Gnar has been played by many legendary League of Legends pros, such as Huni and Dyrus, in international competitions. The Missing Link hasn’t been a meta top lane champion since season eight, however.
But one League fan noticed that Gnar is set to receive his tenth buff in a row in Patch 10.13, according to the preview posted yesterday by lead gameplay designer Mark “Scruffy” Yetter. In fact, Gnar hasn’t been nerfed since Patch 7.18, which was released in September 2017.
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In competitive matches, Gnar has been played 20 times since the start of the season in all regional leagues but mainly in the LCK. In the 2019 season, he had a presence rate of only 6.5 percent.
His strongest presence on the ladder was in 2015, less than one year after his release. But Gnar has significantly dropped down the rankings since then. Due to the fact that he’s at his strongest with high synergy on a team and requires good timing, Gnar has always been more played in competitive matches than in ranked, though.
Although Gnar is a versatile champion, he’s hard to master, especially in matchmaking. His passive requires a good sense of timing and he’s the strongest when using teleports to surprise an enemy with a Mega-Gnar ultimate. For this reason, he’s more of a pocket pick than a safe solution.
Through all his buffs, Gnar has received more movement speed, more damage, less cooldown for his abilities, and even his AP and AD ratios were significantly increased. But his pick rate didn’t subsequently rise.
The details of his buff with Patch 10.13 should be revealed later tonight. It’s unclear if it’ll boost the popularity of the champion, however, because he’ll also receive an indirect nerf like other bruisers with the change coming to the Conqueror rune.
The Patch 10.13 preview is tentative and liable to change before hitting League’s live servers.
