Gragas has seen a lot of shining tournament and ranked use lately, so people complain about him being too strong. So he got nerfed. I try to get a grasp on why they hit the Ultimate Cooldown and the Body Slam charge speed with nerfs in my following monologue and find out, if they are justified.

There are technically two major groups of mages.
The first more common group around right now are the sustain damage casters. These consists of consorts like Ahri, Karthus, Cassiopeia, Rumble, Swain etc. They have low - mid damage spells as their main damage sources, which are on low cooldown/spammable/damage over time in exchange and therefor making them a more reliable damage source throughout the entire game. Missing one or two spells is not as punishing as they are on low cooldown anyways.

And there are the burst damage casters. These consist of champions like Annie, Leblanc, Veigar, Brand etc. They have relatively high damage spells and spell combinations, putting a lot of damage out in a very short period of time. The exchange often is high cooldowns on these spells to balance them out. So if you miss the spells or use them in a wrong fashion and fail to kill the enemy in one combo, you find yourself waiting for your spells to refresh and therefore doing nothing.

So either you have high damage high cooldown or low/mid damage low/mid cooldown. Both bad or Good in certain circumstances.

Gragas as one of the only viable burst casters right now for specific reasons:

The more often seen mages right now are the sustain damage mages. In lane they can chip away at the lane opponents health easily and force them out of the lane, therefor ruining their game easily. If the burst damage caster misses his spells like Pillar of Flame (which is easily dodged) for example, he cannot retaliate and therefor is at an disatvantage. Often the casters mid also use their spells to clear the minions in order to farm. When the burst mage does that, it makes him vulnerable to free harras by the enemy. The sustain damage caster can farm with his spells AND harras the enemy much more easily.


Gragas, on the other hand, is not only a great burst mage with good AP sclaning abilities, he also has built in lane sustain to survive the poke/harras in form of his passive and Drunken Rage, putting him in an advantage over other burst casters, who are not so lucky.

He also is naturally tanky because he is melee, therefor having better base stats like a bigger HP pool or more and better armor scaling. With the Drunken Rage active bonus, he also gets free damage mitigation on lane AND wins every autoattack battle. Katarina damage mitigation compared doesn't last as long as the Gragas one, but is higher at early levels. Maxing his Drunken Rage early gives him less killing power, but in exchange more sustain/damage mitigation. And the time the damage mitigation/AD buff lasts is so long, he has it up almost all the time.

So Gragas gets free health regen, free mana regen, free defensive stats, free massive AD bonus (which makes Body Slam stronger and enables easy last hits) and has good wave clearing thanks to his Barrel Roll/ Body Slam Combo. Not to mention his free dash to escape ganks or his Crowd Control King ultimate rivaling Janna's Monsoon.

Compare him to a burst mage like Brand, who has no built in escape and lane utility/sustain/tankiness and tell me who is superior in lane. Yeah, the obvious choice would be Gragas.

Also his ultimate lategame would be on such a low cooldown, if the fight lasts long enough and Gragas initiated with his Ultimate, he was most of the time able to use it again as a finisher at the end of a fight.

Gragas just has just too much lane utility for a burst mage and the propably best escape dash for a burst mage, which is not ultimate based and on a pretty low cooldown compared. I say he was a little bit too strong, not necessarily OP though, but the recent nerfs I think did not hit the right spots.
His Ultimate Cooldown might be reasonable as it was pretty low cooldown, but that's it.