Who is Gragas

Gragas is an AP champion whose skills are Q Barrel roll, W Drunken Rage, E Body Slam and his ultimate Explosive Cask. If you were to look at the skills and what they do you would see there is not much change from the Gragas of old. So why has he changed so much with only a small change to his kit. I'm here to talk about that and to begin, I'm going to start where I first met Gragas, in Season 3.

Season 3

Season 3 was the start of my League career and I quickly fell in love with the game and its competitive scene. Team Dignitas was the first team I watched and quickly became my favorite team. Team Dignitas's mid laner William "Scarra" Li was the main person I watched to get better at the game and by watching Scarra and researching his playstyle I found the mid champ Gragas. At that time, Gragas was an AP Mage played in the jungle, made popular by Choi "inSec" In-seok at the Allstar event in Shanghai, and was played in the mid lane as a niche pickup.

But as the season progressed I noticed more people playing him. His burst was amazing, his poke was great, he had crowd control and sustain, why would a mid laner not play him. He is amazing. So I said to myself I'm going to play Gragas. I had great success with the champion and many pros did as well shown especially by Faker and his plays at World's, most notably in the finals against Royal Club. But with all this power, Gragas was beginning to be seen as over powered and Riot seeked to nerf this mid lane power eventually.

Season 4

Gragas' power remained pretty strong thanks to people like Scarra playing him to great success for example against Cloud 9's mid laner Hai. He was continually played but Riot was still looking to nerf his overall power. The changes that came next may not seem that large but have made a big difference on the Gragas we know today. Overall his Ap scalings were brought down most notably from 100% on his ultimate to 70% as well as giving his Q, Barrel Roll, an arming time to have full effect.

This changed Gragas completely moving him from a bursty AP carry to a .... well, his role is very undefined in the current metagame . The community is unsure whether he is still a good mid laner or if he is an AP bruiser top lane or if he is a viable support. These changes are huge, going from an AP carry to a tank top laner is a large jump for changes that don't seem super large at first glance.

Conclusion

So whether you play Gragas top, support, jungle or mid, he is still a great champion and is well worth to pick up if you haven't. He is very versatile and can throw the opponents off when you pick him so even with these changes he is still viable and it's up to the community to decide where the new changes to Gragas place him.