose quite some damage on the effects. Shift that power into either hybrid stats or sustain for gunblade, slow/duration on GLP, and mobillity/CD or just better stats(preferably hp) on protobelt. We already have ludens and lichbane for additional sources of burstdamage, the hextech items should be more about utillity instead of burst.

Glory97Jan 25, 20201 votes

It's a super nieche item. There are only 3 champions that buy it: Akali Katarina Kayle . But those 3 who buy it are super reliant on gunblade. It's their core-item for pretty much all situations. It's the bread and butter for these 3 champions.

I know the average soloqueue player hates all 3 of these champions, so wouldn't it be awesome to make all 3 of these champion pretty much unplayable and nobody else is affected? Great plan, but it won't work. Riot will go to any lenght to put out "compensations buffs" to keep at least 2 of them viable. Don't you know how many skins katarina and akali have?

So if the champions who buy gunblade get enough compensations buffs that they are still very strong in the meta, removing the item doesn't even make that much sense. You might aswell ask for some akali and katarina nerfs, that those 2 definetly deserve right now.

ŚhunpoJan 25, 20204 votes

If it's a niche item then that makes it even easier to remove.

They can actually balance those 3 champions properly with it gone.

Crescent DuskJan 26, 20201 votes

{quoted}

It's a super nieche item. There are only 3 champions that buy it: . But those 3 who buy it are super reliant on gunblade. It's their core-item for pretty much all situations. It's the bread and butter for these 3 champions.

I know the average soloqueue player hates all 3 of these champions, so wouldn't it be awesome to make all 3 of these champion pretty much unplayable and nobody else is affected? Great plan, but it won't work. Riot will go to any lenght to put out "compensations buffs" to keep at least 2 of them viable. Don't you know how many skins katarina and akali have?

So if the champions who buy gunblade get enough compensations buffs that they are still very strong in the meta, removing the item doesn't even make that much sense. You might aswell ask for some akali and katarina nerfs, that those 2 definetly deserve right now.

Well, Katarina also depends on it because her CS is absolute garbage if she doesn't start longsword, and she would lose lv's 1-5 to virtually every assassin if she didn't start longsword.

Autoattack damage should honestly also scale just as good from AP for AP assassins as longsword does for AD assassins. The other problem is that short of Fizz and Ekko, the AP assassins like Katarina and Akali have more delayed burst than Zed/Talon/Qiyana. Gunblade compensates a lot for that lack of burst.