Surely you are no stranger to Gangplank – a champion in League of Legends who is not very well-liked by the gaming community worldwide. Simply because Gangplank has an incredibly strong defensive style in the top lane, champions that are proactive and tend to engage often lose trades against this champion.
If you engage, you are likely to get barrel chained, and after being hit by 2 instances of his passive, you will definitely lose health. With a tough laning phase, Gangplank also has the ability to interact with items and accumulate Silver Serpent to upgrade his ultimate. Almost without any weaknesses, Gangplank is regarded as one of the most versatile champions in the League of Legends arena.
Among them, a rather strong style called “Physical Damage Fighter” Gangplank has been rising recently. From all the tournaments around the world, Gangplank has almost abandoned the fast-paced playstyle in favor of a more reliable and sustainable approach. The fighter direction for Gangplank can be divided into two paths: building the Thornmail for both armor and magic resistance, making him tougher in team fights, and can also include the Hammer of Progress if they want to push both lanes. The second direction is more favored by professional players in the LCK (League of Legends Champions Korea): the Serpent’s Fang and Serylda’s Grudge; the combination of these two items helps players push lanes faster, dropping the ultimate to create many powerful effects. The common point of these two styles lies in leveraging early power compared to the white health push style, which requires many items built from the Purple Cloak to maximize strength.
Feeling quite unreasonable with the power of Gangplank, Riot Games decided to change Gangplank’s playstyle by completely removing the physical damage fighter build, shifting to a style that builds items from the Purple Cloak in version 12.14. Specifically as follows:
Base Stats
– Base health: 640 ⇒ 600
– Health per level: 104 ⇒ 114
– Armor per level: 35 ⇒ 31
Passive – Trial by Fire
– Damage: 55-310 (based on level) (100% bonus physical damage) ⇒ 55-310 (based on level) (100% bonus physical damage) (200% crit chance)
Q – Parley
– Base physical damage: 20/45/70/95/120 ⇒ 10/40/70/100/130
E – Powder Keg
– Slow: 40/50/60/70/80% ⇒ 30/37.5/45/52.5/60% (0.25% per 1% crit chance at all levels)
– Additional physical damage: 80/105/130/155/180 ⇒ 75/105/135/165/195
– Additional damage if the keg explodes: 25% ⇒ 10%
As you can see, Riot has reduced Gangplank’s power significantly in the early game. A 40 health decrease at level 1 but an increase of 10 health per level means this isn’t a huge problem. However, with the 4 armor points reduced, this champion’s trading ability and lane sustain have weakened considerably, making him very vulnerable if opponents focus on him. Thus, Gangplank is substantially weaker before level 6 compared to before.
However, the passive has received an increase in damage based on crit chance, which is the highlight of this champion to compensate for the weak early game. Furthermore, the Parley (Q) itself has also changed to be weaker in the early game but stronger later, combined with the base stats will make Gangplank really struggle before the first 6 minutes.
Most importantly, the Powder Keg has three main issues: first is its interaction with crit chance based on slow stats. The base slow stat has been reduced, but it compensates by interacting with crit chance items. However, players must reach 80% crit chance to achieve the same slow stats as before. Second, the Powder Keg increases additional base stats, which will help the power scaling to be more stable when reaching level 9 and not having many items built from the Purple Cloak. Finally, the additional crit damage if the keg explodes has been reduced from 25% to 10%, making Gangplank players less dangerous with just one keg shot.
In summary, Gangplank will be significantly weaker before level 6, and will no longer be able to build physical damage fighter items as all his skills have been adjusted towards crit, especially with the Powder Keg (E). The biggest upside for Gangplank in version 12.14 is that he will deal very painful passive damage when he has crit items. However, Gangplank is not easy to approach to continuously utilize his passive, so he will not become stronger but rather slightly weaker.
Riot’s adjustments to this champion seem somewhat contradictory: upgrading towards crit but reducing burst damage with just one shot. Surely you all know, building items from the Purple Cloak is quite “fragile”, and approaching opponents to take advantage of the passive is not easy at all. Of course, Gangplank can still perform well in version 12.14 but will not be stronger, and may even lose lane sustainability and the physical damage fighter style. The League of Legends version 12.14 officially arrived at the domestic server in the early morning of July 28th, you can download and experience it now.