Hey, I'm Bigalxo and this is my guide for one of my favorite champions in the league - Gangplank. This is going to be my first guide on Mobafire, so bear with me.

I picked up Gangplank in Season 2 and abused his gold earning potential with the 4 passive gold earning items. When Season 3 rolled around I wasn't playing Gangplank regularly and thought that the new shop would limit his potential but after playing him in the last couple of weeks I realized how wrong I was.

To get the most out of this guide, you should take 10 minutes to read through the entire thing as it details how to get the gold advantage you need to be the biggest threat on the map - and use that threat effectively.

The focus of this guide is to carry Solo Que games where you have little trust in your teams ability (ie. you are going to be afk farming top all game and pushing every tower). Enjoy!

Pros

• Hard to bully out of lane If played properly
• Great against crowd control reliant champs because of Remove Scurvy
• Unreal gold earning potential (one of the best in the game) with his safe farming and extra income from Parrrley
• Can 2v1 mid game if ganked during a hard push
• FIVE abilities to help you engage/disengage! LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL ****! Ghost Teleport Remove Scurvy Raise Morale Cannon Barrage
• Can push all three waves at once! farm top, Cannon Barrage mid, Teleport Bot
• You're a pirate

Cons

• Mana hungry if you miss last hits on Parrrley or use it for poke
• First ten minutes can be hell against duelists like Jax/ Irelia/ Pantheon/ Fiora and if you don't lane swap or get assistance from your jungler this can ruin your entire game

If done effectively, a hard split push can be game breaking in bronze and silver Elo, which is what this guide and its item set is aimed at. As a result - I'm going to give you a run down of exactly what Split Pushing is and how to use it as if you've never played League before.

What is Split Pushing

The idea of Split Pushing is simple - While the enemy team is putting pressure somewhere on the map, you put it somewhere else. League is a game based around using your team's resources as effectively as possible to do as much as you can all of the time. For example - If all five enemies are pushing the bottom tower and four of yours are defending it fine without your help then your presence bottom will be trivial - so run top, ult mid (or ult the teamfight if they NEED it), and be ready to Teleport bot if things get hairy.

Why Does Split Pushing Work in low Elo?

Split Pushing is so effective in low elo because people at that level simply do not understand what it is or how to counter it effectively. Many strategies use this principle and can even be effective into higher elos. For example, Druiddroid made double proxy Singed famous and focusing on nothing but farm and disrupting the enemy team to put pressure on the map and let his team do whatever they want. Play Video

Risks in Split Pushing

There are two risks associated with Split Pushing that you can only overcome with practice.

• Over Extending: A fairly obvious issue. If you're pushing your lane hard you're going to strafe into unsafe territory and increase your death potential. Even in low elo, if you're split pushing all game the enemy team will eventually take notice of you being overextended on your own all the time and you're going to need to have good map awareness of their top jungle to avoid death
• Presence in Team Fights: If you're Split Pushing, it means you're not team fighting. This can be easily avoided by picking up Teleport and using your Cannon Barrage effectively, but poor judgement of whether to push or join your team can mean the difference between a win or a loss. This is overcome by lots of practice, good map awareness and consistent communication with your team (tell them what you're about to do, whether your Cannon Barrage or Teleport is up, whether you'd like them to engage or play passively until you're ready to join them).

Why Split Pushing With Gangplank is so damn good

This is going to be a reiteration of things discussed further in other areas of this guide so I'll just give bullet points

1. Good disengage if caught out of position Cannon Barrage Slow / Remove Scurvy Heal and cc removal / Ghost for move speed / Raise Morale for move speed
2. Fast wave clear once Ravenous Hydra and Statikk Shiv are picked up
3. Cannon Barrage is global so you can have a presence in team fights if you're not with them
4. People underestimate Gangplank as he is underplayed. If you've been farming all game and picked up Avarice Blade and Philosopher's Stone early you should have a massive gold lead and should be able to 2v1 anybody if dueling properly.

Many people believe that Gangplank has a strong early game - which is very very true but often falsely translated into trying to engage the enemy top laner early. Stop doing that. Just stop.

Don't even touch the enemy Top Laner

Most matchups will see Gangplank either go even or lose as trying to poke the enemy is not mana effective and will force you to melee last hits or back all together. If you followed this guide religiously you will have runes that do not promote hard engages but rather going even in farm and not dying - and going even in farm will actually result in you winning because of the bonus gold from your Parrrley along with your early pick up of Avarice Blade and Philosopher's Stone as well as your Greater Seal of Gold plus Quintessence of Gold.

Freeze lane and last hit

Because Parrrley refunds mana if you get a last hit, I recommend freezing lane the second you get there and just wait for the enemy to get sick of farming and try to engage you. By the time they do this your lane should be pushed and you should have let your jungler know to hang around the top side of the map.

When to trade

The fact that Gangplank isn't a very popular champion at the moment, and because you haven't been trading, means that the enemy top laner has no idea what your potential is. You should let your lane push and wait for them to try and poke you under tower.

• Against a melee champion, follow up their trade with a Parrrley straight away, then a few Auto Attacks until they start to retreat and then another Parrrley once they've retreated out of turret range.
• If your opponent is ranged, don't even try to bite back - Just eat an orange. If you can only Parrrley withuot the extra Auto Attacks, the mana cost is simply not worth is and Remove Scurvy is a more mana effective way of negating their trade
• Obviously if your jungler is ganking you should hard engage, but if there is no kill potential stop chasing them and get back to farming (avoid using your Parrrley during a trade unless it's going to ensure they will back or die.
• ONLY CHASE IF YOU HAVE KILL POTENTIAL! THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TIP IN THIS ENTIRE GUIDE! Gangplank's early game is based 150% around making sweet sweet dosh. If you are chasing an enemy who is going to live while your tower is killing minions (walking $$$ signs) you are making poor money decisions and this WILL impact your late game. The extra gold off of your Parrrley and Avarice Blade means that Gangplank last hits are so much more valuable than any other champ in the game. When you have a level five Parrrley and an Avarice Blade, every last hit is getting you an extra TEN GOLD. THAT IS CRAZY. That means that if you kill 30 minions with Parrrley, you have gotten a free kill. Out of nowhere. Plus the gold of 30 minions. Do you get it now? STOP CHASING

When to push

When you've built your Ravenous Hydra - The hard pushing begins. You have life steal and health regen and health regen from your Philosopher's Stone so just stop being a little biatch under tower and start winning this game. It really is that simple - all you need to have 0% death potential is to ward baron (and tri if you're blue side). If your laning phase went well you should have a massive lead and be able to push waves really quickly with your now AoE Parrrley and have heaps of gold to buy whatever you like.

When you're pushing top and clearly the most fed on your team, you're gonna get a lot of attention. If you use bushes effectively enough you can easily kite 2 ranged champions with hard cc by using Remove Scurvy and stealthing in brush while Parrrley is on cooldown.

If more than two enemy champions are on their way up (which you will know because you've placed a Sight Ward at baron or tri) just get out. The aim of the game is to have more gold than the enemy and getting a wave isn't worth getting killed. It all comes back to using all of your resources as well as possible and if you're off the map for 30-60 seconds then that's 30-60 seconds you could have been taking wolves and wraiths or helping your team or taking dragon or just not giving the enemy 300G for nothing.

There is only so much advice I can give here and at the end of the day it all comes down to practice and your ability to play this game. If you are dying a lot because you are responding poorly to pressure they're putting on you then you might not be ready to advance into higher ranks - or maybe its just not the match you are going to carry. Because remebmer, if they're putting pressure on you, it means that they're afraid of how good you are and it lets your team do whatever they want (tell them to take drag or bot tower if all five just killed you top)

Thanks for reading through this guide to Gangplank. I really think the best way to climb the Solo Que ladder is to play champs that scale well and dictate what happens on the map - while playing strategies that people are unfamiliar with and as a result do not have an effective counter to - but still follow the meta so that your bronze/silver team can work around it.

I couldn't fit this in anywhere else, but another little tip I'd like to give bronze and silver players to help your team's chance of winning is to time dragon and baron and tell them 30-60 seconds before they will be up. Dragon has a 6 minute respawn and Baron is 7. Its a super easy thing to say "2458 d" in chat and if you stay on top of it you can get every drag and have a surprising large gold lead for every member on your team as a result.

The principles I set out in this guide can be translated to just about any Auto Attack heavy champ but works especially well with camps that have a global presence like Shen or Pantheon.

Even though he doesn't really have anything that can assist a team, Rengar is insanely good at split pushing in the way that I set out in this guide. By using his Savagery on a tower twice on top of one another (with ferocity) towers are dropped instantly, and picking him up in the jungle means that a successful gank (pushing enemy out of lane or killing them) can be followed up with a tower just about every time.

Thanks Guys! Have fun in Solo Que and buy more Sight Wards