Talk:Gnar/@comment-7460908-20140908180827/@comment-6281696-20140911230209

8 to 20 seconds on what's supposed to be your main, and pretty much only active, skill for most of the laning phase is absurdly long. And frankly, any skill that reduces by over 50% in CD by simply leveling has a bad CD if it isn't an ultimate, either it starts too high or ends too low, especially if it's your bread and butter skill. Even at max rank the base CD, so when you fail to catch it for whatever reason and yes you will occasionally miss at crucial moments, you're not perfect either, is on the high side given that it's still your main and only active trick. Also, the fact that it absolutly requires you to catch it to have an even remotely acceptable CD is bad, you will eventually be punished hard for that mechanic as eventually you will miss or your opponents will abuse it to hit you with something hard (e.g. Fizz predicting where to fire his ultimate based on it).

Furthermore, the thing has abysmall values until max level (at which point it finally has normal base-values), which is made even worse by Gnar's lack of offensive stats in his build. Furthermore, the actual potential for poke is kind of ruined by how the thing works with respect to being blocked by minions, the range advantage becomes fairly insignificant if there's a host of minions to hide behind and the damage becomes even more pointless due to the 50% damage reduction for secondary targets.

O yes, as long as I dodged rupture I could more or less farm thanks to the mobility/range. Which is why my farm was still decent, at least until Cho got enough defenses to simply stop caring about my damage since he was slowly building a lead over time. It however did make it an increadibly obnoxious lane as pretty much everything was a danger zone. Now as for his spikes hitting me, I was specificly refering to situations where I was trying to poke him. I might be trying to position myself in such a way that he can't do that, but Cho isn't an idiot either, so you get a nice dance around the blob of minions and never a situation in which I can trigger W frequently without getting attacked several times myself. And since Gnar's sustain is well close to nonexistant, while Cho's sustain is brilliant, that'd mean Cho'd win the trade for the most part, or at least that I couldn't reliably push him below say 70% health, at which point I'd have to hang back & wait for mega's regen to actually be able to try again. But yes, with respect to "poke" Cho's not the worst I faced, since his attacks are reasonably easy to avoid for the most part. However, it was good enough to allow him to trade to a high enough degree thanks to Gnar's lack of sustain and just overal stats.

As for Cho combo immeadiatly chunking of a good chunk; the issue isn't that you get punished significantly for being caught. The issue I have with that is that his full combo resulted in significant overkill, at least until later on when I got a banshees or something, which I don't find interesting to play against, though this is more of a general issue mobas appear to be suffering from with the whole obsession with  "plays" than that it is an issue specific to (mini) gnar. I find (near) instant dead boring as it basicly removes any sort of interaction since well it's freaking instant, and thus doesn't allow for much back and forth in a fight just who hits/screws up first wins/loses, I simply prefer more prolonged fights with more actual well fighting.

Gnar's kiting is overrated since he instantly dies the moment he is caught, at least before he has a nice build goin. Which is basicly the entire problem for his early game. His laning phase is reduced to manicly trying to stay out of range of the bruiser you're facing while simultaniously trying to push farm & keeping your opponent low enough to prevent him from tower diving and any mistake being fatal. Which is not what his kit is good at. His kit is good at kiting, but you don't freaking do that all that often in lane, there's simply not enough lane for that. Not to mention that the need to last hit means you need to get in range for most of them to be able to hit you with their long range attacks, or in some cases even engage. Late game, when you actually get the space to kite, your passive actually gives a significant stat boost, and you finally have the survivability to survive say a jarvan jumping in your face for long enough to actually get out of his way again, then is when his kit starts to shine, and suddenly becomes actually interesting.

Anyways, pretty much all arguments you're mentioning rely on (near) perfect play on Gnar's side (and in some cases arguably on quite bad play from an opponent, e.g. the whole "dodge everything always" argument is kind of bullshit if your opponent is even remotely capable). Which isn't something a champion should be balanced around since humans aren't perfect, and opponents not moronic. And even if you'd argue that it's balanced for the pro's and they are better than me (obviously), so are their opponents. Since they are equals I don't see any of his issues being solved at higher level play, not unless they magically play the game completly different which really wouldn't so much mean that his problems are solved as much as that they are just somehow ignored and thus avoided. His kit might be fairly decent, but he is simply undertuned especially mini with extreme CD's and low stats. As I said before, he feels like the idea is that it's a larvea state and that you unleash mega to actually win your lane, which in practise just means that you're constantly losing while in the larvea state, while whenever you get to unleash mega your opponent makes sure to be nowhere near you until you go back to a harmless larvea. And lastly, he really needs items that simply don't exist in LoL, which just adds to the frustration.