Poison is for ninja not pirates (Gangplank Rework)[]
I would like to discuss the state of Gangplank, the Salwater Scourge. Gangplank is a pirate. It seems that many people at Riot Games™ have not noticed that Gangplank is a pirate, or perhaps have a wrong idea of what pirates are supposed to do. Pirates are supposed to acquire to treasures and to shoot people in the face in order to acquire more treasures, which they do with such raw overflowing testosterone than simply picking Ganplank on the selection screen should instantly make you grow a beard or at least a modest stubble. A pirate is definitely not supposed to poison his enemy and wait for them to die, as it is the cowardly way of the ninja. Ironically, none of the ninjas in League of Legends actually use poison which speaks much of the quality of the champion design that has been put into this game. I have decided to make the following Gangplank rework since I am smarter than Riot Games™ in every way.
INNATE: Booty Expert[]
Gangplank generates a stack of treasure every time that he strikes a target, up to 2 + (1 × level) maximum stacks. When Gangplank inflicts the killing blow on an enemy, the stacks are consumed and Gangplank gains an equal amount in gold.
ABILITY: Parrrley / Rearm[]
ACTIVE: Gangplank shoots a fast projectile that deals physical damage to the first enemy unit. Additionally the target is briefly slowed by 50% for .5 seconds. Parrrley cannot critical hit but scales linearly with critical hits, causing the ability to inflict 1% more total damage for each 1% chance of critical hit that Gangplank possess. This bonus damage is then increased by critical hit damage modifiers.
REARM: Parrrley instantly comes off-cooldown whenever Gangplank uses another one of his abilities.
- Physical damage: 10 / 20 / 30 / 40 / 50 (+ 100% AD) (+ critical hit modifiers)
- Range: 600
- Cooldown: 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 / 4 seconds
- Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 mana
ABILITY: Remove Scurvy[]
ACTIVE: Gangplank eats a large amount of citrus fruit, instantly removing any active poison effect and restoring some of his missing health and mana over 3 seconds. Passive: Gangplank reduces the duration of all crowd control effect on himself by 1% for every 100 HPs that he currently possess.
- Health and mana restore per second: 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 10% of missing health and mana
- Cooldown: 20 seconds.
- Cost: no cost
ABILITY: Attack Signal[]
PASSIVE: Gankplank passively gains 2/4/6/8/10% additional attack damage and movement speed.
ACTIVE: Gangplank launches an attack signal, ordering nearby friendly minions to automatically attack by priority the nearest enemy champion. Using Attack Signal also causes Gangplank to temporarly benefit from the passive bonus stats for three times the normal amount for 2 seconds.
- Passive AD and movement speed bonus: 2% / 4% / 6% / 8% / 10%
- Bonus during activation: 6% / 12% / 18% / 24% / 30%
- Range: 600
- Cooldown: 20 seconds
- Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 mana
ABILITY: Cannon Barrage[]
PASSIVE: Gankplank's Parrrley ability gains 100/200/300 range.
ACTIVE: Gangplank signals his ship to fire a cannonball barrage upon a target 600-radius area for 6 seconds which grants vision of the area. Enemy insides the area receive physical damage every second and are slowed by 25%.
- Passive Parrrley range bonus: 100 / 200 / 300 range units
- Physical damage per seconds: 50 / 75 / 100 (+ 50% AD)
- Range: Global
- Cooldown: 120 / 115 / 110 seconds
- Cost: 100 mana
Booty Expert
The primary purpose of Booty Expert is to remove Gangplank's old innate which smells so much of Ninja that I can feel my beard growing backward in time simply by looking at it. Inflicting damage over time is something that definitely damages the sheer manliness that Gangplank should radiate by all law of men and nature.
The secondary purpose of Booty Expert is to build upon the theme of Gangplank's character, which from what I understand, is to be a greedy greedy pirate who would stab his own grandma with a Blade of Avarice just to plunder her cookie jar. I believe that the implementation of a grandma-stabbing passive would be problematic from the point of view of game mechanics and therefore I am ready to settle by simply affixing to Gangplank a proper gold-income effect. The gold-income effect of our favorite pirate is currently affixed to his pistol, much to my dismay. Shooting people in the face is supposed to generate a lot of noise and a lot of fun but it hardly a proper method of modifying the balance of your back account. Do not get me wrong, I firmly believe that shooting people in the face is very fine hobby and I heartily encourage it for the health benefits. However I would rather transfer the gold-income part of Gangplank's kit away from his gun and unto his innate passive.
Finally, the third purpose of Booty Expert is to convey that Gangplank clearly has sufficient history with Miss Fortune to have become an expert on the subject of booties and how to assess them properly.
Parrrley
The purpose of Parrley is to shoot people in the face. I recommend that Gangplank does this as often as possible for purely spiritual reasons. Hence I have decided that Parrley should inflict much less damage per individual shots in exchange of coming off cooldown whenever Gangplank uses another one of his ability. I have also decided that Parrley should be a skillshot and should scale linearly with critical hits, which I am not even going to justify because it is awesome. Also the skillshot should be very fast, like not the speed of light but maybe as close you can get, you know what I mean? Bang bang bang, arggh, arrr landlubbers ahoy, bang bang bang, get treasures. Pirate lyfe.
Interestingly, both of Gangplank's other basic abilities do not require a target and can be used to refresh Parrrley's cooldown with but the press of a button, which should make the process shooting more people in the face very smooth and instinctive.
Lastly, Gangplank is designed to have a humble amount of crowd control effect since his attacks and his pistol used to provide a slow. I have decided to move this portion of his kit to his pistol shot, hence his pistol shots have a powerful yet brief slow that is designed to halt opponents in their track for a barely perceptible split second. This will give a satisfying sense of stopping power to Gangplank's bullets, which is a necessary component because using Parrrley is the most satisfying thing in the world and it definitely deserves a little extra oomf.
Remove Scurvy The purpose of remove scurvy is to make the summoner look at the abilty and then realize "hey that's a costless ability that you use every now and then for the purpose of lane sustain and which conveniently allows you to perform a double shot with Parrrley!" and then I will be standing behind this summoners in spirit form and I will nod at their incredible wisdom. Yes, the secret purpose of Remove Scurvy is to make Gangplank shoot more people in the face. Shoot, eat oranges, shoot again. Is there anything that oranges cannot do? Nerf oranges please.
I guess that for the sake of professionalism we might also discuss how Remove Scurvy does not provide CC removal anymore. Gangplank can never be balanced unless CC removal is stripped from his kit. This effect belongs to Ultimates and Summoner Spells, not a basic healing ability. Instead, Remove Scurvy now remove all active poisons on Gangplank. This is utterly useless but it is there just in case Riot decides to release a ninja champion which actually uses poison. To slightly compensate for this huge removal, I have decided to add a humble amount of passive Tenacity bonus to Remove Scurvy. This should somewhat keep up with Gangplank's design as a CC resistant champion. It is much weaker than what is used to be but the new pistol-reloading side-effect of Remove Scurvy is more than attractive by itself.
A whiny person may argue that the new Remove Scurvy seems to provide way too much health, due to the fact that it restores an impressive 30% of Gangplank's missing health. This opinion is wrong and weak. A greedy pirate that wants to roleplay as an AD carry will have around 2000 Health at level 18. If that pirate is running around at half-health (1000) and uses this ability, he will gain around 280 health. In comparison, the old Remove Scurvy provides with 360 health, instantly, not over 3 seconds, and it actually has a scaling. Hence, when you give the matter a closer look, the restoration effect is not as appealing as you might thing. Its purpose is to give Gangplank a manly burst of stamina when dancing in the face of death. It is weaker than the majority of abilities in the game that focus on healing.
In case you ask why this ability also restores mana, the answer is that it will help Gangplank shoot more people in the face.
Attack Signal
This ability isn't called Raise Moral anymore because it is archaic and also dumb. The new ability that is know as Attack Signal has the exact same animation but now serves as an aggressive laning tool which orders all nearby minions to aggressively attack Gangplank's opponents. This reflects Gangplank's quality as a pirate captain that brims with authority and who have no problem whipping a crew into shape. In fact this skill is vastly underpowered since Gangplank should instantly acquire every minion and neutral unit in the game as a permanent pet unit due to his indomitable captain swag.
From the perspective of game mechanics we might also discuss how being able to send minions after an enemy champion on command will add trickiness to Gankplank's laning phase. Due to being a melee champion with no shield or defense-boosting skills, Gangplank has a very weak laning phase. In the majority of match-ups he cannot swoop down and last-hit an enemy minion without paying for it. His only offensive ability can be used for last-hitting but then Gangplank becomes passive in the lane, unable to last-hit minion on his own due to focusing all his offensive potential on simply keeping up in gold. Therefore it is clear that Gangplank requires a trick in order to keep opponents on their toes while he swoops down to last-hit a minion. Attack Signal is this trick. It is also an AD deathcap and burst of speed for 2 seconds. Speaking of which, the 30% movement speed bonus over 2 seconds is not very interesting compared to the 20% movement speed over 7 seconds of the old raise morale. This is a sacrifice that I am willing to make to allow Gangplank rush quickly into people's face and repeatedly shoot them in the aforementioned face.
You will notice that Attack Signal does not buff allies anymore. Team buffs have been stripped from Gangplank's kit simply due to the fact that Gangplank is a greedy bastard who should only buff himself. If you wish to play a team cheerleader or aura prostitute then I advise that you select a different champion in the pre-game lobby. Gangplank is no support, although he can be an inspiration to your personal life. I am willing to concede that Gangplank is a testosterone tyrannosaur with disturbingly beguiling chest hair that has drawn more than one bead of sweat down the face of the average Summoner but it is my strict belief that this purely platonic love of all things manly should not spill into the virtual world. The only buff that Gangplank should be providing is accelerated beard growth.
Cannon Barrage
Cannon barrage. I changed it. It's not random anymore. Do we care? We don't care. Look at that parrrley bonus range, yesss oh baby that's what I'm talking about. Pew pew pew. Parrrley can shoot 4 times in a row if Gangplank exhausts his entire kit, and landing each of these skillshots at maximum range is the kind of stuff that will make the crowd go wild with uncontrollable love and admiration for the Scourge of Saltwater.
Conclusion
You are free to leave feedback on this page but but I highly discourage you from doing so since I already know that this rework is perfect in every way.