I don't understand why Gragas was so "broken" before his nerfs

Cloud273·Mar 28, 2015·3 votes·2,757 views

I guess champions just aren't allowed to have decent AP ratios anymore. I guess mages aren't allowed to have CC, AOE damage, or something that makes them unique. I don't care if gragas wasn't meant to be played as an AP champ. That's how he was being played, and he was average at best. Other mages like Annie, Malzahar, Swain, etc are equally strong but they haven't been nerfed into oblivion yet. I feel like every time a mage becomes good, Riot nerfs them. Lulu and Kayle started being played mid, and because they countered the assassins, we have to get rid of them. I feel like the assassins are the only champions Riot cares about anymore, and anything that beats them gets nerfed into an unplayable state (Kassadin is actually decent still).

10 Comments

thinking manMar 28, 20154 votes

If you mean pre-rework Gragas, it was because he had a good early-game while assassinating teams with QR.

If you mean post-rework, it was because he was immovable in lane.

Also Lulu solo lane is cancer and needed to be gutted, Kayle top is also annoying so I don't care much about that either.

There's also the problem as stated above of champions with high utility doing well on their own.

Cloud273Mar 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

If you mean pre-rework Gragas, it was because he had a good early-game while assassinating teams with QR.

If you mean post-rework, it was because he was immovable in lane.

Also Lulu solo lane is cancer and needed to be gutted, Kayle top is also annoying so I don't care much about that either.

There's also the problem as stated above of champions with high utility doing well on their own.

Define "utility" please. If you define it as bringing something useful and unique to a team, then every champion in this game has "utility". I think you just hate Kayle Lulu and you don't give any good reasons for her nerfs. All you said is "I hate them" and "they do well on their own" (which a lot of champions can do). Why is it so hard to get an unbiased response here?

thinking manMar 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

Define "utility" please. If you define it as bringing something useful and unique to a team, then every champion in this game has "utility". I think you just hate Kayle Lulu and you don't give any good reasons for her nerfs. All you said is "I hate them" and "they do well on their own" (which a lot of champions can do). Why is it so hard to get an unbiased response here?

Not only did they have high damage, they also had other things that could make their teammates stronger or their enemies weaker in the form of Lulu's everything and Kayle's ult/W.

This combined with the fact that most people absolutely despise solo lane Lulu means it needed nerfs.

TalamareMar 28, 20154 votes

I believe Gragas needs to be carefully balanced to be a close range AP mage

Rolling barrels from 1500 range was stupid gameplay, and if you ever got close he would E or R you away.

Gragas should be balanced in a way that makes him want to use E and R to get closer and be more in your face. I think his numbers are almost there too

67chromeMar 28, 20154 votes

The problem with most of the champions you mentioned getting nerffed comes down to counter-play, or a lack there of.

Counter-play is the basic idea that everything shouldn't just be fun to use, but should also be fun to have used against you in some way. The some way Riot has opted for is choice. They generally push for different mechanics to be countered with a range of different choices.

With Gragas - while he was fairly average in power by most respects, he just offered very little means of playing against him in lane.

Most lane match-ups allow a shorter-ragned champion (when taking into account abilities) to beat a longer-ranged champion if they trap the longer-ranged champion in their shorter range. This gives the short-ranged champion a way to win by biding their time, and the longer-ranged champion will always be able to win by out-ranging their opponent and wearing them down. Gragas didn't allow that. Gragas was extremely solid in a body slam + auto-attack point-blank assault, and his massive poke range and personal sustain made him essentially impossible to beat in a poke-war. While his lane strategy wasn't devoid of countermeasures, you had to contort yourself into really obscure, awkward strategies to mostly just break even. Generally such strategies involved staying in a really difficult to maintain medium range where Gragas had to resort to poke, was punished for his melee auto-attacks, and wasn't quite close enough to Flash+body slam you in the face. But you're pretty much walking on a razor's edge, even with medium-ranged champions capable of blocking the body slam (Malazhar), to reliably gain traction.

And Gragas had no real trade-offs late for a very solid early game, where most early champions (LeBlanc, Shaco, Yorick) fall off a proverbial cliff late-game as a counterweight to their power. Being dominant early is something you can play against there by simply surviving, where late-game Gragas could still easily turn into the AoE damage/poke champion his team needed.

If you look at the other champions you mentioned - it's the same basic thing. Not to strong on paper, but very difficult to actually come up with meaningful counters to - be it counter-picks, counter strategies, counter tactics, or counter reflexive plays.

Cloud273Mar 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

The problem with most of the champions you mentioned getting nerffed comes down to counter-play, or a lack there of.

Counter-play is the basic idea that everything shouldn't just be fun to use, but should also be fun to have used against you in some way. The some way Riot has opted for is choice. They generally push for different mechanics to be countered with a range of different choices.

With Gragas - while he was fairly average in power by most respects, he just offered very little means of playing against him in lane.

Most lane match-ups allow a shorter-ragned champion (when taking into account abilities) to beat a longer-ranged champion if they trap the longer-ranged champion in their shorter range. This gives the short-ranged champion a way to win by biding their time, and the longer-ranged champion will always be able to win by out-ranging their opponent and wearing them down. Gragas didn't allow that. Gragas was extremely solid in a body slam + auto-attack point-blank assault, and his massive poke range and personal sustain made him essentially impossible to beat in a poke-war. While his lane strategy wasn't devoid of countermeasures, you had to contort yourself into really obscure, awkward strategies to mostly just break even. Generally such strategies involved staying in a really difficult to maintain medium range where Gragas had to resort to poke, was punished for his melee auto-attacks, and wasn't quite close enough to Flash+body slam you in the face. But you're pretty much walking on a razor's edge, even with medium-ranged champions capable of blocking the body slam (Malazhar), to reliably gain traction.

And Gragas had no real trade-offs late for a very solid early game, where most early champions (LeBlanc, Shaco, Yorick) fall off a proverbial cliff late-game as a counterweight to their power. Being dominant early is something you can play against there by simply surviving, where late-game Gragas could still easily turn into the AoE damage/poke champion his team needed.

If you look at the other champions you mentioned - it's the same basic thing. Not to strong on paper, but very difficult to actually come up with meaningful counters to - be it counter-picks, counter strategies, counter tactics, or counter reflexive plays.

I agree that his poke and sustain was a problem, but since Riot nerfed his "w", he can't just spam his abilities all day anymore. Since his free mana regen is now gone, why can't he have his AP ratios back?

Also, Nidalee does the exact same thing as Gragas. She pokes even harder and it's very difficult to poke her down since she'll just heal any damage done to her and she has free mobility.

Sailor MintMar 28, 20151 votes

Lulu and Kayle started being played mid, and because they countered the assassins, we have to get rid of them.

I'll assume you didn't play Lulu back when you could do 60% of someone's life in one EQQ, while outscaling them through pure utility.

I did. It was fun. But even I agree that there should be some drawbacks to a character that can go 0/7 and still "carry".

Cloud273Apr 18, 20151 votes

[{quoted}](name=Devi Freak Mint,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=RkFtI8M3,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-03-28T02:30:49.557+0000)

I'll assume you didn't play Lulu back when you could do 60% of someone's life in one EQQ, while outscaling them through pure utility.

I did. It was fun. But even I agree that there should be some drawbacks to a character that can go 0/7 and still "carry".

Because she's a support! She's not supposed to get kills (not a ton of them anyways). She's supposed to use her utility to help her team, while also peeling and CC'ing for her team.

TheI3igDaddyMar 28, 20151 votes

When Gragas was created, they wanted him to be a bruiser / frontline fighter; that's why he's called the Rabble Rouser. He's supposed to fly in and cause havoc. It also helps that he's a giant fat guy.

The problem was that with his AP ratios on his barrels and ultimate, people turned him into a barrel caster that didn't really have to go at the enemy. His barrels would destroy minion waves with little effort, and his old W gave him damage reduction for like 20 seconds (though the CD was around 25), so he'd be very hard to harass.

His ult's big thing was and still is the displacement effect, so you can position it to really fuck up enemy's positioning. His old ult was so strong damage-wise that AP Grags just used it as a finisher more than anything.

He had to get reworked because his ratios caused him to be played in an unhealthy way (and this is coming from someone who likes playing the new Gragas and prefers it over the original), and went against the design goals Riot had for him.