I'm honestly all for Gragas buffs, but I feel like a full revert to Q's damage to minions would still make him a problem as a laner. Gragas was way to safe as a solo laner as his Q could clear waves easily and Gragas could avoid interaction with the enemy due to his kits disengage potential. If they were to alter his Q, I feel like they would have to reduce its current AP scaling and possibly hit its base damage as well to make it deal 80 to 90 percent of its current nonminion damage. I feel like if it weren't for the fact that AP burst mages are kinda meh with the current items and mastery system that Gragas would actually be in a pretty good spot. Item changes actually seem to favor him in Lichbane, RoA, Abyssal Scepter and Lucidity boots getting buffed while Deathcap and Zhonya's getting nerfed. Gragas liked D-cap but he wasn't in love with it when compared to Pen items and the extra burst from Luden's. And he is not really dependent on having Zhonya's unless he is against Zed or a high burst opponent.
What he probably needs is love to his Q, but a full revert I think is too much and he would be very strong in solo lanes. It would be a 42 percent increase in his damage to minions on his Q if it were reverted fully, but giving it some better minion damage would make him a much stronger pick.
I feel like Riot wants to have Gragas be a damage oriented AP fighter that builds a mix of AP and defense, but Gragas has either been a full AP champ or a full tank champion based on what is strong on him at the time. He needs to maintain high-ish base damage but his scaling might need to be hit as his current Q's AP ratio when charged is .9 on top of a 360 base damage at level 9 means he can easily clear minions with no effort. A fully charged barrel that had a .75 to .8 ratio would be a lot better and a base damage of 320 would probably make it much more manageable for balance. In order to give Gragas more damage in other abilities, I would suggest increasing the AP ratio on his W as they have taken away a lot of the damage from the ability when he was abusing it to maintain high damage throughout the game without building any damage items. Increasing the AP ratio would not help Tank Gragas, but would help a more damage oriented build with Lichbane and pen items such as 
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I hope Gragas doesn't have to wait a full year to be viable again. He is still a strong jungle pick purely for the Utility in his Ult, but he is considerably weaker than he has been and it seems like it just gets worse and worse with each change to the masteries. I still find success in both his AP and his tank build, but I feel like I would have been better off with another champion most of the time. Anyway. I hope Gragas gets some love with the awaited Control Mage update Riot has been hinting at. It might be enough to bring him back into solo lanes, even if it is just item changes that benefit him. Peace.
