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What is Riot's intention with Gnar?

Sum Wun Speshal·2/12/2015, 1:56:26 AM·1 votes·614 views

Hi there,

I'm an unranked level 30 player on EUW who has been there for a couple of months now and who never found pleasure in serious competitive plays. That's why I don't even have played my provisionals yet.

I have followed the changes of my favorite champion Gnar until now and I have to say that I really have mixed feelings about what is happening to him. Gnar got nerfed in patch 4.20, 5.1 and now in 5.3 Don't get me wrong, pre-nerf he was incredibly strong and could put out a surprising amount of damage for a little yordle that is supposed to be the tank. After 4.20 I had to adjust my play-style to be able to win lane and patch 5.1 made me shit my pants before Level 4, until my Boomerang didn't have a Cooldown that felt like an eternity anymore. Now they tweaked him just a little concerning his Rage Gene duration and transformation timing. I don't feel that sad about the nerf itself but rather about the explanation behind it. Riot specifically said:

"When a champion based on unreliability becomes a staple competitive pick (where reliability reigns supreme), we felt like something was up. "

Now in my ears this sounds like "This champion was never supposed to be a serious pick and shouldn't compete with the champions that really are viable and reliable".

I know Gnar is seeing a lot of LCS plays and professionals have mastered him whereas players of my skill level don't even bother playing Gnar because they think he is trash.

I want to know from you guys what do you think of the constant nerf-streak Gnar is going through? Are there fellow Gnar-players who feel the same way I do or do you think he is completely fine and still viable? Even if you told me that he still is a strong pick and my struggling with him is because I haven't practiced him enough yet, that would be fine for me.

Tell me what you think and sorry for the long post. Here's the short version

TL;DR Gnar getz nerft evrytim. 2 many weaknesses now. Dose Riot h8 Gnar?!?!?!?!

7 Comments

Siachi2/12/2015, 2:34:29 AM2 votes

EDIT:

**TL;DR: **Because the nature of Gnar's kit means that he can cover just about any situation given the right time, they'd rather have Gnar's team build around his unpredictability so they can make the most of his transformations on a good time, and also be able to stall or cover for him if he's not in an ideal form. If he's just strong regardless of team comp, then that suggests that he's just better than every other top laner despite his unreliable forms.

EXTENDED VERSION

To be fair, this recent patch's 'nerf' was more of a bug fix: he was always intended to have 15 seconds of Mega Gnar time, but for some reason he had more time than intended. (You would think they'd have caught on to that earlier though)

And I think it's less "He shouldn't be viable competitively" but more "He shouldn't be pick/ban in competitive". I believe they've stated they wouldn't mind Gnar in competitive, but they'd rather have him in because his team built around his unpredictability, not because he's just strong on his own regardless of team comp. Having a separate dedicated tank, for instance, because you can't trust Gnar to always be tanky at the right time, or a team that is able to peel or disengage long enough to buy Gnar time to transform.

If he's just strong on his own regardless of comp, he becomes a jack-of-all-trades that overshadows everyone else, especially due to the nature of his kit (And we ALL know what people think of champs like that COUGH Lee Sin COUGH)

Now, don't get me wrong: I **LOVE **playing Gnar! I plan on making a Gnar-only account one day, I've started considering him my main, he's been my go-to top laner since release, and even if he was nerfed to the point a Beginner bot could kick my ass, I'd still play him, dammit! (Well, against bots at least)

But while I'm not sure if he's completely deserving of all the complaints he receives, at the same time, I can still understand why people don't like to play against him.

Just by being lucky, Gnar can be in the perfect form to react to just about any situation. And while Mini Gnar is definitely mobile and hard to catch, even Mega Gnar is surprisingly good at getting out of a bad situation, which makes for a problem if you're a lane bully whose main job is shutting down the other guy, or a champ that relies on snowballing early.

And while, ideally, you'd want to build to suit both of Gnar's forms, a mix of damage and defences that compliment both forms, the full tank build works just as well: Mini Gnar's damage comes almost entirely from his hyper procs, and he has enough natural attack speed that you don't really need more, and the full tank build means he can survive long enough to get out that sustained damage. Basically, full tank covers pretty well for Mini's weakness of being squishy, while not really hampering his damage any.

Jefftiffy2/12/2015, 2:07:41 AM1 votes

The problem with Gnar. He was purposely made to counter the top lane meta like Irelia was made to counter carries. This is how you spur new trends like the mobility creep that we have now.

Erockandroll2/12/2015, 2:22:43 AM1 votes

Not really too fond of Gnar's tank build. Back closer to his Release, I like building him more of a duelist. Relying on the Kiting in Mini form and the CC in mega form, felt fun swapping between the two forms (though they are unreliable).

With tank gnar, his Mega form feels more like a Power Up, than a new unique form with different tactics. And Riot decided to balance around that.

Guess I'll just stick to Jayce if I want dual form.

Retillin2/12/2015, 2:22:55 AM1 votes

Even after his last nerf, he's still (most likely) the strongest over all top laner. He's not the faceroll he was awhile back. but he's still good.

ForgiveColour2/12/2015, 2:37:57 AM1 votes

renekton of season 3. Gnar will be nerfed half way into season 6 mark my word

Sum Wun Speshal2/13/2015, 3:27:08 PM1 votes

Wow, thank you guys for all of your replies and the effort you are putting into this. As this was my first attempt at creating my own "thread" I didn't think I would get any reply at all.

When Gnar came out everybody complained about how his Kit was just way too strong overall and it offered way too much to be even nerfable. In my opinion, no matter how good a kit might look like, you can always nerf the numbers, the slows/stuns, the CD's, the resource costs, ... and so on.... And that's why I am always afraid that one day, one of my favorite champions will get nerfed to a point where I am not able to play him or her effectively anymore. Just remember how people reacted when Leblanc's Q didn't silence anymore. People thought this would kill her and make her completely weak....

Now look where she is at right now...

Seriously, I see champions like Katarina, Riven, Darius getting hated SO MUCH because these champions dominate the games very often. But Gnar? It seems like people are ok with him as an enemy. Gnar has his weaknesses and if you are good you should be able to shut Gnar down early so he doesn't put out ridiculous amounts of damage instead of bringing his utility to the team.

And despite that he is getting toned down regularly.

It seems like these are pro-player-nerfs only (and I know we are not talking about patch 5.3 .. I'm aware these are only bugfixes. Tbh, i like it. Mini Gnar is cooler anyway). You really have to be f*cking good with him to avoid exposing all of his weaknesses. Nobody until maybe Platinum can constantly wreck everyone on top lane.

He is very squishy in mini form, his mini form range is the worst of all ranged champions, Boomerang does (good) damage only to the first unit hit (subsequent hits are only good for procing hyper), the boomerang flight will stop after the first unit hit, walking patterns are predictable due to Gnar being forced to catch the boomerang, kiteable in mega form.....

It's not like he has no counterplay.

I just hope they will at least let him stay where he is right now. I don't want to have the laning phase getting harder as it is now.