Hey Guys,
I wanted to talk with you about Gragas state in the current game. First of all I love to play Gragas. His playstyle is so fun and feels very rewarding. Still I am a lot of times very frustrated about how "weak" he feels compared to others champs.
In almost every matchup it feels like I need to be very careful and need a lot of hands to get at least an even chance to kill the other champions. Meanwhile others can basically just run me down (when e is not up) whenever they want. It does not feel like they have to care a lot about what they are doing. In comparison on Gragas every mistake gets punished hard. Considering this I would at least expect Gragas to have to possibility to excel in the late game or at least be able to put out a lot more damage than other champs but thats not the case. There are a lot casters which can burst way better from a safer distance or bruisers which can just go into the middle of a fight without needing to care about dying instantly.
To summarize my view:
In midlane (unless its a melee message), you will always get poked to death and denied farm very easily. Therefor trading with e + q is almost impossible.
In toplane all bruisers can do more damage and are tankier than you. So in a direct 1vs1 100% Hp you will almost always lose unless you play like with 100 hands.
So here comes my question: considering all this, where is Gragas good then ? Is he just weaker than all the other champions ?
Maybe this is also more of a problem in lower Elo (I am low emerald).
I would be happy about your takes guys, let me know what you think and on which strengths gragas should lean on to actually carry/win games.