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New Gangplank Op? (Thoughts below if TL;DR)

dont trust girls·7/22/2015, 9:54:54 PM·3 votes·8,561 views

Just skip to the end if you don't want to read everything, just look at the part about his barrels

So with the release of the new Gangplank, people still have the old mindset of him being a mediocre top laner, not worthy of competitive or solo queue play. The new update makes Gangplank a great pick against a lot of melee top laners, because his barrels have such high damage he can zone in lane phase using them. Since every time the enemy laner wants to defuse a barrel (if melee) they will have to walk up, gangplank can efficiently get free damage on anybody that tries to defuse his barrels. Even if he cant get the barrel off, he can still settle for a Q onto his laner.

Against ranged top laners, he may struggle, if they can trade and defuse barrels with relative ease. Kayle will out-sustain him and urgot will be able to trade with him and even zone him, and when gp uses his oranges to remove CC from a gank, urgot has free reign to ult him.

Problems with the new gangplank arise as well - namely with his E, The barrels and for those of you who don't know what it does, lets just take a quick look > If Gangplank scores the last hit, the triggering attack is splashed as physical damage to surrounding enemies, slowing them for 2 seconds. Explosions ignore 60% of their targets' armor, and enemy champions take bonus physical damage. When he destroys the keg, it instantly readies trial by fire, which will proc a 30% move speed buff, so you can also run away with them. Triforce also procs onto these barrels, so feel free to just Q them.

The big problem is that these barrels have too much damage with this amount of utility. If you crit onto a barrel, and the barrel splashes onto the enemy champ, it will ignore 60% of their armor. While he can't use the barrels to attack the enemy backline in teamfights, he can easily stop people from diving his own with the barrels.

He isn't OP as in, you absolutely can't deal with him but he seems like he would be very hard to deal with for a lot of people. What does everybody else think about him? (comments below)

16 Comments

Prozzak7/22/2015, 9:55:50 PM2 votes

I vote no because it is too damn early to know if it is op or not. Wait around oh I dunno maybe a week before spouting it is op.

Prospector Pete7/22/2015, 10:05:07 PM2 votes

The thing about gangplank is he's pretty much useless in terms of damage if behind. And setting up the barrels can be pretty tricky, but the reward is taking away 75% of the enemy's health with a massive slow :D.

Lugg7/22/2015, 10:45:11 PM1 votes

GP is going to be a beast at support now. His barrels completely zone off the bushes from the enemy team, he has good poke, you can't CC him, and his ult makes it hard to escape ganks.

0rrn7/28/2015, 3:45:58 AM1 votes

I played a lot of games with and versus Gangplank now and i dont think he is op. The powder Kegs may seem too strong if you look at the utility and numbers, but dont forget that they are never guaranteed to hit somebody, because they can be defused + they grant 10 gold. They're pretty similiar to Heimerdingers turrets. If you dont pay attention and run into them, you usually wont win the duel. Fair enough. And Gangplank is actually really bad versus ranged champions and some melee Champions like Riven, at least if they know the matchup.

If you struggle versus Gangplank i have some tips:

**1. Most important, pay attention to the kegs and kegs in the brush. **You can see when GP sets up a powder Keg. Pay attention to the animation and be aware of the possibility of a chainexplosion.

**2. GP has 2 powder kegs early game, up to 5 lategame. **Knowing how many Kegs he has in his Stock is the way to beat him.

**3. **If GP used both of his kegs and did not hit you, he has to wait 18 seconds for each new keg (earlygame). His passive cant be refreshed without kegs and has a 15second cooldown. That means, 2 kegs gone and he used an autoattack vs minions = Your time to engage. You have something about 15 seconds now to trade with him, pretty much every Champion is stronger then. If he even used his Q before, he has nothing but his heal to answer your engage.

**4. If Gangplank places a keg on your position when you fight him, either disengage or defuse it. ** If you disengage, you need to run at least_ twice the distance of the explosion radius from the first one, or be sure 100% he has no second keg._ Because GP will usually place his second Keg to your new position if the new Keg connect with his first one. Thats worst case for you because you cant defuse the second one (which is on your position) and he will detonate it by using q on the first one.

**5. **If you want to defuse a keg, aa it when it has 2/3 life and the timer actually runs out. Dont wait for the 1/3 life. Defusing a keg in lane makes every GP cry. The Cooldown is pretty high earlygame and he usually cant duel without kegs, cant zone, cant poke or aoe parrley minions.

**6. **Tell your team when he is lvl 6. Because global Ult.

**7. **In Teamfights you should make sure that you have enough vision to at least see his kegs. 2 Player can easily defuse a keg before GP can detonate it, because GP's Team cant attack the kegs, your team has 5 ppl to defuse them. Again think of his kegs as Heimerdingers turrets.

**8. **Last but not least, dont dive him and dont fight him when you dont have a huge advantage. His remove scurvy heals now for 15% of his mising health and removes cc. I did a lot of kills with help of my tower because ppl underestimated the lvl1 remove scurvy.

Good Champions to pick vs GP are (in my opinion) Vladimir, Then Azir, Quinn/Vayne. Followed by Riven, Jax, Pantheon, Fiora. All of them have more Attackspeed than GP usually has + range advantage. Riven for example can use valor to dash to a keg and defuse it before GP can detonate it and even if he can (should not be the case), her shield protects her. Every Champion with an autoattackreset has an easy time defusing his kegs, thats why Champions like Jax are great vs him. As i said.. Counting Kegs is vital in this matchup and GP does not hardcounter any Champions. Champions which rely on their cc and are slow and immobile have a hard time vs him, but it should be always possible to not feed him and still farm.

GL HF :)

lolipopevelynn7/28/2015, 4:24:12 AM1 votes

{quoted}

Just skip to the end if you don't want to read everything, just look at the part about his barrels

So with the release of the new Gangplank, people still have the old mindset of him being a mediocre top laner, not worthy of competitive or solo queue play. The new update makes Gangplank a great pick against a lot of melee top laners, because his barrels have such high damage he can zone in lane phase using them. Since every time the enemy laner wants to defuse a barrel (if melee) they will have to walk up, gangplank can efficiently get free damage on anybody that tries to defuse his barrels. Even if he cant get the barrel off, he can still settle for a Q onto his laner.

Against ranged top laners, he may struggle, if they can trade and defuse barrels with relative ease. Kayle will out-sustain him and urgot will be able to trade with him and even zone him, and when gp uses his oranges to remove CC from a gank, urgot has free reign to ult him.

Problems with the new gangplank arise as well - namely with his E, The barrels and for those of you who don't know what it does, lets just take a quick look > If Gangplank scores the last hit, the triggering attack is splashed as physical damage to surrounding enemies, slowing them for 2 seconds. Explosions ignore 60% of their targets' armor, and enemy champions take bonus physical damage. When he destroys the keg, it instantly readies trial by fire, which will proc a 30% move speed buff, so you can also run away with them. Triforce also procs onto these barrels, so feel free to just Q them.

The big problem is that these barrels have too much damage with this amount of utility. If you crit onto a barrel, and the barrel splashes onto the enemy champ, it will ignore 60% of their armor. While he can't use the barrels to attack the enemy backline in teamfights, he can easily stop people from diving his own with the barrels.

He isn't OP as in, you absolutely can't deal with him but he seems like he would be very hard to deal with for a lot of people. What does everybody else think about him? (comments below)

he isnt OP, his barrels are perfect counterplay. its actually very balanced.

Erockandroll7/28/2015, 5:31:51 AM1 votes

I think Gangplank is pretty balanced, but he does have much more defined strengths than most champs. While his Barrels do ignore 60% armor, It's entirely based on his Parley damage. Combined that with the True damage on his passive, and it becomes obvious that he has harder time with High health targets, more so than high armor targets.

And obviously his Barrels are a bit unreliable Early game, as it takes time for them to tick to 1 hit. A lot of the time, I find myself using the barrels more as an escape/safety mechanism, than for harass and wave clear. It doesn't really pick up for me until level 9 and tri force. As such, I really feel like his strength is more in the mid/late game.

I wonder how Riot has analyzed him at different points in the game. Since his Barrel Farm can be a massive rubber band mechanic if he ever falls behind.

SquishyArchon7/28/2015, 5:39:31 AM1 votes

He's not OP by any means....

Nikola11/30/2015, 7:07:00 PM1 votes

I started to main GP he is a god with the right barrel placement you are a god ! You have global presents with your ult so you can stay top and farm 24/7 and get them sexy stacks on your ult ! But still ult mid or bot to help them getting the kills or running away ! His early game is weak IMO but help bot lane with ult and walk down there or go to mid and the enemy top will 90% prevent the mid push or try to help mid so you don't take the tower you can tp back top and farm like and idiot after about 20 mins im sitting around 100 minions and by 35 minutes i have around 300 . And I all ready upgraded my ult 3 times by then which is a GOD in team cast it at the adc the middle big cannon ball will slow and do TRUE DMG so they are already about down 3/4 of there health . And doing the extra wave clear from the one that upgrades fire speed will do extra dmg to champions around so they will have to run out of it but while everyone is craping there pants they forgot you ulted the adc by that time your extra movement speed passive on the ult ensure your team to rape them . His early game weak AF tho . After 20 min if you have 100 farm and around 1/3 score you will be fine just farm like a mo fo ! [slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

Daddy pigs h0e9/20/2017, 7:04:01 AM1 votes

I play Gangplank mid but I always keep a barrel and a ward in the bushes for the jungler. Early game he's not that good but late game he becomes a god, once the priming times on his barrels go down he is a beast. As a Teemo player his ult is amazing for killstealing your team. :D