The biggest problem with Gangplank isn't even his ultimate or his safety, it's his Q interaction
It interacts way too much with melee abilities. Basically, this has been an issue for years and its been abused pretty hard core by a variety of champions, but most notably GP.
I know there's a thread made by HD in GPB atm but I felt this was a significantly different kind of discussion that it warranted its own topic.
HD's problem with GP is his safety and his ability to power farm. That's okay. If you want him to be safe and be able to farm, that's fine. If he's difficult to shut down, that's okay, ticking time bomb exists in other forms too (Nasus, Irelia, Tristana, etc) but his problem is that he shouldn't be able to bully as hard.
Really good GP players atm are going dorans ring start for a variety of reasons. You get mana regen and the onhit kill passive even while killing barrels. It also makes it so that he can spam his Q and his W whenever they are off cooldown. This makes him fucking IMPOSSIBLE to shut down while at the same time he bullies the shit out of you WHILE hyperscaling. THIS is the problem.
The reason it's such an issue is that good GPs start with mana regen partial runes, max CDR for more ultimates/barrels etc (which this build was helped significantly by trinity CDR changes) and the fucking bandit mastery. GP will also put a barrel on himself so if you try to engage on him, he'll pop the barrel and destroy your hp. This forces you to focus the barrel first, which guarantees one auto in which gives him the MS he needs to run away while Qing your face to win the trade. That shits infuriating. Granted it's fun as fuck to do but it's also infuriating to play against.
This results in good GPs just Qing you in the face. Over. And over. Whenever the bandit mastery is off cd, they're going to Q you in the face. And there's nothing you can do about it, because he sits on his fucking barrel and regens all the minion harass via his W. You can't even punish him for using it because engaging while he has barrels stocked will result in you having a very bad time.
But why is this so effective?
Let's go over this again.
https://i.gyazo.com/bbae2ccb943437f7884a201d0324bad8.png
This shit on gangplank is the equivalent of Lulu top. It's a support thing. Get it the fuck out of top lane. EVERY time he Qs your face, he's massively rewarded for it! In fact, it's almost always better to Q a champion pre-triforce than it is to Q minions because Qing the champion simultaneously generates harass and gives him 10 gold, way more gold than last hitting minions. He doesn't care about the lack of SS as he can power farm them after triforce anyway.
Point is, make his Q trigger effects as if they are ranged. No more Q hydra. No more Q + 10 gold, he gets 3 instead, half of what he'll get off a minion. This makes him choose and gives him tradeoffs in lane. No more fucking grasp of undying on his Q either. Same thing for Poppy, for consistency. The effect of an ability or item should be dependent whether it is on, that attack, ranged or not.
This will fix some of his cheese problems and will let Riot actually look at whether the champion needs to rely less on Barrels. It's probably perfectly acceptable to buff his Q damage after this change, but let the bandit changes settle and then decide.
