• Share disagreements I have with common points on this subreddit - about Gwen's role in the team, her itemization, her strengths and weaknesses.
• Give certain formulaic tips that will help you cheese games even if you don't really understand why on the grand scale of things. This is not a guide on becoming a very good player, it's a guide on climbing the ranks with Gwen.
• Link it everytime someone asks what is Gwen's role in the team and how to play her.

BAD takes that you should not follow

• Shadowflame instead of Nashor's Tooth - Gwen's strengths are splitpushing and she does this extremely well. Trying to turn her into an assassin with items that harm her splitpushing potential is counterproductive. Enemies in Plat, Diamond and Master aren't beasts that can evade all your abilities. They are inters, just like almost everyone in soloqueue. Chances are you will never meet a truly great player in the enemy lobby or have one in your team. Once they are slowed down by your ultimates first cast, it is trivial chasing them down and finishing them off. There's no reason to build her like a C tier assassin when full duelist splitpusher build will do the same damage in teamfights. You will just get your damage items faster, because the splitpusher playstyle generates more gold.
• Ignore Rabadon in favor of X - Third item Rabadon is what allows Gwen to turn around games and turn from an okay teamfighter to a great one when the player uses their ult well. After buying Rabadon she can 100 to 0 anyone who didnt build more than 1 MR item. Rabadon is what allows you to dive their fed 500g bounty player 1v2 and kill him.
• Gwen has bad early game - It might take a bunch of games to see it, but when Gwen early is played correctly, she has better pre 6 than most enemy toplaners who are supposed to be stronger early. Her Q damage is very high, low cooldown, has mobility, increased ranged, untargetability, increased resists, ability to poke without drawing minion aggro. Noone will punish your champions vulnerabilities even in Masters. Two big reasons for it: Gwen is a rare pick and the enemy doesn't know what to expect from you, and because majority of players Masters and below haven't learned all aspects of the game equally well. They have learned to play into very specific things that allow them to win games (exactly what I do with Gwen). Whether its one tricking champions, very good vision and macro, great mechanics - it doesn't matter. They will start inting as hard as a Bronze would when you throw a wrench in their plans. More often than not they start to play a bit more careful when trading with you if you scare them with a great trade early on in the game which allows you to punish them even harder.
• Play safe and farm up for late game - If you just hug your turret, avoid fighting and prioritize on last hitting minions, then you will miss out on the snowball opportunity from plating and turret gold. It is a very suboptimal way to play Gwen.
• Riftmaker is a bad mythic on Gwen - Very common argument that I have read here is that Riftmaker is a bad mythic. That it has awkward stats or there are tankier options, items with more mobility, with more damage etc. Riftmakers main strength over any other mythic is the omnivamp it provides. The omnivamp is crucial for those 1v2 and 1v3 fights that you will be often fighting when playing very aggressively. The healing increase is miniscule, but it is enough to have an impact. Yes, you can fight enemies when outnumbered with other mythics too, but going anything other than Riftmaker takes away from your potential to be hyperaggressive. Going Riftmaker also creates an illusion for the enemy in which you are far squishier than you actually are which has helped me secure many victories after enemies get baited into fighting me. The health, AP, ability haste, omnivamp, increased damage, true damage - all of this works great on Gwen.

Key concepts that you have to understand to make this playstyle work for you

• Plates - 15 plates, each worth 175 gold. Consistently you can get around 5 plates per game which is 875g + 300g from turret kill + 150g from first turret = 1250g - more than 4 kills worth. Gold generated through plating does not grow your shutdown gold. Plates are better than kills for this reason. It is worth it to die for plates if minute 14 is about to hit (Plates despawn on minute 14).
• Inner turrets on side lanes ( second turret on bot and top ) - Destroying a secondary turret alone gives you 600g total. With demolish rune and completed Nashor's Tooth you need just a few seconds to push the turret. If you have vision on more than half the enemy team then it is risk free gold.
• Herald - Taking herald gives you 300g and the herald eye which can help you get either plates or inner turrets.
• Splitpush - Allows you to push the inner turrets and reach their inhibitor if the enemy team does 1 macro mistake. Sometimes when you take the inner turret the enemy team won't respond to your threat hoping that you will just give up and recall. If that happens you continue to push onto the inhibitor turret. In other situations your team will be 4v5 at drake and spam pinging you to TP. That can be the correct play but more often than not I decide to ignore the pings and keep on pushing. This often results in the enemy splitting up in the middle of the fight to try to do both drake and also protect their inhibitor and base. Your team might win the drake fight this way and you got yourself a free turret or two. Your team might also get completely wiped on drake, but that gives you more time to push. Maybe you even get to take 1 nexus turret. Gwen with Riftmaker, Nashor's Tooth, Rabadon Deathcap and demolish melts turrets in seconds.
• Nexus turret pressure - When inhibitor goes down you often have the opportunity to damage or destroy one of the nexus turrets. It is good to destroy one as it allows for you to no minion push the last nexus turret at a later time and cheese the game.
• Lobby pick order - Always try to be last pick in the lobby. Chances are your Silver, Gold, Plat etc. teammates aren't the most proactive players and they won't benefit as much as you would from being last pick. You don't want to blind pick and end up playing vs Akshan or Fiora. You don't necessarily have to counterpick the enemy, but you don't want to be counterpicked. If you aggressively spam the "Swap Pick Order" button it is possible your teammate won't give it to you out of spite later if he declined the first time. Which is why if that person declined once, wait for the enemy team to pick a few times. Then you notify them in chat that their lane opponent picked and if they can swap with you. There are 3 other people in the team so you don't always have to instantly go for last pick either. Try to weasel your way down slowly by asking those directly after you if last pick doesn't work out from first attempt. If blindpicking is unavoidable then pray the enemy is clueless.
• Playing hyper aggressive and money hunger - Sometimes it happens that your botlane goes 0/7 in the first 10 minutes of the game and enemy ADC is very ahead. This shouldn't make you play safer. If the enemy bot has 500g shutdown on their head then if there is an opportunity it is better to dive them 1v3 with the chance of getting that shutdown bounty rather than playing safe. Whenever you are forced to teamfight your primary goal is to get all the shutdown bounties on the enemy team. Gwen loves AP and AP costs gold. The more gold the better. It is okay to die if it means that you also got gold. Because gold on you is way stronger than gold on their champions. There are exceptions to this. For example if you are very fed with kills and have 700g shutdown on your head then it is not wise to jump in a suicidal fight when moments later a better opportunity will arise.
• Number of games played - Keep spamming Gwen and Gwen only. Play her against every matchup on top atleast a few times to know what your champion can do and what you can do. Don't wildly change your runes every few games. Stick to the same runepage. With time you will see and understand the key moments in the game where you can dish out the exact ammount of damage to kill an enemy and survive. Whether you can push down a lane, greed for a turret and get out of it alive. Whether you can jump in 1v4 and survive.

Tricks that you might or might not be aware of:

• Gwen Q does not trigger minion aggro if you do not autoattack so you can harrass through a wave.
• You can queue up an autoattack if you right click the target during the Q animation and if you are in range it will instantly autoattack when Q cast ends. Works great with E -> Q right at the end of your attack range to do a little bit of extra damage. This will trigger minion aggro.
• Going 2x Blasting Wand on a back with 1700g is better than going Leeching Leer ingredients in majority of cases. It helps you do as much damage as you would with a completed Riftmaker but way earlier into the game helping you snowball harder. Also you can push turret plates way faster with the extra AP. The second blasting wand can later be used for building into Nashor's Tooth. I prefer going Riftmaker first because it makes you tankier and allows you to do easier 1v2 plays when you get ganked.
• Your W can be used to tank Baron and Dragon attacks if you cast it at the proper location where the edge is right infront of the monster without touching it.
• You can use your W to push turrets and plates even if its protected by the enemy. If you are ahead of your laner and the wave is crashing on his turrent you can walk up and cast your W in a place where its edge allows you to autoattack the turret without moving the W. This way if the enemy wants to push you off, they have to walk directly into you which accomplishes 2 things: gives you an opportunity for an easier dive and/or the enemy misses a bunch of farm trying to protect their plates.
• If you are ahead you can skip completing your boots item and stick with normal boots or no boots at all. The speed difference hardly makes a difference in the early game but you can get your item spikes way earlier. Your slow from your R and your dash are more than enough to stick to targets.
• When you are trying to push a structure as fast as possible E on top of yourself immediately after your autoattack completes. Your dash is not a fixed distance and you can dash very small distances which is a quicker way to reset your E AS buff.
• Gwen Q executes minions below 20% HP which works on super minions too. This makes her one of the fastest clearers of super minions in the game and guarantees that you will get the 90g from them if there are teammates present.
• Even if your minion wave is very small when you are approaching a turret, it is worth it to push it. After Rabadon all you need is 2-3 minions to push a turret safely. You might tank a few shots but the damage reduction that turrets get without minions doesn't apply instantly the minion dies. You have time to push the turret.
• You can cast E while you are casting Q. This will move the damaging area of the Q together with you. Can be used in many situations that require it. For example if both you and the enemy are on low HP and you have pushed the wave into his turret. If you dive him with the standard E -> Q he might react, flash away and CC you. But if you pretend to be cleaning out his minions with Q and then E towards him right before the final snip which deals the most damage it is unlikely he will expect that and be able to react to it.
• Jump in a fight right when you are about to level up. If you are leading your enemy on XP then the level up from 5 to 6 often enables a kill opportunity. Learn to level up your spells with your keyboard, not a mouse click. Watching other people play in real life, I notice that even some mechanically good players keep using mouse clicks to level up their spells. When playing Gwen this should become a habit. You level up -> you rank up spell - even if you are in the middle of the fight. It happens frequently because of her AOE spells killing a few minions in the middle of the fight or you were just randomly near a level up. It has happened too many times where a level up in a spell that I did in the middle of the fight saves my life and changes how the rest of the game goes.

Build

CORE ITEMS:

Riftmaker

Nashor's Tooth

Rabadon's Deathcap

FOLLOW UP OPTIONS:

BOOTS:

RUNES AND SUMMONER SPELLS:

NOTES:

• Pre min 14: Get plates, plates, plates, shove waves, try to get herald if theres good opportunity, if not shove wave get plates.
• After min 14: Inner turrets! Bot and top, when you see 3 people on enemy team on one side of map, you go to the opposite and push the lane.
• Don't walk around aimlessly on map, walk up that sidelane and push the wave. Repeat.
• Enemies are guarding their towers too well? Farm their jungle. Join up for teamfights only if it is absolutely necessary. You will know which are if you keep playing the same runes, items and champion every game.

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• I live in an apartment complex where there a lot of internets from the same ISP.
• This issue of my PC constantly switching from 5Ghz to 2.4Ghz started happening a couple of weeks ago after an unsuccessful display driver installation. I don't really know how that affected my internet or if it did at all but I feel like it's important to be transparent here.
• My PC did not do this prior to the above mentioned issue, it always remained on 5Ghz.
• My internet provided me without 100-150Mbps before this thing started happening, now it provides me with about 10-34Mbps. AND this thing doesn't happen on my phone, laptop, iPad or anywhere other than my PC. I've even tested some other phones and all of them show that my internet provides 100-150Mbps
• I don't use ethernet, it's a wireless connection. I know that I should use it.

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• Getting mutually counseling. They've said the bad outweighed the good in total spanning from being together to be separated now as each bad time and break up broke them bit by bit.
• Consistent care. I'd like to spend 2-4 hours daily just enjoying our time together which likely would be evening to night just unwinding.
• Radical realness. I'll admit I've sometimes made it an unsafe space to express emotions yet really appreciated when they just have a heart-to-heart with me explaining what they felt as I feel they bottle up emotions and experiences a lot.

• They said if they could they wouldn't live with me anymore and want to move to another country. They've even talked with their new 'girlfriend' about wanting to kiss, cuddle, move in, etc alongside generally wanting to be alone in their room and interacting with people whenever they want versus being around people as the default.
• They said that they're unsure if they have romantic capacity. They're surely burnt out with me yet want to rebuild that to connect with others in the future. Right now they're in the dating phase with someone they got with the day they officially ended things with me cause this person is 'nice' and they want to 'see where it goes' yet it wasn't 'preemptive cheating' because they were already out and disconnected from despite me explaining why it would be a betrayal to allow those connections to form in a monogamous setup.
• They want to be solo polyamorous. This fits them best as they'd like to have multiple, unlimited meaningful relationships in their life without artificial restrictions and conventions. I scarred them with my jealousy and controlling in the beginning regarding same-sex friendships and I regret it. I saw so much cheating that my dad did and I hated the sneakiness and that message was confirmed throughout despite getting over it after a few months of being together. They also mentioned needing to have someone close in their life and them needing to seek that out... and not feeling close with me for months besides snippets and not engaging in their hobbies. A previous breakup would be when they considered polyamory while LDR and broke up with me as that'd be a incompatibility towards wanting a more connected lifestyle with boundaries. I tried getting over them and they reached back out and we got back together cause it wasn't a need.
• They said 'get over me and get on with your life'. They have no emotional or mental attachment to us working out and would rather not think or talk about anything regarding our relationship in the past. I feel like a bad memory that she wants to forget as I kept asking questions towards the end when they were in the other room and they kept repeating 'let me go', 'I already said everything that needed to be said', 'you already know the answer', etc. I left the door frame cause they were so angry and they seemed done with me. We talked later today and we had a relatively civil conversation minus me letting my emotions spill out and taking jabs at their overall secrecy.
• They said it was stupid and 'one of their biggest regrets in life' to get back with me out of pity. This happened around 2 months ago when they broke up with me last despite me trying to cry in silence and not bother them and try to actually move on cause I felt unsure of how many heartbreaks I could go through.
• They missed the old me. I apparently was a bit sharper, playful, etc in the past and most recently they've sought people out like that to fill a void yet can't pour it back here. I'd also say I was prettier and happier as I had more home-cooked meals and less stress.

• Some things they've said about us would be that 'we peaked last year', 'I don't think I can do (romantic) relationships anymore', 'I want to keep everyone in my life at a (platonic) friendship level', etc. I feel like I've ruined love for them and that hurts too because I not only knew and believed we had potential but want it to continue.
• I don't feel like I'm in the state to do much radical change cause I need to pick up the broken, bashed parts of me or else I'm just going to go into bad cycle of changing for a little bit or not ... fully understanding how to root-cause change and add more trauma to them.

• Some things that still upset me would be that they don't greet me or sometimes lock their door at night which I don't understand. I've never done anything harmful to them while they're sleeping but did look at them a few days ago while they were sleeping because
• Talking to me minimally because I'm draining in the background. They've said they just can't do 'this' anymore and I assume that's just talking to me so I'm trying to keep conversation brief and basic.

• Some things I'm left dealing with would be feeling like I'm unlovable. They were many things I admired and aspired to be like especially since I didn't have a stable male figure in my life. Their willingness to stand on their beliefs despite many like it will always be one of the top things that drew me to them despite it coming from a dark origin of their authority figures spanning teachers, parents, classmates etc either actively or passively allowing people to bully them. They also had a caring, compassionate view of allocating resources to people which fit well as they used to take care of their sister.

1. Doing a giveaway every month where anyone who donates a small amount to charity gets randomly picked to win a free pedal? I feel like this might be my ultimate best way to raise the most money.
2. I just build PCB's from Effects Layouts and PedalPCB. If I designed my own effect/circuit, I could charge more money in good faith. I started building just because I like the zen nature of it and am happy to know the basics of troubleshooting and reading a schematic. I did have a really weird idea for a pedal but it's so far-fetched and probably unmarketable if I even DID know how to do that.
3. I had a local music shop approach me about carrying my pedals in store. I told them I didn't think I'd be comfortable with this, because as mentioned above I'm just building off pre-manufactured boards and I don't feel like they're "mine" to sell in a retail setting like that. I was curious if he would carry some and donate 100% of the proceeds to charity, but understandably they charge a commission. The foot traffic/awareness would be awesome, especially locally. I guess I could do builds on vero/stripboard, but I'm not sure of how reliable this is vs. building on PCB's?
4. Custom builds. I could probably charge more for these and donate way more to charity from each pedal, but I don't think I'd want to build anything without the artistic freedom over how it looks. I know that's stupid.

Performance:

Charging and Battery:

Speakers and Haptics:

Display:

Camera:

Software:

Conclusion:

Next: