@Riot if you end up touching GP again...

Sahn Uzal·Jul 21, 2016·47 votes·2,766 views

PLEASE, get rid of his RNG reliance.

I wouldn't be surprised if you end up touching him again, his play and winrate is going up in both Mid AND toplane, which usually indicates the champoin is quite strong. I'd be perfectly fine with Gangplank getting another nerf, if he needs another.

But Please, PLEASE, get rid of his RNG reliance at the same time... Crit chance as a mechanic is fine, because usually champions auto attack multiple times, Crit chance is only psuedo random, right? An ADC with 50% Crit chance would deal 150% damage with their AA's.

But Gangplank... He usually just tries to crit once or Twice in a fight. I feel like I'm just crossing my fingers and hope I'll win the fight with a crit.

Now I understand there wouldn't be an immediate need to change GP's interaction with crit... But if you end up touching him anyway, please take this into consideration c:

Thanks for reading ^^

66 Comments

Blood MefistJul 21, 201611 votes

What if shooting a barrel always resulted in a crit, but with a smaller crit multiplier that got stronger as you bought more crit, similar to Ashe ?

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

One of the things I came up with :P I'd love to see something like that done for him ^^

Guy Fox TeemoJul 21, 20163 votes

When you dont crit, your chance of critting goes up. So if in a fight he has 30% crit, that will jump to to some number I dont know; They posted the math somewhere.

Its reliable enough that its not really rng;

Sahn UzalJul 21, 201617 votes

For a marksman* Gangplank usually tries to land that 3 barrel combo, which means he has one chance to get that big crit.

YumaS2AstralJul 21, 20162 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tidal Tyrant,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NQt7F7EF,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-07-21T10:25:49.506+0000)

For a marksman* Gangplank usually tries to land that 3 barrel combo, which means he has one chance to get that big crit.

This

I am trying to imagine if Riot makes GP become an AD caster (without reliance on crit, but rather relying on AD and armor pen) would him become easier to balance?

Sire HippingtonJul 21, 20166 votes

everything that isn't 100% is still rng.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20165 votes

or 0% :^)

Auz the RipperJul 21, 20162 votes

0% is just 100% of nothing

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

touche

TheSlogsJul 21, 20163 votes

That is not how statistics works.

Locke DaemonfireJul 21, 20162 votes

It's not how statistics works, but I have heard that that's how this game works, and I wouldn't be surprised. People have a false sense of what 'looks' random, and some programs are designed to appeal to that at the cost of true randomness. The iPod shuffler was a fairly famous case, where they made it 'less random in order to feel more random.'

EnloctJul 21, 20162 votes

They did. It's an old change now. I think they put that in late S1 or early S2.

Sightless66Jul 21, 20161 votes

The way the game works is by changing your chance to crit everytime you autoattack. If you autoattack without getting a crit, then your chance of getting a crit on the next autoattack increases. It decreases the variance for longer autoattack chains.

The problem is that this system makes that assumption that you're autoattacking a lot. This assumption works fine for ADCs because they autoattack so much, but if you're only doing 1-2 crit-reliant attacks a fight (like GP's barrel combos), then you're still completely reliant on RNG. The pRNG system does almost nothing to make RNG less unreliable for Gangplank.

Sire HippingtonJul 21, 20163 votes

Crit chance as a mechanic is fine, because usually champions auto attack multiple times,

I don't agree with that. Even with an adjusted algorythem, you still need a higher sample size to get the statistic average than any adc will deliver in any fight(exept maybe max as kog) There are often situation where an adc only gets a few AAs of on a specific target. If an assasins for example jumps on a sivir that has 50% crit chance, let'S asume she's allowed to get of her aa+W and another AA befor he kills her, and she kills him with two crits and 1 normal AA. The outcome of that would entirely dpend on rng, sivir has 3 chances to crit and needs 2 crits to win. It might be that she gets no crits, but would crit with the next 3, just that this wouldn't matter as she's already dead by then. One might say that this is a very hypoteticayl scenariou, but you often have very similar situations to this in game. There are often situation there 1 pr 2 crits within a few AAs make all the difference. And pseudo random is a bit mislleading. For every single hit, whether you crit or not is still 100% rng based. It's just that your chance changes from hit to hit.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20163 votes

Let me rephrase, Crit Chance as a mechanic is acceptable... Kinda.

I guess that in Most situations, RNG is ''fine'', with certain situations where it's not. In Gangplanks case, It's never really ''fine''

Ugh, I don't know... I don't think RNG as a mechanic will be removed/changed any time soon, but GP's interaction with it might, if he ends up getting touched y'know?

Sire HippingtonJul 21, 20162 votes

I agree that it's worse on GP than in the generall case and that they might actually change it for him, and sadly i also don't think riot will change the RNG of crit any time soon(they got rid of prettymuch every other RNG in the game though), as didn't do it when they had the perfect opportunity woth the marksmen update. Instead they though just more crit at us -,-

However, that doesn't change that i think that (onesided-)RNG is never fine, not even kinda, in a game like this and that the marksmen update was one of the biggest let downs so far for this reason. I've seen far to many fights getting won by mostly RNG luck rather than skill within my 7 years of lol...

Zero Skill TankJul 21, 20162 votes

Same applies to Yasuo. This makes laning vs him even more annoying, because you never know if you can, or can not trade him. For ranged champs this is somewhat OK, because often they can avoid Yasuo, but toplane Yasuo is like in God Tier of most annoying laners, second only to Teemo.

Bladerunner7777Jul 21, 20161 votes

Top lane yasuo doesn't rush crit...

Zero Skill TankJul 21, 20161 votes

Actually, most of them do.

http://champion.gg/champion/yasuo/top

Bladerunner7777Jul 22, 20161 votes

I've only seen Triforce rush Tanksuo top

BastionKrossJul 21, 20162 votes

With current items the way they are, having his barrels crit might actually be hurting him more than helping him; by locking him into building items that are okay on him, but not great, just to have a chance to get a huge damage barrel in a teamfight.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

I would argue this is incorrect... But since the Trinity force change (That indirectly punched his synergy with Essence reaver in the teeth because he overcaps cdr with just those 2 items) I honestly agree..

GayFluffyUnicornJul 21, 20161 votes

Essence Reaver has never been worth building on GP anyways imo.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

GP likes AD, he used to have a synergy with Essence reaver. That build made sense. I didn't buy it very often either, but now the TF (GB) Boots Shiv PD build is what everyone is getting... AD Caster... 3 high AS items... 2 of them only for crit chance... Idk, I feel like that's not what his build should look like...

OnwodoriJul 21, 20162 votes

Upvoted, thank you. Consistency is so important for a champ like GP. It's already hard enough to be consistently GOOD with him, it is heartbreaking when you do everything right and only end up being half as effective as you needed to be due to a mechanic like Crit

(Which is why I've been building him armor pen since the beginning but still)

YumaS2AstralJul 21, 20161 votes

{quoted}

Upvoted, thank you. Consistency is so important for a champ like GP. It's already hard enough to be consistently GOOD with him, it is heartbreaking when you do everything right and only end up being half as effective as you needed to be due to a mechanic like Crit

(Which is why I've been building him armor pen since the beginning but still)

I would love to be able to build only armor pen and AD. I can't do that however, as GP's damage falls off without crit. I would really like if GP wasn't crit reliant...

Sahn UzalJul 22, 20161 votes

Basically this ^

My Waifu VanillaJul 22, 20161 votes

Honestly the problem is that the amount of crit chance you'd want (50%+) requires you getting rather subpar items on GP since he as a champion does not care about AS in the slightest because for most of a teamfight you are simply not auto attacking because going into melee typically ends up with you dying.

If ER didn't put him over the CDR cap it would be a decent buy with IE but even still you would need another crit chance item still to get the most out of it since ER has non-linear scaling on the CDR (for who knows what reason). It's just a problem now because the "mathematically best" build is getting Trinity+IE and a bunch of ArP/AD and hoping for that 20% crit hit since almost every other crit item is just so lackluster on him since arguably a good 1/3 of its value is wasted since he isn't auto attacking.

A solution could honestly be to just give his Q the Yasuo treatment where it doesn't benefit from CDR but instead gets lowered by AS to a fixed point to make P Daddy/Shiv not used solely for their bonus effect and 30% crit.

YumaS2AstralJul 24, 20161 votes

Well, at least the attack speed items still have useful secondary effects for GP. Statikk with its lighting bolt (does massive damage) and Phantom Dancer with its damage reduction (better dueling potential).

Another solution for this problem would be to create more non-AS crit items. There was an item named The Lightbringer (removed on 6.12) that gave 30% crit chance and would also give 30 AD. It also had two amazing passives: one that revealed enemy invisible traps (ex: Teemo's shrooms, Shaco's boxes) and another that would deal magic damage to enemies equal to 90% of your bonus AD for 3 seconds each time you scored a critical strike. In addition to its active effect that was essentially an old red trinket (it would also reveal stealthed champions).

Despite its low amount of AD, this item would work well outside of Summoner's Rift as a means of allowing GP to stack crit without resorting to purchasing attack speed items.

This item, if properly tuned, could be activated on Summoner's Rift and could allow champions which benefit from crit but not from AS to benefit from it. Outside of GP, a well known example is Rengar.

Kenioshi2 sequelJul 21, 20161 votes

No GP nerfs Plz and thank you, and you call yourself a GP main get outta here

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20163 votes

http://i.imgur.com/viUCQGN.png ?

WyrmbladeJul 21, 20162 votes

Any GP worth his oranges knows that he's broken as fuck.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20163 votes

Any GP worth his oranges

''You suck at Gangplank, therefore you are no longer able to cast Remove Scurvy. You simply aren't worth the oranges''

The Yetii RiderJul 21, 20161 votes

Thing is, if he's reliant on just AD or just armor penetration, he gets a power spike with a single item. To fulfill the idea of GP being a farming champion who builds up stacks of Silver Serpents and fires explosive barrels, he needs crit chance reliance so that he actually has to build three or four items to really be successful.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

I guess I wasn't very clear on this, but I didn't mean ''take away his synergy with crit chance'', I meant change the way he interacts with it.

Think Yasuo/Ashe, they build crit items, right? But they're not RNG reliant (well, yasuo is, untill he has his 2 items)

The Yetii RiderJul 21, 20161 votes

I see, I see.

So, how about "If Gangplank's Parrrley strikes a Barrel, he has double the chance to critically strike, up to an additional 30% chance"?

Get IE and Shiv and you've got an 80% chance to crit on a barrel instead of 50%.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

Something among those lines c: Or maybe he could get Crit chance for building attackspeed, since he builds quite a lot of AS considering he barely uses it...

The Yetii RiderJul 21, 20161 votes

No, that's a bad idea. If Riot wanted GP to have crit in his early build, they wouldn't have changed Trinity Force.

Trinity Force lost its crit chance so Yas and GP would stop getting so much value off of it.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

They changed TF to work better with the champions it was intended for, Gangplank, Corki etc were a victim of the TF changes, and Riot kept an eye on them. (Corki got buffed Twice after the TF change, didn't he?)

Anyhow, I'm just throwing around random suggestions

The Yetii RiderJul 21, 20161 votes

Corki's winrate was terrible before the TF changes, and TF has been something he's relied on since he was created. GP isn't struggling in terms of win rate.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20161 votes

Which is why GP didn't receive any buffs. But they did keep an eye on him. I think it was Meddler who commented about that, you could search for it. But that's up to you.

My Waifu VanillaJul 22, 20161 votes

I feel like giving him the Yasuo treatment may be a better solution. Parrrrley no longer benefits from CDR (or it does but has a much longer base CD) but instead gets lowered by AS. Would make Trinity Force feel better than be a 3700 gold sheen item with CDR (which still affects your remaining 3 abilities) and make Statikk and crew not be bought SOLELY for the bonus effect and 30% crit.

Another option to make AS not suck is to change his passive to be a mini buff for a few seconds (lets say 1.5-2 seconds after triggering it the first time) where you can reapply it during that time and hitting someone else causes it to do significantly less damage ( that way you cant just tag everyone for 400+ true damage dots).

Sahn UzalJul 22, 20161 votes

That... Might actually work, but unlike Yasuo, Gangplank REALLY wants that max CDR aswell... I guess TF provides him a good amount of both, so that should fix that problem.... The main downside I see is that it would make Yasuo less unique... But I guess their kits are different enough for it to be acceptable...

My Waifu VanillaJul 22, 20161 votes

You would still end up getting close to max CDR anyway for your Barrels and ult (Trinity still gives 20% and you tend to get Lucids so that is 30%). I don't think "uniqueness" is a problem here since they would still be the only 2 champions to scale with AS instead of CDR on an ability out of all ~140.

WyrmbladeJul 21, 20161 votes

I've never had a problem with RNG on Gangplank, after Statikk shiv and Infinity edge you can pretty much always rely on getting a crit. Even then you shouldn't be taking fights you need a crit to win unless it's a last ditch effort.

I don't think disincentivizing the crit build would be the right way to go about it. Gangplank's barrel combos are satisfying as fuck and reducing their impact when successfully pulled off would make him feel a lot shittier to play. A better nerf would be one that hits parts he wasn't supposed to be good at, like his incredible poke in lane with Q or the map/fight mobility he gets from the speed boost when he breaks a barrel.

Sahn UzalJul 21, 20162 votes

Lots of ways to look at it, They could change his interaction with crit to be like Ashe's, where he always crits, but buying Crit chance inscreased Crit damage. Maybe even like Yasuo where his crit chance is multiplied, but his crit damage reduced. Lots of things that could be done.

HateDaddyJul 22, 20161 votes

Honestly you shouldn't even be building crit on GP anymore. The loss of crit on Trinity basically killed his crit spike until 4+ items. You're better off just stacking AD + flat pen with Trinity rush and just aoe true damaging back lines. You don't kill them in one go around, but you'll badly damage them.

Also I think his biggest problem is his ult. You can play around his barrels so ultimately crit doesn't matter.

My Waifu VanillaJul 22, 20161 votes

With the common crit build (where you get 60-80%) your barrels do relatively low damage if they do not crit since you spent your gold on 1-2 AS items and not AD. The ArP build is OKAY but it doesn't scale at all and falls off like a brick and has you rely on the 20% crit from IE to really pack a punch to anyone with any Armor (aka you get bodied by tanks).

Slack KingJul 22, 20161 votes

[{quoted}](name=Tidal Tyrant,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=NQt7F7EF,comment-id=,timestamp=2016-07-21T09:42:55.028+0000)

PLEASE, get rid of his RNG reliance.

I wouldn't be surprised if you end up touching him again, his play and winrate is going up in both Mid AND toplane, which usually indicates the champoin is quite strong. I'd be perfectly fine with Gangplank getting another nerf, if he needs another.

But Please, PLEASE, get rid of his RNG reliance at the same time... Crit chance as a mechanic is fine, because usually champions auto attack multiple times, Crit chance is only psuedo random, right? An ADC with 50% Crit chance would deal 150% damage with their AA's.

But Gangplank... He usually just tries to crit once or Twice in a fight. I feel like I'm just crossing my fingers and hope I'll win the fight with a crit.

Now I understand there wouldn't be an immediate need to change GP's interaction with crit... But if you end up touching him anyway, please take this into consideration c:

Thanks for reading ^^

Most people just build him with triforce with AD and pen. He doesnt need crit

Sahn UzalJul 22, 20161 votes

http://champion.gg/champion/Gangplank/Top

I wish they did lol