Thoughts on Urgot and Gragas

These champions are... uhm... weird.

Urgot first because this will be the shortest.

His rocket is a auto-smartcasted skill shot that hits a single target. It costs very little mana and is spammable (40 mana, 2 sec CD) but does very little damage (base 10 + .85*AD) which will is rigged to do more damage at lvl 1 then your auto-attack although this reverses with runes and masteries. However, at level 5, you'd need over 800 AD to get your auto-attack to outdamage it. What this means is that if the field of fire is clean, you should be spam casting this as fast as you can click Q.

It has a curious interaction with his E. That's a ground targetable smallish AoE (much like Twitch's) that will poison and armor debuff everyone in the area. Targets with the debuff can be "locked on" by the rocket. What this actually means is that you can use it to avoid hitting other targets. You lock a target and fire. You can get 3-4 (depending on CDR) rockets in per E.

Lastly, his ultimate. In theory, you can use this to start team fights. But it's better to trap isolated opponents or to counteract mid lane flanking by their team. A lot of teams will try to bait you in and have 1-2 people circle around through the river so that they can get at your squishies. The instant you see this happening, you need to tell your team and fire your ult at the biggest flanking threat. This will have the affect of removing you from the direct threat and also dumping their (probably squishy) would be assassin right in your team's midst. It CAN be used to start team fights but you need a really well coordinated team. Because what's going to need to happen is that you snag a squishy and, within 1 second, your team moves up to keep your new position safe while also clobbering the trapped character. Works best with a Malphite, Karthus or Anivia who can exhibit some sort of crowd/zone control as soon as they see your ult get channeled.

Now let's talk about Gragas.

He's, ostensibly, a melee AP champion. You're going to build him a little bit tanky due to his melee nature. His W and E both encourage being in people's faces but his Q and R give him nearly unparalleled ability to control zones. In particular, an early R can get an oppponent under a tower in a completely unexpected way. It also has a very fast animation so isn't easy to dodge. On the other hand, his Q has a slow animation and can't be detonated while it's still moving. This makes it fairly easy to dodge. Some tips.

Push hard for the Archangel's Staff early. You have the ability to spam W (to replenish mana and buff attack speed) and E (to speed around faster) and with higher mana it makes it even easier. You want to get that Staff converted over to Seraph's in case the game goes late and this will also help feed his AP without additional gold expenditures.

The real key here is the ultimate. The barrel has a HUGE knockback dispersion affect. You want to use this to break up enemy teams and isolate champions. It can also be used to knock them into your turret. The animation is very quick and difficult to dodge too.

Both very interesting champions. I think I like Gragas enough to put him on my "eventual" buy list... but Probably not a priority. Urgot, I need to play another game as / against and figure out  where I stand.