I've played Gangplank alot. Somewhere between 250-300 normal games and can easily say he is my favorite and best character. After playing him so much I've tried many different builds. Everything from the Feel no Fear Avarice Blade stacking to Spamplank to Tankplank. And while I hated to death Feel no Fear's 5x's Avarice Blade or however many it is he used, one day I saw him try go 2x's Faerie Charm and 3x's Health Potion and rush 2x's Philosopher's Stone. Since GP is kind of a mana hog at low levels with Parrrley and Raise Morale spam I decided to give it a whirl and have since enjoyed the benefits of this route.

However I greatly disagree with everything past the 2x's Philo stones and 3x's Avarice Blades. This is mostly because I hate watching fights that unfold where all I can do is skirt around the edges of the battle and only try to Q someone and hope that it's a crit and that I'm lucky enough to land it on someone without being punished for being a glass cannon. Your teammates will loathe you for playing like this too. No one likes to watch their teammates hang back in fights like that especially when they have a powerful auto attack and passive. To play Glass Cannon Gangplank is viable, but you must realize that you won't be able to carry very hard at all against a team with a decent tank.


This is where the "Doing the Feel no Fear2.0" comes into play. By using my item build you effectively are able to unsquish Gangplank and are able to get into team fights and do more than just Q every few seconds.

Pros

- Less squishy
- Extremely high gold generation
- This build allows you to actually participate in team fights
- Mana issues early game aren't very bad
- 2x's philo stones allows you to take some abuse while laning
- Can easily push people out of lane with harass once you've gotten some farm and if you've denied enough

Cons
- Still fairly squishy, can be focus fired down if their whole team gets on you
- Not nearly as much of a dps output compared to spamming a combination of Phantom Dancer, Bloodthirster, Infinity Edge
- Slower movement speed than a build including multiple Phantom Dancers

Marks
I use 9x's Greater Mark of Desolation. I prefer the armor pen marks because your damage is more reliable and thus predictable.

The only other viable choice is 9x's Greater Mark of Critical Chance. I believe that either rune choice will perform similarly over the effect of the game

Seals

I use 9x's Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration. I prefer the mana regen because it allows me to more easily spam abilities. Even after the mana regen rune nerf these runes are still pretty damn good. Remember that the runes were nerfed and base mana regen for everyone was buffed so that the end effect is that your base regen with the runes is pretty much the same.

The only other viable choices are:

9x's Greater Seal of Evasion - Good against a team of power auto attackers, consider stacking Ninja Tabi and swapping the 9 points in offense for 9 into defense accordingly for the dodge talents.

9x's Greater Seal of Critical Chance - In case you love crit that much, however I think the mana regen runes or dodge runes are much better overall choices.

Glyphs

I use 9x's Greater Glyph of Scaling Mana Regeneration. I use these for the same reason I use the mp regen per level yellows.

The only other viable choices are:

9x's Greater Glyph of Cooldown Reduction or Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction. CDR is pretty good for Gangplank considering how good each of his abilities are and being able to spam them more often is always better.

Quintessences

For Quints I use 3x's Greater Quintessence of Movement Speed. These puppies are really nice early game especially considering the fact that you don't pick up boots until a solid 1700'ish gold into the game and your first skill is E. This will give you a nice base move speed comparable to most champions with boots. They also help you get in and out of Q range for harass or farm.

The only other choices are:

3x's Greater Quintessence of Health for more hp at the start of the game.

3x's Greater Quintessence of Critical Chance for all you crit lovers out there.

3x's Greater Quintessence of Desolation for more armor pen.

With this build I start out with a pretty strict first few items. First I begin with 2x's Faerie Charm and 3x's Health Potion. I like to try and hold out until level 6 and enough gold to at least buy 2x's Philosopher's Stone. I wait until level 6 so I can ult my lane and kill the creeps if I have to on my way back. Next I build Boots and 3x's Avarice Blade. My starter items are complete when I turn my boots into Ionian Boots of Lucidity and one of the AB's into Youmuu's Ghostblade.

The next two items I build are Warmog's Armor and Atma's Impaler. It doesn't really matter which order you build these two in, but my personal prefence is Warmog's before Atma's. I usually trade a stone for the warmog and a blade for the impaler.

Finally my last two items are Trinity Force and Infinity Edge. Again it is more personal prefence which of these two you get before the other. But I usually find myself buying the Trinity Force first because it seems to benefit me more.



Explanation for Warmog/Impaler before IE:
By giving GP Warmog and Atma's Impaler you greatly improve his survivability vs most melee damage and harass while also boosting your AD and crit. Also think of the Atma's as a cheaper version of the Infinity Edge, especially after the warmog's. For almost half the price you gain about 75% of the benefits ad/crit wise. If you bring up that IE gives 50% more crit damage then let me just remind you that Atma's gives you 45 armor which makes you even more resilient.

Other Item choices are:

Banshee's Veil - Really good for a heavy AP team.

Ninja Tabi - Really good for that ridiculously powerful full on AD/auto-attacker team.

Randuin's Omen - A pretty good alternative for Warmog in case you want more armor and the active.

Guardian Angel - A really good item. Offers a good balance between MR/armor and a pretty good passive as well.

Sunfire Aegis - Another good alternative to Warmog's

Spirit Visage - A real niche item with CDR/MR/HP/Increased healing done to self.

Frozen Mallet - A pretty good replacement item instead of Warmog's. I'm not sure if Frozen Mallet and the phage proc from TriForce stack, so keep that in mind.

I go 9/0/21 for a few simple reasons. For most of the game, until you are able to farm up atma's/warmog, all your dps is very Q-centric. Because of this Offensive talents like Alacrity are mostly wasted. Also since you will be very much spamming your E to deny and your W to be able to escape ganks and heal yourself, the talent Sorcery becomes far more valuable. Personally I find 15% spell pen to be kinda useless for your ult. I mean really you don't stack any spell pen so it's not really helpful. Also make sure you pick up the crit% talents and improved Exhaust.

The 21 points in Utility are pretty standard. Not much you can swap around for in this tree that would benefit you more.

I believe that there are only a few viable summoner spell options for GP.

Good Summoners

Ghost - Extremely good for chasing and escaping, especially when used with a well timed Remove Scurvy

Exhaust - Extremely good for chasing and escaping during laning. For team fights this summoner is ridiculously good at shutting down the enemy team's carry for a short time or can completely negate an extremely powerful ultimate from heroes like Kennen or Fiddlesticks.

Flash - This summoner spell is extremely situational. Offensively it is rather useless since the best you can do with it is Flash + Q. This is great in that you net a kill, but bad that in now it's on cooldown and can't be used defensively. Defensive wise though it is a pretty good summoner if you can pull a "Hat Trick".

Less Viable or Useless Summoners

Cleanse - You have Remove Scurvy. It's on a much shorter cd and can remove suppression. Get something more useful.

Ignite - You have Grog Soaked Blade. The true damage aspect is nice but there are better summoners that you can get.

Teleport - This summoner has some applications that are very niche and so has some uses. It can be used to get yourself closer to a teamfight that you can contribute to, or it can be used to teleport yourself to a tower to defend it. Before you take it, let me remind you that Cannon Barrage is a global ultimate and can be used to defend a tower from a creep wave usually long enough for another closer by hero to get there.

Clarity - While you might use this summoner once or twice in the first 10minutes of the game. Late game it will be completely useless. Seriously get something else.

Heal - Very niche uses. Primarily used to bait someone into doing something they shouldn't early game. Late game is pretty much useless.

Clairvoyance - Pretty niche. Unless you're "God Hands McGee" I doubt GP can put much use to this because you'll already be really busy trying to deny and last hit with q. What I mean is you can take it but you probably won't be able to maximize the use of it because of your duty load.

Fortify. Rally. Revive - NO. End of Discussion.

Gangplank is a little bit different from most melee champs in that at some point no matter what your opponents in lane do you will never be 100% zoned. This is because you can always deny your own mobs which make your creep wave weaker than theirs. This means that their creep wave will always push no matter what they do. With this in mind I want to stress that when playing as Gangplank have patience, patience, patience. Don't get greedy trying to last hit mobs if it means you have to get in melee range when vs. a match-up that can make you regret it like ashe/shen. Just wait until the creeps get closer to your tower and last hit what you can, rinse and repeat.

Some tips on laning and how to tailor your creep wave with Raise Morale are:
1.) When possible always deny the siege creep, it's worth the most gold/xp to the enemies and pushes the hardest

2.) When there isn't a siege creep, deny one of the melee creeps, they have the most hp/armor so it's like taking a little tank out of the creep wave.

3.) When possible try to only last hit very low hp mobs with Q, this will help their wave push by avoiding killing the other minions with more hp.

4.) Try to create an equilibrium right in front of your tower. What I mean is, auto attacking is fine only when you're evening up the creep wave so that the wave is just outside of your tower's attack range. This will take some experience to master as a technique but when you're solo will be a very powerful skill to master. (I find in duo lanes this is almost impossible to do because your partner is almost always an auto attack ******* ****** and will ruin your "masterpiece").

5.) Try your hardest to at least wait out to 1320gold and level 6 so that you can go back to base and buy 2 philo stones. Also level 6 helps out a lot because you can use your Ultimate to cover your lane while getting back to your lane. I find it's most effective to wait until the enemy creep wave stops moving and won't be moving for a time period of 20ish seconds and aiming it at the center of the wave.

6.) Post level 6, always try to peek at other people's lanes and try to see if you can help them by ulting. Remember your ult isn't just for damage it has an extremely potent slow and if RNG(Random Number Generator) is on your side can be used to help your teammates get away by snaring their pursuers.

7.) Remember that just because "laning phase" is over that doesn't mean you have to stop farming. If you see a wave of creeps that you can farm and no one on your team is moving over to kill it, then by all means go take care of it. Just remember to always keep an eye on your team and where the enemy is headed. That way you can anticipate a gank and escape beforehand (this will take some practice to master) or you can try to ult for your team if they need it and then head over there if you can do anything.

I thought this deserved it's own section because I believe that most players will need some convincing on why gold/10second items are decent and that there is a sort of intuitive myth involved with them that can be debunked with some logic and math.

Philosopher's Stone
Initial Cost: 800gold
Resale Value: 400gold
Net Loss: 400gold (800-400 = 400)
Gold per Minute: 30
Time Needed to Make Profit: 13.3minutes ([400/30] = 13.3)

Avarice Blade
Initial Cost: 750gold
Resale Value: 375gold
Net Loss: 375gold (750-375 = 375)
Gold per Minute: 30
Time Needed to Make Profit: 12.5minutes ([375/30] = 12.5)

Heart of Gold
Initial Cost: 975gold
Resale Value: 488gold
Net Loss: 487gold (975-488 = 487)
Gold per Minute: 30
Time Needed to Make Profit: 16.23 minutes ([487/30] = 16.23]

The inherent myth with these items is that when you've purchased your third Avarice Blade 22minutes into the game that it won't pay itself off until 34minutes into the game. This isn't true because you're neglecting the gold generated from the other items in your inventory so if you have 2x's Philo stones and 3x's Avarice Blades then you are generating 150Gold per Minute and it will only take 2.5minutes for your Cumulative GPM to pay off the new Avarice Blade(assuming the other items have already paid themselves off).

GPM is also very important because it helps compensate for the fact that GP won't always be able to get 100% of the creep in his lane due to having to duo lane or having a tough match up to go against. Because of this, try to refrain from prematurely selling items in order to buy pieces of the items in the Core Item Build. Instead try to buy the core items as whole items.

These are some scores I recorded over the past few days of me playing GP using this build in normal games.


In case it's too hard to read. The enemy team's Lee Sin said
"So sad. GGmoneyplank. They let you farm all game or something?"

I thought it was funny because I had already decided to name this guide Goldplank and this guy went and said that lol. But if you look at the graph you can see this build does exceed at gold generation seeing as I farmed almost double the gold anyone else farmed except for one other player. I should say though that in this particular game I also farmed up 150cs and went 5/1/8. So the possibility exists that even more gold could have been farmed seeing as 150cs falls short of a perfect cs in a 29minute game.