So, the bonus damage is nice, ofc, for 7 seconds.  Added damage is great in a team fight ofc.  Now, the damage is most useful on champs with some crit chance, so the primary beneficiaries are typically gp + the adc.  More often than not people use it to engage a fight with the minor speed boost, so some time is lost, but sure - its ok an buff at max level. 

He's got nice peel.  But its self peel and he's still generally not going to try to be a front line with his primary damage coming from q.  If he builds somewhat tanky, then that's fine, but self peel is not peeling or a stun for the team (eg less useful). 

The ult is just a 25% slow.... and its so reliable that you might only get 1 hit on an enemy champ with how it works currently.  1 hit.  The slow's in effect the entire time you are in the ult, but I just dont think its that strong. 

I still think it just comes down to him being a lane bully, having a fairly useless ability outside of lane (orange - I mean, seriously - are you going to focus gp in a team fight with your stun if you know his orange is up?  Its like stunning olaf when his ults up... kind of dumb). 

Now, if my choice is between caitlyn and gp in mid, I'd go caitlyn 100% of the time.  Why - because she can do more for the team than some bruiser GP build, or some full glass cannon GP, or some tank GP, or support GP (which sounds swell because of the passive boost, but its quite bad as well).  Knowing what GP brings and only having a choice to play an ADC or GP mid, outside of just wanting to have fun, would anyone wisely choose GP?  If so, why?

1 - yes, no longer serious imo based on that pick.  That's not saying in anyway he's throwing or trying to feed.  That's saying he picked a weak champ (imo) that made it so the other lanes would have to carry to win and that his carrying would likely be staying mid, tossing an ult out here and there, and eventually... after quite some time, taking out his tower.  A safe, selfish pick imo when I asked for a decent pick (a decent champ that might be able to help out or have any positive impact outside of his lane).  Again, its not auto loss... as long as we do well in top and/or bottom.  So, I don't like the pick.  I was annoyed by the pick, but again, all that is the emotional side after feeling trolled a bit already.

With that said, there's also a discussion on why I think GP is garbage. That's 100% unrelated to how cow plays him, etc. That discussion isn't really emotionally based at all imo. 

Not much to offer about GP.  Don't play him.  Can't say I enjoy having him on my team.  Can't say people have always enjoyed me being on their team.  *coughsorrytoeveryoneagainaboutsupporturgotcough*

Playing LAN games is fine.  I was playing in games with Bronze V players not too long ago so I don't judge.  I do like to point out to my pals that playing in games with terrible Brazilian players might skew what they think are effective ways to build champions when they play with/against Diamonds/Plats/Golds.

Don't be sorry that you want to participate in the Gangplank discussion, but I'd advise you try not to come across as someone who'd like people to feel bad that he was trolled by his friends champ selection while he was trolling them with his build.  

While the shells "could" hit once, if you drop one on top of a team fight, odds are you're going to do a few thousand damage, not a few hundred.  It's such a big area, it doesn't suffer from dodging as much, everyone with an escape can't just clear.  Now sure, when you pop it off on one guy it's kind of a waste, but GP mid should be dropping that at an opportune time to help bot lane secure a double.

SOB sexy - i didn't try to troll anyone with my build.  I was upset over crap games and made crap decisions.  GP is still crap.  I didn't troll anyone. My impression was that cow trolled me (as I explained).

That said, please enjoy this video covering my last game of the night. The video is short, but I think anyone that follows this thread will enjoy it (youtube upload now)

http://www.twitch.tv/1pacov1/c/4625301

Yeah - but its just that you hope it does dmg on the right people.  It's pretty much like the crit or old dodge mechanic.  Might be ok, but also probably really unreliable.  His ult needs a major rework imo.  Honestly, I'd be fine with it doing flat dmg to all in its AOE.  Anything is better than "maybe I hits ya."  The thing is, his q is that "maybe" and its also his ult.  Dbl maybe baby

Also - hedgie - this should be in your library or something:

http://imgur.com/a/9Supc

Me picking GP is never a troll. I probably have almost as many games on GP as I do on gragas or ziggs. I mained GP for a while when I started playing and continued to use him for specific counter picks (TF) in other seasons in ranked. I think at one point I was like 15-0 in ranked with GP. 

Could you not summarize support Gragas as very similar?

Both GP and Gragas boast subpar winrates. (objectively a weak champ and thereby unemotional at all)

Gragas is a safe, selfish pick because he's a tanky and mobile support who "accidentally" manages to leach a fair amount of CS. His teamfight impact is selfish and safe as well, compared to more conventional supports. Oh, and if you build him glass cannon, he's really dependent on making sure top and/or mid does really well.

yet I'd consider graggy's ult something that would validate picking him in a team comp.  I just don't think the adv of getting an easier laning phase justifies taking gp due to his mid/late game disadvantages. 

If it only takes one ability to make a champion fit a teamcomp, why does that not apply to gangplank? (both have similar engagement and disengagement value).

Furthermore, GP ult allows him to have some global presence to counter the Karthus. What do you need to do when you're getting 3v2'd + Karthus ult? Run away. GP ult helps you do that and prevents additional deaths. This is "yet another" thing that GP does in that particular matchup.

Maokai, The Mummy, and GP all have AOE ults that Gragas' ult has a lot of anti-synergy with.  Thresh, Nami, Morganna, Leona... so many strong supports that you do know how to play well would have gone so much better with that team, or most teams.  Why not pick one of those if you wanted to have a last game of the night where everyone did their best?

Instead you picked a not that great support that you apparently don't have much experience with while getting worked up that one of your pals picked a not that great mid who he's extremely good with?

I totally understand where Pacov is coming from and can see why he was upset with my pick but I think the important thing is that when I pick GP I am not trolling. Maybe when some one else picks him it is trolling but I actually have a decent amount of experience with him and have had success playing him.

As 1st pick, I didn't really have much control over everyone else's pick (and zero control of whatever crap sy was going to do). It is a fair criticism that I could/should have taken another support, though. 

I am curious to hear a comp where anyone can tell me they actually want a gp on their team vs another champ.  I honestly cannot think of one.

OK.  Fair enough and thanks for saying so.  I definitely would have preferred a different champ as is now very obvious.  I just don't think gp brings anything meaningful to the team outside of early lane dominance in certain match ups. 

Anyway, that's a couple nights in a row where I'm either bent out of shape or getting bent out of shape at the end of the night.  Going to try to call it a night a little earlier I think. 

People need to stop complaining about internal tier lists.

Unless you are in high Diamond or something, you simply aren't good enough such that tier lists matter that much.  A very well played tier 3 champion at least as good as a kind of well played tier 2 champion at our level of play.  We just aren't good enough to consistently exploit somebody like Gangplank's weaknesses in the long term, so the game comes down to individual skill on champions just like it always does.

I mean, I agree that in theory GP isn't a great champion.  But he has a higher winrate than Lucian and Renekton when I checked yesterday.  You know why?  Because tier lists matter a whole hell of a lot less than individual skill on that champion.

I mean, I probably wouldn't encourage a new player to learn to play something like AD Sion top, but if somebody happens to already be good at somebody not currently popular, I don't have a problem with them playing it. (The guy we were playing with the other day is not good with the champions he plays top and is still learning them, so thats another issue...).

Plus, there are a lot of bigger factors that you should be worrying about at champ select.  Namely, team composition.  We have all this complaining about people picking champions that aren't high enough on somebody's tier list, but we ignore MUCH larger problems.

Take last night.  We first picked a top/jungle combo of Nidalee/Eve.  Come on.  Thats TERRIBLE unless we are going for some kind of extreme split push, no teamfighting at all comp.  We get no CC, no front line from our jungle/top.  Nidalee could poke in principle, but Eve can't, so we don't really have siege either.  Then we quickly follow up with a mid pick of Malzahar.  So that doesn't fit at all with split pushing, so we have a nothing comp.

But because those are 3 champs that don't violate anybody's tier list, nobody says anything despite the fact that the game is basically unwinnable (unless the other team is openly incompetent).  But if somebody had picked something that made a better team comp and therefore gave us a better chance to win, but happened to violate a tier list, we would get a 2 day ongoing thread about it.

(I'm not saying that the game in question was lost because of team comp since everybody lost their lanes, but the game would have been lost even with good lanes due to comp).

Karl and I in complete agreement?!  It's a Festivus miracle I tell you.

One thing I will say as a support player is that I feel that a lot "tier strength" of support champions is tied to their "team comp strength" in a way.  Back when Leona and Thresh were considered God Tier, I feel it had a lot to do with picking a tank support really opened up the selection for the rest of your team.  Yes, they were too strong in lane but having a Tank on the team that didn't need gold opened things up for DPS jungles and such.

The top support picks today cover a lot of your teams needs so you don't end up with useless team comps as much, and I think that's why they're the top picks more so than that they're overtuned or too strong in lane or whatever.

Well, I don't think I'm personally going on and on about tier lists as much as I simply believe GP is a weak champ.  It's his jacked up kit that is just smeh.  And I don't believe a game is lost because of a single pick. In the instance I've been talking about, I believe we needed a stronger pick.  But, skip all that and lets talk about tier lists and the meta then.

Now, I generally don't get too sour when I see someone take an arguably weaker champ (based on some tier list or experience).  I'm actually generally ok with that and its fun to play various champs in various roles.  I personally generally dislike meta changes like dbl bruiser bot and just don't find them fun. No tier list involved there... just something I generally don't like.

I also dislike picks that force you into behaving a certain way - all really enforced by a champion pick.  That's not to say some of those picks are bad; I just don't like em.  For instance, a ww jungle means no pressure until he hits 6.  Knowing that, lanes have to adapt and are typically put in a position of having ganks from the enemy team and none for you team.  In short it puts you into a position where you can fall behind, but then have the expectation of getting back ahead once ww hits 6.  Another example is ww mid.  Sure, its a champ that you can pick, have good sustain and do fine, but you generally need a jungler's attention to make anything of that ww mid unless its you are up against a baddie..  Nothing really wrong with doing that, though.  Just not my preference.  WW mid isn't conventional, but it works and he can provide tanky engage for the team later.  GP can win his lane and provide very little later imo. 

But continuing in that, there are gains the team gets out of not just composition, but certain champs.  For instance, a fizz that's either doing well solo or because his jungler got him ahead is a major threat to the enemy team in pretty much all lanes.  A gp is a threat to the other mid laner and that's about it (sure, he has some minor power with his ult, but its just not that good).  Anyway, the biggest benefit I'd expect out of a gp mid lane is for him to keep the enemy mid busy and unable to roam/impact other lanes.  Except if its karthus, then he can still impact other lanes.... so the most I can really hope for is that karth it kept from csing and leveling a bit early/mid.

Anyway, here's where you START to get into tier lists, but also think about team comp.  I can put champs into tiers based on how they would do in a certain role, vs a certain matchup, in a certain comp, etc.  There's nothing wrong with that and its good to be able to think about all of those things.  That said, some champs are certainly better than others at certain things.  I don't get terribly bent out of shape when people aren't picking god tier champs in the slightest.  A god tier champ might be rubbish when played by someone in our group.  Not a big deal and nothing to be dogmatic about. 

I guess my main thought is that I don't super care about tier lists (either?).  I also agree that I would very much like us to think more about composition.  That's more problematic when someone like karl can't muster the words "I'd like to play jungle," ofc.  And when we have certain folks with us (eg that fella that went eve... idk, sy going whatever he felt like). 

But here's where we hit some crap:  let's say I've been playing support all night. I want to play top as nidalee for a game.  OK, now we get some guy that has decided they want to play eve (nothing to do with karl refusing to say "I'd like to jungle" hue).  Well, now I'm in a position of having to be like well... guess I won't play nidalee now (even though I've been playing support all night and just wanted to do one thing for fun...).  So, I have to beg off and go play some other champ. 

So, what should we be trying to do more proactively to get better team comps?  Some of the MC folks just want to play w/e they want to play (I enjoying playing with those particular folks quite a bit less and don't invite them as often).  Thoughts?