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Gangplank has no efficient counter play. Here are my ideas for counter play

Inigo Montoya·1/25/2016, 2:07:47 AM·3 votes·3,455 views

I thought it was just me being a shitty player but watching GP in the LCS is after being banned 100% of the time, don't you think its time for a fix?

Lets talk about why my scrub ass thinks he's broken:

  1. Free ignore %armor massive 1000 damage AOE crits that also slow and apply on hit effects.
  2. everything applies on hit effects
  3. silly amount of sustain with a cleanse+heal on a 14 second cooldown
  4. bonus free gold from last hitting minions plus reseting your ranged ability that applies on hit effects
  5. a 2000 base damage global AOE ult with 2/3 upgrades
  6. True damage auto attacks and a reset on its cooldown that also ignores %armor

I feel like there are a few relatively easy tweaks you can make to relieve his unfair game play.

  1. When you shoot barrels its a flat damage burst. It doesn't crit and it doesn't apply on hit effects. You can make it basic attack damage, ignore the armor still and slow still. Lets just take away 1000 damage crits that ignore %armor and CC AOE targets out of the game from anyone. There isn't really counterplay to the barrels late game when he gets one every few seconds and can chain them.

  2. Lets relax the W a little bit. 40% CDR means that he has a QSS that heals every 8 seconds at max rank. That kind of sucks to deal with if you're not playing a superbursty champ that constantly has to outplay him to win trades. How does removing the recover missing health aspect and increasing the cooldown to 30/28/26/24/22 sound?

  3. Take away the free gold. The doubloons make his parrrlay and pirate theme click already. Free gold on a champ is just mean. Its why Frost Queens is really popular now, why does he get thousands of gold worth of free stuff in his kit AND then more free gold on top of that? He gets a better version of a 1300g item when he gets his W. He gets another better version of a 1300 gold item in last whisper with his barrels that he can protect instantly chain Q them to hit you if you aren't a ranged champ. Plus his bonus gold from last hitting with his AOE barrels if he chains a barrel in a minion wave he gets 2 minions worth of free gold? Come on. Thats not fair to play against.

  4. He can chain barrels still, but they all have to be at 1 health otherwise the exploding barrel takes the other barrel(s) to 1 health. This means you have counterplay to the instant barrel chain Q nonsense.

There are certainly better players and designers out there than me who can address this better. It just seems like it defies the first rules of Zileas's list of anti patterns you guys work so hard to incorporate into all champions (for those who are curious: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=293417). The 2k damage ult breaks the conflicted purpose rule, his barrels break fun fails to exceed anti-fun, his EQ barrel chain breaks quite a few but we'll call it power without game play, (what should you do? dive the barrel he's going to explode next to him hope you have better timing than him and eat true damage from his auto or back off and get zoned from CSing? Neither of those are good options) and his w is just... sigh, lock him down blow your CC just to have everything be k and watch him kill you. What's the point of even playing against him?

As you can see by this post, I'm tired of it, frustrated and annoyed by the seemingly lack of attempt to bring him to a counterplayable state. This has caused me started play ARAMs only to not have a GP in every game someone forgets to ban him. Its just not fun to play against, and leaves you a ban short when you're red side. No matter how hard you beat him in the early game, he outscales you and gets more gold than you do, does more damage than you and doesn't die as much as you because he can get away. He was broken at worlds, and he's broken again now. Again, maybe I just suck, (I do) but I see this in pro play too, what does it take for this to get addressed? Usually Riot is on top of this instantaneously like the AP Tryn nerfs or Runeglaive Ezreal.

14 Comments

Troiann1/25/2016, 2:08:53 AM4 votes

You remove the critting barrels and he becomes pathetically weak.

Hayaishi21/25/2016, 2:14:28 AM2 votes

Barrels need to hit hard because they aren't exactly the easiest thing to hit.

HotChilly1/25/2016, 3:09:02 AM2 votes

Those changes you suggest are all incredibly extreme, and while GP WAS extremely op when he was first reworked he is much more inline than he was back then. He is very close to not being banned, he has already started to slip through the ban phase, and when he does he doesnt win 100% at all, infact I'm pretty sure he has a losing winrate this season across all regions. I know he is 1 -1 in NA lcs, and I know FAKER lost on him, lol xp

Anyways, with him already not getting banned here and there, I expact small/medium sized nerfs like the ult CD nerf coming in 6.2 to have a strong impact on his ban rate. He will be seen in more games in 6.2, he may or may not see 1 or 2 minor nerfs similar to the 6.2 nerfs and I bet he will drop off completely in ban rates. There are just too many other game changing champs out there, it takes very little (sometimes nothing) for a champ to drop out of pro competitve play popularity

Sasogwa1/27/2016, 12:44:45 AM2 votes

Gangplank is overpowered because he has a Q, a W, a E, a R and a passive.

I'm not sure you grasp or even define why his strengths are so good atm. It seems he's really proficient in proplay but not quite as much in normal games/ soloQ except in high elo.

I think the main problem is the barrels. Let's think one second about old GP. He had slightly more AD thanks to his E, but overall his Q,W and R were pretty much the same. What about the barrels then? Well it's really complicated. It's his new design and how his new kit functions. You take away too much reliability from it, and he instantly becomes garbage. Barrels are also kinda unhealthy in the way that they are insanely good against melee champions (can't get in range without getting hit by the Q on barrel) and average-mediocre against champions with good range. (once again a design that's supposed to shit on melee--') If you require the barrels to all have 1 hp for those to chain, I'm afraid it's gonna be real garbage. He'll never be able to hit a ranged champion ever. He will lose any reactive play potential in fights and will become worse than pre-buffs rework Veigar (#neverforget)

I'll admit GP is currently quite a nightmare to balance. You could always take some base stats, but they already did it (quite a lot actually) and it didn't really solve the problem. I might be mistaken and maybe he won't be such a good competitive pick in some months, time will tell.

Cenobite Azaziel1/27/2016, 3:59:12 AM1 votes

Gp hits a barrel "Well, I guess it is a 4x5 fight now". Feels like nidalee old spear. Jayce hit a E/Q (having so muhc power because he has no ultimate), "And thats a scratch for the tanks."