Riot, why does GP need to invalidate melee champs so hard early if he is a late game champ??

is meant to be a melee hypercarry with his Q being able to crit and then use that on barrel chains to AoE crit entire teams. Because of this he gets the whole "gold for using Q to kill things" which allows him to scale faster than other people.

But if GP currently goes vs a melee champ in the top lane, with very few exceptions he beats them at all stages of the game.

Early game he has klepto, so he can spam Q at people to poke them down and not fall behind because klepto will give him gold + items (usually to help him sustain mana in lane...) Once he gets his first back he returns with sheen, making his Q hit twice as hard, and giving him more mana and CDR. You can't engage on him because he always has a barrel underneath him and W to escape if you CC him. So if you do engage on him as a melee, he removes scurvy, hits the barrel and runs away.

Mid game he can 1 shot the minion wave with barrel+Q. He can almost constantly split push because of ult + TP. He gets enough MS with passive/E and the items he builds that a competent one can't be engaged on.

Late game he can one shot most people, even tanks because his barrels ignore 40% of armor. That is more than a last whisper.

Klepto and GPs current itemization hide all of his weaknesses too well, especially for a champ that is meant to be a late game scaling champ. There is no point as a melee champ that you can engage him