Can we take a look at Gnar and Frozen Mallet?

Anybody who has played against Gnar knows just how toxic Frozen Mallet is on him. He's also one of the only champs to use it. With the recent Rylai's changes reducing how prevalent and toxic the item is, I think it's time to take a look at Frozen Mallet.

In its current state, it only exists to make certain champs that are already sticky / good at kiting even more so. And if it does make immobile melee champs able to stick to enemies, that isn't necessarily a good thing. They are balanced around not having guaranteed access to their targets, and should be. If they weren't, they would be useless. However, this means if they can reliably stick to targets, they are absurdly broken, since they kill everything while also being unkillable (I'm looking at you Shyvana).

Anyways, Gnar could theoretically function fine without Frozen Mallet (I say theoretically only because without it, he would be need compensation buffs to do well). He already can kite fine with his low cooldown Q slow, his Hyper speed buff, Hop, and the Rage passive from The Black Cleaver. His Mega form didn't really need it in the first place, and only liked it because of his stats. Just to get another opinion on the matter, I asked Myloo, an ex-challenger Gnar main, what he thought. He said that Gnar without Frozen Mallet would be gutted, but he would be fine if he got compensation buffs. The first thing he would need is for the 6.18 nerfs to be reverted. He also said that the biggest problem would be that the loss of Frozen Mallet would mean that he wouldn't do enough damage, and that he would need to do similar amounts of damage without it as he does now with it. Considering that the damage would be much fairer since it's more reliant on skillshots, this would be a good direction to take for Gnar.

If we take a look at what happened in between patches 6.17, where he was considered very strong, and the current patches, we find that there are two major nerfs to Gnar. The first is the nerfs on patch 6.18, which took 5 damage off of Hyper at all ranks (15/25/35/45/55 -> 10/20/30/40/50) and added 4 seconds to his E cooldown at rank 1 (18-12s -> 22-12s). The second, which took a much bigger hit, was the preseason changes to masteries. Fervor of Battle was massively nerfed for him, since he does not build crit and does not have many AD ratios. Courage of the Collosus also became the meta keystone for tanks, and Gnar cannot use it effectively. The new meta of tanks outtrading due to Courage and Fervor being much weaker has nerfed Gnar quite a bit. Reverting the nerfs form patch 6.18 would help a bit, but would probably not be enough.

We should also consider how weak Gnar is at the present moment. There is a massive tank meta going on right now, and everybody's favorite tank shredding yordle is nowhere to be seen. I know winrates don't necessarily mean a whole lot, but I'm going to quote lolalytics on Gnar's winrate right now: "Gnar Top has a win rate 45.62% for Platinum+ players whilst the very best Gnar's are earning a win rate of 49.15% with the average rank of these top players being in Diamond II." That, regardless of the stigma regarding winrates, should say something. What usually matters most is win rate based off of experience. The best Gnars are only getting a sub 50% winrate. That is not good. Gnar also has a pickrate of around 3.5%, which is around average and does not suggest that the reason for Gnar's low winrate is due to many inexperienced players playing him. Rather, Gnar is in fact very weak right now compared to all of the meta top laners.

What would Gnar need to be in a healthy place? The two main issues I see are Frozen Mallet and his weak state. The first is easy to resolve; simply remove Frozen Mallet. There will be very little impact on the rest of the game, since it is very rarely taken outside of on Gnar. Meddler recently said: "No, we haven't forgotten Frozen Mallet. Its use is fairly niche, and the champions who do apply it do so only at short to medium ranges. It's not very comparable with Rylai's situation as a result." My interpretation of this is that it is an issue, but not anywhere nearly as pressing as Rylai's was. The second issue would be amplified by fixing the first issue, but can be resolved with buffs. I would personally say start with reverting the nerfs in 6.18, and then wait a patch or two before buffing again to see what is necessary. This new, more careful approach that Riot has been taking recently is definitely better than excssive preemptive buffs. Assuming Gnar is still too weak, I would look to buff his Hyper damage, Q slow, and/or health regeneration.