Predecessor Builds > Gideon > Gideon Offlane

Let's talk itemization. Generally after hallowed braid I build the t2 against the damage type of my enemy laner, either abyssal bracers in physical or nullifying mask into magical. Then Tainted for lane poke, finish the t2 into t3, then get the other defense type T3 you didn't build. Caustica 4th, then flex spot for 5th item. The only time I deviate in that is either my lane opponent is not going to interact with me a lot, in which case I build tainted skipping t2 defense, or when the enemy team is very cc heavy and I build truesilver after Tainted even into physical matchups rather than finishing golem then building truesilver. Either way, the end goal is by item 3 you have braids, golem, Tainted, truesilver, order varies and you sell braids to finish 4th item caustica into your flex spot.

Ability order is q max, rmb max, ult when avaliable. Start Q level 1, generally get teleport at 2, because it let's you chase or escape level 2 ganks, and rmb is poor poke for its mana anyways.

Now let's talk playstyle. First up is laning, and the most important thing is managing wave. Against players that push, let them, poke them, and establish a freeze. The most important thing in lane is remembering you need to stack your crest, and you accomplish that by taking minion aggro and letting them hit you. This is really easy on Gideon because his passive pulls minion aggro so you can manipulate waves with high uptime minion aggro, and setting up a freeze by tanking waves at tower is doing double duty by giving you stacks of crest. Against better players that stop a freeze you abuse your portal and aggressively shove them out, while dropping q on them on cooldown, you have extremely hard hitting poke, and the ability to basically get out of ganks for free, that together means he is relatively safe shoving to enemy tower, and can aggressively poke out the laner, even while playing safe there is almost nothing a, usually melee, offlaner can do to stop you from just shoving them under tower and dropping meteors and auto poke even under tower when they go for last hits. Once you have shoved under tower, let the wave bounce setup a freeze until they break it, then rinse and repeat. Against good laners its usually a back and forth of 2-3 waves frozen, 2-3 waves hard shoved with pressure, against worse laners its more like permanent freezing bully lane.

Once midgame is rolling around it's time to balance teamfighting vs laning. If the enemy team is like dekker, Argus, riktor, grux, teamfighting without truesilver is going to be rough, in that case pressuring lane, and shoving to t2 to force your laner to stay or pull jungle focus, is generally better than actually rotating to fang fights, until you finish Truesilver, if they have a less cc heavy team you can begin using portal to rotate fast and contribute to fights once Tainted is done, it's a large power spike and it hits extremely hard at low levels relative to enemy hp bars. This is very game dependant on deciding when to go fight pre truesilver or not, so this is really more a question of experience and knowledge rather than a hard set rule of when to leave lane. Both shoving and creating macro pressure and using his mobility to team fight are good options, just up to gamestate to decide what to do.

Once you have saphirs, golem, truesilver Tainted three item spike, you are a God of teamfighting. This is when you are at your absolute strongest, and when you want to be teamfighting at every obj to stack crest. At this point in the game you are at your absolute best, you have the tank items done, and enemy damage is lower than late game letting you truly just ult in their faces at your discretion. Unless the enemy laner is shoving your core, you should be leaving lane and doing what an offlaner does best, dictating midgame fights at obj. This is also where the teamfighting strategy comes in to differ from mage Gideon. In general, and this isn't like a hard rule of do this every time but it is common, I am ulting much lower to the ground and basically in the faces of the enemies rather than above them. The reason is twofold, one you do have more tank and can do so, so getting close range ults with stronger pull force is just better, and two, to some extent allowing more of the enemy team to hit you, ie the melee, is better for your role of tanking than being outside their range. When a Gideon teleports into your team and you are playing grux, if he is sitting right next to you in hitting distance, you hit him. If he is above you, you ignore him and hit his team. You have saphirs, a truesilver shield, and 70 defense from golems gift, it is better for you to get hit than your team. people ignoring you is not you dictating fights, and it's a lot easier to ignore a Gideon above you with less suck, than a black hole an inch away from you with maximum suck. Even if ult is broken, absorbing burst and cc on engage is your goal.