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Let's talk: The Future of (AP) Galio

Malicious Metal··7 votes·1,492 views

With the Horrors of "Full AP Q One shot" Galio still burned into our minds and the recent changes to Galio on the PBE I thought it was time to take a step back and reassess the state of Galio, The Colossus, as he's been struggling a lot since the changes made to him.

After being hotfixed two days after the patch hit, Galio's win rate has been among the lowest in the game, if not THE lowest. https://www2.pic-upload.de/img/34341998/GalioT.jpg Sitting at almost 40%, which is undeniably a win rate you don't want to balance a champion around.

The changes on the PBE do not seem like they tackle any of the underlying Issues regarding Galio's place in the game so I thought it was time for us all to sit down and have a nice little discussion about the Future of our Patriotice Petricite Pal.

I'd really like to get some second opinions from other players on this matter as I myself, am a bit biased when it comes to Galio since he's one of my favorite champions and I really do enjoy his AP Bruiser playstyle.

First off; #What is Galio's Niche?

A Champion should have a clear designed niche in the game. The one thing they're picked for and the one strength that really makes them shine when played to their full potential. Galio's niche is that of an Anti-Mage character similar to Kassadin, in that these champions are (on paper) able to go toe to toe with mages and are designed to royally mess up their day when they're allowed to do so.

But more than that; Galio is supposed to be a Mage/Tank Hybrid, or the term I like to use; A Juggermage They're basically durable Battlemages that are tough nuts to crack with usually avoidable, yet strong AoE magic damage. Mordekaiser, Vlad and Swain come to mind.

They have shorter range than most mages and do trade that reliability for strong defensive tools and abilities that allow them to function as a semi-frontline for their team. He's supposed to be this Ap Fighter that rolls Mid and allows his other lanes to pick somewhat squishy champions and not gimp their team comp with lacking CC or bulk.

Riot intended Galio to be a flex pick between top and mid, a champion who can flex as a team's mage and frontline.

Yet this falls somewhat short now that he was tuned towards mostly AP builds. And I'm a fan of it, I do believe we lack true Ap fighters anyways and I'd love to add Galio to that roster, yet his changes a few patches back were, in my opinion, not fully fleshed out and thus failed in giving him a more solid role as a tanky AP champion.

#So, what would I personally change about Galio?

First of all, I would REVERT the recent change to his W, giving his Taunt, his bread and butter DEFENSIVE Spell, damage. I think putting damage on all his abilities just makes his kit a blurry mess as all his spells would just serve the purpose of dealing damage. He'd face the same problem like Mordekaiser, that he'll ALWAYS use his abilities as soon as they're off CD to maximize his damage.

I'd thus keep his W primarily a defensive tool that allows him to tank mage burst and catch people out of position to set them up for his combo.

I've played my fair share of Ap Galio pre changes and post changes and I feel his main problem right now rests in him being pushed too heavily into a late game powerhouse. Galio has insanely high AP ratios that give him strong late game scalings, which, to be honest, is a good thing since we do need some Fighters with actual late games, yet this comes at the cost of his early lane being absolutely atrocious.

Galio struggles against bullies right now due to low base effectiveness. His base damages are on the lower side and so is his base durability. This causes the Brawly colossus to be relegated to purely farming until he gets the items he needs to be effective.

Thus the things I would change about him would be linked to making his power more evenly distributed throughout the game, without returning the brick-wall nature of him when he had strong early wave clear and durability.

W: Shield of Durand's magic resist shield now has a base value, scaling with levels

This change is much needed since Ap Galio can't really invest in a lot of HP, especially early on, making his shield easily peeled away. I'd give him some baseline power, maybe in favor of lowering the % max hp ratio on early ranks of the ability.

Additionally I'd reuse Colossal Smash's Cd effect on his W shield, lowering the cooldown of the shield whenever Galio damages an enemy champion with an ability. This would promote a more interactive way of survival in lane and not just make his tankiness be passive

Q: Increase the Tornado's (Q2) base damage but lower Q1's base

This would allow Galio to have some more ways to farm from range without making his poke too overbearing as Q2 can be easily side stepped. It would mostly be a net buff to his wave clear early on when he lacks the AP to actually clear waves

Base stat adjustments: Increase base Hp level 1 by 25-30

As already mentioned, Galio struggles a lot early game, falling behind too easily and becoming rather useless for his team until he farms his items

#Do NOT give Galio more damage! Galio already deals a lot of damage, especially late game, adding more damage ratios to his kit is NOT needed, instead Riot should focus on how he gets to his powerspikes rather than blowing his late game out of proportion.

But those are just my personal thoughts on the matter, I'd like to get some second opinions on what other players think would be needed in order to make Galio a healthier addition to the game and give him a comfortable spot in the roster.

15 Comments

Very Hard Engage5 votes

AP galio will never be balanced in the mid lane, just go ahead and gut the AP ratios, up the base damages (what old galio used to have) make pen builds a thing again (for mid lane). and stick current galio in the tanky top lane position 95% of the time. just go ahead and make him a true tank.

give up balancing around mid lane and ap damage, its not going to happen with long cooldowns and terrible base damages unable to trade as a melee champion.

i would rather see him be balanced in one role than see riot continue to flop around not knowing how to handle the situation at all.

Jbels3 votes

{quoted}

AP galio will never be balanced in the mid lane, just go ahead and gut the AP ratios, up the base damages (what old galio used to have) make pen builds a thing again (for mid lane). and stick current galio in the tanky top lane position 95% of the time. just go ahead and make him a true tank.

give up balancing around mid lane and ap damage, its not going to happen with long cooldowns and terrible base damages unable to trade as a melee champion.

i would rather see him be balanced in one role than see riot continue to flop around not knowing how to handle the situation at all.

Not sure why CrestKnight is being downvoted, Galio wasn't a fucking balance nightmare until somebody decided he should be building AP. They've already made it so he can't shred health unless he gets at least 100 AP, just up his base damages and defensive base stats and just lower the AP ratios to compensate. Full AP Galio can not, and will not ever be able to be balanced. Tank Galio for the longest time was. And before anyone comes in here saying he had a shit winrate, I would prefer 45-46% to his shitty 41% right now.

And to Riot: Stop fucking with things that weren't broken in an attempt to artificially create small shifts in the meta. Every time you've done this, it backfires immensely. Remember Mordekaiser?

Penns3 votes

He was broken when they made him AP tho [sg-ezreal]

Ralanr4 votes

Personally I did always feel that the first part of his Q did too much damage. Allowing someone who can’t land the tornado part well (like me) to still trade well with just the arcs. Shifting damage from the arcs to the tornado seems like a better idea to reward the ability to land it.

Laughing Fish3 votes

Galio is at his best imo when he is a tank that also can deal some damage, rather than a damage dealer who is also tanky. A lot of his problems come from scaling that is way too high, which forces his base to be low, which then in turn forces him to build AP instead of tank. While he can hit quite hard, he is far slower and less elegant than a true mage still, which puts him in a weird spot. Higher base damage, much lower scaling, and some increased health early would allow him to better serve his true purpose.

One idea that you proposed that I think is a great idea is lowering the initial damage of his Q but raising the secondary damage. This would maintain strong waveclear, and in teamfights could still soften targets up, but it would make the primary use of the ability to force enemies to move lest their health get chunked away. This zone denial would be very fitting of Galio, both in terms of his in-game style and in his theme. Combined with his AOE taunt and AOE knockup ult, it would secure Galio's place as a slow but powerful zone denial tank who punishes anyone for staying too close to his allies.

However, something I am in disagreement with you about is lowering his %health damage in favor of baseline damage. I think the opposite would be more effective. %health damage without baseline damage makes it difficult to actually kill squishy or high priority targets, but it makes it easy to damage and soften up any target. Making Galio focused on protecting allies and softening up enemies for those allies to finish would better help him serve his purpose as a tank.

Galio's kit and fantasy both are at their best when he is protecting and working with an ally, and the combo of strong AOE zone defense with %health damage to soften up targets for his ally to finish would be very thematically satisfying.

KoKoboto1 votes

I think the updated taunt doesn't last 2s flat anymore if you just instantly click it. So that's good.

Jbels1 votes

{quoted}

I think the updated taunt doesn't last 2s flat anymore if you just instantly click it. So that's good.

It never did that in the first place. It was a short 0.5 seconds some odd

KoKoboto1 votes

I play jungle Galio and that's what it does. I would just instant tap so that my DPS doesn't fall down and I'd get the free damage reduction for 2s.

Ralanr1 votes

Are you saying that taunt lasts for 2 seconds or the DR?

KoKoboto1 votes

The DR

Jbels2 votes

{quoted}

I play jungle Galio and that's what it does. I would just instant tap so that my DPS doesn't fall down and I'd get the free damage reduction for 2s.

You said the taunt didn't last for 2 seconds on insta cast anymore. The taunt never lasted for 2 seconds on insta cast. That is all

Sire Hippington1 votes

I think with his current kit, there is no real way to get him in a healthy spot that flexes between frontline and battlemage. Old Gallio could do it because his base kit only gave soft utilliy(armor/mr boost, speedboost, aoe slow), so he could be allowed to have some noticeable damage.

New gallio has 2 forms of hard cc on his base kit, an actual gapcloser, and a semi global ult with another big aoe hard cc. You can't slap a battlemages worth of damage onto that, you just can't. You brought vlad and morde as examples, now how much CC do they have? A bit of slow on vlad and non at all on morde... If you give him better bases for a stronger early, he needs to loose scaleings, cause his AP scaleings are totally nuts already.

Jbels1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sire Hippington,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EtjAHjAW,comment-id=0004,timestamp=2017-11-22T17:45:07.339+0000)

I think with his current kit, there is no real way to get him in a healthy spot that flexes between frontline and battlemage. Old Gallio could do it because his base kit only gave soft utilliy(armor/mr boost, speedboost, aoe slow), so he could be allowed to have some noticeable damage.

New gallio has 2 forms of hard cc on his base kit, an actual gapcloser, and a semi global ult with another big aoe hard cc. You can't slap a battlemages worth of damage onto that, you just can't. You brought vlad and morde as examples, now how much CC do they have? A bit of slow on vlad and non at all on morde... If you give him better bases for a stronger early, he needs to loose scaleings, cause his AP scaleings are totally nuts already.

Galio WAS in a healthy spot as a frontline before the changes that tried to push him into full AP. He didn't rock the boat, but could still function well enough if you played him well. The only reason Riot did this to him was to force him out of competitive.

Sire Hippington1 votes

he wasn't in a healthy spot at all befor, he was prettymuch in the Azir/Ryze zone - rather bad for soloQ but pretty damn broken in competetive and for high elo mains. His performance in worlds ( so pre change) was absurd, 90% pick/ban with a 72.7% winrate mid and 64.7% top, there hardly was ever a champ with such an broken performance in competetive, yet his soloQ succes was rather abysmal. I really wouldn't call that a healthy spot.

Jbels1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Sire Hippington,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=EtjAHjAW,comment-id=000400000000,timestamp=2017-11-23T13:50:08.257+0000)

he wasn't in a healthy spot at all befor, he was prettymuch in the Azir/Ryze zone - rather bad for soloQ but pretty damn broken in competetive and for high elo mains. His performance in worlds ( so pre change) was absurd, 90% pick/ban with a 72.7% winrate mid and 64.7% top, there hardly was ever a champ with such an broken performance in competetive, yet his soloQ succes was rather abysmal. I really wouldn't call that a healthy spot.

I never had a problem with him in solo queue. If I can find a way to actually succeed with him in solo queue, then so can other people. Not to mention, you can't take those winrates at face value. You didn't consider that most of the time when Galio was picked, it was by the better team who outplayed the lesser team. Galio was taken in worlds because he was a safe pick, not because he was broken. See Rek'sai in season 6.

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