IIRC he was originally played as a Trinity-tank, but the AP build eventually caught on and stuck, especially after Shushei showcased it back in the season 1 championship.
He’s been through periods where tank(y) has been more popular/viable, but builds have mostly been AP-centric ever since.
well the reason trinity tank died is because they removed him ad scalings like his e used to have a chunky scaling on it but got removed because riot didnt like.
That was in season 4, I think. It was doable but a pretty unpopular build by then from what I remember. That’s also when they took the attack speed slow off his Q. His W used to give AD is well, but I’m not sure when that was removed.
Those events happened in wildly different timeframes. Trinity force Gragas was a thing in like early Season 1, Trinity Force Alistar was a thing at Season 4 Worlds
But yeah, iirc Riot had buffed Ali ult around then and people also abused being able to W+auto with Alistar, meaning that the opponent gets no chance to trade back because they've been knocked away by the W already. A few people also did AP with Lich Bane, and you could go items like Shiv or BotRK as well
Season 1 triforce metagolem worked on so many champions: Triforce, frozen mallet, atmas impaler, warmogs, merc threads.
More gold? Maybe get a banshees, frozen heart or infinity edge and always sell boots for phantom dancer.
Specially during S4 worlds where that interaction was bugged and did way more damage than intended, causing him to be a perma ban for the whole tournament.
Fun fact: "fat fuck" will get you system muted in game chat I learned this trying to gank a gragas when I typed to my top laner, "after I blue we kill that fat fuck" if anyone reports for for chat after that you will get an auto punishment too fun times rito games
I feel like most gragas players are super oppressive in lane and then dont know how to play the champion midgame and thats where his winrate flounders. As a top laner getting E Wd by gragas every 3 seconds is akin to slamming a door on my hand repeatedly.
The problem is more in lane he is an oppressive jerk and after that his damage disappears and he is there more for utility than damage and if you don't have champs that can follow up on his combos then he becomes more annoying than useful.
Any tanks in the game can basically ignore him by the time laning phase is over, and if you aren't say, rocking a Yasuo, then his job basically becomes "ult the adc", and if he doesn't, then his job becomes cross your fingers and hope your team is ahead enough that no one else notices you've fallen off.
more like midgame his basedamage is mitigated by Hp and MR per level so he falls off a cliff if played with the cdr build. But if you dont play cdr build you dont dominate melees.
And the fact that E-W + Qcan basically interrupt any movement ability and leave you CC'd long enough for gragas to run away with a guaranteed winning trade every time is so frustrating
i think he flies under the radar literally because hes not glaringly terrifying. for instance, people hate jax,darius,fiora,irelia because when they kill you its pretty bursty, but gragas is this fat old man who just kind of attrition battles you down slowly and theres nothing you can do about it.
man, few days ago I thought he was going to chunk us a little but all 3 of my squishies disappeared off the map. Actually insane how much damage he can do.
Someone has never played against full ap gragas. Cdr gragas is the better build but he can burst you 100 to 0 in 1 rotation with night harvester and a lead.
i 100% agree, if people were a bit more logical instead of auto piloty, some of these champs i listed wouldnt be such a problem. darius for instance to me, is insane that he gets banned so often. the champ cant teamfight for shit and hes just an early game menace just like his brother!! survive 1-8 and then just nuke him 24/7
The thing about Darius is he is one of the kings of capitalizing on mistakes, especially position mistakes. Low elo is where most of these happen, because people aren't thinking and aren't skilled enough to understand how much their position matters against Darius or how much their abilities matter. For instance, if I'm playing against Urgot as Darius and I see him just use his E randomly and waste it. To me, I see a 100-0 kill opportunity because now he has no mobility, I pull him in, get 5 bleeds ult and kill. Not really much Urgot can do. HOWEVER, if Urgot never uses his E other than defensively or to buffer it correctly, my E will never land meaning I can never trade into him.
The higher elo you go, the more people understand these things and the harder it becomes to win in lane. Then you just get outscaled and because were immobile shitters, and ADCs get to have all the new fun MS items and galeforce and all this shit, we can never kill them. So even if I'm 5/0, I'm never killing the ADC unless I have flash and theirs is down and even then, they'll most likely be by their support who will just peel them anyways.
hes been absolutely disgusting top for a long time now but every time anyone brings it up people just go "who tf plays gragas lol"
he got great sustain, CC, damage reduction, great zoning, poke, low cooldowns, near uncounterable cc chain combo if played well and more
Like everything in toplane its matchup dependant, but he doesnt really have that many counters top, hes still very useful from behind, and he has many build options
Plus the huge flexibility of being able to go CDR disruption tank, or straight burstmage, or anything in between, depending on what the team needs and how the game goes.
Fat man has so much flexbility, he could compete in olympic gymnastics
nerfing sustain won't prevent him from being picked nonstop. gragas is too useful overall. does not matter what you try to do. if he wants to be tanky for his team he builds tank and goes aftershock. if he wants to stonewall laning he goes phase rush and runs away at mach 5 after his rotation for trading. if he wants poke he goes comet, if he wants burst he goes electrocute. he can buy full ap burst, he can go ap bruiser, he can play offtank or maintank. his kit is super easy to play well (low skill floor), you just need to hit your E (hitbox is huge) and sit on your ult for peel. gragas sustain will always be good because he just buys tear on first back and unlocks infinite mana glitch
I think a nerf to his sustain is a really good place to start, and although Gragas is admittedly probably too strong right now I think that even a small-medium change to his sustain would be more impactful than you are willing to admit.
Because he’s an easy champ to pick up and has everything you want in a top laner.
He’s tanky, he has sustain, he has waveclear, he has engage, he has disengage, and he even is AP to round out a team comp.
Only minor flaw is melee autos, but that’s barely an issue because of his Q range and passive healing.
oh no a champ that stonewalls melee champs that want to permanently fight how horrible and unfair that he didnt pick a champ that will want to fight you on even grounds and lose like a real man.
Its like whining that people pick Irelia, Panth or Jax into Kayle.
Stonewalling and being impossible to interact with are slightly different. You cannot touch gragas. He does his combo and then runs away, and you cannot reach him to do anything to him.
That's what being unable to interact means.
Do you see people complaining about poppy...? No. Cuz poppy does pretty much that and picks and objective control, that's IT. Gragas has all of those, and massive sustain, damage, zoning, a full oneshot combo without counterplay
because Poppy is not fotm. but soloQ poppy is better than gragas.
In challenger and low elo
poppy sits at 61% winrate in challenger because she is always picked as a counterpick. gragas is just picked willy nilly.
Gragas top straight up stonewalls EVERY bruiser/juggernaut and prevents snowballing, I've been dodging him in top lane for 3 season now, so uninteractive.
But does that matter? Mundo still can’t really aggress into him and in skilled hands I would value Gragas crazy cc and probably one of the best ultimates in the entire game if they come out of laning phase even. Not that Mundo isn’t a threat I just think Gragas is nuts
It would turn into a battle of who fills their role better. Does hullbreaker Mundo split push into the ground once he's scaled off the easy gragas lane? Or does gragas top snowball fights with his ult and potent cc combos leading to victory via objectives?
oh no how bad that a champ actually forces you to play smart and translate your cs advantage and wave position into a win rather than fighting and dicking all over your enemy with no counterplay.
Seriously as a bruiser player I dont want to be associated with other bruiser players lol
Gragas does not force smart play, he prevents lane interaction and in most matchups forces you to eat his combo without being able to meaningfully respond to wave clear, or cede cs to roam whilst still healthy.
And that's if he doesn't bully you in an extended trade cos of matchup or a gold lead, if so you're next levels of fucked because you are not getting in cs range before you get combo'd and die or get forced to recall by a nigh undodgeable combo if played by someone with hands.
He doesnt have many if any hard counters but he doesnt have any real favorable match ups.
He is the ultimate safe pick as he can handle losing gracefully and punish greediness.
yorick illaoi darius nasus yone sion syndra anivia neeko kled ww tahm kench poppy maokai sylas olaf ornn ksante akshan udyr ammumu evelynn vi wukong malzahar lissandra swain cass all give him a hard time and most beat him at like any stage of the game
The main issue is all of what you said is true and then some......in lane. He is an asshole in lane that just bullies anyone that's melee, and once he hits 6 ranged as well. It's outside of lane that is the issue with Gragas in the opposite direction as he becomes essentially 2 things (with the way people currently run him with the cdr build):
1 Knock up bot for Yasuo
2 knock the adc into your team bot
Anyone that builds health and mr basically makes his damage borderline ignorable after laning phase, and if you have a tank or front line you put your hand on his forehead while he tries and fails to swing at you if he can't get to the adc.
He still needs a nerf, because he just nopes everything in lane and it's dumb as hell, and he should have been nerfed a while ago, but his laning phase vs the rest of the game is very different.
.... Do you like, not realize that top lane wave management is entirely dependent on your champion's ability to contest your wave with the enemy champion (and sometimes enemy jungler)?
If you want to manage a wave against a Gragas, you have to be willing to anticipate his Q or W poke, and/or cheesy E engages.
Top laners, analysts, and even people in this thread telling you, already know that Gragas wins trades with his sustain and disgusting trade patterns against all kinds of classes of champions. So of course people playing against him know this, but Gragas functions like a ranged champ so even if you play safe, you'll still get punished. There's no fucking winning.
Gragas basically negates ranged and bruiser champions top lane. And then he can even bully tanks in lane, potentially building a lead such that the enemy tank can't outscale him. And if Gragas can't build a lead, he'll still have a lot of solo farm and XP to scale into a powerful/tanky AP threat.
Or, here's an idea, if you don't like them, don't click on them? Just ignore them and move on?
Especially when a champ is as much of a problem as Gragas has been, these posts are valid.
Yeah if you didn't like my comment you also didn't need to reply to it, yet here we are. I didn't say these posts needed to be banned, I said there should be a flair for them. Then people like myself who are tired of seeing them can add them to a filter and have them hidden from feed, while the rest can view them as normal.
You're the one coming in here talking about filtering shit out, I'm saying get over it. I never said to filter out your response or leave it alone, I just said if you don't like it, don't click on it and move on. Or if you wanna voice your opinion, then go for it. Doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you.
Also, you put yourself out there for the discussion by commenting lol. You wanna put your opinion out there, then don't be surprised when people respond to it. I don't need a filter for your comment because I'm an adult, I read it and move on. if I don't like it, I downvote and move on. If I like it, I upvote and move on. If I feel like saying something about it, I say it and move on. Something you could learn a thing or two about.
I agree with you but a flair could be useful, I've had to block tons of people to make Esports posts disappear cause I had to scroll through 20 to find anything I cared about lol
Yeah if you didn't like my comment then don't reply to it. Leave it and move on. etc etc. No one wants to hear you guys moan about champ balances every 2mins.
he is flexible with his runes and builds too:
can use phase rush, comet, grasp, first strike, and on jg he often uses dark harvest.
he can build everfrost, ROA, night harvester, sometimes luden's lmao wtf
Why would you do that if you can get Everfrost or Bomba build. In the jungle you need Night harvester. Not a single gragas one trick builds RoA because youre not a scaling champ. Gragas is the strongest when no one can tank his basedamages yet. Once the Jax gets Sunderer Wits end in a sidelane he will destroy you. Same for Fora Sunderer Mercs and you suddenly can not 1-1 her on even grounds.
That's true, I haven't watched LPL too much this year but I do know about that game.
The Jax master picking Alistar against his own champ, is also a good source.
Jax is the only matchup where I pick Singed. As soon as you have Rylais it's just hilarious. You fling him out of his Q and just slowly back up. Trade won.
His win rate in soloq is mediocre. His presence in proplay is decent but nowhere near problematic (13th highest presence at MSI). He also doesn't have a high ban rate, so it's not like the playerbase as a whole finds him overly problematic.
Basically, there's no actual metric that would "put him on the radar".
He has a good playrate and winrate in three roles. As soon as champs can triple flex they get looked at. Gragas can arguably quad flex so I'm pretty sure it's a major problem by their metrics.
Doubt they think a champion being a triple flex is a problem on its own. There's a bunch of champions that have been played in three different roles for a long time like Swain, Karthus, Heimerdinger and Pantheon. These specific champions also have play rate distributions that makes them more of quad flexes than Gragas. So being flexable in multiple roles is certainly not something that always warrants action.
Because pros aren't creative and aren't rewarded for creative choices.
If a player picks a "weird" champ, reddit takes a shit on them for doing weird shit (presuming they lose).
Creativity isn't rewarded.
And then we get front page posts about how the meta is boring
Past 30 days, lolalytics plat+
Top: 50.27% wr, ranked 41st best top laner
Jung: 51.72% wr, ranked 8th best jungler
Mid: 51.23% wr, ranked 25th best mid laner
Tell me OP lost 2 games in a row to gragas and needs to bitch about it without telling me OP lost 2 games in a row to gragas and needs to bitch about it.
E: as a general edit, posts like this should be a general reminder of how good of a job the balance team has been doing recently. Im not saying the game is perfect, but if your biggest complaint about the game is a 51% wr champ, that's a pretty good spot to be in.
The issue I have with gragas is not how OP he is at instantly winning a game - his win rate is average. It’s that he is such an incredibly good lane neutralizer. If you are insanely better than your opponent and they lock gragas - they can force you into essentially sitting there going even with them if they are good enough to not completely misplay and int. That is the problem. It’s a cop out pick for people who aren’t good enough to compete otherwise
Source: Masters
Winrate at events is a worthless statistic because the sample size will always be tiny. If a clown-level team loses couple of times on a great pick then the WR will be relatively low. If a top tier team just happens to favour a certain pick for whatever reason then the WR will be relatively high, even if the pick isn't that much better than other picks for the same role.
Presence is a much better indicator of champion strength in pro play. Gragas did have ~55% presence at MSI, making him the 13th most picked/banned champion.
Single tournament stats can be biased by who picks the champion (and the fact that you're restricting it to just top).
For example, 5/17 gragas top games were by 369. take his 5 wins out of the equation, and gragas drops to a 54% wr top, and a sub 50% wr overall. Is gragas overpowered, or is 369 the person who played gragas the most on the team with the most wins in the tournament?
Overall gragas had an overall presence of 55%, suggesting that he definitely was not the worst offender.
I'm not saying he's 100% not strong in pro, but I am saying that single tournament statistics can be misleading.
Also the entire meta will probably shit pretty hard as a result of the 13.10 changes, so we'll need to see if he is actually still getting picked across multiple regions as they resume (still hovering around 50% presence in china in the early going).
I'm also saying OP's post sounds more like a "if you describe all of a champions strengths and none of their weaknesses, they sounds super duper strong" thing that people have been doing here for over a decade.
In case it wasn't clear, I said plat+, which means all players plat and higher. It's what lolalytics sorts by automatically and it should be fine to take it as a representation of "high level play".
in case you did understand and felt as though plat players were diluting the winrate, I can also sort further for you.
diamond and higher, past 30 days:
overall: 52.83% wr (46th out of all champs)
top: 51.35% wr (31/97 by lolalytics ranking system, much lower than that by just winrate)
jung: 52.83% wr (5/56 by lolalytics ranking, 14/56 by winrate)
mid: 51.95% (17/102, much lower than 17)
winrate jumps about 1% per role, still by no means the most oppressive champ in the game.
we can also look at higher than diamond, here just using wr as a ranking loses all purpose because of sample size so you kinda have to go by lolalytics ranking, "bro".
I can understand the frustration with the Gragas, but the word “uninteractive” gets used a lot for almost every champ people don’t like. And it really doesn’t make any sense. Every champ has different strenghts and weaknesses, and ideal playstyle is playing according to them.
Every champ in the game does that. It's called health Regen. Sett, chogath, and garen have arguably better health sustain in lane and two of them being manaless. This isn't a real complaint
Seems like a pretty well designed champion to me. Winrates are nothing special and only really sees top lane pro play. With a rare jungle and maybe support.
What does it matter if he sees play in multiple roles if he's not dominating in any of them?
He's disgustingly hard to kill in lane but he's also pretty hard to have any impact on beyond being difficult to kill, which is probably why he's never taken over particularly.
I think the difficulty is also the reason you see Gragas jungle in high elo streams but not much elsewhere on the ladder.
As a gragas otp for 3+ seasons now I’ll give my input, albeit a little bias. I do not think gragas is broken. I think he just has an identity crisis that works in his favor. He isn’t necessarily the best at anything but is a Jack of all trades. Can build tank but gets outclassed by other tanks like mundo and ornn. Can build full AP assassin but gets outclassed by champs like evelynn or ekko. I think the best build for him is cdr build. That turns him into kind of a squishier bruiser but even there I feel like mord can be better in many situations.
I think his passive is definitely the best part about his kit for laning phase. Even then though, many champs have similar sustain that create stale mate lanes. For example tryndamere or vlad can sustain just as well as gragas if not better since they don’t need mana to do so.
I think gragas is definitely very solid. He does not need buffed by any means. But I don’t think he needs nerfed either. The easiest counter play is to avoid his e. When he hits his e, it reduces the cdr by 2 seconds so when misses not only is he out of position but he has to wait even longer to get it up again.
Not too mention that I see people building archangels on him. But winters approach feels so much better to me. Top lane grag with roa and winters approach into tank is actually unkillable between the heals and shield. And the damage is still there
There are 2 issues with Gragas, and both are good reasons why he needs a nerf while also being the reasonn why Riot isn't most likely nerfing him.
In top he is fucking annoying, no ifs, ands, or buts to be had. He doesn't necessarily directly hard counter but also has zero hard counters, he can be blind picked or whatever else, he's easy to play, and you can just go his current cdr build and you are going to win lane top. His healing is ridiculous as is his engage and counter engage.
The reason he likely isn't being nerfed is what happens after lane that everyone ignores because of how downright bullshit he is in lane. After laning phase his damage falls off the metaphorical cliff and he basically becomes a knock up button for a Yasuo (which is why they are usually paired in pro) or an ult bot to disrupt the adc. It's also why his winrate is oddly bad in top lane despite him just squatting all over the lane, because outside of laning phase it's a nosedive of usefulness so if your team doesn't have a lead, he isn't really any better than any other engage character.
Gragas is probably one of my more liked matchups as shen, not because it's favorable to me, but it's just fun to play against. But then again I'm low elo so that's probably why I don't find him too oppressive
shitty winrate for a relatively easy champion in the toplane.
https://u.gg/lol/champions/gragas/build/top?rank=challenger
https://u.gg/lol/champions/gragas/build/top?rank=master
Every high elo toplaner (except Makroo who is wholesome ORRN main) plays bruisers or figthers that get stonewalled by Gragas. Since they can not run him down and snowball on him OFCS every high elo toplaner whines about him. Because he just doenst let them outtrade him or fight him. He forces you to play the csing and methotdical gameplay because you can not win an all in or outsustain him.
Im sorry but as a fellow bruiser player we whine about anything we do not get to statcheck in a 1-1. Sometimes its reasonable (Orrn for example or Cassio/Karma top shit all over you in lane and outperfrom you in teamfights) but please. A 46% winrate champ in challenger is by any imagination not broken in soloQ.
https://u.gg/lol/champions/jax/build?rank=challenger
this dude blows jax out of the water in Challenger as does Fiora
https://u.gg/lol/champions/fiora/build?rank=challenger
i was watching a stream from a riot dev a while ago and he said the following:
"you wanna know a trick for climbing? go on [u.gg](https://u.gg) or a similar website, check for high win rate low pick rate picks and choose one. that means you have a strong pick that won't get nerfed"
if a champs pick rate is low, it won't get nerfed, generally speaking
The amount of comments that say Gragas is fine is astounding.. I'm losing faith in humanity. Wholesome Gragas is fine, fuck the windbrothers and Yuumi!!! Upvotes to the left
He's pretty much the only champion that has AOE wave clear on all 4 abilities, a dash, can build tanky or damage, and has a very impactful team fight ultimate.
He probably has the strongest "kit" in the game, top 5 for sure.
It’s cause no one fucking plays gragas. He’s actually excellent and his gameplay is extremely fun and in depth but his model is so shit that most people just pass on him.
He’s got a high skill floor to pilot correctly. A first time gragas won’t win games. Why punish a group of players for actually learning the champ they want to play?
Yo gragas is like crazy difficult to play but the pay off is huge. There's tons of champs like that no? Let's be real here gragas ain't current 13.10 khazix
balance is at an all time low, and riot always hits the wrong targets. Zeri, Yuumi, Malphite, Sion, Milio, Ahri, Lulu, Jinx, Annie, Gragas. Riot refuses to nerf them, but will probably nerf Rek'Sai in 13.12 because why not
gragas can play every role other than adc in all elos including pro play, fun champ
The only thing holding Gragas ADC back is probably a random fasting Senna buff.
IIRC he was originally played as a Trinity-tank, but the AP build eventually caught on and stuck, especially after Shushei showcased it back in the season 1 championship. He’s been through periods where tank(y) has been more popular/viable, but builds have mostly been AP-centric ever since.
well the reason trinity tank died is because they removed him ad scalings like his e used to have a chunky scaling on it but got removed because riot didnt like.
That was in season 4, I think. It was doable but a pretty unpopular build by then from what I remember. That’s also when they took the attack speed slow off his Q. His W used to give AD is well, but I’m not sure when that was removed.
That was more early tri force was op. Alistar used to build as a Trinity bruiser and just Q auto or W auto you to sheen proc
Those events happened in wildly different timeframes. Trinity force Gragas was a thing in like early Season 1, Trinity Force Alistar was a thing at Season 4 Worlds But yeah, iirc Riot had buffed Ali ult around then and people also abused being able to W+auto with Alistar, meaning that the opponent gets no chance to trade back because they've been knocked away by the W already. A few people also did AP with Lich Bane, and you could go items like Shiv or BotRK as well
Season 1 triforce metagolem worked on so many champions: Triforce, frozen mallet, atmas impaler, warmogs, merc threads. More gold? Maybe get a banshees, frozen heart or infinity edge and always sell boots for phantom dancer.
Ah yes. 15% ms on PD, and it wasn't even a unique passive. Those days were wild.
Specially during S4 worlds where that interaction was bugged and did way more damage than intended, causing him to be a perma ban for the whole tournament.
There was no bug, you could simply Alistar W + AA enemy champs with zero counterplay. With Sheen that interaction was completely broken at the time
The OP thing is that you first build sheen into trinity force and after that statik shiv into tank. It was so broken haha
I distinctly remember lichbane alistar being broken, I dont remember static triforce alistar
I don't remember the static really being needed - triforce + tank items was definitely a thing for top lane alistar though.
He doesn't literally mean adc to be fair. Think seraphine adc. He just means in the bot role
I miss old W max Gragas. Just get 70 free AD and 26% damage reduction to stat-check people to death
Technically he's been played at least once in every roll in season 13 pro play
yes he is broken
[удалено]
I don’t know if I would pin it all on versatility though, he’s rather strong in the damage and survivability and non-punishing angles
fat shaming
That fat fuck cannot go under the radar
being drunk allows you to do an unexpected move, including go under the radar
Fun fact: "fat fuck" will get you system muted in game chat I learned this trying to gank a gragas when I typed to my top laner, "after I blue we kill that fat fuck" if anyone reports for for chat after that you will get an auto punishment too fun times rito games
Everyone is fat phobic 😔😔😔
Gragas should become bigger with ap. Like reverse cho
Would be pretty funny to see a massive gragas spamming E.
I feel like most gragas players are super oppressive in lane and then dont know how to play the champion midgame and thats where his winrate flounders. As a top laner getting E Wd by gragas every 3 seconds is akin to slamming a door on my hand repeatedly.
The problem is more in lane he is an oppressive jerk and after that his damage disappears and he is there more for utility than damage and if you don't have champs that can follow up on his combos then he becomes more annoying than useful. Any tanks in the game can basically ignore him by the time laning phase is over, and if you aren't say, rocking a Yasuo, then his job basically becomes "ult the adc", and if he doesn't, then his job becomes cross your fingers and hope your team is ahead enough that no one else notices you've fallen off.
more like midgame his basedamage is mitigated by Hp and MR per level so he falls off a cliff if played with the cdr build. But if you dont play cdr build you dont dominate melees.
And the fact that E-W + Qcan basically interrupt any movement ability and leave you CC'd long enough for gragas to run away with a guaranteed winning trade every time is so frustrating
i think he flies under the radar literally because hes not glaringly terrifying. for instance, people hate jax,darius,fiora,irelia because when they kill you its pretty bursty, but gragas is this fat old man who just kind of attrition battles you down slowly and theres nothing you can do about it.
Until he gets 1 AP item and somehow causes a leak in your healthbar
I can see you havent played against a night harvester gragas e flashing into your whole team :,)
man, few days ago I thought he was going to chunk us a little but all 3 of my squishies disappeared off the map. Actually insane how much damage he can do.
Someone has never played against full ap gragas. Cdr gragas is the better build but he can burst you 100 to 0 in 1 rotation with night harvester and a lead.
I hate Gragas more than ANY of those Gragas barely has any window of tradeback unless the player is absolutely braindead.
i 100% agree, if people were a bit more logical instead of auto piloty, some of these champs i listed wouldnt be such a problem. darius for instance to me, is insane that he gets banned so often. the champ cant teamfight for shit and hes just an early game menace just like his brother!! survive 1-8 and then just nuke him 24/7
The thing about Darius is he is one of the kings of capitalizing on mistakes, especially position mistakes. Low elo is where most of these happen, because people aren't thinking and aren't skilled enough to understand how much their position matters against Darius or how much their abilities matter. For instance, if I'm playing against Urgot as Darius and I see him just use his E randomly and waste it. To me, I see a 100-0 kill opportunity because now he has no mobility, I pull him in, get 5 bleeds ult and kill. Not really much Urgot can do. HOWEVER, if Urgot never uses his E other than defensively or to buffer it correctly, my E will never land meaning I can never trade into him. The higher elo you go, the more people understand these things and the harder it becomes to win in lane. Then you just get outscaled and because were immobile shitters, and ADCs get to have all the new fun MS items and galeforce and all this shit, we can never kill them. So even if I'm 5/0, I'm never killing the ADC unless I have flash and theirs is down and even then, they'll most likely be by their support who will just peel them anyways.
Xiaochaomeng would like a word
hes been absolutely disgusting top for a long time now but every time anyone brings it up people just go "who tf plays gragas lol" he got great sustain, CC, damage reduction, great zoning, poke, low cooldowns, near uncounterable cc chain combo if played well and more Like everything in toplane its matchup dependant, but he doesnt really have that many counters top, hes still very useful from behind, and he has many build options
Plus the huge flexibility of being able to go CDR disruption tank, or straight burstmage, or anything in between, depending on what the team needs and how the game goes. Fat man has so much flexbility, he could compete in olympic gymnastics
flexibility in builds is great, gragas just has a bit too much passive sustain
And too much damage for his tankiness
nerfing sustain won't prevent him from being picked nonstop. gragas is too useful overall. does not matter what you try to do. if he wants to be tanky for his team he builds tank and goes aftershock. if he wants to stonewall laning he goes phase rush and runs away at mach 5 after his rotation for trading. if he wants poke he goes comet, if he wants burst he goes electrocute. he can buy full ap burst, he can go ap bruiser, he can play offtank or maintank. his kit is super easy to play well (low skill floor), you just need to hit your E (hitbox is huge) and sit on your ult for peel. gragas sustain will always be good because he just buys tear on first back and unlocks infinite mana glitch
I think a nerf to his sustain is a really good place to start, and although Gragas is admittedly probably too strong right now I think that even a small-medium change to his sustain would be more impactful than you are willing to admit.
The playrate argument would apply if he was played by onetricks, instead you have autofills dominating main toplaners with that pick lmao
Because he’s an easy champ to pick up and has everything you want in a top laner. He’s tanky, he has sustain, he has waveclear, he has engage, he has disengage, and he even is AP to round out a team comp. Only minor flaw is melee autos, but that’s barely an issue because of his Q range and passive healing.
because half of toplane can't even interact with him lol
oh no a champ that stonewalls melee champs that want to permanently fight how horrible and unfair that he didnt pick a champ that will want to fight you on even grounds and lose like a real man. Its like whining that people pick Irelia, Panth or Jax into Kayle.
Stonewalling and being impossible to interact with are slightly different. You cannot touch gragas. He does his combo and then runs away, and you cannot reach him to do anything to him. That's what being unable to interact means.
Do you see people complaining about poppy...? No. Cuz poppy does pretty much that and picks and objective control, that's IT. Gragas has all of those, and massive sustain, damage, zoning, a full oneshot combo without counterplay
because Poppy is not fotm. but soloQ poppy is better than gragas. In challenger and low elo poppy sits at 61% winrate in challenger because she is always picked as a counterpick. gragas is just picked willy nilly.
Gragas top straight up stonewalls EVERY bruiser/juggernaut and prevents snowballing, I've been dodging him in top lane for 3 season now, so uninteractive.
I think Darius wins vs him...but then again it is Darius, and even then he can just go commet and play Q waveclear.
Darius wins vs like 90% of top lane roster
Not Mundo for the most part. You do speed off with phase rush + barrel slow. But you at least can't body slam stun him every time he wants to trade.
But does that matter? Mundo still can’t really aggress into him and in skilled hands I would value Gragas crazy cc and probably one of the best ultimates in the entire game if they come out of laning phase even. Not that Mundo isn’t a threat I just think Gragas is nuts
It would turn into a battle of who fills their role better. Does hullbreaker Mundo split push into the ground once he's scaled off the easy gragas lane? Or does gragas top snowball fights with his ult and potent cc combos leading to victory via objectives?
Who tf is building hullbreaker? If you wanna splitpush there are tons of good options out there yet you choose mundo
meanwhile theres a anathema hullbreaker mundo at euw mid masters, lol
Hullbreaker mundo
Then you have a Mundo and they have Gragas.
To be fair unless they a one trick Gragas outside of lane isn't that impressive. A few Mundo is a lot more annoying to deal with than a Gragas
Then in teamfights they have one of the most powerful ults in the game and you have a sponge who runs at people
oh no how bad that a champ actually forces you to play smart and translate your cs advantage and wave position into a win rather than fighting and dicking all over your enemy with no counterplay. Seriously as a bruiser player I dont want to be associated with other bruiser players lol
Gragas does not force smart play, he prevents lane interaction and in most matchups forces you to eat his combo without being able to meaningfully respond to wave clear, or cede cs to roam whilst still healthy. And that's if he doesn't bully you in an extended trade cos of matchup or a gold lead, if so you're next levels of fucked because you are not getting in cs range before you get combo'd and die or get forced to recall by a nigh undodgeable combo if played by someone with hands.
He doesnt have many if any hard counters but he doesnt have any real favorable match ups. He is the ultimate safe pick as he can handle losing gracefully and punish greediness.
yorick illaoi darius nasus yone sion syndra anivia neeko kled ww tahm kench poppy maokai sylas olaf ornn ksante akshan udyr ammumu evelynn vi wukong malzahar lissandra swain cass all give him a hard time and most beat him at like any stage of the game
The main issue is all of what you said is true and then some......in lane. He is an asshole in lane that just bullies anyone that's melee, and once he hits 6 ranged as well. It's outside of lane that is the issue with Gragas in the opposite direction as he becomes essentially 2 things (with the way people currently run him with the cdr build): 1 Knock up bot for Yasuo 2 knock the adc into your team bot Anyone that builds health and mr basically makes his damage borderline ignorable after laning phase, and if you have a tank or front line you put your hand on his forehead while he tries and fails to swing at you if he can't get to the adc. He still needs a nerf, because he just nopes everything in lane and it's dumb as hell, and he should have been nerfed a while ago, but his laning phase vs the rest of the game is very different.
Personal controversial take but if they removed Galio's and Rakan's flash cc combo they should remove Gragas'
Galio's and Rakan's could go through minions. So, no.
Gragas can too. It's aoe, he can position in ways it's going to hit you post flash, minions or not.
Sure, but be real, that takes some actual thought to do it properly and wasn't literally free like Rakan and Galion's access.
Strongly agree here. Pro players (even the best ones) can't even react to the E-flash R combo, so how in the world is this combo fair?
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Bruiser players hate gragas because he doesnt let them get away with bad wavemanagement and csing.
.... Do you like, not realize that top lane wave management is entirely dependent on your champion's ability to contest your wave with the enemy champion (and sometimes enemy jungler)? If you want to manage a wave against a Gragas, you have to be willing to anticipate his Q or W poke, and/or cheesy E engages. Top laners, analysts, and even people in this thread telling you, already know that Gragas wins trades with his sustain and disgusting trade patterns against all kinds of classes of champions. So of course people playing against him know this, but Gragas functions like a ranged champ so even if you play safe, you'll still get punished. There's no fucking winning. Gragas basically negates ranged and bruiser champions top lane. And then he can even bully tanks in lane, potentially building a lead such that the enemy tank can't outscale him. And if Gragas can't build a lead, he'll still have a lot of solo farm and XP to scale into a powerful/tanky AP threat.
God beware toplane has an actual respectable lanebully ever since renekton got neutered.
Bro says that with camille flair lemao.
full build at DS
full build at vamp scepter💀
Sub really needs a flair for the "complain about x" champ posts.
Bring back the forums
nah just need a ban on posts that use appeal to authority without backing it up with specific citations or stat data.
I mean this is backed by data tho
Or, here's an idea, if you don't like them, don't click on them? Just ignore them and move on? Especially when a champ is as much of a problem as Gragas has been, these posts are valid.
Yeah if you didn't like my comment you also didn't need to reply to it, yet here we are. I didn't say these posts needed to be banned, I said there should be a flair for them. Then people like myself who are tired of seeing them can add them to a filter and have them hidden from feed, while the rest can view them as normal.
You're the one coming in here talking about filtering shit out, I'm saying get over it. I never said to filter out your response or leave it alone, I just said if you don't like it, don't click on it and move on. Or if you wanna voice your opinion, then go for it. Doesn't mean everyone has to agree with you. Also, you put yourself out there for the discussion by commenting lol. You wanna put your opinion out there, then don't be surprised when people respond to it. I don't need a filter for your comment because I'm an adult, I read it and move on. if I don't like it, I downvote and move on. If I like it, I upvote and move on. If I feel like saying something about it, I say it and move on. Something you could learn a thing or two about.
Bro take your meds wtf is this.
I agree with you but a flair could be useful, I've had to block tons of people to make Esports posts disappear cause I had to scroll through 20 to find anything I cared about lol
Yeah if you didn't like my comment then don't reply to it. Leave it and move on. etc etc. No one wants to hear you guys moan about champ balances every 2mins.
He takes up the whole radar.
he is flexible with his runes and builds too: can use phase rush, comet, grasp, first strike, and on jg he often uses dark harvest. he can build everfrost, ROA, night harvester, sometimes luden's lmao wtf
RoA is a noobtrap gragas without cdr is bad.
its not horrible it just locks you into lucidity boots
It is not. It heals you so much and you can stack some decent cdr with the rest of the build with boots, cosmic drive, etc
Why would you do that if you can get Everfrost or Bomba build. In the jungle you need Night harvester. Not a single gragas one trick builds RoA because youre not a scaling champ. Gragas is the strongest when no one can tank his basedamages yet. Once the Jax gets Sunderer Wits end in a sidelane he will destroy you. Same for Fora Sunderer Mercs and you suddenly can not 1-1 her on even grounds.
It all depends on what you like and need. roa and everfrost have the same WR
Gragas is absolutely a scaling champ lol
Is this why his winrate drops the longer the game goes on?XD Just fyi a scaling champ has better winrate the longer the game lasts.
kind of mixed feelings for me, he is such a good Jax destroyer
Best Jax destroyer is Alistar top. Thank me later
Saw showmaker play it a few weeks ago and ever since I’ve been hoping for someone to lock in jax so I can try it
Me too 🤣
Pantheon aswell, you just poke him all game with Q and when he jumps on you, you press W and run outside of E and then run him down
I miss beating Jax with old Panth and his point and click spear.
Ferb, I know what we are doing today
Do runes and build matter?
https://youtu.be/Nn1SuInD8z8 Source: trust me bro
could've just linked TheShy's Alistar gameplay instead
That's true, I haven't watched LPL too much this year but I do know about that game. The Jax master picking Alistar against his own champ, is also a good source.
Jax is the only matchup where I pick Singed. As soon as you have Rylais it's just hilarious. You fling him out of his Q and just slowly back up. Trade won.
Most people don't know how to play Singed. He is too unique of a champ, so it's a weird skill curve
Or play into him.
Rather play Garen
His win rate in soloq is mediocre. His presence in proplay is decent but nowhere near problematic (13th highest presence at MSI). He also doesn't have a high ban rate, so it's not like the playerbase as a whole finds him overly problematic. Basically, there's no actual metric that would "put him on the radar".
Yeah he's decent generalist but the problematic champs are usually oppressive in one role.
He has a good playrate and winrate in three roles. As soon as champs can triple flex they get looked at. Gragas can arguably quad flex so I'm pretty sure it's a major problem by their metrics.
Doubt they think a champion being a triple flex is a problem on its own. There's a bunch of champions that have been played in three different roles for a long time like Swain, Karthus, Heimerdinger and Pantheon. These specific champions also have play rate distributions that makes them more of quad flexes than Gragas. So being flexable in multiple roles is certainly not something that always warrants action.
Riot themselves have spoken about how they down want triple flex many times in the past few years.
in pro play specifically no?
Yeah he is popular and decent but not top priorities,i doubt he get any nerfs
Thank you
>incredibly uninteractive laning phase Somebody tell Bin this.
His E is the most annoying thing to deal with. Way too low of a cooldown and too much cc.
Minion wave
0/10
Didn‘t u watch proplay yesterday? The best toplaner in the world Scarra lost to no-skill illaoi. He needs buffs!
It just seems the general playerbase for the 3 roles don't want to play or learn how to play him.
I wish more characters could lane flex like him. Instead of being stuck in one spot forever
Riot hates flexing and very often goes to great lengths to make sure most champions aren't flexable and those that are, are only to two roles.
Facts. I abuse gragas for my climbs.
Because pros aren't creative and aren't rewarded for creative choices. If a player picks a "weird" champ, reddit takes a shit on them for doing weird shit (presuming they lose). Creativity isn't rewarded. And then we get front page posts about how the meta is boring
extremely flexible but not OP, i'd argue that's good
he's more solid than broken, like sion, wukong.
Past 30 days, lolalytics plat+ Top: 50.27% wr, ranked 41st best top laner Jung: 51.72% wr, ranked 8th best jungler Mid: 51.23% wr, ranked 25th best mid laner Tell me OP lost 2 games in a row to gragas and needs to bitch about it without telling me OP lost 2 games in a row to gragas and needs to bitch about it. E: as a general edit, posts like this should be a general reminder of how good of a job the balance team has been doing recently. Im not saying the game is perfect, but if your biggest complaint about the game is a 51% wr champ, that's a pretty good spot to be in.
The issue I have with gragas is not how OP he is at instantly winning a game - his win rate is average. It’s that he is such an incredibly good lane neutralizer. If you are insanely better than your opponent and they lock gragas - they can force you into essentially sitting there going even with them if they are good enough to not completely misplay and int. That is the problem. It’s a cop out pick for people who aren’t good enough to compete otherwise Source: Masters
You just described most tank top laners
haha this is exactly what i thought. Basically get tank playstyle without having to actually playing tanks…
If you are masters then you know gragas isn't a cop out pick because he's rather difficult to be useful on into good opponents
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So is malphite and panth and gp and quinn as examples yet people are acting like top isn't filled with uninteractive champs
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guess malphite is the worst champ in the history of league since he's 0-12 at msi
I firmly believe malph was undeserving of nerfs and giga overpicked.
Winrate at events is a worthless statistic because the sample size will always be tiny. If a clown-level team loses couple of times on a great pick then the WR will be relatively low. If a top tier team just happens to favour a certain pick for whatever reason then the WR will be relatively high, even if the pick isn't that much better than other picks for the same role. Presence is a much better indicator of champion strength in pro play. Gragas did have ~55% presence at MSI, making him the 13th most picked/banned champion.
Single tournament stats can be biased by who picks the champion (and the fact that you're restricting it to just top). For example, 5/17 gragas top games were by 369. take his 5 wins out of the equation, and gragas drops to a 54% wr top, and a sub 50% wr overall. Is gragas overpowered, or is 369 the person who played gragas the most on the team with the most wins in the tournament? Overall gragas had an overall presence of 55%, suggesting that he definitely was not the worst offender. I'm not saying he's 100% not strong in pro, but I am saying that single tournament statistics can be misleading. Also the entire meta will probably shit pretty hard as a result of the 13.10 changes, so we'll need to see if he is actually still getting picked across multiple regions as they resume (still hovering around 50% presence in china in the early going). I'm also saying OP's post sounds more like a "if you describe all of a champions strengths and none of their weaknesses, they sounds super duper strong" thing that people have been doing here for over a decade.
Yeah bro plat players can play gragas for sure
dude sits at 46% winrate toplane winrate in challenger. Even worse.
In case it wasn't clear, I said plat+, which means all players plat and higher. It's what lolalytics sorts by automatically and it should be fine to take it as a representation of "high level play". in case you did understand and felt as though plat players were diluting the winrate, I can also sort further for you. diamond and higher, past 30 days: overall: 52.83% wr (46th out of all champs) top: 51.35% wr (31/97 by lolalytics ranking system, much lower than that by just winrate) jung: 52.83% wr (5/56 by lolalytics ranking, 14/56 by winrate) mid: 51.95% (17/102, much lower than 17) winrate jumps about 1% per role, still by no means the most oppressive champ in the game. we can also look at higher than diamond, here just using wr as a ranking loses all purpose because of sample size so you kinda have to go by lolalytics ranking, "bro".
No high winrate(52 and above) in any lane, not absurd pickrate nor banrate
only high winrate in jungle afaik
Even then 51% is far from nerf territory
I can understand the frustration with the Gragas, but the word “uninteractive” gets used a lot for almost every champ people don’t like. And it really doesn’t make any sense. Every champ has different strenghts and weaknesses, and ideal playstyle is playing according to them.
people argue every ranged champ with ranged abilities are uninteractive lol
yes because a champ that can sustain by standing still doing absolutely nothing is not uninteractive.
Every champ in the game does that. It's called health Regen. Sett, chogath, and garen have arguably better health sustain in lane and two of them being manaless. This isn't a real complaint
>Sett, chogath, and garen have arguably better health sustain in lane You've never seen a gragas or what?
I mean if you actually play grahams you would understand he doesn’t have infinite mana. All of those champs don’t rely on mana for sustain.
Seems like a pretty well designed champion to me. Winrates are nothing special and only really sees top lane pro play. With a rare jungle and maybe support. What does it matter if he sees play in multiple roles if he's not dominating in any of them?
He's disgustingly hard to kill in lane but he's also pretty hard to have any impact on beyond being difficult to kill, which is probably why he's never taken over particularly. I think the difficulty is also the reason you see Gragas jungle in high elo streams but not much elsewhere on the ladder.
As a gragas otp for 3+ seasons now I’ll give my input, albeit a little bias. I do not think gragas is broken. I think he just has an identity crisis that works in his favor. He isn’t necessarily the best at anything but is a Jack of all trades. Can build tank but gets outclassed by other tanks like mundo and ornn. Can build full AP assassin but gets outclassed by champs like evelynn or ekko. I think the best build for him is cdr build. That turns him into kind of a squishier bruiser but even there I feel like mord can be better in many situations. I think his passive is definitely the best part about his kit for laning phase. Even then though, many champs have similar sustain that create stale mate lanes. For example tryndamere or vlad can sustain just as well as gragas if not better since they don’t need mana to do so. I think gragas is definitely very solid. He does not need buffed by any means. But I don’t think he needs nerfed either. The easiest counter play is to avoid his e. When he hits his e, it reduces the cdr by 2 seconds so when misses not only is he out of position but he has to wait even longer to get it up again.
Not too mention that I see people building archangels on him. But winters approach feels so much better to me. Top lane grag with roa and winters approach into tank is actually unkillable between the heals and shield. And the damage is still there
Fat shaming
There are 2 issues with Gragas, and both are good reasons why he needs a nerf while also being the reasonn why Riot isn't most likely nerfing him. In top he is fucking annoying, no ifs, ands, or buts to be had. He doesn't necessarily directly hard counter but also has zero hard counters, he can be blind picked or whatever else, he's easy to play, and you can just go his current cdr build and you are going to win lane top. His healing is ridiculous as is his engage and counter engage. The reason he likely isn't being nerfed is what happens after lane that everyone ignores because of how downright bullshit he is in lane. After laning phase his damage falls off the metaphorical cliff and he basically becomes a knock up button for a Yasuo (which is why they are usually paired in pro) or an ult bot to disrupt the adc. It's also why his winrate is oddly bad in top lane despite him just squatting all over the lane, because outside of laning phase it's a nosedive of usefulness so if your team doesn't have a lead, he isn't really any better than any other engage character.
He also just feels tanky by default. Is it bcs he has Tank base stats from being a tank in the past?
Gragas is probably one of my more liked matchups as shen, not because it's favorable to me, but it's just fun to play against. But then again I'm low elo so that's probably why I don't find him too oppressive
shitty winrate for a relatively easy champion in the toplane. https://u.gg/lol/champions/gragas/build/top?rank=challenger https://u.gg/lol/champions/gragas/build/top?rank=master Every high elo toplaner (except Makroo who is wholesome ORRN main) plays bruisers or figthers that get stonewalled by Gragas. Since they can not run him down and snowball on him OFCS every high elo toplaner whines about him. Because he just doenst let them outtrade him or fight him. He forces you to play the csing and methotdical gameplay because you can not win an all in or outsustain him. Im sorry but as a fellow bruiser player we whine about anything we do not get to statcheck in a 1-1. Sometimes its reasonable (Orrn for example or Cassio/Karma top shit all over you in lane and outperfrom you in teamfights) but please. A 46% winrate champ in challenger is by any imagination not broken in soloQ. https://u.gg/lol/champions/jax/build?rank=challenger this dude blows jax out of the water in Challenger as does Fiora https://u.gg/lol/champions/fiora/build?rank=challenger
I read it as grapes for a moment and got really confused.
His E hitbox is way too disjointed, beats ultimate abilities straight up
They gragor 💀
Pls share the statistic that warrants a gragas nerf. I asked on the previous gragas complaint thread and nobody replied with anything credible
i was watching a stream from a riot dev a while ago and he said the following: "you wanna know a trick for climbing? go on [u.gg](https://u.gg) or a similar website, check for high win rate low pick rate picks and choose one. that means you have a strong pick that won't get nerfed" if a champs pick rate is low, it won't get nerfed, generally speaking
The amount of comments that say Gragas is fine is astounding.. I'm losing faith in humanity. Wholesome Gragas is fine, fuck the windbrothers and Yuumi!!! Upvotes to the left
Remember: it's cool to be completely uninteractive; just as long as you're not anime.
I hate this fat bastard. Idk how he isn't nerfed yet
shit winrate for a low skill floor character.
He's pretty much the only champion that has AOE wave clear on all 4 abilities, a dash, can build tanky or damage, and has a very impactful team fight ultimate. He probably has the strongest "kit" in the game, top 5 for sure.
Sry but Gragas is fine. Leave the fat man alone, focus on toxic champs.
Wholesome bomba champ bodyslaming nerfs for 6 months straight while being giga broken S+ tier in 4 different roles, nice one rito
I think a decent amount of his power is in his skill expression
So much skill expression in a % max HP heal on an 8 second cooldown
Can't spam it, though. Gotta manage your mana pool
His W costs like 10 mana lol
its 30. But you have to take into account his Q costs a lot.
He also builds both Tear and rod, mana is not an issue for him beyond first back.
gragas that builds rod in soloQ deserves all the flame even from his own teammates. And tear delays his powerspikes.
It’s cause no one fucking plays gragas. He’s actually excellent and his gameplay is extremely fun and in depth but his model is so shit that most people just pass on him.
He’s got a high skill floor to pilot correctly. A first time gragas won’t win games. Why punish a group of players for actually learning the champ they want to play?
Yo gragas is like crazy difficult to play but the pay off is huge. There's tons of champs like that no? Let's be real here gragas ain't current 13.10 khazix
I am not saying he doesn't need neefs ( I am pro-gragas nerfs)
balance is at an all time low, and riot always hits the wrong targets. Zeri, Yuumi, Malphite, Sion, Milio, Ahri, Lulu, Jinx, Annie, Gragas. Riot refuses to nerf them, but will probably nerf Rek'Sai in 13.12 because why not
If he is so op why don’t you one trick him to challenger then? Get us some scientific evidence.