Welcome to my Gangplank build analysis. I'm SaltMining, a Gangplank one-trick who reached Platinum III in Season 6. In this guide, I'll briefly cover the different starting items, but I will primarily analyze the differences between building Lethality/Crit on Gangplank and why professionals almost always build Lethality. I will compare the client's recommended full Crit build vs. the hybrid Crit/Lethality build most pros use.

TL;DR: Triforce>Youmuu's>Infinity Edge is the strongest 3-item build path, and buy Lord Dominik's instead of Mortal Reminder.

Starting Items

Sapphire Crystal + Refillable Potion: This is a standard greedy start that allows you to spam Q in lane. When you run out of mana, back for an early Sheen/Corrupting Potion/Cull for bullying and outscaling potential.

Doran's Shield + 1 or Cloth Armor + 4: These starts help you survive against bully matchups such as Yasuo, Riven, Quinn, and Kennen.

Doran's Ring + 2: This start is similar to the Mana Crystal start, but it expects you to be farming at tower or only walking up for an occasional Q. Good for staying afloat against heavy pushers and gives extended mana sustain.

Doran's Blade + 1: This is the game's 'recommended start', but relies heavily on auto-attack sustain. However, Gangplank is bullied off the wave in many matchups, so you won't be able to sustain with life steal and you will run out of mana very quickly (since Doran's Blade has no mana stats).

Core Items

Trinity Force: No single item can outdamage Trinity Force's Spellblade proc. The extra attack and movement speed helps Gangplank with duels and survivability.

Youmuu's Ghostblade: This is the cheapest but highest Lethality item and has a very smooth build path.

Infinity Edge: IE is the highest damage Crit item in the game. This item is the reason Gangplank's barrel crits deal so much raw damage.

Boots: Getting 40% or 45% CDR is extremely important on Gangplank. Since most players buy Youmuu's Ghostblade, they also opt to cover the remaining 10% with CDR boots. However, if you run 10% CDR runes, you can opt for other situational boots (Tabi vs. Riven, Yasuo, etc. and Mercs vs. Maokai, Kennen, etc.).

Infinity Edge or Youmuu's?

The short answer is get both. Youmuu's provides too much Lethality to pass up, and Infinity Edge is absolutely necessary for Gangplank. Later, we will show that full Crit/Lord Dominik's build is weaker than our Crit/Lethality build until late game. Be sure to buy Youmuu's first. It has an easier build path, and I will later show that it deals more damage than Infinity Edge.

Crit Items

Phantom Dancer: Provides extra mobility and 1v1 survivability.

Statikk Shiv: Adds hybrid damage to your Q and helps waveclear without needing to use barrels.

Lord Dominik's Regards: Useful for killing tanks due to bonus damage against armor/health-stacking targets.

For the last item, the last offensive options are Phantom Dancer/Statikk Shiv (if you only bought one of them), and the defensive options are Guardian Angel and Sterak's Gage.

Example full Crit build: CDR Boots, Trinity Force, Infinity Edge, Phantom Dancer, Lord Dominik's, Guardian Angel.

Why Lord Dominik's but not Mortal Reminder?

Gangplank is a burst champion. Unless he walks into auto-attack range, he will only damage enemies with his Q or E every 4-6 seconds. This means he cannot constantly apply Mortal Reminder's passive, unlike an ADC with Runaan's Hurricane. However, it is sometimes worth buying Executioner's Calling in lane versus opponents with high amounts of self-healing, like Illaoi or Swain. Mortal Reminder is a team-oriented buy to cut enemy healing in teamfights, but sacrifices much of the damage you get from Lord Dominik's, as I'll show later.

Lethality Items

Duskblade: Combined with Youmuu's, this item's true damage passive will deal 120 true damage. On average, Duskblade does more damage than a Statikk Shiv proc, and has the added bonus of vision control.

Edge of Night: While Gangplank has his W for an instant cleanse, this item protects him from assassins and allows him to play aggressively.

The following is an example full build with Lethality and IE: CDR Boots, Trinity Force, Infinity Edge, Youmuu's, Duskblade, Sterak's Gage. We buy a Infinity Edge in the penetration build because it is a core item on Gangplank. On average, a build with Infinity Edge does more damage than one without. Though an Edge of Night provides higher consistent damage, on the 20% chance our Infinity Edge crits, we will far outdamage a full flat pen build.

Guardian Angel vs. Sterak's Gage

Guardian Angel is stronger in the Crit build and Sterak's Gage in the armor pen build. Guardian Angel fits well into a Crit build because it does not provide bonus HP. This way, players can take full advantage of the "Giant Slayer" passive from Lord Dominik's Regards. On the other hand, Sterak's Gage, unlike any other AD item, increases the user's base AD. This means, in addition to any auto-attacks and skills that scale off of bonus AD, the user's Spellblade procs will deal more damage. For any champion, it is more efficient to pair Sterak's with penetration, rather than with Crit. Crit does scale with base AD, but penetration scales with both base AD and Triforce procs.

Analyzing a Lethality vs Crit-based build

Each table shows the damage each type of combo deals.

At level 13 with two completed items, here are the average stats of a top lane tank (such as Maokai) and an ADC (like Caitlyn).

The table below shows the damage various combos deal, taking armor into account. E(Q) is a barrel activated with Parrrley and E(auto) is a barrel activated by an autoattack. Since the Pen build cannot Crit yet, its Crit damage values are 0.

As expected, the Lethality build is normally stronger and the Crit build is superior on critical strikes. However, we must also take into account that the Crit build only has a 20% chance to Crit, so the next table takes a weighted average of Crit combos (4 non crits + 1 Crit, due to 20% Crit chance)

This table shows that the Crit build has less damage on average, in addition to being less consistent than the Lethality build. This is perfectly fine, since Crit is expected to outscale Lethality. However, this is why we build Youmuu's second and Infinity Edge third.

At level 15 and three completed items, here are the enemy stats:

Here is the damage Gangplank's combos are expected to deal:

Once we weigh each build's Crit damage and percentages correctly, here are the average damages we get:

The Lethality build still does more damage against all types of champions, since the Crit build has not bought any penetration yet. Note that at this stage in the game, the Lethality build can Crit for over 1000 damage on an enemy carry, assuming they have kept up in levels with Gangplank. This is why the Lethality build is so strong - while crits are rare, if you are lucky, you can single-handedly win the game.

At level 18 with 4 completed items, these are the enemy stats: note that the "Carry" enemy now has 60 bonus Armor. This is assuming they bought a GA 4th item because they got tired of being deleted by Gangplank.

Gangplank's damages, factoring in LDR's penetration passive:

Now, we average the damages, factoring in LDR's Giant Slayer passive:

Finally, after buying Lord Dominik's, the Crit build does a good bit of damage against tanks. The Giant Slayer passive is the Crit build's saving grace. It amplifies damage against tanks by 15%, and penetrates through much of their bonus armor. However, even in the late game, the Lethality build will do more damage against squishy targets, even if they build defensive items, as shown here.

How does Lethality still do so much damage versus tanks?

Gangplank's E, Powder Keg, passively ignores 40% of a target's Total Armor. This greatly diminishes the value of Lord Dominik's Regards. Let's use a late-game Darius with 90 Base Armor and 110 Bonus Armor as an example. Powder Keg penetrates 36 Base Armor and 44 Bonus Armor, leaving 54 Base and 66 Bonus armor. Lord Dominik's penetrates through 45% of the remaining 66 bonus armor, which is 29.7. Even against two armor items, a Youmuu's + Duskblade/Edge of Night pair penetrates more armor than LDR.

Conclusion

Throughout this little project, I made several surprising findings, such as how strong Lord Dominik's is versus high-health targets as well as how powerful Infinity Edge is as a standalone Crit item. This the biggest thing to take away from this guide: Lethality is stronger than Crit items (besides Infinity Edge) at almost all stages of the game, and is always better against squishy targets. Thanks for reading, and I encourage you to experiment with other builds on the Rift!

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