Gangplank's Rework: A CRIMINALLY Underrated VGU | League of Legends
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 сер 2023
- Gangplank's rework, despite producing arguably one of the most annoying top laners in the game, is one of the less spoken about VGU's in the game. I wanted to dedicate this episode of the Rework Retrospective series to bring his design to light.
League of Legends Rework Retrospective Playlist: bit.ly/3yWdMsZ
Check out my Genshin Impact channel! bit.ly/3HQN9ud
Check out my Smash Bros channel! bit.ly/3rlFD3Z
Support me on Patreon! bit.ly/3iy5pvu
Donate to the channel! bit.ly/36TpIQP
~Editor (HealsNShields)~
Twitter: / healsnshields
~Contact Links~
Facebook: bit.ly/3lGV9Vg
Twitter: bit.ly/3kv7CZU
Discord: bit.ly/33M2iev
Twitch: bit.ly/2XNes31
Candle.gg: bit.ly/3ndfU9r
Non business email: varsverum@gmail.com
Business email: vars@mythictalent.com
Graphics provided by: / tofugraphics
#LoL #Gangplank #leagueoflegends - Ігри
True damage, reset, armor penetration, cc remouve, global ult, ms buff, gold generation, slow, aoe damage, healing...
I love gp. I hate playing against gp. While you feel is generally a skill match up, at the same time you cant stop thinking "why can he do that?"
Cause no one can make him do that efficiently enough.
At least no one but Solarbacca, that dude is cracked.
Also, dominating noobs does not count as being OP. That comes from me, a complete noobass bronze 4 player.
@EruCoolGuy try mundo and mindlessly smash your skull against towers. Also counters quite a few meta champions (but fuck camile fiora irelia riven) all my homies hate the 4 swordladies of top lane
@@soulsemblance3163 based.
FUCK THE FOUR HORSEWOMEN OF TOPLANE
@@EruCoolGuy if you're telling me ''no one can make him do that efficiently enough except Solar'', i'd say that you haven't faced that many high elo GP otp.
Solar is on another level yes but the point is you don't need to be THAT good at GP to dominate the match. The amount of damages and fight control he have is insane.
@@EruCoolGuyhe's not that hard I'm sorry but he ain't that hard
I don't play Gangplank, I don't even like Gangplank, but his rework gave us one of the most memorable oments in league history:
"Gangplank is dead and has been disabled"
Whereas year 2022.
yeah the bildgewater event was proabaly the best event in lol history
A note about gangplanks old ult:
It used to be able to MISS.
If you were completely unlucky and no cannonballs hit the enemy. You practically had 0 impact, which is the dumbest thing about old gp
Im surprised this wasnt brought up. Like, yes, old GP could have cross map impact with his R, but the sheer randomness of the cannons made it unreliable wherever it was used.
To be fair, before the rework he did have his ult fixed to work similarly to current ult, where cannonballs hit in waves that hit the entire area
@@countsaintgermain393 Personal bias, but I preferred his ult being random because it just *felt* more fun to me. I started playing after it was already changed, and when I watched older GP videos with the random ult it just felt way more fun and cool-looking to me. It's definitely worse for gameplay since you can never guarantee any hitting, but it just looked better and a little less "scripted"/fake to me (why do these separate cannons shoot and aim at the exact same time, and the cannonballs land at precisely these spots?)
@@countsaintgermain393 Dude what are you on? "Personal bias" here is MY personal bias liking the old random ult more than the wave ult because of my preferences, even though I know it's bad game design. I didn't attack anyone and you're losing your shit already
@Utsuhoagie Sure I guess, but you never played WITH the ultimate. Wasting a buncha mana for nothing is never fun.
I'm a GP-Main with about 1.8 million mastery points. Even after probably thousands of hours on this champ it feels like I can improve my barrel usage to maximise my damage and pressure every single game. The high skill ceiling makes coming back to GP always intriguing and fun. Apart from his gameplay, the Bilgewater event in S5 was in my opinion the coolest event Riot ever did. All that makes GP something really special, I'm glad you put the spotlight on him. :)
I am not good at gangplank but that event remains the coolest thing riot has done
Average gpa player has 1m points
Everyone who had the pleasure of witnessing the Bilgewater event know what Riot is capable of. Hence the constant disappointment of recent seasons
P.S. odyssey event was fun too
@@TimZoetOdyssey skill augments 🥲🥺
@@TimZoet Thats the season i hit master tier, but besides gp being disabled for some time, i dont really remember anything about that event, like at all, what was so good about it?
Something id like to mention about old Gankplank's Q is that the mana refund was per unit killed, so hed gain more mana than he used if he killed multiple units with one Q through effects like tiamat, statick shiv, or iceborne gauntlet which applied its damage in an aoe back then.
There's a very good article that the designers of the rework did on gangplank where they explained how they reworked him/what needed to be keep/thrown. The main reason why gameplay wise it worked so well is because they specifically set out to keep big crits, oranges, gold generation, and a global ultimate because thats apart of the champions identity and they can't remove it. If you look at all the good reworks like fiddle, nunu, etc they all follow the same concept and the reworks that fail almost always deviate from the champion themes/playstyle/identity
Then why did ASol's CGU work ?
They could have kept at least the zone. Cycling stars were unfun and wanky, but they could have made anything but this generic braindead piece of shit he now is.
What are you talking about? Reworks that failed like lb, which got literally reverted back?
@@pauliussipavicius4658 I think by "failed" he means reworks that alienate their old player bases, like Aatrox... But that's definitely subjective because Aatrox also got an entirely new playerbase. There's also Yorick as a close contender as he's very different from his old version yet still frustrating to play against, only slightly less toxic, and failed to really get people to play him
I know everyone agrees raise morale was the worst part of old GP's kit, but it was conceptually my favorite ability. I loved the feeling of leading a charge into the enemy team through the sheer charisma of shooting his gun into the air, really felt like a being a captain of a rag-tag crew. I wish they had leaned more into this aspect when they reworked him.
That's what I love about kled's ultimate it's so funny to just run it down with ur whole team for no apparent reason
I would have Maybe tried baking it into his Ultimate.. like at first is the Raise morale effect happens, with him fireing a flare or something, and upon 2nd activation he'd summon his cannon barrage on a target location.
If you want to use your Ultimate purely for the global AoE dmg, then you miss the AoE buff aspect of it, so mastering the use of his Ultimate would need enough awareness to know both when to charge it and where to place your barrage at the same time.
I haven't played nor kept up with league since S6 and only play Wild Rift nowadays but hearing (if I'm not wrong) that they removed that same aspect of Sivir's ult rubbed me the wrong way. That was honestly one of the best feelings for engaging. That feeling of rallying your team towards the enemy. Always made pro play so hyped when she ults. Same goes with RM except GP wasn't as relevant in the meta back then.
@@skrttt_dffoo I played Sivir just yesterday and I could still rally my team at full speed into the biggest int of the game with her ult.
@aqilmardini455 way back in the day when I played and GP/5 was in the game their were 3 ways to play Gangplank: Bankplank (insane gold) Tankplank (Big man) or Critplank (100-0 Qs). GP was easily my favorite character until the rework. You could low elo GP jungle and one shot with qs from fog of war
The true purpose of old gangplank's E was to kill your allied annie's tibbers
My favorite old GP build was getting all the passive gold over time items and do nothing but farm with q, Id get late game items so much quicker than anyone
Heart of Gold and philosopher stone good times
Now it's called mosstomper or any other jungle pet. Can we talk about how strong jungle monsters have become to not even counterbalance how dumb the jg items are ?
the month event where he died was great. great stories and then he was locked 'dead' for 2 weeks, then the VGU. it felt less like a replacement and more like he evolved due to his life events.
GP is voiced by Matt Mercer.
That alone IMMEDIATELY elevates the champ.
NO WAY
WAIT HE HAS THE SAME VOICE ACTOR AS CHROM/YAMATO/JOTARO/YUSUKE/LEVI/MAJIMA/IRA/COR- Huh... now that I think about it he has a pretty good range of voices lol
He's wolf from kindred too.@@VarsVerum
@@VarsVerum Matthew Mercer and his range are extremely amazing.
Another fun fact: In Germany, he has the same voice actor as the German Mr. Krabs from Spongebob. Sadly, that VA died a few days ago.
Whaaaatt
GP is one of the most underrated project L picks, imagine all the set play
A informatic pirate, but not one that locks down your PC for money.
One that burns down an internet access furnisher to make every other furnisher pay him a gargantuan bill.
Barrel! Another! Scum! More powder! COMBO!
Babe, wake up, new Vars just dropped!
Holy hell?
Q-Prowlers-auto
After dying to this same "combo" more than I'd like to nothing will make me like this champion
prowlers does bonus damage after dashing? you probably remember old prowlers but it luckily doesn't exist anymore
i remember the old gp, where he ran up to you, q's and it would deal 1k+ dmg. Good old times
Also, he had the most interesting lore integration ever, the fact that he got disabled when he died then came back reworked was so beyond cool
I used to play a minigame with old GP where I'd ask a random team member to name a color. I would then proceed to buy items that only had the icon color of the chosen color. For obscure colors I'd pick stuff that could add up into that color (so if someone called purple I'd pick one blue + one red item).
It was shocking how often it worked, but that's mostly because, as pointed out in this vid, old GP was just a weird stat checker with little gameplay identity so buying random items on him just worked.
You forgot to mention one really important thing about his old ultimate, it was random, you had the guaranteed slow in the area but the places where the barrages landed was random thus it was possible to only be hit by one or even none, or somehow be hit like by 16. It was awful to use for dmg due to inconsistency.
I was an pre rework GP main, and I gotta say, I still miss doing crit plank... seriously, I remember that at times I could do 70% of an adc health with just one Q, then use my E to get close and finally execute them with that GLORIOUS crit animation he used to have.
When the rework was announced I was nervous af, but also happy he would get some love. Then we got the AMAZING event that came with his rework (seriously remember the song that played during that event?) And after finally getting my hands on the new GP I was instantly in love all over again.
I havent played in years, but GP will forever be my favorite champion
YASSSSSSS a new video from my fav series
I remember locking in GP as a troll pick because i was tilted. Now here i am 800k mastery points later.
Bruh, exactly the same shit, i remember i wanted to play yasuo top one day and 1 of my mates in the 5 stack wanted to play him mid, but his pick order was before mine. So to troll him after he locked in my pick i instalocked gp. I started playing him afterwards and i too have more than 800 points now 😂
I love how much he shows the old map, makes my nostalgia gland in my brain happy.
as a top main, Gangplank's rework is one of the worst one riot has ever did just because I hate playing against him
my Mord's brazil ticket is always denied by him
So current gp is bad for the game because your braindead juggernaught gets countered by him?
Morde vs gp is morde favourited. Yes he can remove R but can't do anything after Rilay e+passive, just die slowly .
@@TavusitIt’s not. You’re talking about Mordekaiser having a completed item against a zoning, gold generating champion. It’s GP favoured, Gangplank only needs not to get hit by Morde’s abilities from levels 1 to 4 and the lane is over. Gangplank has a full Essence Reaver when Morde has a Blasting Wand and a Ruby Crystal
@@ViktorLoR_Mainudefending the champ with
-cleanse
-point and click true damage
-global ult that you cannot miss
-free gold generation
-aoe armor shred
-point and click poke that procs onhit
3:20 should've put Jack Sparrow edit in. That would be hilarious
4:12 my lonely toplane ass wants that kind of ability
Kata has grevious wounds on r and varus has it on e
Seeing Trico the Tussler in the B-roll took me way back, wow.
The fact that I'm familiar with the bgm used here mostly because of that legendary base conversation.
you forgot about hwo old gp ult was random shots in the circle. You could ult al itterl 1 hp target and rng could save them
pre rework gangplank was my favorite champion of all time, post rework is fun but it's not the same.
It will never be the same :*(
The Bilgewater event is bar none my fav they've ever done. I know you didn't mention it here but the genius that was when his rework first landed he had the "Captain GP" skin and such and as the event went on he actually got REMOVED FROM THE GAME, only to be brought back with his new default skin with new voice lines and everything. Man the memories.
I’m a gangplank otp, and no other champion even comes close to how fun he is. After 1 million mastery points, I still have so much to improve mechanically, I’ll always love him
the barrel mechanic is just so incredibly unique, creative and fun imo. love the character and gameplay
I would consider gp a healthy or even respectable champ if he had to hit those barels.He is so incredibly unbalanced that a good gp will just max out Q and garantee a good early
@@Strawberry_Soda. i just dislike the fact that he can shoot a barrel and then place another one before the chain reaction finishes, and the fact that barrels are stealthed in bushes on top of that. sure, the technique is hard to master, but that is little consolation when a master does appear and deals unreactable 2K damage to half your team. difficulty should not be a factor in game balance
@@Underworlder5 Map control, awareness is. And you sounds like aren't doing that very well. This is nothing new in league. Fiddlestick has a way easier, AOE fear with insane dmg from fog which you always have to pay in mind and he is pretty balance(imo). GP level 1 2 is scary sure, but his level 3 is very scuff. You can easily all in him with most top laner at level 3 and there is not much he can do about it
YO the fire emblem music really threw me for a nostalgia run
I liked that he had a denial. I can see why they removed it, because you could just actively deny your enemy laner minions, but I still liked it, as it was unique to him.
Gangplank's rework took him from a pretty niche champion mostly used for some trolly strategies. To one of the all time top lane staples and one of the most skill expressive champions in the game. It really is hard to top that without the champion feeling overpowered and unfun to play against.
One part that you didn't mention in the video is how the gold stacking passive on his Q was already there pre rework. Only without barrels it would give you so little gold over the game it was kind of pointless to try and last hit minions with it. Still people attempted to abuse this mechanic with things like Tiamat and most prominently Static shiv. Which was on one hand hella fun, but on the other hand very funky and mostly for fun strat. Which also made GP extremely snowbally as if you were ahead you would oneshot everything and get even more ahead, but if you were behind the whole point of the build would evaporate as you wouldn't have enough dmg to oneshot waves.
Feel like the designers got the idea for barrels from this at the time pretty wide spread GP strategy and made it something you don't need to bend over backwards to utilize. Which gave GP another of his now staple characteristics. Of him being the scaling king, who prints money out of nowhere.
Waited for this one , where is fiddle
At those years
There was fun full sheen build when it stacked on each other
It was so fun to go and os vayne with e then just one q
5:33 - This point got a bit confusing because it misses one key piece of informatio: GP's old E.
The original ability required GP to consume an allied minion in order to activate the buff, effectively denying CS.
So his entire kit was built for the neutral game as a sort of denier/zoner that makes sure the other laner will be low on gold while he gets those fat stacks, leaning on the whole "pirates gotta plunder" theme.
The Passive meant that each poke or trade with the opponent would curb their sustain options by nerfing the healing - back in a time when healing was even more scarce - so if you trade with him and pop a red pot, now it's worth only 60%, but if you wait for the 7 second debuff to be over, he will be ready to hit you again.
The Q is a poke and farming tool. GP had to choose between poking the enemy or farming. If he pokes, he misses out on potential gold but can harass the opponent, if he farms, he gets gold but creates a window of opportunity for the other guy to farm or maybe even engage.
W obviously is the get out of jail card. Since he would be expected to often shove the wave (keep in mind this is beta stuff, so freezing wasn't that much of a widespread concept yet), he needed a form of escape from a engage or possible gank.
The E was the other deny tool. It had a buff so he could use it when engaging, but more importantly it killed one of your own minions, even canons. So not only the opponent had to time their windows to farm, and you were making more gold per CS than them, but their waves had 1 less minion and even no catapults. Today this would be even crazier considering wave management, rotations and how precise the economy is.
The ult was a way for him to have some pressure in the map. GP was meant to keep up that neutral game in other to keep the other guy locked in his tower. The ult was quite shitty BUT it was a point and click global slow that could help on any skirmish and get him extra gold from potential assists and even a kill. Again forcing the enemy to either TP, missing more gold, maybe even lose a tower, while GP can have pressure without moving his ass.
Basically, despite being a pirate he was more of a old uncle protecting his toplane yard. Either the other laner could duel him and steamroll the guy, or he wouldn't have an early game at all. GP was quite bad in teamfights, so the extra gold should help with that and the lack of another player also compensated a bit.
Still, that style was degenerate. His E was an unique ability that gave him too much power over the economy even for BETA standards. Today it would make GP a 100% pick or ban champion. So they removed that from the E, which broke the whole economy thing. So he HAD clear theme and win condition, it's just that it didn't fit what League should be.
You're probably over analyzing it, to compensate one good ability others are not so good, it's called power budget.
@@MangaGamified I'm talking about the themes and win condition of the champion, not necessarily whether he was powerful or not. The original design had a very clear intent, it just got gutted very early on due to how toxic it was.
@@ggwp638BC True the original design was nice, not saying the current design is the best rework option when Riot never showed us other possible futures. It feels like one or two decision-maker decided this is what 1 billion collective player wants.
Also it feels so "argument cheap" when they make a champ harder and just say "git gud" whenever someone doesn't worship it and they know it. It's like using the R card whenever no one agrees with you.
"Nunu was a degen invader"
Bro that's hilariously true 😂 People always think back to his inting "playstyle" but we forget than even his normal playstyle felt like you were trolling xD
The only thing I disliked about the rework was that they removed the silenced pistol sounds on Special Forces Gangplank skin.
As a bronzie way back in the day I miss getting GP on aram and building full crit with static and just constantly harassing. Good times man
How did you make the fog of war change color, is there a special mod or can you do it in game?
When will you do the Shen video?!
burning tides was the best event that i ever experienced in the many many years i played league. the Graves changes weren't anything to sneeze at either.
Something underrated in these videos, Vars, is realizing just how crazy the timeline of League ACTUALLY is. I could SWEAR GP was reworked before Yasuo, but there he is, old school GP, fighting Yasuo. It's just crazy to me, lol.
hi dont roast me but I am new to league. in that T1 clip, how did he die? does Q bounce off keg and hit closest enemy?
If there was anything I miss about old GP it was the ability to play him as support. It was pretty funny using Raise Morale to run someone down.
Old GP also worked well with a weird tank/bruiser build that bought Statikk Shiv first. I had so much fun with that build, and it's sad that new GP is totally useless as a bruiser.
12:08 what is that item in GPs inventory? It has the deathblade tft icon but i just cannot find if any item with that icon was actually ever in league.
Issue with gp denying minions wasn't the mechanic itself, just that riot back then wanted to do their own brand of dotw but for some reason only one character had a denying mechanic
also it had the same issue as old nunu q, if there are no minons around he was down an ability
Forget about the older gp's e, which have to EXECUTE AN OWN Minion yo work, playing against him was playing 1 to 2 level behind, and half an item behind cause no cannon minion allowed
I used to play old gp as a supp and poke with his q and max my e 1st. Not the best but the funniest way to play gp I found
As much as i love gp i think one thing to mention is his ability to abuse runes such as grasp and first strike in the early game with q to such a degree that some matchups become literally unplayable for the opponent if one missteps at least once (which in of itself is a reoccuring pattern in top lane). I think riot's intention with it was to gatekeep the constant poke by high mana costs, but nowadays it feels like whenever he's about to run out of mana he has built up either enough hp from grasp to not be instakilled or enough gold from first strike to back and buy essence reaver at which point the mana never runs out since the kegs are literally free. I feel like that should've been addressed a long time ago, but they never did since looking at his winrate across all ranks (which is the only thing riot does nowadays, his winrate top is 49.13%) you wouldn't be able to tell how obnoxious it is to play against, but I guess same goes for k'sante.
one misstep and you are dead and have an unplayable is nothing new on top lane. Try playing vs a fed Irelia and you can see that she can kill you so much as you sneeze in her direction and you can't really runaway from her 1 million dashes and stuns. A normal vayne doesn't let you farm at all, forcing you under tower for almost the rest of the game and you can only kill her if she gets ganked or she misplay
Hopefully the OG chesthair GP model is shown ingame.
anyone knows what item are those 2 at 12:10 in the 2nd and 4th slot? (they look like the same icon from TFT deathblade) ?
the remake took away his soul, you could build so many ways now its just full crit
12:09 GP barrel does 11584 damage to the ezreal. Fair damage
Moreover, the barrels themselves were taking 1407 damage, and ezreal was at nearly exactly 1600 hp. So ez shoulda lived with about 200 health to spare, but riot thinks it’s okay that the barrels ignore almost all armor and can do 10x the damage they should
Its funny to think that GP is a champ who got a 'Why no one plays' video in the past, and now hes a fairly staple champ. But GP is easily my favorite rework since no other champion made me fall in love with his playstyle and challenge me to constantly improve due to the sheer complexity of his kit.
i wish they introduce new champions like how they introduce gangplank's reworks. nowadays we get a lame event and a leaked trailer weeks prior but his rework was introduced with a temporary gamemode and actually disabled him so that everyone would know he's getting a makeover
It's sad that Burning Tides going to be first and the last time Lore affecting actual game. If you were to open Client even if you didn't know about the story, an alert would appear in the top bar saying: Gangplank is dead and has been disabled in all queues. It was unique it had problem with Pro-play since pros couldn't practice if I remember correctly but it was memorable.
12:08 wtf since when did Riot add Deathblade to League? when was this and can i get a link to Solar's video on this
Wasn't Volibear AOE knock back was added later? I'm pretty sure it uses to be a slow, his only CC was his flip.
i was a gp one trick playing for the sole reason of limit testing barrel combos but lately i havent played him for he has been so strong and even though he’s enjoyable its not the same as before idk what changed or maybe i just dont wanna gain lp by using a relatively stronger champ than others 😂
Man I hate reworked GP so much, it killed my goofy pirate and replaced with a plan ahead evil genius GP. AND I HATE IT! I had to stop playing him after 20 loses with 0 idea on how to use the barrel.
Grog soaked blade was so baller. I won so many lanes at level 1 thanks to that bad boy. Im having flashbacks to heart of gold and all the gp5 items. Kages lucky pick and the crit one 😢
Zaaamn Vars just dropped
the best part of old GP was that he could deny cs
I'm a simple person
I see Vars video - I click
I understand that this video is focusing on the mechanical aspect of GP's rework, but man some of the best part of his rework was the entire event and lore surrounding it. he was disabled because he died.
I remember being that person who went full crit runes and spammed Q
It's kinda crazy how his splasharts are still not reworked
yay vars video :D
I wonder how old GP's ultimate would impact modern league. He applied positional pressure (something that a lot of old ults did now that I think of it) from a global range, but said pressure might get negated by the mobility creep.
The only difference between the current Ultimate is that he doesn't crit his Magic Damage. Silver Serpents makes it *BETTER*, since you can get a True Damage nuke and use it for one big hit instead of the massive DPS Storm that Old GP had.
@@omegaminoseer4539 My bad. Thought it had also been reworked. My comment was then meaningless. Thank you for pointing it out.
Gangplank really does prove that sometimes all a boring kit needs is one creative gimmick, just one button that does something interesting to create a whole new champion. Give him every single change he got from the rework but keep his raise morale instead of giving him barrels and he's exactly the same old GP, just with the numbers moved around.
The nuts and bolts of Gangplank's original design are all there, the only *real* change is the barrels... and the barrels was really all he needed to become a brand new champion worthy of all the fans he's got.
Fun fact gp’s old ult could crit I think it’s still the only magic damage source that could crit
i think galio on his passive also can crit
@@Warden_Ingobecause its technically an auto attack
@@averonisgaming9023 Is it a magic damage source that can crit? Yes. Does it count? Yes.
everything about gangplank is perfect, the lore, the music, the gameplay, the design, i love gangplank.
the design, free ignite, free cleanse, free heal, free gold on lane, free pressure on the map, completely perfect design
mad and bad@@larfee5191
Listen I loved old gp I miss old gp critplank midlane was and still is goated. Bruiser top gp was fun as hell also. One of the few champs to work with atmas at the time.
who else loves the fire emblem OST in the background `?
Ill never forget when they removed rng from his ult
Being simple is not all bad, if so how do you expect people with epilepsy and/or micro-seizures to play? It's like taking all PWD parking, lifts and stairs away.
WAIT I JUST NOTICED: WHY DOES THE TEEMO ABILTY LOOK LIKE THAT KID FROM ARCANE AT 7:36???
i feel like heimerdingers rework was amazing too, tho i might be biased
I'm glad this FINALLY has a video as I literally listened to the Kayle one and went "I wonder if GP has one"
GP's rework is the only rework that I still 100% agree with and like to this day. Every other rework has SOMETHING in it that either I don't agree with or outright bothers me, but GP's was just perfect. Plus it lead to a kickass summoner's rift track that I wish you could toggle on regularly, hah.
Idk man. Old go there was a setup where you could be full build by 13 minutes. That's how he stood out
Old gp was great man, insane critical strikes
I dig the Radiant Dawn music, raise the volume tho
warwick, nunu and fiddle are top 3 reworks imo
I am a GP main with a little over a million mastery points (counting my main with 900k+ and some alt accounts) and I love him so much. I have yet to find a champion with such a unique gameplay mechanic that will keep me interested and wishing to constantly improve. Even though I did not play back in season 5, I have heard so much about his Bilgewater event, the new announcers, the Howling Abyss turning into Butchers Bridge, and them literally killing him off by removing him from the game, just for him to return in the dramatic reveal that he survived the ships explosion in the Burning Tides story. The only thing I cannot sing praises about is his kit being a tiny bit overloaded, but then again, who isn't in this game anymore?
Twisted Fate and Zilean ?
He use to be Gol D. Roger with his previous rework. If he ate the honey honey fruit he gained the power of supreme healing and becomes unstoppable as he instantly becomes king of the pirates...Not even Monkey D. Wukong can stop him
My only complaint about Gangplank is his oranges. They don't make any thematic sense besides pirate=scurvy and they don't synergize mechanically with the rest of his kit. But they're so iconic at this point that they can't be removed. Why does eating an orange let you escape from anything from entangling vines to a parallel death-realm.
I guess clearing CC can be thought of like "the pirate who always gets away", cheating death sort of thing. But still. Oranges.
Ooooooooooooh, who lives in top brushes in low elo queue? CRIT RUNES GANGPLANG, CRIT RUNES GANGPLANK, CRIT RUUUUNES. GAAAANGPLAAAANK!
Nothing will ever be as satisfying as starting toplane with like 25% crit. then being able to build to 100% crit in 3 items and just skip boots entirely. I miss old GP. that or the dumb ass stacking tiamat shit and doing more damage to people around your target than your actual parley target. He was a lot of fun.
sometimes i miss the old versions of reworked characters like: Akali, Karma, Galio, Ryze, Aatrox
i'm late to the enter party but i've mained old GP before the rework, as an intended ad fighter. Not the "I crit you and explode myself" kind of deal. While I apprechiate the effort you bring to the table and enjoyed many previous of your works, here are a few things i take grievance with. Take no offense, it's just my autistic brain and love for this misrepresented character speaking through:
A) 0:48 mins. The idea of how the barrels work and interact is unique, but it was obvious that GP required to have some sort of aoe damage, be it iceborn gauntlet, hydra or a few shiv crits to have any form of waveclear. aoe damage greatly synergyzed with the bonus gold from Parrrley and it's mana refund as well. While I agree to the practicallity, he is too attatched to the barrel mechanics (be it the usual phantom barrel or a double barrel). The fact that they added high bonus damage based on the crit chance forces him too far to be a zoning or spamming specialist, running circles in the backline till he has his barrels back up. Makes you feel like a proper artillery waiting to reload; which further streamlines the build path for CDR and Critdamage. Penplank is discouraged with the stats on E and since the grasp change, tankplank is even more dead than before.
B) 1:13 mins: "Gangplank takes up an entirely different approach to combat in contrast to most people in top lane who opt for very attack heavy cqc." Given how his kit incorperated both aspects from the first gangplank (old healing reducing groak soaked blade) and the second (movespeed steroid and magic damage dots a 7 dmg stacking up to 3 times), i argue he was designed to punish poor positioning, use the slow and own increased movespeed (and reignited passive) to close the gap, set the tank / fighter ablaze with a true dmg dot, and use the movespeed buff from his passive to return to a neutral game stand, having won a short trade. In practice, players fear for their K/D like their virginity and will only spam q and 2 barrel combos from the second half of the screen in terms of distance.
C)1:40 min "(...) his older version was even more hard to wrap your head around (...) Threat range and windows are quite apparent" - his "threat" range was his q range. which is as telegraphed as garens ult range - not at all hence the point of "being conspicuously shown to the player" (1:46 min) is either poorly expressed or flat out misinformation. If he went full crit, then q range is the threat. the global ultimate was not much of a threat, and duh it was global. Furthermore, I find it ironic you pick fiora as an example for this, glassing over the fact that old fiora broke this rule herself, greatly extending her threat range much like a Lee Sin would with a ward jump, since her old Q could be recast after hitting an enemy or minion. Making for unexpected zig zag engages and getaways with her, completely undermining your previous point herself.
D) 2:20 mins "Personality"; also the section about underpowerdness at 7:50 mins: stats- and gameplaywise there was hardly incentive to pick him. there was little incentive since he was flat out underpowered. In gameplay terms, old GP was an AD fighter, but specializing in movementspeed and mainly ADdamage output with build in magic damage instances as free (low) hybrid damage, similar to old Miss Fortune. GP was an annoyance, poking you down with qs AND autos, cause he was a FIGHTER not an malee adc. giving himself or allies loads of movement and attack speed at will, slowing a single target down while giving continuus chase for either himself to finish you off or have a teammate do it. Or he could be a constant annoyance in lane, keeping himself healthy with the actual noticable heal of the old W, (even with no AP,) and the mana refund on qs; not too disimilar from old swain who could stay in lane indefinetly with little resource management. Funnily enough, i still remember stomping out a sweaty kassadin as an deliberate ap gangplank on a 3v3 ranked back in the day. Ironically worded, I argue he had one of the few actual fun and comedic personality in terms of quotes, which greatly improved the ammound of enjoyment in the champion. While cartoony and cheesy in many regards, I very much miss his over the top, laughing at danger-esque drunk pirate personality, since he was happy and made me happier; as opposed to the thousandth "tragic backstory depressed edgelord" we got due to the rework. Need I quote the new Gp? I think my point is made, and there's an abundance of tragic and sad lore in a game that takes itself a bit too seriously.
E) 5:23 min "no trade combos, all ins, no real mechanical or even positional execution to speak of. He was all neutral" you said yourself earlier at around 2:29 mins how the abilities of the time were very cookie cutter. Why is that point an issue at this segment of the video? Given the abilities and their limited interactions, as you said yourself, there could be no different trade combos than e-q-move-AA-AA-q-move-w or slight variations. The only all in he could muster is stacking the 21 magic dmg / sec and slow on you, ulting and trying to kill you in his "zone" with the limited slow at his disposal and knowledge of his damage output / tankiness. Again, looking at someone like Trundle who you could critique in a similar manner, seeing his AA focus, buff and debuff with Q / R and movespeed + attackspeed steroid on W. Yet he works fine, how strange, huh? and no. troll's E is too mana heavy to be used in every trade, its reserved for all ins as is his ult.
F) 6:14 mins: "(...) Aatrox, Jax, Tryndamere; Xin Zao, old Fiora had better dueling power" Not at levels 1 and 2. You are glassing over how hard his old Q hurt given a generous base damage and high ad scaling, and with the steadily refreshed slows, and not neccecarily ignite, he was an underestimated threat levels 1 and 2. Also he had very high health by default, helping in his raw, statt checker-esque (or well, piratey brutal) approach to laning. Tho given how much utility items he needed to get into mid and late game (-> for example going bankplank) and due to poor scaling unless helped with Spellblade or Shiv, mid and late game qs and autos were more annoying than lethal, even with is passive E bonus. today's q always feels like i just spitballed my enemy, even if it is empowered.
G) 9:41 mins: "decide if you want to use Q to damage enemies or farm for a stronger ultimate" - you forgot the gold generation and that old gp did that decision every 3 sec. Old GP got a lot more passive gold from q farming, so you DID the decision to poke with underwhelming damage, maybe following up to stack the passive so that the magic dot eats away at your enemy OR to stay back and farm up with the partial mana refund and bonus gold, helping you transition into mid and late game.
H) 10:39 mins "elevating the skill cieling of this champ almost to infinity" sounds like the fanboy glasses are speaking. No, it does not elevate skill expression. You are rewarded for positioning and ambushing, or for punishing unaware opponents as you set up a barrel chain outside their influence zone, which is as simple as a max range 2 barrel combo. The flashiest is the useless 3 barrel combo, burning your flash in the process. The only skill present is munching crit chance, waiting in the backine for the moment to punish an enemy misposition, like a bursty artillery mage (ziggs; xerath) while dependend on Crit rng and waiting for your recharge rate. Mr Foo (former most played OCE gp main pre and post rework) quit due to the dependence on crit chance, a point oddly unaddressed in your entire essay, Vars.
I) 10:45 mins "the only thing that hasn't changed is 'remove scurvy'" again, flat out wrong. Base heal is abysmally low, so its useless as sustain. Animation untill the heal or cleanse happen is way longer than with old GP. -10% ap scaling compared to old gp. Post rework "remove scurvy" has a build in missing health % scaling which is hardly noticable in most circumstances in my experience, and in the moments you have a high missing health and want to escape death's clutches, the animation time kills you before the intended bigger heal. A poor implimentation of "risk vs reward" in terms of timing, as opposed to exploding phantom barrels with non critical qs.
J) 10:54 mins "one thing i love about champion reworks (...) is how they take remnants of their previous iterations and modernizes them" while i agree, i find it severely depressing how due to old crit plank being popular, seeing how it can be funny to onehit squishies (as every lethality addict will confirm), the overbearing focus on crit limits his gameplan and itemization too severely for skill expression in anything but clean barrel combos. which are inherently easy to hit given the tiny delay between chained barrels and the fundamental fact that they cover an area larger than a tiamat proc. Imagine we all lost our shit when Jinx hits multiple enemies with a crit rocket from Fishbones, it's stupid. I'd rather have the barrels do bonus dmg against minions and heavily slow enemy champions, as opposed to flat out nuking them, to tie into both old and new movespeed steroid aspects of GP with the more area of denial / misposition punisher he has become.
K) 12:32 "his q spam is as obnoxious as ever" - how so? without loads of base ad the damage is pityful, the grasp interaction is removed at the point of you making this video, its too expensive to spam early levels - you can't even q farm early, 4 - 5 times and you're oom with spitball damage to boost. he can only spam once he gets his hands on an essence reaver or goes ye olde man-ahoy build for the lols.
a yes, skill expression, flash auto q ignite
Am i the crazy one for liking the old pre rework gp and how u could troll with ap
I have 290k plus mastery on gangplank, I enjoyed him for a long time. I hate laning against one, mainly his true dmg passive is the most frustrating thing. You can all in but lose since he will out trade you. You have to contest his barrels to even get close and if you do he wins the trade.... its the passive i hate it so much.
The overall rework of GP I feel isn't appreciated as much as it should be. For his rework to come out, they remove him for a week because he died in lore. Just for a whole new skin to come out as his default was pretty cool. Even though his new skin sucks compared to captain GP. I think the only thing I miss is a top laner having a stat ability that he can buff his team and jgler for ganks. They don't do anything like that anymore except for supports. I think stuff like that is what made this game stale. They removed things that were impactful, but not over the top because they look at it as boring. Yet, there use to be a good bit of GP mains that just enjoy his casual gameplay.
I do enjoy the new gankplank but my biggest frustration with him is that I enjoy playing many interesting builds with him but anything thats not a full crit build is only about half as good as his crit build so there's almost no point trying it, yes I tried AP gankplank with a lich bane because he has 2 AP scaling abilities but it's crap in comparison to crit plank