What I’ve learned through playing is that it’s more important to build in a way that you understand rather than just what is good or not.
If you take high win rate runes for example but don’t know WHY they work you’re better off taking simpler runes that you understand.
this is so true. i main tristana with almost 2m mastery and i have gone PTA since twisted treeline days but there was a time when people went HOB and now fleet is popular. i always try new runes and builds but always go back to PTA because instead of sustaining through poke i trade health and go for a PTA proc because it'll lead to an all in kill. Some people swear by other runes (and builds like IE vs Navori) but with my playstyle, i swear PTA is optimal
Yes, but not everything has to be perfectly optimal. Different people enjoy different items and playstyles, even if some are less optimal than others. For example I play Gwen mid and obviously thats not optimal but it’s fun to me and I do my best in every match I play.
It’s a game meant to be played for fun at the end of the day.
Quick question: I love Gwen but always feel hard to play her in mid. Any particular advice? Feels bad playing a melee into the lane that doesn't have great mobility and prone to get poked out
Nashors into Dcap is the "i am omega fed therefore i can afford this"build path. If you buy a pink rod and get 2350g on your next back its better to buy dcap straight up becaues the buildpath is bad and the completed item is fantastic. Dcap is gwens best item, but should be built 3rd.
Gwens best items are pink rod items, nashors and void staff for the 40% pen. Void staff being good if you see more than a negatron in mr on the enemy team.
Nashors into shadow is typical "game is going well". You buy it because you can kill people and if you get kills on gwen before 2nd item you are winning. You would not buy it if the enemy assassin is oneshotting you or you are laning against a tahm with mercs/kaenic.
Gwen is a good safe pick into tanks because you can afk farm, but its "better" to be on the winning side of a pantheon matchup since that means kills & plates.
TL:DR All cases where cryptbloom is good either void staff or shadowflame is better. Void staff is better vs mr stackers because it gives more %pen and shadowflame is better vs non-mr stackers because it gives more AP. Same can be said for all 80ap items.
Gwen likes in combat healing (old riftmaker) and out of combat healing (red buff healing), but not post combat healing which cryptbloom/riftmaker gives you. This is because you rely on your 4s W window to kill and then you typically have to GTFO. Cryptbloom healing is much easier for your karma support or yuumi to apply. The fiora ult heal field keeps you stuck in your current position making it bad vs ranged and vs melee you have already killed the opponent or died. The item does not give you enough sustain to re-enter combat at full health either. Its just stuck in the crevice of "not bad but not good". If the healing field triggered when you hit 50% hp then it would be better or if it gave some omnivamp. As it is right now its just a "win more" item.
Crpytbloom gives you haste, but Gwen has a lot of soft caps for attack speed and haste. Gwen Q soft caps at 2.0 attack speed because the animation is 0.5 seconds and you cannot auto attack in the Q animation. So if you have more than one attack every 0.5s you are either losing autos or not using your Q. This also means Gwen Q soft caps at 75 haste (2s cd). This is why old LT was bad.
Gwen E soft caps at -3 ability haste because it does not stack. You have full uptime without any ability haste & lv5 E (3.85s). The additional mobility is nice, but not worth it at all. You cant use your E recreationally like fiora can and you are still gated by your Q cooldown because you need to EQ frequently. It does not reach the breakpoint where you can e without the refund, making it worthless.
Gwen R & W benefit from ability haste, but more importantly her passive does not benefit. Gwen passive benefits ludicrously from ability power, since its a percentage scaling. This means later breakpoints in AP stacking rewards you much more and the only way to get to those breakpoints is by stacking 120ap items. Stacking AP is so much better than stacking AH.
This means the -10ap & -10% pen hurts. You only buy void staff because you need the pen and you only buy nashors because its a core attack speed item that adds 20% to your AP scaling. Everything else should be AP stacking.
Shadowflame is AP stacking deluxe. The flat pen & passive is nice, but you get 67.5AP more from it with Dcap compared to cryptbloom. That is almost an entire item worth of AP. You reach a lategame stage where you just oneshot anything you touch. You dont need utility or defense or anything you just kill so incredibly fast that fights are over once you land 1 Q, it changes the game completely.
This is entirely too blanket statement and so is phreaks. Every game the situation changes and for every player, their understanding of the runes and their strength changes.
yea it definitely sucked, but when they made it a better buildup,+50% atk spd and 100 ap it became a crazy gwen item. they've nerfed it since then but its still way better then before
I think fundamentally, you play quite a bit different between riftmaker nashor vs nashor shadowflame. Ever since the remake, the omnivamp part just come way too late. On the other hand, the stat from the item (HP most notably) is decent when you are facing a tankier target and the build. And the component also feels stronger in laning phase. The extra HP give more leeway in terms of rooms of error.
Meanwhile, the nashor shadowflame provides offensive stat only. So you will need to be more cautious in terms of starting a fight and when to dip. But when played right, you are more likely to leave an impact as your damage is much better, which is what Gwen role is
For newer player I think riftmaker is a generically good start, but once you start to get familiar with the champ, testing limit with Gwen gives you so much more playmaking ability. I am someone who loves the tankier build in the past, but riftmaker outside of its stat and buildpath just feel so bad to get. The extra tankiness means nothing in teamfight unless you are against a low damage comp
I think that what phreak describes isnt wrong but your interpretations of the builds are, there is a lot of context to these builds. First why do you say rift first is better than nashors first? What prompts you to make this assumption, if I had to take a guess this is probably a high wr build because these are games noobs can get away with rushing rift first like when there are multiple tanks (so youre chances of winning the games is already high because you counter them not necessarily that the build is good). I'd argue that rushing rift first is the noob tax he's talking about making the build 2% higher because it still has a lower winrate than rushing nashors first. Its just noob gwen players building rift first because they picked into tank thinking that rift is a better counter for tanks over nashors. When you go nashors into shadowflame I'd argue that your matchups are much more difficult to where you need the burst so that you 1 shot your opponent before they kill you ( riven, kled, etc) so seeing this build at a higher winrate implies that it is just a better build. Finally, yes dcap will obviously have the highest winrate second because you rush when youre turbo ahead, which is very rare but if youre that far ahead you are more than likely already going to win the game anyways, making it seem like it is an op build. If you just build it second without being ahead it is probably not going to give you the same value as shadowflame/rift/lich second.
> First why do you say rift first is better than nashors first?
Basically, there is a set of noobs that will go rift into nashor's every game. That gives that build a winrate. There is also a set of more experienced gwen players that go nashor's into rift. These people don't do this every game. They only do this when they think it is better. Other games they go rift into nashor's. The nashor's into rift people are, on average, more skilled at gwen and have more experience. So, even if the builds were actually completely equal, you'd still expect the nashor's into rift build to have a higher winrate because of the better players going that build and the fact they only go that build in the right situation. That is the "noob tax" that I mentioned that Phreak talked about in that video.
>because these are games noobs can get away with rushing rift first like when there are multiple tanks (so youre chances of winning the games is already high because you counter them not necessarily that the build is good).
The thing is, noobs mostly just stick with the same build every game. Rift into nashor's into dcap is the standard "i don't wanna think about my build" build. So, they might be picking that build into tanks where it is really good, but they are also going that build into comps where it isn't that good. The point is that they are noobs, so they aren't really changing their build based on the situation like more experienced players do. More experienced players change their build based on the situation, so the other builds have a higher proportion of non-noob players, inflating those build's winrate. This is the "noob tax". I might not be explaining it well, so I recommend watching that phreak video is you still don't understand.
> Finally, yes dcap will obviously have the highest winrate second because you rush when youre turbo ahead, which is very rare but if youre that far ahead you are more than likely already going to win the game anyways
I think I ultimately agree, I'm just saying the winrate is SUPER high, so maybe it is worth trying out in your game even when behind, just to test it out and see how it feels in losing games.
I see what youre talking about with the tax but I dont see how that argument is in favor of rushing rift into nashors over nashor into shadow/lich/rift/dcap
basically, the tax, according to phreak, is around 2%. So, if the build you are looking at isn't at least 2% higher than the default noob build, then the build probably actually isn't better than the default build. Hopefully that makes sense.
if this was really true then rift's winrate would be super shit, espeically when you consider the "noob factor" of 2% that Phreak talked about. Yet, riftmaker seems to be doing just fine. The "riftmaker is only good into tanks" line I see repeated a bunch here is not justified by the data.
I think it's not a bad choice for a newbie Gwen, because it can save you with additional HP and occasional proc in fights, when omnivamp can save your life. But if you are more confident with her then higher ap items will be better because you won't be in the situation when riftmaker can potentially win you a coinflip play
I try to build Rabadons and dark seal first if I’m snowballing (only applicable to Gwungle)
The clear speed feels faster or on par with nash first. Definitely faster with a stacked D seal
Controversial opinion: Gwen builds can be boring, it’s AP this, AP that. I wish she could build a mix of tank and AP instead of being reliant on her W. would be more fun ... but yeah, there’s not much AP bruiser items like AD and I doubt they’ll change that anytime soon because of Akali
Visage and Jaksho are both great tanky items that work well with her. If you're going for a long fighting gwen build, i can see a riftmaker being viable with Jaksho as they both have similar windup mechanics, but other than that i think thornmail isn't terrible on her (even though morello is 100x better).
if you're struggling with MR in fights, you're using your W wrong. part of why she's a boring full AP builder is because of how much her W scales with it. you shouldn't struggle so badly to survive that you need Jak'Sho (which is now a late build tank item and you really shouldn't build it as a solo tank item) if you're using the ability correctly
Im good on bruishers but i play well assasins (akali, camille, nafiri top) i have way better winrate and imo feels better for me play nashors, shadowflame, lich Bane first strike than bruishers Gwen.
What I’ve learned through playing is that it’s more important to build in a way that you understand rather than just what is good or not. If you take high win rate runes for example but don’t know WHY they work you’re better off taking simpler runes that you understand.
this is so true. i main tristana with almost 2m mastery and i have gone PTA since twisted treeline days but there was a time when people went HOB and now fleet is popular. i always try new runes and builds but always go back to PTA because instead of sustaining through poke i trade health and go for a PTA proc because it'll lead to an all in kill. Some people swear by other runes (and builds like IE vs Navori) but with my playstyle, i swear PTA is optimal
Or learn. Yknow as everyone should do instead of sitting on suboptimal strats
Yes, but not everything has to be perfectly optimal. Different people enjoy different items and playstyles, even if some are less optimal than others. For example I play Gwen mid and obviously thats not optimal but it’s fun to me and I do my best in every match I play. It’s a game meant to be played for fun at the end of the day.
Quick question: I love Gwen but always feel hard to play her in mid. Any particular advice? Feels bad playing a melee into the lane that doesn't have great mobility and prone to get poked out
Nashors into Dcap is the "i am omega fed therefore i can afford this"build path. If you buy a pink rod and get 2350g on your next back its better to buy dcap straight up becaues the buildpath is bad and the completed item is fantastic. Dcap is gwens best item, but should be built 3rd. Gwens best items are pink rod items, nashors and void staff for the 40% pen. Void staff being good if you see more than a negatron in mr on the enemy team. Nashors into shadow is typical "game is going well". You buy it because you can kill people and if you get kills on gwen before 2nd item you are winning. You would not buy it if the enemy assassin is oneshotting you or you are laning against a tahm with mercs/kaenic. Gwen is a good safe pick into tanks because you can afk farm, but its "better" to be on the winning side of a pantheon matchup since that means kills & plates.
What about bloom instead of void staff?
TL:DR All cases where cryptbloom is good either void staff or shadowflame is better. Void staff is better vs mr stackers because it gives more %pen and shadowflame is better vs non-mr stackers because it gives more AP. Same can be said for all 80ap items. Gwen likes in combat healing (old riftmaker) and out of combat healing (red buff healing), but not post combat healing which cryptbloom/riftmaker gives you. This is because you rely on your 4s W window to kill and then you typically have to GTFO. Cryptbloom healing is much easier for your karma support or yuumi to apply. The fiora ult heal field keeps you stuck in your current position making it bad vs ranged and vs melee you have already killed the opponent or died. The item does not give you enough sustain to re-enter combat at full health either. Its just stuck in the crevice of "not bad but not good". If the healing field triggered when you hit 50% hp then it would be better or if it gave some omnivamp. As it is right now its just a "win more" item. Crpytbloom gives you haste, but Gwen has a lot of soft caps for attack speed and haste. Gwen Q soft caps at 2.0 attack speed because the animation is 0.5 seconds and you cannot auto attack in the Q animation. So if you have more than one attack every 0.5s you are either losing autos or not using your Q. This also means Gwen Q soft caps at 75 haste (2s cd). This is why old LT was bad. Gwen E soft caps at -3 ability haste because it does not stack. You have full uptime without any ability haste & lv5 E (3.85s). The additional mobility is nice, but not worth it at all. You cant use your E recreationally like fiora can and you are still gated by your Q cooldown because you need to EQ frequently. It does not reach the breakpoint where you can e without the refund, making it worthless. Gwen R & W benefit from ability haste, but more importantly her passive does not benefit. Gwen passive benefits ludicrously from ability power, since its a percentage scaling. This means later breakpoints in AP stacking rewards you much more and the only way to get to those breakpoints is by stacking 120ap items. Stacking AP is so much better than stacking AH. This means the -10ap & -10% pen hurts. You only buy void staff because you need the pen and you only buy nashors because its a core attack speed item that adds 20% to your AP scaling. Everything else should be AP stacking. Shadowflame is AP stacking deluxe. The flat pen & passive is nice, but you get 67.5AP more from it with Dcap compared to cryptbloom. That is almost an entire item worth of AP. You reach a lategame stage where you just oneshot anything you touch. You dont need utility or defense or anything you just kill so incredibly fast that fights are over once you land 1 Q, it changes the game completely.
Thanks for the complete explanation brother!
Me single handely carrying nashor into lich bane 😎
very underrated build into ranged squishes
Yup, insane damage, people don't expect it at all then cry "OP CHAMP" which makes this better lol
This is entirely too blanket statement and so is phreaks. Every game the situation changes and for every player, their understanding of the runes and their strength changes.
idk how lich is a low pickrate item, similar damage to shadowflame 2nd but 100 gold cheaper, 15 ah and 8% movespeed, all crazy good stats on gwen
it was bad for a really long time is the reason I think.
yea it definitely sucked, but when they made it a better buildup,+50% atk spd and 100 ap it became a crazy gwen item. they've nerfed it since then but its still way better then before
Build doesn’t really matter that much? Ok bro I will build ad Gwen from now on
I think fundamentally, you play quite a bit different between riftmaker nashor vs nashor shadowflame. Ever since the remake, the omnivamp part just come way too late. On the other hand, the stat from the item (HP most notably) is decent when you are facing a tankier target and the build. And the component also feels stronger in laning phase. The extra HP give more leeway in terms of rooms of error. Meanwhile, the nashor shadowflame provides offensive stat only. So you will need to be more cautious in terms of starting a fight and when to dip. But when played right, you are more likely to leave an impact as your damage is much better, which is what Gwen role is For newer player I think riftmaker is a generically good start, but once you start to get familiar with the champ, testing limit with Gwen gives you so much more playmaking ability. I am someone who loves the tankier build in the past, but riftmaker outside of its stat and buildpath just feel so bad to get. The extra tankiness means nothing in teamfight unless you are against a low damage comp
I think that what phreak describes isnt wrong but your interpretations of the builds are, there is a lot of context to these builds. First why do you say rift first is better than nashors first? What prompts you to make this assumption, if I had to take a guess this is probably a high wr build because these are games noobs can get away with rushing rift first like when there are multiple tanks (so youre chances of winning the games is already high because you counter them not necessarily that the build is good). I'd argue that rushing rift first is the noob tax he's talking about making the build 2% higher because it still has a lower winrate than rushing nashors first. Its just noob gwen players building rift first because they picked into tank thinking that rift is a better counter for tanks over nashors. When you go nashors into shadowflame I'd argue that your matchups are much more difficult to where you need the burst so that you 1 shot your opponent before they kill you ( riven, kled, etc) so seeing this build at a higher winrate implies that it is just a better build. Finally, yes dcap will obviously have the highest winrate second because you rush when youre turbo ahead, which is very rare but if youre that far ahead you are more than likely already going to win the game anyways, making it seem like it is an op build. If you just build it second without being ahead it is probably not going to give you the same value as shadowflame/rift/lich second.
> First why do you say rift first is better than nashors first? Basically, there is a set of noobs that will go rift into nashor's every game. That gives that build a winrate. There is also a set of more experienced gwen players that go nashor's into rift. These people don't do this every game. They only do this when they think it is better. Other games they go rift into nashor's. The nashor's into rift people are, on average, more skilled at gwen and have more experience. So, even if the builds were actually completely equal, you'd still expect the nashor's into rift build to have a higher winrate because of the better players going that build and the fact they only go that build in the right situation. That is the "noob tax" that I mentioned that Phreak talked about in that video. >because these are games noobs can get away with rushing rift first like when there are multiple tanks (so youre chances of winning the games is already high because you counter them not necessarily that the build is good). The thing is, noobs mostly just stick with the same build every game. Rift into nashor's into dcap is the standard "i don't wanna think about my build" build. So, they might be picking that build into tanks where it is really good, but they are also going that build into comps where it isn't that good. The point is that they are noobs, so they aren't really changing their build based on the situation like more experienced players do. More experienced players change their build based on the situation, so the other builds have a higher proportion of non-noob players, inflating those build's winrate. This is the "noob tax". I might not be explaining it well, so I recommend watching that phreak video is you still don't understand. > Finally, yes dcap will obviously have the highest winrate second because you rush when youre turbo ahead, which is very rare but if youre that far ahead you are more than likely already going to win the game anyways I think I ultimately agree, I'm just saying the winrate is SUPER high, so maybe it is worth trying out in your game even when behind, just to test it out and see how it feels in losing games.
I see what youre talking about with the tax but I dont see how that argument is in favor of rushing rift into nashors over nashor into shadow/lich/rift/dcap
basically, the tax, according to phreak, is around 2%. So, if the build you are looking at isn't at least 2% higher than the default noob build, then the build probably actually isn't better than the default build. Hopefully that makes sense.
Ah I see what hes saying, I think there are probably some flaws in using this comparison in such a broad term though.
Rift isn't good unless you're playing Gwen vs a comp she's already good into.
So 1 in a 100 games when you see a tank
if this was really true then rift's winrate would be super shit, espeically when you consider the "noob factor" of 2% that Phreak talked about. Yet, riftmaker seems to be doing just fine. The "riftmaker is only good into tanks" line I see repeated a bunch here is not justified by the data.
I think it's not a bad choice for a newbie Gwen, because it can save you with additional HP and occasional proc in fights, when omnivamp can save your life. But if you are more confident with her then higher ap items will be better because you won't be in the situation when riftmaker can potentially win you a coinflip play
I try to build Rabadons and dark seal first if I’m snowballing (only applicable to Gwungle) The clear speed feels faster or on par with nash first. Definitely faster with a stacked D seal Controversial opinion: Gwen builds can be boring, it’s AP this, AP that. I wish she could build a mix of tank and AP instead of being reliant on her W. would be more fun ... but yeah, there’s not much AP bruiser items like AD and I doubt they’ll change that anytime soon because of Akali
Visage and Jaksho are both great tanky items that work well with her. If you're going for a long fighting gwen build, i can see a riftmaker being viable with Jaksho as they both have similar windup mechanics, but other than that i think thornmail isn't terrible on her (even though morello is 100x better).
Ya I find Gwen feels bad into full AP team, her MR is so low. might check out SV, especially if I have soraka
if you're struggling with MR in fights, you're using your W wrong. part of why she's a boring full AP builder is because of how much her W scales with it. you shouldn't struggle so badly to survive that you need Jak'Sho (which is now a late build tank item and you really shouldn't build it as a solo tank item) if you're using the ability correctly
Try building iceborn, makes you tanky and turns your attacks into super glue.
I haven’t faced an all AD team in ages to go down that build path yet but I’ll try it this season eventually, see how it feels
It's more for if you need to stick to people more, the armor is nice but the slow field and sheen procs are where it's at
The problem is, riftmaker is dogshit no matter if you build it first or second.
Im good on bruishers but i play well assasins (akali, camille, nafiri top) i have way better winrate and imo feels better for me play nashors, shadowflame, lich Bane first strike than bruishers Gwen.