Riot balled out on these Gangplank changes

A pirate’s life is a life for me!

Sorry. I can’t help it. Gangplank is the one champion who really makes me feel like I’m playing as the champion. From the voicelines, to the rudimentary pistol and flaming sword thing, Gangplank is just one of the coolest champs in the game.

But there’s always been that *one* thing. He’s a pro play staple, and his Grasp interaction makes his laning so good that Riot felt they had to nerf his late game. They, like me, want to drop massive barrels late game and be a hypercarry.

Riot get a lot of stick, but this is one of the coolest changes they’ve ever made.

Riot Games announced these potential changes. I can’t wait.

Back to dropping nukes

Every time the discussion of ‘Triforce or Sunderer?’ came up, it completely missed the point. The correct answer is neither, because clearly crit is the only logical build. Bruiser Gangplank is strong, but it’s boring. Ooh, my barrels do about 400 damage, look at me, I’m an LCS player. Disgusting.

Riot, thankfully, have seen sense, and given his barrels an extra 25% scaling with crit. Thank the lord, good Gangplank players who hit barrel combos will be rewarded. They’ll also get more barrels – up to 5 – to combo with, with a similar recharge time.

They’re removing the obnoxious, skill-less Grasp interaction and instead giving him more damage and more uses of the spell everyone started playing Gangplank for. It’s like Christmas, or Worlds, came early.

And so did Tobias Fate.

GANGPLANK IS GETTING 5 BARRELS… I’D SAY WORTH. pic.twitter.com/rZ6T9Pcqgi

— Tobias Fate (@Tobias_Fate) August 17, 2021

“More powder!”

So what does this mean? It means a few things. His build is going to change – you’re less tied to Ability Haste due to having more barrels, and more tied to crit. Essence Reaver looks like a certain first item, with Shieldbow coming afterwards.

It’s a big change to how he interacts with other laners, and could completely change his place in pro play. Some lanes that he bullied early he no longer will – such as Camille – and his difficult match-ups will be harder to navigate. He should be stronger when he comes in as a punish pick, weaker as blind pick.

He’ll go back to outscaling nearly every bruiser on the game instead of his weird power spikes, but he won’t be as safe. However,  if his late game is back to how it used to be, he might still be blind-pick-able as beating him early won’t mean anything. Nice work on that 30cs lead, Lucian.

Solarbacca is excited, too.

Just… watch out for those 3:15 dives. If you can avoid that, GP will outscale Renekton by about level 9. And EVERYONE picks Renekton, for some reason. Not to go all LS on you.

But most importantly, GP becomes FUN again, especially in solo queue. The late game pirate is back on top of his throne as the coolest, most fun, hardest scaling, G2-ending top laner. 

Bad GPs are about to get found out so goddamn hard, and G2 are about to lose to a single barrel again.