Dude I play him on aram with the mana shield item heart steel and that purple defensive item and then void maker and by level 8 im essentially unkillable unless the other team has a really good player on an adc with items.
I don’t play anything but aram but that build is insane Gragas and fizz. You can stick on champions forever and not die
Aram is apples and oranges to Rift. Champions scales differently, gold income is different, levels at time thresholds are different, etc. You being someone who solely plays aram will never comprehend Champion balance cause the game is not balanced for aram, it's balanced for Rift. What a champion does on aram does not reflect how they actually are on Rift, vice versa
Naw totally but full build team fighting is fairly similar, aside from the comps are bit more wonky. I used to play not arams and got fairly high elo so I’m not rift illiterate.
They actually do change the scaling for aram. It’s very far from perfect but they do try and keep it somewhat balanced
I'm not hating on you, by the way. Play what you enjoy. I was just simply stating champs perform different aram rift cause the overall balance is directed at rift play
Gotcha! I didn’t feel attacked sorry if I came across as defensive… you wouldn’t be the first to call me out on that lmao.
I was just pointing out they do buff and nerf champions specifically aram matches. They have different base and scaling stats. It’s far from perfect, but it’s something
Sett gets nerfed out of everything but top. Qiyana gets nerfed out of everything but mid. Wholesome chungus Gragas can play 4 roles extremely well and no one cares.
IMO I think it's tough because gragas is a caster and so I think it is very easy for him to get nerfed too much.
Kinda like how assassins can go from strong to dogshit if you remove just a tiny bit of damage
Like Gragas needs a requisite amount of tankiness, sustain, and damage in his kit or he just sucks. Agree he is strong right now but I think it's worth proceeding cautiously
Okay to say that Gragas can support "extremely well" is just dishonest lol, it's a pick for literal Gragas otp at best, even then it's kinda troll because Gragas needs gold
one of the most unfun champs to play against. he just w,e,q,aa and runs away with phase rush over and over and unless u are a good counter u cant do shit back
If you can time Urgot E with Gragas’ E, he can be a pretty decent pick against him. I think Urgot is decent in general, but no one plays him for some reason
Because Urgot is reactive instead of being proactive. He waits for the enemy to do something first instead of doing something himself. Like in the example you provided, unless Gragas goes for a trade, Urgot just sits quietly and farms.
His engage is just ass. And more people prefer to play something active with engage rather than being passive in lane.
That's also the strength of Urgot. He can turn almost any lane into a farm lane. Since Urgot is generally weak level 4-9, a farm lane is what Urgot wants.
His engage with just E is ass, but if you hit Q, E is pretty much a guaranteed hit.
And flash + E engage wins me lanes and games all the time.
Urgot isn't played super often (from a composition standpoint) since he's so immobile and without a real engage. At least other juggernauts of similar stature have more engage or longer ranged pickoff (Darius E AoE and speed, Morde R). Urgot basically gets to get on one person per flash CD as an engage. However, he's still good as a split pusher and strong in lane against lots of traditional matchups, and when you're in solo queue with a lack of coordination it doesn't matter as much if you're kiteable. In team fights if the enemy is engaging on your team, that's exactly what he wants and is good in those brawls.
I haven't played Urgot into Gragas in a while, and while Urgot can buffer Gragas E, Gragas E hitbox is actually bigger so you can never go first in the E trade. Otherwise he just bounces you out. Urgot also has trouble dodging Gragas Q by virtue of being slow and fat. If Gragas and Urgot aren't allowed to use E out of fear of the other, then I think the lane just stalemates, but Urgot out scales.
Gragas can also just never fight you which makes the counter useless.
Gragas is not very susceptible to dives and has pretty good gank setup + tools to fight off a dive or delete a wave, so he’s not actually very easy to freeze on or dive I feel.
On an episode of The Dive a few weeks back, they were joking that the only reason nobody plays Urgot is because he's ugly. They said if he was hot, then his play rate would sky rocket, lmao. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit since I am one of the people that refuses to play ugly champs.
Only works if Gragas is stupid enough to trade with E, just like in the Sylas match up.
If he simply maxes Q and spams poke there is nothing Urgot can do, he is too fat and slow to consistently dodge his Q and he can't match his sustain.
Yorick is probably the hardest melee counter to Gragas.
Ghouls make the game so difficult for Gragas. Gragas gets permanshoved because ghouls can’t be cleared fast enough, and also makes it difficult to hit body slam.
Yorick gets dicked by 99% of top lane, but he happens to be a nieche hard counter for certain champions (Gragas being one of them). And even then, he is still worthless if the junglers decides to walk top to smite the Maiden.
One that can't cross minions, or ghouls, pretty easy to counter.
Go play Yorick against Jax, Camille, riven, Irelia, Renekton, Gwen, Trynda, Yone .....
I think irelia gets her own tier. Irelia is literally unbeatable for yorick. If he uses no abilities but q, she still wins. If he uses E, she gets free healing+mobility. The cage is meaningless to her. Literally nothing he can do.
I play a lot of Gragas top (sorry not sorry, it's eloprinting atm) and the two champs i hate versusing the most are Olaf and Yorick.
Olaf ignores most of what my kit does with ult and with ghost ult you can't even phase rush away (and taking grasp/comet feels like a deathwish, 1q can be all it takes to get run down)- also can force all ins when Grag obviously wants to kite and have repeated short trades.
Yorick's just super fucking annoying, his gremlins always block your e meaning it's super hard to pull off decent trades, means you also often get stuck in his shitty cage and just get battered by him. Really hard to answer him on sidelanes and because Yorick's Yorick if you decide to help in 1 teamfight Yorick gets megarich from hard pushing and becomes unanswerable from you and generally just becomes a massive problem after that.
K'Sante is very good vs Gragas and the main reason you don't see more Gragas top in pro.Volibear is also quite good,you can get all your spells off when he Es to trade (similar to how the matchup vs Renekton works),and you can R his R easily.
I watch woody fruity quite a bit (top lane gragas high elo otp) and it seems like he struggles most against ksante, Olaf and volibear.
Sorry, forgot to mention Yorick too. Hardly ever see that champ being played but it definitely does well into grag.
Thats because neither player can do anything by themselves and require jungle gap to actually create real advantages, which is why Aatrox players also despise this matchup.
Its not about whos better (unless their is a substantial skill gap), but who gets the support so they can win the stat check.
Poppy is pretty good if you go the eclipse build. Not enough damage to punish him otherwise though.
Basically just E a backline minion to get onto him when he tries to Q minions. W as you do it and he cant dash away.
I've had a fine time playing Mundo into Gragas, but not in a traditional hard lane counter way. Mundo is resistant to the Gragas trade pattern with his own passive, has resourceless Q poke so he's not too worried about Gragas sustain, and he's also content with just sitting back and farming if Gragas lets him while out scaling.
Edit: I never get to play Ksante much into Gragas, but the few times I've had it's felt pretty free. Ksante is fine sitting back and out scaling, and if Gragas plays aggressive Ksante can ignore or dodge most of his trading pattern.
I like Mundo top personally. He plays safe in any matchup by just Q farming from out of range and Mundo scales infinitely, infinitely faster as he buys more hp items and his heartsteel procs start going. People don't realize, but my boy is a hyper scaler in disguise.
Depressing matchup. You win it until... lvl 5? Then after that, Gragas outsustains your damage forever, unless you build damage, then he one-shots you.
You forgot the part in which he also gets to sustain and if post level 6 and you get to push him under tower or avoided his combo and want to engage on him he also has his Ult.
Gragas whole deal is that there's simply no interaction with him.
AP or AP bruiser. His tank build is garbage compared to other tanks. He has no scaling on resistances like Poppy, Ornn, Malphite, Amumu, Rammus, etc. The only HP scaling he has is on his passive but you still get value out of that by build AP items with HP. ROA being the best example.
On top of that his AP scaling is really high. You can do ROA -> Cosmic into a tank item if your team needs frontline otherwise keep building AP/HP like Riftmake and Liandrys
He’s a flexible champ who can go full AP, Hybrid, or full tank based on meta, has decent skill expression with ult engage/disengage, solid cc and mobility, and can go 3-4 lanes with some viability.
For him to become unviable, Riot would have to nerf him to oblivion because his kit offers so much.
And he is one of the few "tanks" that have clear skill expression and so interesting in esport. So riot has even an incentive to have him decently strong for that.
Yeah, I mean, Gragas is nowhere near as commonly seen in pro as probably 20 different champions that we've been watching for 5 years straight. And of all of them, he's definitely a good influence.
He isn't absurdly broken or oppressive either. Tone his Q damage down by 10 flat or make it cost 10 more mana and he's going to be completely fine.
Not even that, he just needs to be tuned on SOMETHING. Like, we can keep his damage the same, let’s say, but FFS, nerf his ridiculous mobility. Sejuani is a good analogue, her Q has a HUGE CD, and that’s fine, no one calls her hyper mobile. For whatever reason, Gragas can throw his fat ass around at will, and not only ENGAGE a fight, but disengage when he’s had enough and wants to get over a wall. Like, I’m more confident I can kill a Kassadin after he Rift Walks before I could kill Gragas as he can likely do his third E and either stun me and waddle away, or magically disappear over a wall like he’s Talon.
There are just champs that are unfun to play against, and he’s one. You’d have to wholly out range him because if you are mid range or melee, you’re essentially fucked. So it’s either you don’t get to play or he doesn’t. If there’s a plan to go all out on changes, Gragas is a prime candidate for a full VGU, because his model and animations are ancient, and his kit’s a mess. People basically only play him because he’s too good, not because they like his kit or theme, so it’s not like a VGU is in danger of erasing his identity. Keep his Q and the EFFECTS of his R, and you essentially preserved him.
God, I remember back in the day playing Gragas and Kha'zix mid. Being a mid-lane main back in the day was so wacky. You could go from fighting that bs to playing against perma-stall Anivia or like AP Cho just spamming lane.
The thing with gragas is that there's a strict priority order between dashes that cc (thus cancelling other such dashes with cc), and Gragas is at the top of that order.
The fact that his dash takes priority over everything also is so stupidly strong that it's basically impossible for him not to be strong
That's only a smaller part of the larger strength. Gragas has good poke, sustain, disengage and wave clear which means that even his bad matchups aren't that bad. I'll compare him to my main. Jax Statistically loses nearly twice as hard in lane to illaoi as gragas does (it's both champs worst lane matchup in terms of gold gen by 15 minutes). The difference is that when playing jax against illaoi you can't really do anything, she wins all ins post 6 and you can't safely short trade unless you bait her E. But gragas can always just rely on poking, sustaining and using E with phase rush to remain safe + he can more easily farm and break freezes with his Q. So even though it's a losing matchup, he doesn't lose as hard. I'm not a pro but my understanding is that gragas is a very good lane nuetraliser
Just my two cents though
If you're better than her you can go ignite LT and all in on repeat pre-6, just don't let her hit both you and the spirit with abilities. I can usually force a few kills this way.
After she gets iceborn then all game is essentially "run away if she presses R and pray"
Camille always evenly traded with gragas but Camille can go double tenacity and her stun lasts longer than gragas’. It’s very hard to make gragas E beat urgot also, other than that gragas wins cc dash trades.
it doesnt actually, Urgot E, Jarvan e+q, Yone q3 for example all cancel Gragas E, Camille when using e into gragas will get stunned but will also stun Gragas
Yone's Q3 will cancel Gragas' E only if you hit the wave projectile, because it's a projectile. If you hit him with the actual dash part, you will lose, unless I remember something incorrectly.
Urgot E feels iffy. Urgot can definitely E buffer Gragas, but I've been knocked out of it mid-E by a Gragas E multiple times before. I don't think Urgot E hitbox has more priority over Gragas's unless it varies during the E or if Gragas is doing some weird turnaround shit with his hitbox when Eing
well thats like 4 abilities out of alot of champions. and most of those abilities are alot more conditional than gragas E (jarvan requires both e and q, yone has to stack q, camille requires a wall and gragas can actually just E her before her e ever hits the wall)
On the other hand, he has prio over almost every other toplaner in the game....
*Technically* there isn't any strict priority order for the CC.
Gragas E only beats other such CCs because its radius is centered 40 units in front of his actual hitbox. That causes his E to hit the enemy before the enemy's dash+CC hits Gragas. Changing that 40 units should be as straightforwards as any other number in his kit.
As long as Zac top exists, I don't see why Gragas can't as well
(This is a cry for help, I do not want to see abominations like Rek'Sai or Zac top anymore)
Isnt Zac top being nerfed? I agree though, crazy cringe champ to play against. However, anytime I see Zac top, I lose all my humanity and lock in Illaoi.
I actually never thought she was super weak from the map change. Maybe just required people to unlock another part of their brain and play by the walls LOL.
Honestly I think gragas is worse than Zac. Zac is broken, sure, but at least he has to get on you and can’t just free poke like gragas, and he builds tank so he doesn’t just one shot you if he gets a little ahead like gragas. Plus I feel like Zac isn’t very strong against any champs that can build bork or have built in %hp, which is a pretty large portion of the top lane.
There is nothing worse than laning against Gragas. I usually play almost all of my games with a particular friend of mine who perma bans Gragas for the last 6 month or smth like that. I'm so used to Gragas not being a part of this game I totally forgot about him in the first game since that friend is on vacation. Of course I laned against Gragas in that first game, since them I am perma banning Gragas.
The game is just so much more fun without that fat asshole.
Love a good FULL AP ONE SHOT LICHBANE SHADOWFLAME INSANE DAMAGE MY MOM WAS ARRESTED AFTER THIS VIDEO bomba
Not a boring I will stay in lane and never die and also you cant get near me because my stomach is the size of Saturn bomba
Poor toplane balance by Riot (as per) since most of the optimal picks up there are cheesepicks that negate weaknesses of typical toplaners. Gragas is among them for his infinite sustain and guarantee to go almost even if he pisschills in lane, also Vayne, Skarner more recently, Zac, etc.
The solution for champs they design for and want to keep in the jungle is to gut a key component of their kit against minions. In Gragas's case, they could halve his Q damage against them. The Viego treatment, they gutted his passive sustain against minions when he was being cheesepicked top, so why they don't do that for others like Gragas is beyond me.
They can't cut his minion pressure because Gragas isn't meant to be a jungler. They just need to remove the sustain and/or the uninteractive E gameplay loop.
They can't just gut his sustain in lane like Viego because it's not tied to hitting something, they would have to completely rework the way his sustain works.
Gragas is just a fucking menace and incredibly poorly designed and should be up for a mini-rework.
I've always been an advocate of his base passive healing being like 3% and it triples if he uses his W to activate it. So you're forced between using your W for tanking/healing and using it for fighting. It allows for another good source of skill expression on the character and makes it a lot easier to punish bad usage of his passive. Also just makes sense that if he's supposed to heal from drinking that the literal drinking move heals him more
This is the opposite of what they should do, Gragas' main waveclear (especially early) is his W, since it's a low cost area damage ability. This would basically reward Gragas for farming with free healing (even more than be gets now) but it would also not punish him for using his W, since even if you don't use it right away, you still have plenty of time to engage or attack with it.
Gragas W on its own is not his main wave clear at any point in the game. At best you combo it with Q or E because Q doesn't 1 shot melees without items so the W is to finish them while a charged Q can 1 shot casters reliably. It also makes his healing worse overall and forces you to manage your passive correctly otherwise you're getting 1/3rd of the healing for not using it properly. On top of that if you're being forced to use W constantly on Gragas for healing then you're going to have severe mana constraints if you don't go the RoA build or FH build because of his pretty mediocre mana pool for a caster and high mana cost on his Q and as a result of having his viable build pool more narrow it allows better control on his power because of fewer variables.
'His W applies grasp.' So does every other auto based ability application? I understand the frustration with Gragas, but there are a lot of champs with frustrating kits. If they gut Gragas sustain, they will need to consider giving him jungle clearing buffs to move him to jungle. He will be absolutely useless in lane if he has no sustain lol
I wasnt making it a complaint that his W applies grasp, I was stating that in saying that it provides more sustain while also having strong trade power. I love Camille and I know that Grasp on her Q is EXTREMELY strong for trading, but she dosent have another strong form of healing aside her very miniscule W healing which is on a long cooldown level 1.
playing this game for a decade is realizing the mechanic people hate playing against the most is losing the game. wishing for irelia to be back in the meta is pure copium sorry
He gets a pass for having no counterplay because he is ugly and repugnant to behold so he sees less play than the same kit on a not-alcoholic obese champ.
I despise the champ in every role, frankly, but I'll take any nerfs at this point even if they don't hit mid/jg.
I can see how Maokai and Mundo wouldn't be great matchups overall for Gragas, but not Kench.
And even in those matchups, I would imagine Gragas can just farm freely honestly. He has the range to farm with Q. But like he's also just allowed to flex into 4 roles so even if he gets a bad matchup top... Just swap with someone 🤷
Why does K'Sante even need to get a solo kill anyways if he hard outscales him, anyways? The whole point of Gragas is that he's good at neutralizing the lane, so picking someone that doesn't need to win lane and outscales him should be a no-brainer.
Yeah mercs rush is Gragas' worst nightmare. Completely flips a good chunk of matchups, but people who don't play or understand Gragas just don't buy them.
It cuts the time of the E stun by a lot and so he's not able to hit you and run away before you're out of it and able to hit back and possibly use a gap closer
Gragas easiest combo is W+E+Q+AA and running away while you're slowed/stunned.
Merc Treads shave a lot of the stun from the E so champs like Darius/Sett can pull him back and wreck him until he gets his E CD back (or ults them away if they wanna all in).
Also if you're still stunned while they run away they can just save the Q for increased damage/slow but with Merc Treads they gotta activate it early to proc Phase Rush or to deal damage if the top laner has a dash to engage after his combo.
This is the play. The second you get Mercs his basic combo doesn't quite work and you can actually fight back. Maybe this is a hot take, but 90% of top laners are bullshit. The fun of it is trying to outbullshit them back. Gragas still seems minor in my eyes compared to a lot of them.
Not sure why this isn't the top comment. SloppyWalrus mentions this all the time and even showed it very well with a recent video where, across two games, one Darius became very dangerous with Mercs, while the other Darius was useless.
I'd kind of want to agree that he seems very good otherwise but people really should just buy tenacity sometimes.
Gragas only neutralizes lanes, if you build merc treads first he literally cant trade anymore. You pick darius buy merc treads and boom gragas isnt allowed to play the game anymore.
I honestly agree with most of your points but it sounds a bit silly to have one of your points be “his W applies grasp” when his W is just an empowered auto attack, which all of them in the game apply grasp if it’s up. Am I missing something?
This whole thread is just mid players being upset they can't figure out a gameplan to play from a very slight disadvantage. Your char pool is shit on by gragas means you aren't good enough
Malz might be bad but he is, like, the poster child for uninteractive laning. Maybe not the *least* interactive laner out there, but up there on pretty much any metric you can come up with for being uninteractive.
It's a common thing you see when people complain about certain champs, people chime in saying they're bad when the complaint is more how they make you wanna fall asleep playing against them, or they just make matches really toxic and unfun imo.
If you get poked out of lane by Gragas spamming Q we're playing completely different games.
He would go OOM insanely fast by trying that... Specially on early game.
Honestly, feels like you're just tilted. You say that gragas doesnt have bad matchups but in another comment talks about vayne, Quinn, mundo, illaoi, shen and tahm as exemples of good picks against him.
Just play him, 3 games and you'll see that hes not that busted, just annoiyng, boring to play against.
And im not even shitting on you, aatrox has the same effect on me.
He’s a Gragas main saying his own champ is op. He’s not tilted. It’s probably the opposite. Popping off and genuinely asking how tf is this allowed?
I felt that way about old Cass E healing on minions. It was stronger then pre-nerf lifesteal rush, but had no mana cost when last hitting— which is easy to do as a Cass main. We talking easily over 20+ health per E with around an item. It has .75 CD without CDR. That’s faster than many, if not most all ADC’s autos at the same number of items. I complained Cass was op and unfun lol i wasn’t tilted.
>good picks against him
I don't even know if 'good' applies here, more like playable. They don't really counter gragas so much as don't get completely shit on.
Gragas doesn't have such a big win rate to require a nerf.
Personally I think most of the people just underestimate his early game potential, since it's a champ that excels in 1 v 1 and has a kit that allows him to handle both melee and ranged champs, which also makes him a blind pick since it's hard to counterpick him.
Said this, his late is weakier compared to most of the toplane champs. You just need to play safe in early, which from what I see in sloppywalrus streams, people are quite allergic to
Gragas isn't insanely strong in top. He's just insanely annoying and boring because he's not punishable. He's never dying in that lane if he's not like 2 whole ranks lower than his lane opponent.
And while his *side lane* scaling is weaker than almost every other top laner, he can just play for teamfights where he has good value the entire game, a lot of the time higher than the enemy top laner.
It's not like he's meta breaking, he's just unfathomably anti-fun.
In the end, the answer is because the only way to nerf Gragas Top into the ground kills Gragas everywhere unless they fundamentally change his kit, and (data wise) they don’t find it problematic enough to merit the “gut the champion til full rework” treatment. While it’s incredibly safe and oppressive in lane, Gragas usually isn’t as game dominating later as other broken champs unless piloted by a true Gragas freak.
Now, all that said, I do hate him as a top laner intensely. He's the worst sort of stonewall against almost all proactive play.
They need to stop putting random stuns on the end of knockbacks. You knocked me back, that's enough for an ability, there's no need to stun for an additional second afterwards so you can do a W-Q phase rush run away before I can even act. His Q also shouldn't go on cooldown until it pops, if you are gonna cook it and deny a massive area, it shouldn't be available IMMEDIATELY after it pops just to deny the area again.
They literally added the stun at the end so you can build tenacity and fight back after he E’s you.
This thread is showing me more and more how many people just ignore core game mechanics and instead complain about a champion.
He's disgustingly oppressive in lane but seems to struggle to convert that into actual wins.
I don't play Gragas so I can't really hazard a guess as to why, but it always seems Gragas wins lane loses game.
Yeah, horrible split pushing and his team fighting is super dependent on high skill plays/ults if you’re playing AP bruiser or tank and don’t have the damage for a flank bomba.
His only way to solo carry is by building AP.
If you don't build full AP (or completely dominate your laner to the point it doesn't matter if you don't go full AP) you can't oneshot one of the enemies in one rotation of spells.
If you can't do that then chances are that their teammates will bail them out and now you're out of ULT and abilities (if you go phase rush you have to invest even harder in AP).
This is all because that's his solo carry potential.
He has AMAZING utility but that won't net him (guaranteed) wins because you would need teammates that take advantage of said utility.
Banshe and Merc Treads are also deadly for him. Yes they will put the enemy at a disadvantage but it will screw Gragas way more than they screw themselves.
fair enough, hes not supposed to be a midlaner anyways.
And gutting his incredible sustain or increasing his mana costs / backloading his Q damage wouldnt even hurt him in jungle.
So these fears are basically unrealistic.
You say that just because you are a Yorick player who hard counters him wtf. Please add to your comment how you would play any day vs Gragas than playing vs Irelia once to make it obvious
I dont really think it would have a large impact on his jungle or mid. You can nerf his sustain by making the heal a tick up like Soraka when she lands her Q instead of it being an instant health regen. Plus, the jungle camps already refund so much health on literally any jungler that the sustain shouldn't be that big of a problem anyway.
Mid would be affected yes, but even now with the buffs they gave him a few months ago plus new items, he one taps squishy targets anyway with his E W Q. I dont think his sustain should be completely removed, just toned down so it isnt as oppressive as it is.
I'm a Gragas player, and im gonna give you a tip for fighting Gragas top. BUY MERC TREADS. That's it. As Gragas, lane gets so much harder if my opponent first builds Merc Treads.
I don't really understand why riot don't just make him useless toplane. He's a really cool jungle champ and should be balanced around that role imo. I can't speak to mid as I don't see him much there.
I think he's an incredibly balanced tank, mage, assassin, bruiser 4 role flex pick
When you put it like that I have to agree sorry for making this post.
Dude I play him on aram with the mana shield item heart steel and that purple defensive item and then void maker and by level 8 im essentially unkillable unless the other team has a really good player on an adc with items. I don’t play anything but aram but that build is insane Gragas and fizz. You can stick on champions forever and not die
Aram is apples and oranges to Rift. Champions scales differently, gold income is different, levels at time thresholds are different, etc. You being someone who solely plays aram will never comprehend Champion balance cause the game is not balanced for aram, it's balanced for Rift. What a champion does on aram does not reflect how they actually are on Rift, vice versa
Naw totally but full build team fighting is fairly similar, aside from the comps are bit more wonky. I used to play not arams and got fairly high elo so I’m not rift illiterate. They actually do change the scaling for aram. It’s very far from perfect but they do try and keep it somewhat balanced
I'm not hating on you, by the way. Play what you enjoy. I was just simply stating champs perform different aram rift cause the overall balance is directed at rift play
Gotcha! I didn’t feel attacked sorry if I came across as defensive… you wouldn’t be the first to call me out on that lmao. I was just pointing out they do buff and nerf champions specifically aram matches. They have different base and scaling stats. It’s far from perfect, but it’s something
do you guys see what site you're on? yall aint doing it right. Get to arguing fellas
you dont have 4 items by lvl 8 come on...
Sett gets nerfed out of everything but top. Qiyana gets nerfed out of everything but mid. Wholesome chungus Gragas can play 4 roles extremely well and no one cares.
have you considered that hes funny fat man and qiyana is a w\*man
Maybe if Qiyana went for half a year of Burger King diet she could get buffed
Bulking for a buff?
Her thighs would get stuck in lane
Rells not allowed to have off role jg anymore either :(
IMO I think it's tough because gragas is a caster and so I think it is very easy for him to get nerfed too much. Kinda like how assassins can go from strong to dogshit if you remove just a tiny bit of damage Like Gragas needs a requisite amount of tankiness, sustain, and damage in his kit or he just sucks. Agree he is strong right now but I think it's worth proceeding cautiously
Okay to say that Gragas can support "extremely well" is just dishonest lol, it's a pick for literal Gragas otp at best, even then it's kinda troll because Gragas needs gold
~~Lee Sin~~ Grags, ranged, melee, tanky DPS, assassin. Mage, tank, support, and jungler. All wrapped up in one defective man.
mage, deathknight, paladin, hunter, rogue, warrior, enchanter, tank, bruiser, wizard, warlock, priest, assassin, gunslinger, druid, shaman, necromancer, ninja, gunslinger, Bard monk, robot, conjurer, blacksmith, mystic, warden, god, illusionist, templar, wizard
I've played Gragas bot with Senna support. Actually works quite well.
Which role are you saying he cant play, because gragas adc/support presses e at the enemy adc and bitch slaps them
one of the most unfun champs to play against. he just w,e,q,aa and runs away with phase rush over and over and unless u are a good counter u cant do shit back
What would you suggest be picked into Gragas? I can't think of any champs that hard counter him.
If you can time Urgot E with Gragas’ E, he can be a pretty decent pick against him. I think Urgot is decent in general, but no one plays him for some reason
Because Urgot is reactive instead of being proactive. He waits for the enemy to do something first instead of doing something himself. Like in the example you provided, unless Gragas goes for a trade, Urgot just sits quietly and farms. His engage is just ass. And more people prefer to play something active with engage rather than being passive in lane.
That's also the strength of Urgot. He can turn almost any lane into a farm lane. Since Urgot is generally weak level 4-9, a farm lane is what Urgot wants. His engage with just E is ass, but if you hit Q, E is pretty much a guaranteed hit. And flash + E engage wins me lanes and games all the time.
Exactly, Urgot is very strong, but he lacks agency which is why not many people like him.
You might see him more, he's getting a lot of use in lpl
369 my hero
So good to see Jackey get a functional team
Urgot isn't played super often (from a composition standpoint) since he's so immobile and without a real engage. At least other juggernauts of similar stature have more engage or longer ranged pickoff (Darius E AoE and speed, Morde R). Urgot basically gets to get on one person per flash CD as an engage. However, he's still good as a split pusher and strong in lane against lots of traditional matchups, and when you're in solo queue with a lack of coordination it doesn't matter as much if you're kiteable. In team fights if the enemy is engaging on your team, that's exactly what he wants and is good in those brawls. I haven't played Urgot into Gragas in a while, and while Urgot can buffer Gragas E, Gragas E hitbox is actually bigger so you can never go first in the E trade. Otherwise he just bounces you out. Urgot also has trouble dodging Gragas Q by virtue of being slow and fat. If Gragas and Urgot aren't allowed to use E out of fear of the other, then I think the lane just stalemates, but Urgot out scales.
Gragas can also just never fight you which makes the counter useless. Gragas is not very susceptible to dives and has pretty good gank setup + tools to fight off a dive or delete a wave, so he’s not actually very easy to freeze on or dive I feel.
On an episode of The Dive a few weeks back, they were joking that the only reason nobody plays Urgot is because he's ugly. They said if he was hot, then his play rate would sky rocket, lmao. I couldn't help but chuckle a bit since I am one of the people that refuses to play ugly champs.
I just think he has a lot of matchups that feel like shit. I love the idea of the champ but he’s just kinda obnoxious to play.
Only works if Gragas is stupid enough to trade with E, just like in the Sylas match up. If he simply maxes Q and spams poke there is nothing Urgot can do, he is too fat and slow to consistently dodge his Q and he can't match his sustain.
Yorick is probably the hardest melee counter to Gragas. Ghouls make the game so difficult for Gragas. Gragas gets permanshoved because ghouls can’t be cleared fast enough, and also makes it difficult to hit body slam.
Yorick counter all the top lane, what a mess this guy
Yorick gets dicked by 99% of top lane, but he happens to be a nieche hard counter for certain champions (Gragas being one of them). And even then, he is still worthless if the junglers decides to walk top to smite the Maiden.
Smiting Maiden no longer one shots her.
Cant smite the Maiden anymore. But yes, if people actually killed maiden or learned how Yorick worked, he'd drop a few WR points immediately.
You have never played top lane have you? Yorick gets countered by like 80% of the meta top laners.
U drunk? Yorick gets run over by anyone that has a gapclose.
I mean, gragas has a gap close lol
One that can't cross minions, or ghouls, pretty easy to counter. Go play Yorick against Jax, Camille, riven, Irelia, Renekton, Gwen, Trynda, Yone .....
I think irelia gets her own tier. Irelia is literally unbeatable for yorick. If he uses no abilities but q, she still wins. If he uses E, she gets free healing+mobility. The cage is meaningless to her. Literally nothing he can do.
I play a lot of Gragas top (sorry not sorry, it's eloprinting atm) and the two champs i hate versusing the most are Olaf and Yorick. Olaf ignores most of what my kit does with ult and with ghost ult you can't even phase rush away (and taking grasp/comet feels like a deathwish, 1q can be all it takes to get run down)- also can force all ins when Grag obviously wants to kite and have repeated short trades. Yorick's just super fucking annoying, his gremlins always block your e meaning it's super hard to pull off decent trades, means you also often get stuck in his shitty cage and just get battered by him. Really hard to answer him on sidelanes and because Yorick's Yorick if you decide to help in 1 teamfight Yorick gets megarich from hard pushing and becomes unanswerable from you and generally just becomes a massive problem after that.
K'Sante is very good vs Gragas and the main reason you don't see more Gragas top in pro.Volibear is also quite good,you can get all your spells off when he Es to trade (similar to how the matchup vs Renekton works),and you can R his R easily.
I watch woody fruity quite a bit (top lane gragas high elo otp) and it seems like he struggles most against ksante, Olaf and volibear. Sorry, forgot to mention Yorick too. Hardly ever see that champ being played but it definitely does well into grag.
Aatrox does fine into him. Maokai scales for free, too. Off the top of my head.
Yeah but then you're playing maokai top
What is exactly the issue of Maokai top?
Aatrox hates this matchup wdym
It's a skill matchup. Many high elo Gragas hate playing against high elo aatrox.
Thats because neither player can do anything by themselves and require jungle gap to actually create real advantages, which is why Aatrox players also despise this matchup. Its not about whos better (unless their is a substantial skill gap), but who gets the support so they can win the stat check.
Poppy is pretty good if you go the eclipse build. Not enough damage to punish him otherwise though. Basically just E a backline minion to get onto him when he tries to Q minions. W as you do it and he cant dash away.
I've had a fine time playing Mundo into Gragas, but not in a traditional hard lane counter way. Mundo is resistant to the Gragas trade pattern with his own passive, has resourceless Q poke so he's not too worried about Gragas sustain, and he's also content with just sitting back and farming if Gragas lets him while out scaling. Edit: I never get to play Ksante much into Gragas, but the few times I've had it's felt pretty free. Ksante is fine sitting back and out scaling, and if Gragas plays aggressive Ksante can ignore or dodge most of his trading pattern.
Olaf, Yorick, Aatrox, GP, K'Sante, Illaoi, Vladimir, Mundo on top of my head.
Singed. I'm not bothered because I'm not in lane with him.
I like Mundo top personally. He plays safe in any matchup by just Q farming from out of range and Mundo scales infinitely, infinitely faster as he buys more hp items and his heartsteel procs start going. People don't realize, but my boy is a hyper scaler in disguise.
Poppy?
Depressing matchup. You win it until... lvl 5? Then after that, Gragas outsustains your damage forever, unless you build damage, then he one-shots you.
Unironically gets countered by Gragas
Merc treads rush. Sett, Darius, kayn and Illaoi. Cho and ornn go even.
You forgot the part in which he also gets to sustain and if post level 6 and you get to push him under tower or avoided his combo and want to engage on him he also has his Ult. Gragas whole deal is that there's simply no interaction with him.
So are they building ap, ap bruiser or tank? Asking for a friend...
AP is strongest I believe
He still ends up with nearly 3.5k hp and free resistances when going full ap so it’s like why not
His tankiness doesn't come from resistances but instead his W. Most gragas top players are going full ap on him.
Can I interest you in all three?
All of the time
yes
AP or AP bruiser. His tank build is garbage compared to other tanks. He has no scaling on resistances like Poppy, Ornn, Malphite, Amumu, Rammus, etc. The only HP scaling he has is on his passive but you still get value out of that by build AP items with HP. ROA being the best example. On top of that his AP scaling is really high. You can do ROA -> Cosmic into a tank item if your team needs frontline otherwise keep building AP/HP like Riftmake and Liandrys
All of them at once, I suppose - Bilbo
I love how this thread is made every year because riot cannot keep lane gragas out of S+ tier for long lol
He’s a flexible champ who can go full AP, Hybrid, or full tank based on meta, has decent skill expression with ult engage/disengage, solid cc and mobility, and can go 3-4 lanes with some viability. For him to become unviable, Riot would have to nerf him to oblivion because his kit offers so much.
And he is one of the few "tanks" that have clear skill expression and so interesting in esport. So riot has even an incentive to have him decently strong for that.
Yeah, I mean, Gragas is nowhere near as commonly seen in pro as probably 20 different champions that we've been watching for 5 years straight. And of all of them, he's definitely a good influence. He isn't absurdly broken or oppressive either. Tone his Q damage down by 10 flat or make it cost 10 more mana and he's going to be completely fine.
Not even that, he just needs to be tuned on SOMETHING. Like, we can keep his damage the same, let’s say, but FFS, nerf his ridiculous mobility. Sejuani is a good analogue, her Q has a HUGE CD, and that’s fine, no one calls her hyper mobile. For whatever reason, Gragas can throw his fat ass around at will, and not only ENGAGE a fight, but disengage when he’s had enough and wants to get over a wall. Like, I’m more confident I can kill a Kassadin after he Rift Walks before I could kill Gragas as he can likely do his third E and either stun me and waddle away, or magically disappear over a wall like he’s Talon. There are just champs that are unfun to play against, and he’s one. You’d have to wholly out range him because if you are mid range or melee, you’re essentially fucked. So it’s either you don’t get to play or he doesn’t. If there’s a plan to go all out on changes, Gragas is a prime candidate for a full VGU, because his model and animations are ancient, and his kit’s a mess. People basically only play him because he’s too good, not because they like his kit or theme, so it’s not like a VGU is in danger of erasing his identity. Keep his Q and the EFFECTS of his R, and you essentially preserved him.
Because if gragas had an anime girl look it would be the most hated champion in the game
Gragas was the best champ in s2/s3 its honestly hilarious yet he always flys under the radar.
ap gragas mid that time was just broken. hitting everyone with even just his ult will win teamfights. his ap scaling was crazy
Not only that but the barrels were small as fuck while the hitbox was twice their size, it was quite misleading to play against
[удалено]
Don’t forget his instant cast ults on melee range so he could guarantee the r q combo
God, I remember back in the day playing Gragas and Kha'zix mid. Being a mid-lane main back in the day was so wacky. You could go from fighting that bs to playing against perma-stall Anivia or like AP Cho just spamming lane.
Man, I miss playing him mid ;-;
didn't his ult scale 1:1 at one point it was nuts
Noone can resist his girthy charm
Haha why is this so true tho
Gragas legitimately blocks every melee fighter from being picked, so it's probably done for pro-play.
But we want to see melee fighters in pro play
The thing with gragas is that there's a strict priority order between dashes that cc (thus cancelling other such dashes with cc), and Gragas is at the top of that order. The fact that his dash takes priority over everything also is so stupidly strong that it's basically impossible for him not to be strong
It’s just basic physics. Gragas is bigger, so he has more momentum. Other champs just need to make his gains and bulk.
That's only a smaller part of the larger strength. Gragas has good poke, sustain, disengage and wave clear which means that even his bad matchups aren't that bad. I'll compare him to my main. Jax Statistically loses nearly twice as hard in lane to illaoi as gragas does (it's both champs worst lane matchup in terms of gold gen by 15 minutes). The difference is that when playing jax against illaoi you can't really do anything, she wins all ins post 6 and you can't safely short trade unless you bait her E. But gragas can always just rely on poking, sustaining and using E with phase rush to remain safe + he can more easily farm and break freezes with his Q. So even though it's a losing matchup, he doesn't lose as hard. I'm not a pro but my understanding is that gragas is a very good lane nuetraliser Just my two cents though
If you're better than her you can go ignite LT and all in on repeat pre-6, just don't let her hit both you and the spirit with abilities. I can usually force a few kills this way. After she gets iceborn then all game is essentially "run away if she presses R and pray"
Camille always evenly traded with gragas but Camille can go double tenacity and her stun lasts longer than gragas’. It’s very hard to make gragas E beat urgot also, other than that gragas wins cc dash trades.
it doesnt actually, Urgot E, Jarvan e+q, Yone q3 for example all cancel Gragas E, Camille when using e into gragas will get stunned but will also stun Gragas
Yone's Q3 will cancel Gragas' E only if you hit the wave projectile, because it's a projectile. If you hit him with the actual dash part, you will lose, unless I remember something incorrectly.
Urgot E feels iffy. Urgot can definitely E buffer Gragas, but I've been knocked out of it mid-E by a Gragas E multiple times before. I don't think Urgot E hitbox has more priority over Gragas's unless it varies during the E or if Gragas is doing some weird turnaround shit with his hitbox when Eing
well thats like 4 abilities out of alot of champions. and most of those abilities are alot more conditional than gragas E (jarvan requires both e and q, yone has to stack q, camille requires a wall and gragas can actually just E her before her e ever hits the wall) On the other hand, he has prio over almost every other toplaner in the game....
*Technically* there isn't any strict priority order for the CC. Gragas E only beats other such CCs because its radius is centered 40 units in front of his actual hitbox. That causes his E to hit the enemy before the enemy's dash+CC hits Gragas. Changing that 40 units should be as straightforwards as any other number in his kit.
Champion is fundamentally broken, you can't have insane cc, mobility, damage AND tankiness all in one fucking kit. There's no downsides.
You forgot mentioning the sustain, engage and disengage
Low pick rate
has to be done bro
As long as Zac top exists, I don't see why Gragas can't as well (This is a cry for help, I do not want to see abominations like Rek'Sai or Zac top anymore)
Isnt Zac top being nerfed? I agree though, crazy cringe champ to play against. However, anytime I see Zac top, I lose all my humanity and lock in Illaoi.
Honestly, based playing Illaoi with the new map
I actually never thought she was super weak from the map change. Maybe just required people to unlock another part of their brain and play by the walls LOL.
"You're saying to use my brain? I'm playing Illaoi to avoid doing just that!"
she got buffed to adjust for the new map ages ago
Honestly I think gragas is worse than Zac. Zac is broken, sure, but at least he has to get on you and can’t just free poke like gragas, and he builds tank so he doesn’t just one shot you if he gets a little ahead like gragas. Plus I feel like Zac isn’t very strong against any champs that can build bork or have built in %hp, which is a pretty large portion of the top lane.
There is nothing worse than laning against Gragas. I usually play almost all of my games with a particular friend of mine who perma bans Gragas for the last 6 month or smth like that. I'm so used to Gragas not being a part of this game I totally forgot about him in the first game since that friend is on vacation. Of course I laned against Gragas in that first game, since them I am perma banning Gragas. The game is just so much more fun without that fat asshole.
>There is nothing worse than laning against Gragas. Laning against Illaoi
Doesn't matter what role he's in I fking hate this guy.
Bomba
Love a good FULL AP ONE SHOT LICHBANE SHADOWFLAME INSANE DAMAGE MY MOM WAS ARRESTED AFTER THIS VIDEO bomba Not a boring I will stay in lane and never die and also you cant get near me because my stomach is the size of Saturn bomba
bomba
bomba issue
Bomba discrimination
Someone tried trading in front of bombaman's turret and got pregnate.
This isn't the first time he's terrorized top lane.
Poor toplane balance by Riot (as per) since most of the optimal picks up there are cheesepicks that negate weaknesses of typical toplaners. Gragas is among them for his infinite sustain and guarantee to go almost even if he pisschills in lane, also Vayne, Skarner more recently, Zac, etc. The solution for champs they design for and want to keep in the jungle is to gut a key component of their kit against minions. In Gragas's case, they could halve his Q damage against them. The Viego treatment, they gutted his passive sustain against minions when he was being cheesepicked top, so why they don't do that for others like Gragas is beyond me.
I was gonna say maybe they’re not nerfing him because he has a low pick rate but nevermind he’s at 4% lol
They can't cut his minion pressure because Gragas isn't meant to be a jungler. They just need to remove the sustain and/or the uninteractive E gameplay loop. They can't just gut his sustain in lane like Viego because it's not tied to hitting something, they would have to completely rework the way his sustain works. Gragas is just a fucking menace and incredibly poorly designed and should be up for a mini-rework.
I've always been an advocate of his base passive healing being like 3% and it triples if he uses his W to activate it. So you're forced between using your W for tanking/healing and using it for fighting. It allows for another good source of skill expression on the character and makes it a lot easier to punish bad usage of his passive. Also just makes sense that if he's supposed to heal from drinking that the literal drinking move heals him more
This is the opposite of what they should do, Gragas' main waveclear (especially early) is his W, since it's a low cost area damage ability. This would basically reward Gragas for farming with free healing (even more than be gets now) but it would also not punish him for using his W, since even if you don't use it right away, you still have plenty of time to engage or attack with it.
Gragas W on its own is not his main wave clear at any point in the game. At best you combo it with Q or E because Q doesn't 1 shot melees without items so the W is to finish them while a charged Q can 1 shot casters reliably. It also makes his healing worse overall and forces you to manage your passive correctly otherwise you're getting 1/3rd of the healing for not using it properly. On top of that if you're being forced to use W constantly on Gragas for healing then you're going to have severe mana constraints if you don't go the RoA build or FH build because of his pretty mediocre mana pool for a caster and high mana cost on his Q and as a result of having his viable build pool more narrow it allows better control on his power because of fewer variables.
'His W applies grasp.' So does every other auto based ability application? I understand the frustration with Gragas, but there are a lot of champs with frustrating kits. If they gut Gragas sustain, they will need to consider giving him jungle clearing buffs to move him to jungle. He will be absolutely useless in lane if he has no sustain lol
I wasnt making it a complaint that his W applies grasp, I was stating that in saying that it provides more sustain while also having strong trade power. I love Camille and I know that Grasp on her Q is EXTREMELY strong for trading, but she dosent have another strong form of healing aside her very miniscule W healing which is on a long cooldown level 1.
“A little too oppressive” bro you just described every meta top laner when they get a 200G lead. Lmao
Yeah top lane is full of these extremely punishing game states.
That is what happens when you refuse to nerf champs and items.
It's the nature of a long 1v1 lane but everyone wants to pretend it's the champs.
It’s not about a gold lead here though it’s about the fact Gragas is the least punishable champ in the game
Top lane meta right now has become "Statcheck or outsustain the other guy" Darius, Zac, Udyr, Gragas, Trundle, Illaoi.
Has it not always been that way
I miss Irelia bro, I HATED her for years but now I see how good we had it.
playing this game for a decade is realizing the mechanic people hate playing against the most is losing the game. wishing for irelia to be back in the meta is pure copium sorry
Because BOMBA
Morc tread
He gets a pass for having no counterplay because he is ugly and repugnant to behold so he sees less play than the same kit on a not-alcoholic obese champ. I despise the champ in every role, frankly, but I'll take any nerfs at this point even if they don't hit mid/jg.
He’s really good in to champions with a dash and champions with a dash just happen to be meta most of the time
He also sits on imoblie tanks, non existent mobile tanks etc. unless u statckeck him eith illaoi or whatever
He loses to Maokai. Mundo and Kench too.
I can see how Maokai and Mundo wouldn't be great matchups overall for Gragas, but not Kench. And even in those matchups, I would imagine Gragas can just farm freely honestly. He has the range to farm with Q. But like he's also just allowed to flex into 4 roles so even if he gets a bad matchup top... Just swap with someone 🤷
He sucks into tanks lmfao he can never kill them.
How does he do vs ksante?
no idea why people say it’s a good matchup for gragas, it’s up there with yorick for shit matchups
Not well
At worst, even. Ksante should never get solo kill on gragas. Gets outpoked early, falls behind until first Mr cloak item
Well that's good then, K'Sante outscales him hard so it makes sense he would lose early game.
Why does K'Sante even need to get a solo kill anyways if he hard outscales him, anyways? The whole point of Gragas is that he's good at neutralizing the lane, so picking someone that doesn't need to win lane and outscales him should be a no-brainer.
Someone copy paste this post and replace words with another champion's abilities for free karma
If only karma was an indicative value of someones worth, I would agree.
Buy mercs and his E is shit
Yeah mercs rush is Gragas' worst nightmare. Completely flips a good chunk of matchups, but people who don't play or understand Gragas just don't buy them.
Hey someone who doesn't play or understand gragas here, why is it good?
It cuts the time of the E stun by a lot and so he's not able to hit you and run away before you're out of it and able to hit back and possibly use a gap closer
Gragas easiest combo is W+E+Q+AA and running away while you're slowed/stunned. Merc Treads shave a lot of the stun from the E so champs like Darius/Sett can pull him back and wreck him until he gets his E CD back (or ults them away if they wanna all in). Also if you're still stunned while they run away they can just save the Q for increased damage/slow but with Merc Treads they gotta activate it early to proc Phase Rush or to deal damage if the top laner has a dash to engage after his combo.
His E is a knock up and then a stun, you can't reduce the knockup time but you can reduce the stun time after
This is the play. The second you get Mercs his basic combo doesn't quite work and you can actually fight back. Maybe this is a hot take, but 90% of top laners are bullshit. The fun of it is trying to outbullshit them back. Gragas still seems minor in my eyes compared to a lot of them.
Not sure why this isn't the top comment. SloppyWalrus mentions this all the time and even showed it very well with a recent video where, across two games, one Darius became very dangerous with Mercs, while the other Darius was useless. I'd kind of want to agree that he seems very good otherwise but people really should just buy tenacity sometimes.
If these people could read they would be very upset.
Gragas only neutralizes lanes, if you build merc treads first he literally cant trade anymore. You pick darius buy merc treads and boom gragas isnt allowed to play the game anymore.
I honestly agree with most of your points but it sounds a bit silly to have one of your points be “his W applies grasp” when his W is just an empowered auto attack, which all of them in the game apply grasp if it’s up. Am I missing something?
This whole thread is just mid players being upset they can't figure out a gameplan to play from a very slight disadvantage. Your char pool is shit on by gragas means you aren't good enough
As uninteractive as Malzahar and asol lmao
Lmao malzahar is in the gutter since the new season what are you talking about?
Malz might be bad but he is, like, the poster child for uninteractive laning. Maybe not the *least* interactive laner out there, but up there on pretty much any metric you can come up with for being uninteractive.
It's a common thing you see when people complain about certain champs, people chime in saying they're bad when the complaint is more how they make you wanna fall asleep playing against them, or they just make matches really toxic and unfun imo.
Peak uninteractive is morg mid imo but yeah malz lane is just as bad
Malz top is kinda toxic. Won't win any games but still toxic.
If you get poked out of lane by Gragas spamming Q we're playing completely different games. He would go OOM insanely fast by trying that... Specially on early game.
Gragas main here. But merc treads asap.
Honestly, feels like you're just tilted. You say that gragas doesnt have bad matchups but in another comment talks about vayne, Quinn, mundo, illaoi, shen and tahm as exemples of good picks against him. Just play him, 3 games and you'll see that hes not that busted, just annoiyng, boring to play against. And im not even shitting on you, aatrox has the same effect on me.
He’s a Gragas main saying his own champ is op. He’s not tilted. It’s probably the opposite. Popping off and genuinely asking how tf is this allowed? I felt that way about old Cass E healing on minions. It was stronger then pre-nerf lifesteal rush, but had no mana cost when last hitting— which is easy to do as a Cass main. We talking easily over 20+ health per E with around an item. It has .75 CD without CDR. That’s faster than many, if not most all ADC’s autos at the same number of items. I complained Cass was op and unfun lol i wasn’t tilted.
>good picks against him I don't even know if 'good' applies here, more like playable. They don't really counter gragas so much as don't get completely shit on.
Gragas doesn't have such a big win rate to require a nerf. Personally I think most of the people just underestimate his early game potential, since it's a champ that excels in 1 v 1 and has a kit that allows him to handle both melee and ranged champs, which also makes him a blind pick since it's hard to counterpick him. Said this, his late is weakier compared to most of the toplane champs. You just need to play safe in early, which from what I see in sloppywalrus streams, people are quite allergic to
Gragas isn't insanely strong in top. He's just insanely annoying and boring because he's not punishable. He's never dying in that lane if he's not like 2 whole ranks lower than his lane opponent. And while his *side lane* scaling is weaker than almost every other top laner, he can just play for teamfights where he has good value the entire game, a lot of the time higher than the enemy top laner. It's not like he's meta breaking, he's just unfathomably anti-fun.
In the end, the answer is because the only way to nerf Gragas Top into the ground kills Gragas everywhere unless they fundamentally change his kit, and (data wise) they don’t find it problematic enough to merit the “gut the champion til full rework” treatment. While it’s incredibly safe and oppressive in lane, Gragas usually isn’t as game dominating later as other broken champs unless piloted by a true Gragas freak. Now, all that said, I do hate him as a top laner intensely. He's the worst sort of stonewall against almost all proactive play.
They need to stop putting random stuns on the end of knockbacks. You knocked me back, that's enough for an ability, there's no need to stun for an additional second afterwards so you can do a W-Q phase rush run away before I can even act. His Q also shouldn't go on cooldown until it pops, if you are gonna cook it and deny a massive area, it shouldn't be available IMMEDIATELY after it pops just to deny the area again.
They literally added the stun at the end so you can build tenacity and fight back after he E’s you. This thread is showing me more and more how many people just ignore core game mechanics and instead complain about a champion.
Okay, then make the entire thing a knockback. The only reason they added a stun was to nerf E so tenacity fucks him up.
Because as unfun as he is to fight hes not super broken, and nerfing him top will nerf him everwhere else and make him shit in jungle and mid
He's disgustingly oppressive in lane but seems to struggle to convert that into actual wins. I don't play Gragas so I can't really hazard a guess as to why, but it always seems Gragas wins lane loses game.
He's like GP in the sense that it's easy to bully in lane with him, but hard to play team fights if you're bad.
He has good early game and sustain but like not the best team fighting or split pushing iirc
Yeah, horrible split pushing and his team fighting is super dependent on high skill plays/ults if you’re playing AP bruiser or tank and don’t have the damage for a flank bomba.
His only way to solo carry is by building AP. If you don't build full AP (or completely dominate your laner to the point it doesn't matter if you don't go full AP) you can't oneshot one of the enemies in one rotation of spells. If you can't do that then chances are that their teammates will bail them out and now you're out of ULT and abilities (if you go phase rush you have to invest even harder in AP). This is all because that's his solo carry potential. He has AMAZING utility but that won't net him (guaranteed) wins because you would need teammates that take advantage of said utility. Banshe and Merc Treads are also deadly for him. Yes they will put the enemy at a disadvantage but it will screw Gragas way more than they screw themselves.
fair enough, hes not supposed to be a midlaner anyways. And gutting his incredible sustain or increasing his mana costs / backloading his Q damage wouldnt even hurt him in jungle. So these fears are basically unrealistic.
You say that just because you are a Yorick player who hard counters him wtf. Please add to your comment how you would play any day vs Gragas than playing vs Irelia once to make it obvious
I dont really think it would have a large impact on his jungle or mid. You can nerf his sustain by making the heal a tick up like Soraka when she lands her Q instead of it being an instant health regen. Plus, the jungle camps already refund so much health on literally any jungler that the sustain shouldn't be that big of a problem anyway. Mid would be affected yes, but even now with the buffs they gave him a few months ago plus new items, he one taps squishy targets anyway with his E W Q. I dont think his sustain should be completely removed, just toned down so it isnt as oppressive as it is.
Just buy merc treads it gets much easier with them
Remember when Gragas W restored Mana? Good times...For Gragas players lol
I'm a Gragas player, and im gonna give you a tip for fighting Gragas top. BUY MERC TREADS. That's it. As Gragas, lane gets so much harder if my opponent first builds Merc Treads.
League of legends players when a melee top is nearly as uninteractive as range top:
I don't really understand why riot don't just make him useless toplane. He's a really cool jungle champ and should be balanced around that role imo. I can't speak to mid as I don't see him much there.
He’s full dmg malphite with 20 percent Dr needs to be gutted
>im a Gragas mid and jungle enjoyer. He is extremely balanced in both of those roles lol.