Boards›Gameplay

GNAR! a plat 1 opinion article.

Binxy Prime·8/20/2014, 10:29:42 PM·4 votes·1,921 views

Hey guys just want to share my thoughts on the most adorable creature to ever grace the league of legends, even more adorable than Santa Nashor.

Gnar strengths and weaknesses

Gnar is really squishy, his base stats are terrible, his range is also terrible, it does allow you to last hit somewhat safely but you should probably not try to auto attack most champions you will lane against.

To make up for this you can play him safely in lane by last hitting and hassing with his q while last hitting under turret until you are either going to transform or until you have some items and you are level 11-13 where he starts to become a threat.

The main issue with Gnar is that when he is small he is really easy to kill, really easy to gank, really easy to trade against and very easy to all in. If you itemize for damage you will just die in both forms, if you itemize tank you still die in mini gnar form but you are actually pretty strong in mega form.

The problem is that his mega form is SO telegraphed that he should almost never be able to use it effectively in a team fight scenario.

His strengths obviously are the ability to harass and farm with relatively safety in lane even if countered and he brings a lot of sustained CC to the team late game if the situation is right.

He doesn't build enough AD for his poke to be strong but 3-4 q's in a siege situation can help to add some extra damage and get people off of turrets. His Q does have good range and is pretty low risk if it misses.

My Opinion on Optimal playstyle

I think he should be built tanky with a single damage item, I prefer different ones for different reasons, all of them increase movespeed to cover the obnoxious weakness of mega gnars mobility.

BotRK is great for sustain in lane and chasing a single target.

Triforce is nice to do a lot of damage especially vs towers.

And Yomous is good to do a lot of damage in mini gnar form if your team has a lot of cc or if you can stunlock someone.

Why Gnar is terrible

Gnar is terrible because he has 0 pressure in most lanes until at least level 11 because he needs to max q for the cdr on it and so he has a harass tool but he doesnt do any damage outside of mega form unless his w is maxed.

Both his q and w in mega gnar form are laughably easy to dodge so as long as the opponent doesnt line themselves up for you to stun them against a wall you will almost never get a kill after 6 either. His teamfight is very strong in the jungle in mega gnar form but many places mid lane his ult is useless and many time in river he isn't that great either. His slows are good utility in team fights though so as long as you land some q's on people he isn't complete garbage. But it is very easy for enemies to disengage when your rage is full/near full and just wait out the gnar form, especially if they have poke on their team which is very meta.

The biggest problem is if I want a heavy CC tanky top lane there is no reason for me not to pick Malphite, Cho, Alistar, Maokai, or even Shen over Gnar. If I want a lane bully I would almost certainly be better off playing Ryze, Quinn, Kennen or Teemo top lane. I understand the argument that "hes both though" but the truth is he isn't. If you build damage to bully in lane he doesnt have a good team fight, if you build tanky, he doesnt bully in lane. And he's a very weak laner early regardless even if you were going to do a bullying type of build so he actually can't even do that role at all.

His max hp damage is magic which is reduced my mr, you are not going to itemize any pen so that 14% at level 9 is going to be reduced by about 40 mr at least assuming that you can get 3 hits on that champion without dying.

Gnar dominates Garen but he can and is beaten by most other meta top laners. Ryze, quinn, maokai, alistar, irelia, ... , any bruiser with a gap closer, anything with more range than his auto is going to beat him in lane / shove him to tower until he has levels and items.

In teamfights he does nothing for a non specific amount of time before transforming and then if the enemy team hasn't done significant damage before he transforms AND doesn't disengage before you transform AND is near a wall THEN you are rewarded by being very slightly better than other team fight tanks like Chogath or Malphite or Alistar but not as reliable.

If your team wins a teamfight and you are chasing his q travels slowly enough that any movespeed like Shyvannas W will let you outrun it, if they let you hit them and keep running in a straight line so you can catch it he can chase but its not like he is bulky, any champion with a ranged slow could do that which is basically like half of the champs in this game.

How to make Gnar worth it

His mega form either needs to be so powerful that when he is in his mega gnar form he can completely zone most top laners for the duration of the transformation or he needs to have a way to control his mega form better.

Ways to buff his mega form would just be to increase the reliability of his q and his w by making them cast faster and maybe make the form last longer, or possibly give his ult a shorter cd like 45 to 60s at all levels so he could use it everytime he is in mega since its the only way to reliably connect with the rest of your moves.

Another idea is to keep his ult cd kind of longish like 120 - 160s and allow him to be capable of using it even in small form to transform on demand with some CC. This is my favorite idea as it allows you to play around his mega form til 6 and allows him to use the mega form late game for teamfights. I think this would still be reasonable because his laning is so weak for so long.

As it stands now we will probably never see Gnar in competitive unless they make a change like this one.

Thanks for reading

<3s

I appreciate all replies

15 Comments

AvariceSyn8/21/2014, 1:52:59 AM2 votes

Somehow you failed to mention his incredible ability to kite. If ganked from behind, use his E to bounce off of the jungler's head and throw a quick Q backwards for the slow. His passive W also gives him movement speed when three stacks are attained on a neutral/enemy minion or champion. I've been building Phage on him first with Movement Speed quintessences and furor boots later down the line for maximum mobility.

If you're blowing your movement abilities to close in on a kill without knowledge of where the jungler or other lanes are, that is your fault for doing so. His kit provides it, there's no reason it shouldn't be utilized for different situations appropriately.

From a Silver's perspective, Gnar is the ultimate bait and switch fighter. He also seems like the Triforce of champions, all that he really seems to be missing is native sustain, but to go out on a limb you can say that he has even that with his Mega Gnar form.

He has a ridiculous amount of CC (5 Slows, 2 stuns, and most of those are AoE or line based), gets bonus movespeed from Hyper which is triggered on transformation back to mini Gnar as well as 3 stacks and just by levelling up and being Mini Gnar because of his Passive Rage Gene, 3 PERCENTILE health damage abilities (2 based on enemy health, one based on Gnar's health PLUS 100% AP RATIO).

His Mega Gnar form isn't all that unreliable if you look at it from a different perspective. You get Rage when you auto attack and use your abilities to damage enemies and neutral mobs. Your jungler and lane allies should pay attention to your Rage and gank when it's time. if you're not receiving help, engaging on the enemy when you have Mega Gnar is the best time to trade due to your increased damage, CC, health regen, health and defenses, but that does not mean that he's weak by any means as mini Gnar. You can still trade effectively between boomerang and auto harass.

Think of him as Aatrox with a different form. You don't really want to engage as Aatrox with a low blood well, as you're missing out on attack speed and your pseudo-GA, meaning that you're either not getting your health back as fast in a fight or you're not at your maximum damage potential or both depending on how far into your build and what you chose to build.

Dom1nati0n8/21/2014, 12:58:53 AM2 votes

They did comment in that last update video that Gnar would probably not be a practical choice for competitive play. Neither are a lot of champions. And I'm ok with that. "Reliable" Is the key to competitive play. Gnar is designed to be opportunistic, Like Yi for example. Yi will also never see competitive play. Thank goodness. Lol

Binxy Prime8/20/2014, 10:51:53 PM2 votes

Hey guys I really would appreciate any comments and any of your ideas about how to make Gnar a stronger pick without making him overpowered. Or even your opinion on why he is or isn't a strong pick =D

Binxy Prime8/22/2014, 5:14:35 AM1 votes

I've run into some Gnars that did decent damage today when I underestimated them but later on in the game I just never had a problem again once I stopped writing him off as a cannon minion in teamfights. If he hits you like 6 times it hurts pretty bad and hes difficult to chase if hes already hit you with a q but he was super easy to play around in both small and big form even with other things to worry about in the fight.

I think Gnar is just a bad champion right now at every stage of the game. But we will see, hopefully after worlds and after the buffs some pros spend some time with him and we can see how good he can get. For now I'll just be happy I have another yordle to pick on my yordle only account.

Syvenon8/21/2014, 3:48:35 AM1 votes

What I've heard is that his passive is just really frustrating. It kind of makes your team have to work around it, timing things for mega gnar to be available. It takes away the freedom to take a good initiation because Gnar isn't ready.

I have not played him myself, but I've just heard there are times when you transform when you don't want to (rare), and times when you want to transform but can't (quite often).

Angry Monster8/21/2014, 12:15:34 AM1 votes

I do not think Gnar is all that bad. Most people build bork on him and go for a life steal aa build.

I have a freind who is crazy about playing gnar and we worked out a CDR tri force build that seem to work out well. The cdr with the refresh on un Q really allows tri force to be proc a lot.

Gnar should not be first one to engage. I find that having him off to the side building/maintain rage is key. A good gnar will learn how to mange the rage.

Eapenator8/21/2014, 4:35:23 PM1 votes

Mini Gnar Attack Pattern - From games where I played against Gnar, In order for him to be able to get into range to lay any meaningful harass (auto q auto/ q auto auto/3 autos), I would be able to lay down a combo and demolish him (most champion spells are 500 - 600 range, significantly higher than Gnar's range of influences). This is even worse when the enemy top laner has a heal/shield, because their damage not only hits you before you can hit them, but

a) they will come out of your trades quite healthy, unless you all in

b) They will zone you and block your attempts to farm with q when ahead by blocking the q, stopping the range.

As for addressing his passive and rage, I think Mega gnar is currently in the perfect spot, only because if you have been watching Darien, you can see how powerful his mega form can be with just tank items. Keep in mind that if you look at his runes, you will see that he only uses Armor pen on both marks and quints.

As for his mega form being telegraphed, I think this is the part that will get better with time. The only thing that needs to be changed is his mini form being just a little stronger. Not too strong that he can completely dominate, otherwise his mega form will have to be significantly nerfed since he doesn't struggle in lane as hard, but enough so you feel like you can actually win lane with the top laner being really bad or having constant help from the jungler.

Gnar is what ranged top laners should be.