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Gangplank Build Guide by

AP Gangplank Support

Updated on

6.7

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League of Legends Build Guide Author whitevelcro

Build Guide By

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62,432 Views

5 Comments

8 4

62,432 Views

5 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author whitevelcro

Gangplank Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (5) More Gangplank Guides

Runes:

Resolve

Guardian

Font of Life

Iron Skin

Revitalize

Sorcery

Transcendence

The Ultimate Hat

Spells:

Flash

Exhaust

Items

Starting items

Early purchases

Core Build Example

Alternative Items (by gold efficiency for W)

Alternative items (page 2)

Other items (that don't help your W)

Another build example

Front line vs AP

Ability Order

Gangplank Passive Ability

More Gangplank Counters

Why AP GP support?

The simplest reason to take AP GP support is his ultimate, . GP's ult can turn fights anywhere on the map at any time, and building AP gives it more of a kick.

But there's a second reason AP gangplank is useful and the reason that he makes a good support, despite having much lower damage than AD Gangplank: His heal scales with 90% of his AP and 15% of his missing health (that's a health scaling) and gives him strong sustain.

AP Gangplank is quite tanky. The W heal is strong and rather spammable. While he won't be winning the lane with his clutch barrel combos like he would with AD, the enemy bot lane won't be poking him out easily either, and he can still do a fair amount of damage with his Qs and barrels.

The overall goal of AP GP support is to keep your ADC farming safely while getting your teammates ahead across the map with your ultimate. You have some other functions you can perform. You have a small amount of peel, you are pretty good at front lining and tanking and can also poke a bit. You even have some healing and shields for your team. But the ultimate is your unique advantage and the reason I feel GP support is worth consideration. You give up some pressure from the support role in exchange for increased global pressure in other lanes.

Why not AD GP Support?

While AD GP support is certainly doable, it requires a lot of skill with Gangplank. You are playing a squishy carry champion with a weak laning phase, next to another squishy carry champion with a weak laning phase (your ADC). If you are really good at Gangplank, you can perhaps land the spicy barrel combos and snowball your lane, then get enough gold from the snowball to easily afford some of the expensive damage items AD GP relies on.

The risk of AD GP is that he is very squishy, low mobility, and has a hard time defending himself and hard time landing barrels vs ranged champions early. With great skill, AD GP support can certainly outperform AP GP support, but with moderate to low skill, the lane and game will likely go very poorly. I would imagine the Kleptomancy rune might give you the most gold to try to afford an AD Gangplank build from support. However, if you want to play AD Gangplank, he is much better in other roles. I believe that this tanky AP build is the best way to play AP Gangplank and the best way to play Gangplank as a support.

Abilities

While the safe bet is to max your W, putting some extra points into first gives you stronger early push and poke. If you feel like you are winning lane, leveling Q will probably help you win lane harder early. However, the damage from leveling Q, as well as the extra gold and serpents, are relatively useless outside of early lane. So if you are not winning, avoid putting additional points into this ability and try to set up your barrels strategically.

Maxing first is the safe bet. The extra sustain frees you up to poke and trade more often and to take some of the focus off of your ADC.

Max after . In combat, use your barrels primarily for the slow, to engage or (usually) disengage, as the damage will be relatively insignificant compared to the utility you get from the slow. Outside of combat, use the barrels for vision (you can put them in bushes or the river for a small area of vision), or set them behind you in anticipation of a gank or the enemy bot lane engaging.

The ultimate, : This is one of your most important skills. Use this skill to give your team the advantage all across the map. It's usually a good idea to wait until some enemies are low, so you can see how the course of the teamfight is going and where enemies appear to be moving to, then use your ultimate to turn the fight in your team's favor. You can also use your ultimate to clear minion waves or save retreating allies, but you should try to use it to put your team ahead instead whenever you can. This is your big advantage, so try not to waste it.

Build Philosophy

In post-game stats breakdowns, AP GP tends to do a large majority of his damage as physical damage, about 2/3 physical and 1/3 magic. But he also usually has about an equal amount of healing done as damage dealt, acting mostly as a tank in combat.

The most important stat to get early is CDR. Your ultimate's damage isn't increased significantly enough by buying raw AP, and AD, as discussed before, is unreliable unless you are quite fed or very skilled at GP. CDR lets you have your heal and your ultimate up more frequently, allowing you to get the most out of the build.

While ultimate damage is important, the AP ability you will be using most often is your W. It's helpful to consider both the AP and health scaling from your W when looking for items to buy. I made myself a spreadsheet calculating the gold efficiency of different items based on the scaling on the W.

Look at the spreadsheet or at the listed order of the items to see which are the most efficient for your W.

Runes

The 10% CDR from and cooldown reduction in the second tree make sense, I'm sure. You want more ults because that's how you impact the game the best. However, the sorcery keystones don't really do much for Gangplank support.

The Resolve tree has synergy with your W and also provides the most ways for you to help your ADC. and the shield both help your ADC stay alive and in particular applies to all enemies hit by your ultimate, barrels, or Iceborn Gauntlet field. improves your survivability vs AD carries bot lane and increases your W, Guardian, Font of Life, and any other shields and heals you might have (like a Locket shield, for example).

Example games

This is a game I lost with GP support. I think a losing game is a good example, since it lets you see the weaknesses of GP support as well as the strengths.

Here's another game. This time I did pretty well. They are both low Elo, so they aren't much more than just a proof of concept, but I feel like they demonstrate that this build can work in a variety of contexts.