My name is CaptainBattlaxe and I have been playing GP midlane since season 7. Back then I saw the "Who is Tobias Fate" video and instantly fell in love with the champion. I want to make this GP mid guide to get rid of some common mistakes people make, and to show you that GP mid is a viable pick that can solocarry games and is super rewarding to learn. My peak elo is plat 1, and this season I will go for diamond. I have roughly 2 Million mastery points as GP mid across my accounts.

I stream on: https://www.twitch.tv/captainbattlaxe

I also make YouTube videos from time to time: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVe9cBYEhvRtOL_dUvNtCZQ

Here I will just list some absolute basics about your abilities.

Passive: GP's sword will be on fire occasionally. If you whack something with it, it will deal a boatload (hehe) of true damage which scales with AD. It resets if you destroy a barrel. This is your main dueling tool and resetting your passive mid-fight will win you most 1v1s.

Q: Parrrley! You shoot a pistol. That's it.

Jokes aside, your Q is your main poke tool. It allows you to farm from a save distance and annoy your opponent. It procs on hit effects, that's why we build sheen ASAP. Killing an enemy with Q gives you bonus gold and a GP exclusive currency called "Silver Serpents". This currency is used to upgrade your ultimate, I will get to that later.

Your W, Remove Scurvy, is an on-demand heal that cleanses you from CC. It has a short cast time, so if you feel extra spicy you can cast it BEFORE you are hit by something (like an ashe arrow) and basically insta-cleanse the CC. It also heals more the lower you are, so holding it in a duel for when you are somewhat low HP gets you more healing out of it.
Some tricks:
You can orange morde ulti.
Knockbacks and Knockups can NOT be oranged. The way they work is, that you are stunned while flying. You CAN cleanse the stun, but not the displacement of your character. So if a lee sin kicks you, and you orange while flying, you can then use FLASH to cancel the character displacement, essentially flashing out of a Lee Sin kick.
You can orange Warwick/Malz ult.
You can orange Yasuo ult (but still take the damage)

Your E, the BARROLS! You can hold 3-5 depending on abiltie level. They are your main damage source and you can blow them up with either Q or an auto attack. If you place barrels, and the outer circle overlaps with another barrel it will connect with a little powder chain. If you now blow up one, the other will also blow up. That's the main skillcheck when playing GP and what makes the champion the most interesting and fun champion in the game. I explain the combos later in the guide. Blowing up barrels with Q and killing minions with it will yield you the bonus gold and the silver serpents from all minions killed.

Your R, CANNONS! Cannon Barrage is your ultimate. It is a global AOE ultimate that rains down waves of cannon balls. They slow and deal okay damage. With the silver serpents you farm with your Q you can upgrade your ult. The upgrades are:

Fire at Will: Here you shoot cannonballs at Will Smith.
Here your ultimate will get more waves of cannonballs over the same duration, leading to more DPS. The waves get faster over time, so the enemies have to stay in your ultimate for full effect.

Death's Daughter: A massive mega-cannonball will rain down in the middle at the start of your ulti. It slows more, and deals 300% true damage. This 300% is based on the damage of one wave of cannon balls.

Raise Morale: Allies in your ultimate get movespeed.

The general order is: Fire at Will -> Raise Morale -> Death's Daughter

If you have heavy CC on your team you can also go: Fire at Will-> Death's Daughter-> Raise Morale

The reason why I prefer GP mid over top is because the matchups feel a lot easier. There aren't as many hardstomp matchups in midlane as there are in toplane. It generally feels like you can win every matchup with skill and knowing your damage and the enemy cooldowns. Enemy champions don't get super tanky, allowing for a more engaging and bursty playstyle that I really enjoy.

With midlane being short, GP has a way easier time survivng ganks. While on top lane you basically flash or die, midlane allows you to outplay your opponent and kite back to your tower when ganked. Being able to roam top and botside jungle also gets you a lot of kills in jungle brawls, making you snowball faster.

The weaknesses of GP mid are, that following certain champions (mainly assassins) will pretty much lead to guaranteed deaths. Generally GP is not a great roamer before level 7, so your team can potentially tilt if you phsically can not follow a talon roam on level 4.

Other than that, GP is basically like an AD mage. You have very clear damage windows with your barrels, you can poke over long range and have big slows to set up ganks for your jungler.

Explaining the different combos is difficult with text, so I will link you my own barrel combo guide here:

https://youtu.be/9U_YsUnEbsc

GP has a very strong level 1 IF you manage to whack your opponent in the face. Your Q and passive allow you to deal more damage level 1 than most other champions, but obviously it is very difficult to reach ranged champions and melees if they know how to space you. You generally want to spam your enemy with Q and pop one corrupting potion level 1 to sustain against their poke and to keep your mana healthy.

Level 2 is insane. If you managed to get 3-4 Q's on your opponent level 1, they should be at around 60-70% health. If you now manage to connect a barrel with an autoattack, you can destroy your enemy. Do AA Barrel-Flash-Auto+Ignite-Auto (if possible)-Q . That should be first blood. GPs level 2 is as strong as talons in my opinion, use it. This is the part where you can start snowballing.

After level 2 we fall off a little bit until our first back. If you don't get your kill level 2, keep poking your enemy and taking as much farm as possible. You generally don't want to farm with your Q in early game to save mana for poke, unless you have to Q to get the farm. If everything went perfectly you can reset after the first cannon wave and buy either sheen or longsword.

From this point, you keep poking you enemy with your Q and look for kill opportunitys. You generally always want to stand on or close to a barrel to have threat. Barrels can be used offensively and defensively. Remember that hitting things with your passive and blowing up barrels gives you movement speed. That is great for chasing or running away. If you play against a CC laner and/or jungler, you want to keep your orange ready for ganks. If you fight Syndra/Elise for example, and you get hit by Syndra stun, you want to generally keep your orange for Elises cocoon, this is situational though.

At level 6 you get your Cannon Barrage. Here you want to start looking at other lanes (the F-Keys are helpful to quicky check your lanes). Look for supportive ults when your jungler ganks or to help your team survive. You can turn the outcome of fights globally, so make sure to use it!

At level 7 the barrel decay rate gets faster. This is where you can start to look for roams and play more agressively. You should be the one who knows how to time your barrels the best, so do so according to your own skill. At around level 8-9 you should get your Essence reaver or get close to it. Thats the first big powerspike and at this point you can start farming minions with barrels.

Moving on to the midgame, we have to identify GP's powerspikes and strengths.

Power spikes:

Level 2 (BIG)
Sheen
Level 6
Level 7 (BIG)
Essence reaver
Prowlers/Duskblade
Level 13 (BIG)
Triple Critcloak (BIG)
Infinity Edge (BIG)

Strengths:

Splitpushing and dueling if you are good with barrels
Gold lead because of runes and Q passive
Teamfighting once you are level 13 and have somewhat consistent crit (3 cloaks)
Destroying tanks and squishys (we don't discriminate with one shots)


So with that being said, splitpushing until you have 3 crit cloaks or IE and 2 crit cloaks and level 13 is usually what I do. If my early game went well, the enemy team usually needs two champs to contest me. GP is also really good at running and kiting, so you will guaranteed win time for your team. A general rule of thumb when it comes to splitpushing is to be on the opposite site of the current objective. So if drake is up, you wanna be top lane to draw enemies away from drake. If baron or herald is up, you wanna go bot for the same reason.

At level 13 you can start grouping and obliterating in teamfights. Teamfighting on GP is honestly a pure skill, positioning and knowledge of your combos thing. It is hard to put into words what goes into teamfighting well, but generally it is this:

Focus on your barrels. They carry fights.
Know enemy abilities and their ranges. Use range advantage if you can.
Be prepared for dives. Adapt your combos quickly.
Be creative with barrels. Do stuff the enemy won't expect (like barreling over walls)
Know your focus target. Is it the 1/9 Caitlyn or the 12/3 Irelia? Don't tunnel on ranges/adc's if it's not needed.

Thanks for reading my guide. If you have any criticism, improvements or questions let me know in the comments. I hope I could ignite a flame in you for GP midlane. If you want to see some GP content, follow my twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/captainbattlaxe) & sub to my YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVe9cBYEhvRtOL_dUvNtCZQ). Much love, stay save.


CaptainBattlaxe