Well let’s face it, Gnar is weird. He doesn’t speak English (or any real language for that matter) and he is a yordle that turns into a monster.

This adorable addition to the league is a fresh look at the transforming champions. Gnar works on a weird system that is like a hybrid between Tryndamere’s rage and Rumble’s overheat system, the only difference being that he doesn’t get bonus stats from rage and instead of overheating he just transforms into ‘Mega Gnar’.

SKILL SET

Before we get into any specifics of the champion let’s talk about his skills.

Passive: Rage Gene, this passive gives a handful of stats that are unique to each form that Gnar can take. In regular Gnar you get: Attack Speed, Movement Speed, and Attack Range. When you change to Mega Gnar you swap those stats out for: Attack Damage, Health Regeneration, Health, Armor and Magic Resistance. These base stats on top of the skill changes cause MASSIVE changes in Gnar’s playstyle when changing forms. What makes this passive so important is that the second you become Mega Gnar you are turned into a super slow crowd control monster instead of the hyper mobile yordle with light crowd control.

MINI GNAR SKILLS

Q: Boomerang Throw. This skill is very self-explanatory; you throw a boomerang at 1100 range that comes back to Gnar (with some slight finicky return targeting) after reaching its max range. This skill is amazing, simply due to how low the cooldown becomes. At level 5 this skill has a cooldown of 10 seconds which gets reduced to approximately 4 seconds if you catch the boomerang on its return. This means that if you invest in some cooldown reduction, this skill can have an effective cooldown of 2-3 seconds! Additionally this skill gets a 35% slow attached to it meaning Gnar can chase extremely well especially when combined with Hyper.

W: Hyper. For simplicity sake we are going to start with this skill. Hyper gives Gnar a boost of speed and applies bonus magic damage (based on a percentage of the target’s max health) every third auto attack (Gnar’s boomerang throw also applies this effect). This skill is key in Gnar’s extreme high mobility and also allows him to take quick but effective trades by just applying three stacks and backing off.

E: Hop. This skill is a very basic gap closer with a very weak and mostly unnoticed attack speed steroid. The interesting part about this skill is that it can be used to bounce off of units (allies and enemies) for a total of 950 range. Finally, if this skill is used while at maximum rage (100/100) you can bounce off a unit and transform mid-air allowing for some crazy combos to catch your opponents off guard, especially with good Rage management. It also does increased damage based on his max health which will come in handy later.

MEGA GNAR SKILLS

Q: Boulder Toss. Similarly to Boomerang Throw, its cooldown can be reduced by picking up the boulder. Its differences are its increased base damage and higher AD ratio and instead of a boomerang, well… it’s a boulder, so it doesn’t really come back to Gnar but it can, however be retrieved to lower the cooldown similar to Boomerang Throw.

W: Wallop. This skill is a simple small AoE stun that deals physical damage. This is the most straightforward skill that Gnar has in his kit, the only real trick you can do is use Wallop to trigger an instant transformation when you are at maximum rage in order to gain the increased defensive stats.

E: Crunch. The counterpart for Hop is Crunch, instead of bouncing you land with a…crunch and slow enemies in the area. Additionally, this skill (and Hop) both scale in damage with Gnar’s max health and with the big AoE of the Mega Gnar version it can actually deal some decent damage once you have purchased some health items. A key fact to remember is that if hop is used to trigger the transformation it will apply Crunch’s effect upon landing (after the bounce of course) on top of this is the fact that Mega Gnar gains increased maximum health which is also factored into Crunch’s damage.

R: GNAR!. This ultimate is only useable in Mega Gnar form but has a passive effect that just acts to boost the movement speed bonus of Hyper. This comes around once you reach level six so that Gnar is not too mobile during early laning phase. The actual skill itself acts like a giant Thresh flay that does decent physical damage which is amplified if enemies are pushed into a wall. Additionally the skill stuns (1.25 seconds up to 1.75 seconds) if they collide with a wall or slows them (45%) if they do not collide with a wall.

SKILL ORDER

The priority for Gnar is very simple and never varies (unless you are trying a cheese build): R>Q>W>E

This is because Boomerang Toss is extremely vital to your success in lane and in the game overall, additionally maxing Boomerang Toss drastically reduces its cooldown.

ITEMIZATION

This is one of the hardest parts about Gnar to really nail down definitively. There are two major styles for playing Gnar: full damage or tanky. When building full damage some good items to grab are: Trinity Force, Blade of the Ruined King and Youmuu’s Ghostblade (among others). The tank build is self-explanatory, you buy tank items like: Sunfire Cape, Spirit Visage, Thornmail, Randuin's Omen and Banshee's Veil. I like to run a similar build to the tank style with the exception of taking an early Brutalizer (and turning it into Youmuu's Ghostblade later) and then building full tank much like Renekton who buys one or two damage items before transitioning into a tank.

SETUP

I like to run a very weird page for Gnar, taking full armor penetration marks and quintessences. I have had success with this build, and although it is very possible that this build is not the most efficient, it allows you to remain a huge damage threat with Gnar’s high base damage values (especially Boomerang Toss and GNAR!). Also it is up to preference for what most players use for their seals and glyphs since defensive rune choices are very matchup and playstyle dependant; however I recommend armor seals and scaling/flat magic resist glyphs (flat for ap laners and scaling for non ap laners).

For masteries I like to run 21/9/0 taking everything in offense for ad champions except for warlord which on top of not being very efficient in general is very useless when you don’t intend on buy much AD. The rest is quite standard.

TIPS TRICKS AND OTHER GNARLY THINGS

Now that we have established the tools Gnar has to work with and how to set them up we can get into some tips and tricks.

Firstly is the fact that Boomerang Throw can be used during Hop animation, additionally with the updated boomerang tracking AI it is actually much easier to catch the boomerang if this trick is used. This trick allows for you to quickly Hop off a unit and throw the boomerang as the animation is about to finish to try and tag your opponents with the slow before they have a chance to get out of the way. While not the most useful trick available it is still a cool interaction to know about.

The next big trick that isn’t mechanically intensive is using your skills to instantly transform into Mega Gnar. This isn’t to say it should always be done but more so that it should be done to gain bonus health and defensive stats quickly; for example if a Karthus is channeling his ultimate and you are able to rack up the last bit of rage you need and transform you are much more likely to survive due to the increased resistances and health (the same goes for surviving damage over time skills).

Another neat trick is using Hop to apply stacks of Hyper in order to close out fights that may not be going your way since Hyper adds a nice chunk of damage when it is activated. Another important trick to keep in mind when using hop is that it can be used to trigger the transformation (like briefly mentioned before) but what truly makes this amazing is the fact that you can use GNAR! very shortly after landing especially if flash is used to cancel the animation in order to engage very quickly (this is especially helpful for starting teamfights). The reason why this quick use of GNAR! can be so powerful is because when using Hop to transform, the area of effect slow is still applied upon landing making GNAR! even easier to line up.

GENERAL LANING

Gnar is very similar to Riven in the way he lanes, he is very “all in” prone and if he loses the fight his lane becomes immeasurably more difficult due to the bonus stats per level on Gnar’s passive being what makes each form powerful (this means that low level mini Gnar does low damage on top of his intended low defensive stats). On the other hand Gnar is amazing at snowballing, if given a lead Gnar can very easily dominate the game and topple the damage to champions graphs at the end of the game even with a tank stat oriented build.

CONCLUSION

Gnar is insanely fun but comes with a heavy mechanical kit that requires at least partial mastery in order to just compete on a level playing field compared to most top laners. Despite this mechanical milestone Gnar can be an amazing addition to any team acting as a tank with amazing chase potential and damage in his own right.

I hope you learned something about this crazy little guy. DEMAGLIO