Gangplank Rework Concept
This infographic rework concept was created by chrisedgeworth - Love the presentation, awesome job!
25 Comments
Short of some of the values (5% Bonus armor? That's... pitiful) I love this. I really do.
Big problem I foudn is, this suggestion wants him to be a bruiser (FRONT LINES HOOO!) but nobody who goes front lines (bruisers, tanks) really BUILD crit.
I really like this idea! It seems like they've put a lot of thought into this, and I think Riot should definitely consider updating GP soon. He's one of my favorite champions (personally), but I've abstained from buying him due to his glaring weakness in team settings. The idea of a lore-based kit really makes me giddy about possible updates to him or any champion =)
GP is hands down one of my most favorite top laners. I almost always go GP top lane and only really lose laning phase to a pantheon. But being a tank I outscale him late game. What I hate about this though is to be able to provide anything to my team I feel the need to go tankplank to provide something. It works really well but I love your ideas and would like to see some changes to gangplank.
I'm in love with that format. And his lore shaping his kit is as it should be!
Sorry for the negative feedback, but I seriously don't like this new rework and disagree with you nearly from the start.
Lets start with the "weak at close range" part. His health at level 1 is ranked 1st, but does drop lower as he reaches higher levels (86% of 1st at level 18, which is still higher than average). His ADs, although lower than the bests, is still really appreciable being in the top half pf the roster for the course of the game. So, in term of raw stats, he goes from one of the best to being better than average. When it comes to skill, your level 1 is still insane. You have a ranged fake-AA, meaning you can basically AA 3 times while your enemy does it twice. Later in the game, you have a free cleanse on a 18s cd, 2 skills that combo'd together allows you to reach nearly anybody (E+innate), a zoning tool (R) and a "single attack range buff" that can be used as a pseudo AA reset (Q). You basically have every single tools that a bruiser could like except for a hard gap closer.
Next, your role is teamfight is insanely easy to understand... You have some neat base damage and team wide buffs and debuffs. You are the definition of a bruiser. Buy some tanky items, get that stat-on-a-stick E rolliing and just cause havoc in the enemy lines. Spirit Visage is a must buy for the CDR on your cleanse and the extra heal. At that point ,you're a nearly unkitable tank that deals quite a bit of damage and give free stats to your team, on top of racking a gazillion assists making you wealthier and thus a bigger threat. You are a bruiser/tank, and one that is an insane snowball (comparable to Udyr imo).
Onto the skills now, imo, the main point that makes you find GP lackluster is the fact that you're scared to go melee. You basically have the Poppy syndrome, where you heard the champion is weak, so don't force any trades and end up getting overly harassed during your power spikes, so you end up losing your lanes/games, so you find the champion weak. I've actually bulied more Renektons out of lane on Poppy than I've lost lanes to Renektons because her laning phase is beyond absurd. Gangplank is the same... You can either play passively andinevitably outfarm the enemy, making you bulkier/stronger than him and thus impossible to trade with, or play agressively using your Q (which is among the best skills) and passive to simply inflict pain. The passive could basically be "your attack deals 12-63 more damage (based on level)". So while I said that his AD was slightly lackluster, that's only for things like Trinity procs and ratios increases. In fact, once you add in his passive, he can stay nearly even to the likes of Fiora and Master Yi. Based on your AS, it could be more/less, but unless you buy attack speed, you will actually never go under that limit.
You also have to factor the slow on it. 20% movement speed slow for 3 attacks is far from negligible If you add in a Frozen Mallet, it's another 40%. Imagine other bruisers like Vi, Evelynn, Elise, etc. Once their gap closer is blown, if they get Condemned + Tumbled away, it's bye bye dps, nice knowing you. Gangplank however will have already traded once with his Q, and with that instant slow + MS buff can catch up again (and it'll be easier every time after the first because your slow stacks).
As for the Q, I think that saying it's the only offensive ability is pretty awkward. You innate is basically "deal more damage everytime you deal damage" and your E is "your team deals more damage and move faster". That's without accounting for the "this zone is now afflicted by an AoE slow that may deals damage" ultimate. I don't know you definition of offensive, but these 3 are far from defensive from my point of view. Otherwise, I believe the Q is fine as-is. If there was to be anything chaged ever, it would probably have to be the bankplank mechanism.
Continued in reply because of character limit.
I feel something in there should grant him bonus flat AD when he kills a unit with Parrrlay.
Really like the format, makes it super clear what you're going for and displays your thought process pretty well.
That said - I have a few problems with what you're trying to address.
First, and most importantly, the overall rework seems to be operating from the premise that Gangplank is statistically weaker than everyone else, and needs more stats to compete - which is mostly what the re-worked abilities do. I'm not going to argue he's weak, he is - but Riot tends to keep weak champions as weak champions because they kill a lot of meaningful interaction, and have confusing mechanics that are hard to counter play, not because they're incapable of boosting their power by ~10% A really important thing to keep in mind with champion design in a PvP environment is how fun it is to play *against *a champion rather than simply playing as a champion. If Gangplank does action A, do you get to respond by doing X or Y, or are you completely screwed over and simply die? Most of this rework seemed more focused on fulfilling a power fantasy for GP players than allowing meaningful interaction from his opponents.
Second, you put blatantly false information in this. Q is not Gangplank's only damaging ability - his ultimate quite obviously causes damage as well. At rank 1 you can do up to 1875 damage to a single target if every cannonball hits them, at rank 3 it's capable of 4125. You can only land 1/4th of the skill's full potential and out-damage full AP burst ultimates with it (accounting for them having AP and you not), which is far from no damage. The average AP burst ult only does 500 damage rank 3. Not to mention his passive and AD steroid dealing no damage is a fuzzy line to cross, especially seeing as Parrrely counts as an auto-attack, which kills a lot of distinctions you could make in regards to Raise Moral's damage boost.
Third - you're core points on his character seem to already be addressed in Gangplank's kit pretty well. Pirate King isn't the same thing as king. It's more a king of thieves, godfather, or gang lord kind of deal. Fighting dirty, using rogue tactics, and in general channeling their inner Teemo is largely what's expected of Pirates, leader or not. A Pirate isn't the type of character I really see being a solid front-line champion. They aren't encased head-to-toe in armor, they don't have mighty shields, they tend to think rules are more "guidelines", and honor is for fools. At least in most popular fiction. I mean - Parley means talking over your problems with an enemy to discuss terms. Like, as opposed to shooting someone in the face. Or pretending you want to talk to lower someone's guard, and then shooting them in the face.
Which actually puts Gangplank's current range of dominance in a pretty solid place for what you'd expect from a Pirate. He's not as overpowering in melee range as a ruthless barbarian in Sion or Tryndamere, or as skilled as swordmasters like Fiora or Yi that have devoted their lives to mastering the art. But he's also not to far off - he operates pretty closely to Ryze's super-short range. He'll demolish a lot of ranged champions in melee combat, and he can shoot a lot of melee champions in the face to weaken them enough to win in hand to hand combat.
Anyways - for your re-work ideas specifically: Cannon Barrage doing consistent damage to everything in the radius I really like. The bleed - not so much. It's already dealing periodic damage in the first place, dealing periodic damage and more periodic damage is complicating the tooltip for no real benefit.
You pointed out Oranges are really iconinc - then removed them.
I feel like you added to much to Raise Moral. Every champion has 5 abilities (including their passive), you should focus on making each one something like Phage, Sheen, or Zeal - not Trinity Force. If everything's like Trinity Force a champion is going to feel like an awkward amalgamation of stats that's really unclear.
YES. Period. Goodbye.
I like this, rito please.
I recall reading this idea once to help make Gangplank's W feel less instant and anti-interactive, while also inviting him to get into fights. Instead of a straight up heal, what it would instead do was give him a relatively long lasting but relatively small Life Steal bonus.
With life steal, Gangplank is invited to actually get in and fight. If he can get his hands on you in melee range and start smacking you around, he gets this bonus amount of HP with the life steal much like the existing Remove Scurvy's heal. Alongside this, the reason why I specify long lasting but weak life steal is to directly avoid Q utilization. If it were a short term, high Lifesteal bonus, all it would take is a single Parrrley to get your heal, still inviting the current non-interactive play style that Gangplank's current W invites what with Parrrley being a ranged poke ability.
That's just a side thought someone brought up, but hey, I thought it was cool. This rework that this guy came up with though, oh my god I love it.
It actually seems well done!
However, Can we make him eat oranges in his new E if this were the rework? Pleeeease?
This concept really mixes with GP both gameplay wise and thematically in a way that NEEDS to happen! Rito, plz do this!
Q ratios too strong. With 200 AD (IE & Shiv included) and 3 stacks of his W passive a crit would deal 1300 damage before armor. That is simply too much for a champion that should be building 100% crit chance anyways, on a ranged point-and-click ability on a 10 second flat cool down at level 9 if he maxes it first. I think instead of a scaling AD ratio it should be a scaling health percentage of 3/4/5/6/7% with a 1.5x cap ratio on critical strikes. If you want him to be a front line fighter duelist, he's going to need to be able to fight his lane opponents. Considering he shouldn't be built tanky, he'll easily die to the renektons of the world during late game.
Tell me what you think of this.
Otherwise I really love the work you've done on this. It's very extensive and your logic is easy to follow.
his parley/Ulti should be replaced with a single shot aoe cannon ball wit lower cooldowns o.o it's like the people on his airship can't hit the broad-side of a barn o.0 and it takes them SOOO long to load cannon balls o.o he must just kill his crew after every game. if they was a real realistic pirate ulti? they should have the pirates on the shit dropping explosive bouncing casks (target-able by other abilties/exploding on contact)
Sorry to poop on the parade here, but GP is already fun to play as he is. Not every character has to be championship-team-caliber-material. Some can just be fun to play. Plus, how is GP's role in teamfights not clear? Use your E on your whole team, and use your R on the whole enemy team. Then Q the enemy carries. Derp.
You got it pretty wrong when you said he should be a leader and frontliner.
He's a PIRATE leader, he's dishonest, he strikes from afar until the enemy is crippled and only then he gets in melee and Parrleu reflects this perfectly, he's the one that sends his crew to die and only intervenes if he thinks necessary and I think his current kit reflects well on that with his ultimate and Raise Morale. I agree he needs some tweaks, but his role should remain as it is, he is NOT a frontliner.
Making him a frontliner would kill his identity.
First of all, awesome format.
I think Gangplank should be a bruiser. He just has the look of a bruiser over him that can build some more or less damage/tankiness but needs both regardless.
Establishing that, building crit is really hard for bruisers because they generally already want ad and health+armor/mr. Adding another stat to this equation, especially one that is hard to combine with any of the others (Youmuu's, Infinity Edge and the weaker Executioner's calling+Atma's are all that have crit and other bruiser stats?), makes him more a light fighter that needs to use abilities to avoid damage more than deal it or a sub-par marksman because he can only shoot once every three seconds. I think phasing the crit out of the parrrley, or give it a significantly reduced crit ratio, and then buffing the ad ratio above 1.0 to compensate is a better start for a bruiser.
With only one non-ultimate damage ability, GP would spike at level 9 and fall off hard after. Your new grog-soaked blade on W solves this, in a way. I really don't like it though, having free crit chance on your kit feels incredibly random. You can win or lose lane based off of that. I think just a solid flat damage ability is in order, for example, deal bonus damage and slow your target with your next attack (or toss a flagon that does this in an area, similar to Twitch). Nobody likes to be permaslowed, but having a temporary stronger slow is great for forcing a trade or fleeing one. I prefer tossing a skillshot here because else you'd just always use W then Q and all your damage is focused on Parrrley again.
To be honest, I like the current GP kit and feel he only needs a graphical update at the most.
Passive - Proper utilization of this passive and his Q can actually help you engage and disengage quite well, this isn't something I think needs any amount of changing on GP because it adds a bit to the underhanded trickery you can pull off with him, as it's not a passive which much attention if any is ever paid to.
Changing this to a armor penetration passive
Q - "Farming and only damage ability [pre-six]" I'm not sure why this is a problem, a champion only needs a singular damage ability really. Tryndamere only has one, even post six, Caitlyn only has one pre-six, Ashe only has one, Diana, Lucian, Jinx. These champions don't have a problem because of only having a single damage ability, they have a bit more depth from it in my opinion.
Promoting farming at range isn't a bad thing, and actually, very few GP's actually just farm at range, it's quite difficult to pull that off and get good CS unless you have maximum CDR.
Adding a scaling AD ratio to this Q would also make certain full-damage builds with a trinity force remove the opposing ADC from the fight entirely due to the pure damage that Q would bring on crit.
W - These changes remove the AP GP off-build, which makes me sad/happy. Sure it's a annoying build to play against, but it's also a very different GP than AD, Crit, or Tank.
It's also taking the old passive of GP and putting it here just for the sake of still having it, which I dont think needs to be done, this W is too overloaded, and too strong.
E - Gangplank's current E is to make sure his damage stays relevant even when building tank, and to allow him and his team to engage using it and his ult. This also allows great kiting, poke, and all sorts of other nuances in his kit when used. Percent damage reduction sounds all well and good, but that does mean that full damage GP may be nigh-unkillable, creating a extremely unhealthy play patten.
R - Alright, I like the removal of RNG, but at the same time, I hate it here. The bleed and damage is just too strong here, and would need major scaling back, and GP's current ult is more of a engage and disengage tool than a damage one. What I would like would just be a small change to GP's current ult, one that would make sure at least one cannonball did hit a target within the area, but a full on AOE spread across that size would just melt any attempt at a squishy team(very not fun for them).
Also, AP GP hate again.
Summary:
This would remove the variety of GP builds you can have with the current GP. You can build him Tankplank, Critplank, AP GP, and so many other builds inbetween in his current form. No, he isn't a top tier pick, no, he isn't popular in solo queue, yes, he is difficult to properly play within a team. However, he is also flexible, meaning he can be a peel, a tank, a frontline damage dealer, or a backline mop-up crew. You can even play all of them at once. You can group with your team and use your groupwide E buff + R slow to guarantee a amazing engage. Conversely, you can buy a few wards, and splitpush forever, using your ult to help your team when needed, and dueling anyone who comes near. You can even just use wards to light up their jungle and assassinate anyone foolish to enter GP's new favorite real estate.
I have played Gangplank: Top, Jungle, Mid, ADC, Support. Tank, Mage, Crit, Carry, Engage. He can already be the leader of his team if you take charge, deciding when to help his team escape, engage, or even fight. He does not need a updated kit, his kit has it's own complexity present in it's simplicity.