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Gangplank Build Guide by

[10.17] Gangplank Mid, An In-Depth Guide [WIP]

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Guide Discussion (4) More Gangplank Guides

Runes: Cometplank

1 2

Sorcery

Arcane Comet

Nullifying Orb

Transcendence

Scorch

Inspiration

Magical Footwear

Cosmic Insight

Bonus:

+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+10% Tenacity/Slow Resist

Spells:

1 2

My Go To

Flash

Ignite

Items

Critplank

Core Item

Starting Items

First Buy Ideal - 1100g

First Buy Cheap - 700g

Boots

Next Items

Example Build

Item Pool

Bruiserplank

Carry Core

Tank Core

Starting Items

First Buy - 1000g

Get one if losing lane

Damage Items

Tank Items

Example Build

Item Pool

Ability Order Main

Gangplank Passive Ability

Hello Everyone!
Welcome to my midlane guide on Gangplank, The Saltwater Scourge

Well, first things first, I'm RageAx and I'm creating this guide because I noticed a lack of other guides on my favourite way to play Gangplank! I really thing GP mid is underrated as he has a fairly strong early game and great scaling into late.

Guide Details

x Intro
x Summary
x Changelog

Champion

x Pros / Cons
x Abilities
x Tips & Tricks

Pre-Game

x Runes
x Team Comp

In-Game

x Items
x Gameplay
x Strategy

Skill Order

Passive - Trial By Fire

Gangplank periodically empowers his next basic attack to burn the target, dealing 55 − 225 (based on level) (+ 100% bonus AD) Hybrid penetration bonus true damage over 2.5 seconds, ticking every 0.25 seconds.

Q - Parrrley

Gangplank shoots the target enemy with his pistol, dealing Attack damage physical damage and applying on-hit and on-attack effects.
Physical Damage:
20 / 45 / 70 / 95 / 120 (+ 100% AD)
Parrrley can critically strike.

W - Remove Scurvy

Gangplank consumes a large quantity of citrus fruit, cleansing himself of all crowd control and healing himself.

E - Powder Keg

Passive: Gangplank periodically stocks a Powder Keg, up to a maximum of 3.
Active: Gangplank places a Powder Keg at the target location for 25 seconds, which connects to other nearby Powder Kegs with overlapping explosion radius.
Gangplank and his enemies can attack the Powder Keg with basic attacks, dealing 1 damage per hit. Gangplank may also shoot the barrel with Parrrley. If Gangplank scores the killing blow, it explodes, also triggering a chain reaction that explodes nearby connected kegs. If killed by an enemy, the keg is safely dismantled.
An exploding keg deals the attack's damage to all nearby enemies, plus bonus physical damage against Champion icon champions, ignoring 40% of their Armor icon armor, as well as Slow icon slowing them for 2 seconds. Enemies can only be damaged once per chain.

PROS

+ Amazing team fight
+ High mid/late game damage
+ Good sustain
+ Self Peel
+ Global ult
+ Unexpected?

While Gangplank is an atypical pick in the mid lane, his high survivability, sustain and damage give him plenty of potential to dominate and carry. Getting a small lead in the early game can lead to a huge snowball when pushing an item advantage thanks to his great scaling. Additionally, his high aoe damage gives him the ability to carry teamfights later on into the game.

CONS

- No hard CC
- Squishy & Immobile
- Vulnerable to bully laners
- Expensive core for a midlaner

On the other hand, Gangplanks low mobility and lack of and hard cc can leave him quite vulnerable to getting caught out if he overextends making him risky to push your lane on. This combined with his need to push waves after his first item, thanks to his passive essentially requiring your E to build effectively, leaves him exposed to enemies with a little knowledge of wave control.

Gangplank in midlane is a very versatile pick, but there is a catch. Compared to toplane, you need a higher level of mechanics to be able to reliably not only survive, but win your lane phase. And that just comes from playing him lots.

On to some actual scenarious for picking GP mid, his extreme AD damage is nice, but if you don't have an extra AP pick on your team, the lack of AP damage will encourage enemies to just build armour and while your barrels have fantastic pen, it will still greatly reduce your overall DPS. So if your team is already very AD heavy, I would strongly recommend giving GP a pass that game and picking an AP midlaner.

In terms of poor matchups, GP actually fairs quite well, most hard CC can be cleansed and ignore thanks to his W but your reliance on this to survive fights leaves you much more vulnerable to midlaners like Malzahar and Azir who have knockups and suppressions that you cannot cleanse. In general I wouldn't necessarily avoid matchups like this but it does require that extra level of precaution to survive.
TL;DR: Don't pick GP if your team is all AD, take extra caution against laners with un-cleanseable CC (Knockups, Suppressions)

SORCERY

is my favourite of the two main rune options for midlane Gangplank. It provides a nice bit of extra poke throughout the game that is pretty difficult to dodge consistently, especially when you proc it with an E and it's accompanying slow. In my opinion it's the most consistent damage rune for carrying with gangplank.

Ideally, using comet, you want to really focus on landing your barrel combos whenever comet is up. The extra damage builds up.

is one of two options here, the other being , and you'll want to swap between the two depending on the circumstances. If they are very AD heavy or if you feel you are struggling balancing your mana usage, you might want to swap out Nullifying for Manaflow.

I Prefer over here as I feel the bonus 10% CDR at level 10 holds you over nicely until you get both and which bring you up to 40% and once you get those two, the bonus AD doesn't hurt.

The choice between and depends on how you want to play the game, scorch gives you a nice bonus to early game poke which, alongside Comet, increases your early kill pressure quite a bit. However, if you are, for example, against a very weak early laner and you want to focus more on your late game scaling, swapping to Gathering Storm here will give you a nice AD bonus.

The only real thing to comment here is just swapping to bonus Magic Resist or Armour Depending on your lane matchup.

RESOLVE

is the second of the two main runes for midlane ganglank. It definitely has great synergy with gangplank since you can get grasp procs off of your Q and your E (when you use Q to blow it up) this allows you to build up a pretty ridiculous amount of grasp stack throughout the laning phase, giving you a nice health and damage bonus going into teamfights.

is my favourite rune here thanks to it's tower pushing potential. In combination with your passive doing true damage to towers, demolish allows you to quickly pick up tower platings whenever your laner is missing.

I really like bone plating for those early trades, taking 30+ less damage for 3 attacks can give easily give you the health lead coming out of an early trade. Especially since Gangplank's damage is no slouch once you pick up a .

is the main choice here, since it works perfectly with maxing it out grants you 45 bonus HP and +3.5% max HP which all adds into Grasp's 4% max HP damage.

The only real thing to comment here is just swapping to bonus Magic Resist or Armour Depending on your lane matchup.

EARLY GAME		MID GAME

Gangplank's laning phase is pretty simple. You have 3 objectives at the start of the game. Poke the enemy to get a health lead Last hit some minions with Q Get Sheen ASAP You want to try to strike a balance between last hitting minions with Q, and using it to poke your laner. If it looks like you're going to have more of a passive lane, try to last hit more with Q, since it gives bonus gold and silver serpents.		Once you pick up your trinity force, Gangplank's E will be able to one shot the caster minions as long as his passive is up. If you combine this knowledge with careful manipulation of the melee minions' HP, you will easily be able to get most if not all of the wave with one barrel. If you get your trinity force late and can't one shot the casters, I would recommend; place a barrel in the middle of the wave, AA it, then place another barrel and kill it with Q One shotting minions is key to GP's ability to farm silver serpents for his R upgrades.

One of the most enjoyable parts of Gangplank's kit are his barrel combos. Since an exploding barrel can ignite another connected barrel, even before it can be exploded normally, it gives GP the ability to create chains of barrels to try and catch his enemies off guard.

Gangplank has 3 main barrel combos, I'm going to go through them and explain their strengths, weaknesses and ideal scenarios

Double Barrel

This is your bread and butter, simple but effective. Simple place one barrel, wait until that barrel is about to tick to 1 hp, place another barrel on the enemy and shoot the first barrel as fast as you can!

Advantages:
+ Easy to do
+ Effective in teamfights
+ Fast set up
Disdvantages:
- Very telegraphed
- Easily Dodged

Triple Barrel

A bit trickier, but more effective in a 1v1. The advantage is that the last barrel is placed After you use Q. This gives the enemies much less time to react to the barrel before it explodes.

Advantages:
+ Easy to do
+ Effective in teamfights
+ Final barrel is hard to react to
Disdvantages:
- Enemies can see the set up and move away
- Long set up

Ghost Barrel

A very difficult combo, but combines the best of both worlds. A super fast set-up with a tiny window to react to. To pull this off, you want to place the barrel just outside of your Q range, queue up the Q on the barrel, then immediately place the 2nd barrel on the enemy.

Advantages:
+ 2nd barrel is nearly unreactable
Disdvantages:
- Really f&!%ing hard

Thanks for reading my guide!

If you like this guide or found it useful, please Upvote and Rep me!

I plan to continue updating this guide with a few more sections in the near future, but as of right now, I think it's in a nice enough state to release to people!

If you have and questions or suggestions, please comment! I'll be sure to get back to you as soon as I see it :)