Gnar for beginners.

Currently I've seen people saying gnar should go full tank, but if you give him a nice mix of tank, raw damage and lifesteal I find that he can be deadly, carry and surive team fights. I've played about 17 games as gnar and won 10 of them. I've taken gnar top, mid, jungle, support and ADC and I thought I'd give some easy tips and tricks to playing gnar.

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Itemization:

Lifesteal helps gnar stay in lane and building bloodthirster scales more with gnar's abilities than bork. Picking bork means you want W procs for the majority of your damage, however it is a double edged sword because it causes you to tranform faster and lose hyper stacks and when transformed you rely upon abilities over auto attacks for damage. Bloodthirster is a better option to learning gnar because of the hefty sustain early and late game, and the sheer AD gives gnar something to make his abilities hurt.

Going off of the lifesteal, if you are up against an AP based champion, consider spirit visage over banshee's veil. You are tanky enough in Mega Gnar form not to need to avoid an ability, and it synergies well with the heal you get from transforming and with lifesteal. It also gives cooldown reduction which is great for kiting with Q when in miniform or in getting the last crunch to wallop (E to W) combo locking down the enemy team easier.

Now let's talk about boots. Ninja tabi are nice because they help reduce poke from enemy champions, however Gnar is really susceptible to CC of any type in either form so Merc Treads will help you not die from mistakes when you start learning Gnar. I'd suggest building them and spirit visage early on against AP champion, while against AD champions a bloodthirster to randuin's is great.

Another great choice is randuin's as it helps gnar in his miniform to survive and to be even tankier in his mega form. He has only 1600 max hp in his mini form but gains 630ish at level 18 when he transforms which is a heal of over 750 damage with spirit visage, so keeping that hp is great with ranuin's and combined with spirit visage you are looking at 2500 max hp when mini and about 3k hp when in mega form.

A brutilizer helps against tanks and I suggest building it into Ghostblade because gnar needs the escape/AS boost given by it to drop a turret quickly by using both E and ghostblade to give a ton of AS, or to run a way quickly as he has only one escape ability in both forms and can be hard to get out of sticky situations. The brutalizer also gives more cooldown reduction and I suggest building it early on if you can, but if you can't it can wait until later.

So far this build puts gnar at about 145 Armor and MR in miniform and about 190 armor and MR when in mega gnar form with a ton of hp. He already has enough AS in his miniform with ghostblade and his mega form has 20% cooldown reduction which is enough for his abilities. Personally here is where you focus on getting what makes sense for the team you are up against. I suggest last whisper or black cleaver for the armor ignore, depending on which role you are taking and if you are up against tanks; void staff if you are relying on W/hyper for damage; or (which is my favorite to build right now) Atma's imapler for the AD, armor and crit chance which is great because you have about 200 armor and 150 MR in miniform and about 240 armor and 190 MR in mega form allowing you to get in the middle of team fights and dish out damage while being able to take it as well.

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Skill Combos/leveling:

Gnar's Q is his main source of minignar's CC which you will be mostly staying in while you lane; however don't be afraid to transform, it is very rewarding to transform and mash all your skills on an enemy champion and kill the minion wave as well, or using his tranformation to heal up to max hp while the enemy laner is going back to base. Usually I max Q first because you need that CC to control your lane. ALWAYS CATCH THE BOOMERANG IF YOU CAN! It is the difference between a 4 second cooldown and a 10 second one.

Gnar's W is his main form of crowd control/disrupt in his mega form and a source of early lane bullying, I'd max this second if you want to snowball, however if you are behind, it's better to max this last. Also since W is passive in minignar and active in mega gnar, it will ALWAYS be on cooldown when you are about to transform and can be used to get a clutch heal in while your other abilities are on cooldown. if you are low, instead of waiting 4 seconds to tranform (in which you can die) just use it and become the mighty Oozaru (DBZ reference) and smash them into the ground if you can! this can turn a fight where you die into a fight where you get a kill and live. Also, W has no active in miniform so use it right before you transform back to get the stun and not have to deal with the cooldown while getting a free stunned target to auto attack while in miniform.

Gnar's E is his primary escape and attack speed steroid which is great for taking down towers or positioning yourself between someone and their tower while you use the steroid to deal damage and potentially get kills. Use this to get out of a gank or secure a kill/reposition. If you find yourself getting camped I suggest maxing this second as it will help you get out of ganks.

Gnar's R is both great and useless. You have to practically be on top of someone as Mega gnar to use it, but it helps W to reposition (before the caps in MS make the increased MS useless.) It can turn a fight, stun all 5 opponents against one wall lining them up for a W or someone else's ult for massive AoE and shred. However I find that I rarely have the opportunity to use his ult to the effect I want, but use it when you can to help split up teams or push them together depending on the situation.

Combos!

Mini-gnar: AutoAttack->Q->E with W proc One great combo I like to do at level 3 once I get all my abilities is I throw out Q at my opponent, then use E to jump on their head giving me an AS boost and getting me behind them while catching my boomerang and getting a final auto attack off for the W proc allowing you to burst down someone's hp and then kite with Q and W. it's great for getting away from the minions and burst them down more and if done with high enough rage you can toss in a Wallop or transforming W to lock them down and heal.

E->Q This allows you to chase down champions and kite them effectively, and if you jump on them, even better because it slows them as well as get the boomerang slow and get the W procs

E->ghostblade active great for getting W procs or just getting that tower down fast and hard.

Mega-gnar: Flash->E Using flash and E gnar can travel great distances and set up other combos that can chain together.

R->Q->W->Q Usually you see R->W, however using Q before W keeps them in one spot, picking up the boulder puts Q on a 2 or 3 second cooldown and it is one of gnar's best damaging abilities, add in the ult afterwords lets you get another Q off and burst an enemy champion for 360% your AD (370% your AD if you ult them into a wall) This makes raw damage so great on gnar and with a measly 200 AD on gnar gives about 1585 damage AoE burst which can decimate an enemy team's squishies while locking them down.

Transforming combos: these I won't explain as much but will put out as ideas to use.

Be mini, E->W procs->W lockdown/transform->Q->R

Be mini, Q->E Transform->W->Q->R

Be mega, Q->W->transform to mini->E onto boulder-> Q/kite

Be mega, R->W->transform->Q/kite or E/escape