Welcome to my Gwen guide, I'm pleased to have you here.

Overview:
Gwen is a top lane mage/fighter hybrid who excels at sustained damage, dueling, dealing with important threats. She is a versatile champion with a unique playstyle and has the potential to carry games with her high burst damage and mobility. Mastering Gwen requires understanding her abilities, itemization, laning phase, and team fight positioning. Let's walk through the details.

Abilities:
Passive - Gwen's basic attacks deal bonus magic damage based on a flat amount, and a percentage of her ability power. Additionally, she heals for a portion of damage dealt to champions.

Q - Autoattacking gives you a stack, up to 4. Each stack increases your damage from your Q, and the healing recieved. Gwen deals damage in a cone shaped area in front of her, dealing magic to all enemies hit. Enemies hit by the center takes 50% of the damage as true damage, and applies your passive healing.
Additionally,the middle deals 1000% bonus damage to minions under 20% health.

W - Gwen creates a circle around her, becoming untargetable to enemies outside of the circle (except towers). While in the mist, you gain a flat amount of MR and Armor + a percentage of your AP. You can recast this to call the mist to you, or it can recast automatically when you try to walk out of it the first time.

E - Gwen skips forward, increasing her attack speed, range and her on-hit damage. Hiting an enemy for the first time with an empowered attack, decreases its cooldown by 25%, scaling up with 10% per level, to 65% at max level.

R - Gwen hurls a needle, dealing magic damage, slowing, and applying passive healing. Gwen can recast this ability twice, increasing the damage and healing recieved.
Subsequent hits on the same target with multiple casts of R slows them for 15% instead of the initial 40% from the first cast.

As you can see, Gwen is an AP bruiser, best suited for the toplane. She relies heavily on poke to help her with the fights she chooses to pursue. Gwen has lot of different builds, playstyles and much more.
Let's walk through it.

When you pick Gwen for the first time, it can be tricky to learn how to play her properly. She's a very versatile character with different playstyles.

Your first game as Gwen will of course be shaky, as it would with any other champion. She doesn't have a tricky kit, but it isn't easy to master either. Learning her is pretty easy, and getting the hang of things within the first game.
You may play very passively early in the first few games, since you might still be unaware of Gwens earlygame pressure. Gwen has a really strong level 1-2 with the monstrous damage output she has, chunking even the tankiest champions both early and late game.

As you play more and more Gwen, you'll start to experiment, maybe even go in the top brush earlygame, and try to 1v1. There's almost never a time you will lose these, if you get the first 2 hits. (You can do this easily by AA + E and animation cancelling your AA.)
Some you would lose to would be Trundle, Fiora, Darius, Riven, Jax, Olaf

Getting an early lead as Gwen can be game-defining. If you get the 400 gold from first-blood gold, and you shove until cannon wave, you can recall and build either a Blasting Wand or a Recurve bow for a lot of extra early game pressure, whether it's with sticking to them with the Recurve bow, or chunking them even more with your stacked up Q's.

A lot of you may say "Tank Gwen? Isn't that troll?" No, my friend, it really isn't, though it may seem like it at first. You can go tank, and dive face first into battle without any fear of dying, while simultaneously outdamaging the ADC. Simply because you deal true damage and you always build Nashors Tooth on Gwen, your damage output will always stay very high, even if you only have 1 or 2 AP items. The healing you recieve as well is immense, healing on your Autos, Q's and your R casts.

You can also play Gwen more bursty, while not building any main tank items, and just going other AP items with tanky stats, such as Zhonyas, Banshee's Veil or Demonic Embrace. This allows you to win (almost) every 1v1, since your damage output becomes a monster, and the healing receieved is even higher. Gwen has both high single-target damage, but also a wild amount of AoE in her Q and R damage. This allows Gwen to take on a lot of 1vX amounts of champions in combat alone, which other champions wouldn't be able to.

This is why you can always carry on Gwen; Your champion can build any AP or Tank item in the game, while still having some of the highest DPS for an autoattacking champion in the game.

Since Gwen is an AP bruiser hypercarry mix, she has about every tank item and AP item at her disposal, making every single one of them viable in their own way.

Now, since Gwens playstyle is very agressive and fighty, Nashors Tooth is your best friend. It gives you everything you want on Gwen; Attack speed, Ability power and Ability haste. Gwen is very reliant on having her E up most of the time, and Nashors tooth almost makes that happen in a single item. You usually want to rush your mythic, due to the tanky stats you gain from them.
Great Mythic options on Gwen are:
Riftmaker - Great for cutting down tanks and heavy enemies
Iceborn Gauntlet - Very good for slippery enemies you can't catch up with otherwise
Rod of Ages - Great for outscaling even further
Guinsoos Rageblade - Makes extended fights almost unlosable. Very snowball-y.
Everfrost - Great for slippery targets you can't catch otherwise
Radiant Virtue - Really great if you need a helping hand in fights
Jak'Sho - Amazing tank potential and healing
Night Harvester - A rare sight to see a Gwen running this, but makes you able to burst faster than usual.


Now, after choosing your favorite mythic, you're ready to build into other items.
The best item Gwen can build second would be Nashors Tooth, since it gives you 100 AP, 50% Attack Speed and Ability Haste. Gwen needs ability haste to keep her E up permanently, and the Attack Speed she gains from Nashors help her dps output a ton.
Of course, depending on the enemy team and how fed certain characters are/can be, you often want to build something tanky. This, although, can be tricky, since Cosmic Drive is a really good item on Gwen. It makes you able to catch up to a lot of targets, and is a really good statstick over all.

But as said, it's very dependant on your enemies. Another good item to build after your mythic, is Anathemas Chains. Let's say they have a really fed Katarina, and you know she can 1v1 you with your current items. What do you do? Buy Anathemas Chains. You take 30% reduced damage when your Vendetta is 100% built up on your target. What's she gonna do? She can't really do much, and you have an insane amount of lategame scaling.

When you have finished deciding on your third item, it's time to go into the situational ones. Rabadons is always nice to have, to acquire the crazy amounts of burst it provides, with the 120 statstick AP, and the 40% AP increase. But even so, the bonus AP provided from the item is obsolete, since you have your Nashors Tooth and mythic item.
Tank items are very strong on Gwen, since you get tons of resistances, health and ability haste. Since you already excel at longer trades and teamfighting, tank items provide extremely strong benefits for your whole character. Spirit Visage is probably one of the strongest Gwen items, since it gives MR, HP, Ability Haste, and increases healing effectiveness on you, which can be procced with your passive healing, and/or Riftmaker/Conqueror healing.

Summed up in a few words about itemization on Gwen, i would say the following:
Primarily build Nashors Tooth (Crucial), otherwise build tanky items to help you survive even further.
A full build against heavy AP could be:
Rageblade, Nashors Tooth, Merc Treads, Spirit Visage, Anathemas Chains, Gargoyles Stoneplate
A full build against heavy AD could be:
Rageblade/Iceborn Gauntlet, Nashors Tooth, Plated Steelcaps, Cosmic Drive, Thornmail, Zhonyas Hourglass

Additionally, you can swap boots out with Cosmic Drive in the lategame, for extra stats.

As Gwen, you have a few different options to choose from when it comes to your Keystones and secondary runes.

You can go:
- Conqueror
- Lethal Tempo
- Grasp of the Undying

Pros and Cons of Conqueror:
Conqueror is definitely one of the most used runes in the toplane, as it provides extra adaptive force and healing when fully stacked. Since Gwen excels in both short and longer trades, Conqueror is obviously the best pick for her, since she already has basekit healing.
Only cons of conqueror i could think of is the lacky early-game potential it has. Sure, it has potential after 6, but before it's very hard to proc it and actually gain value from it.

Pros and Cons of Lethal Tempo:
Lethal Tempo is for those of you who like to just go ham with attack speed, and just ramp up damage in an instant. Lethal is very good into a lot of squishy champions, when you don't need all that much healing from the Conqueror
The cons of Lethal is that it falls off pretty hard late, since that's when you're going to start oneshotting with a few autos and a 4-stack Q.

Pros and Cons of Grasp of the Undying
Grasp is a strong early-game poke and trade rune, which stacks health up for you for the lategame, while providing poke damage and healing. Gwen can proc these easily, since her usual combo is E - Q4 + AA and then walk out. Here you proc both healing from passive, and Grasp.
Cons of Grasp is that it isn't that strong of a rune in the lategame, where Conqueror would be 200 times better.


Secondary runes concerned, you always want to have the Precision tree in your runeset somewhere, be it primary runes or secondary.
You almost always run Presence of Mind since the Triumph nerf came to live servers.
Presence of Mind is amazing on Gwen, since she can have mana problems at times. This helps her out a lot.

Alacrity is your go-to for the legend runes, since your damage relies on attack speed.
Tenacity is the second go-to, if they have a LOT of CC.

Last stand or Coup de Grace are the key finals to go to, since Cut Down won't really help much compared to the other two.

As for your other tree, you love either Inspiration or Revitalize.

For Inspiration, the best ones you can have in your runeset are Magical Footwear and Biscuits.
The Magical Footwear gives you the ability to skip using 300 gold on boots early, and getting them free later, which enables you to go straight for Nashors Tooth, or whatever other item you seek to rush.
Biscuits are great for the extra lane sustainability you recieve from them.

Regarding Revitalize, you only need Bone Plating and Unflinching.
Bone Plating is just a really broken rune in general, since it reduces the 3 first instances of damage you recieve every 55 seconds.
As for Unflinching, you use your summoners a lot since they're on a low cooldown (If you're running Ghost and Ignite of course.)
This enables the passive of Unflinching to shine, granting you the extra tenacity provided.

Usually, you don't go both Legend Tenacity and Unflinching in the same runeset, but Alacrity instead.
If they have 3-4 CC-lock champions, you should go Tenacity and Unflinching, since CC is Gwen's biggest enemy.
Tanks? No problem, Q true damage.
Carries? No proble, W untargetability.
CC? Hell nah. You NEED Tenacity if they have lots of cc.

In the laning phase, Gwen is a big lane bully. Her 4Stack Q + E combo can easily take 1/4th of your health, if you let her chop you up like a fish.
So obviously, you want to take advantage of that.
Playing into melee is often very favorable for Gwen, since she does about 90 damage per autoattack early, and almost never loses a 1v1 early. She can only lose if she plays into another very strong earlygame toplaner who brings ignite + bone plating. Not 100% lost, but it can be a scary situation to be in. Use your own judgement as to whether you wish to fight that.

Into ranged champions however, you want to sit back and farm. That is, unless they use their mobility. If they do, you can pop ghost + E and autoattack them until you force their flash from them, and they're forced into a bad recall.

You want to get your Nashors Tooth before laning phase ends, so you can get fast tower platings. Gwen has a crazy amount of snowball potential, so if you get gold fast, you should be set for the entire game.

Now, as for after laning phase, you have 3 things you can do; (This is where your decision making is key.)

1: Splitpush and create pressure for your team, letting them get objectives. Unless an enemy is very fed, they will often need 2 to kill you. if they don't respond to you, you can freely end the game, since Gwen's AP and attack speed makes her a monster at splitpushing.
2: Walk with your team, and get objectives by being there, rather than creating pressure on the other side of the map. You excel in teamfights and dealing high amounts of damage while healing it all back up, so you should be in the front line when fighting. More about that further down, though.
3: Skirmish against their sololaners who attempt to push something, before resetting and walking towards an objective. If you can catch someone before fighting at an objective, it can be game changing. If you do catch e.g. a Riven toplane, while drake is up, and you see everyone from the enemy team there, you can either TP there (if you're running tp), or you can continue on splitpushing, and putting tonnes of pressure on the other side of the map.

1. Splitpushing
Gwen is a splitpushing powerhouse, provided AP deals more damage to towers in general, and she utilizes attack speed as well. Gwen is also a strong duelist, so most of the time they will need more than 1 to stop you from pushing. You create a lot of map pressure while splitpushing, which can be crucial for when objectives are up.

2. Teamplay
Other times, you want to play with your team. You can provide a lot of assistance for your team, in the form of engaging the fights, and taking care of tankier targets that may be occupying your other carries. You can also just engage on their carries and kill them.

3. Skirmishing
If you decide to skirmish as Gwen, you create pressure for your team at a specific point on the map. If you decide for exmaple to skirmish inside their redside jungle, you create pressure there and allows your team to take objectives that are around where you are, while getting the space warded.

As for positioning in teamfights, you can play in 2 different ways. If you've built a lot of tank items, you can go and peel for your carry, since they most likely will be dived. The other option is diving their carries if your team doesn't have anyone else for the job, and you've built quite a lot of AP. Let's say they have a really strong Jinx, and your team consists of champs who can't engage anyone. Then it's your job to take out Jinx, who is the most important threat. If all of the enemies turn on you, you have tanky items to answer their damage. And the healing from your Passive and R, to sustain you. If you kill the target and die however, you have to rely on your team to win the teamfight.

If you can't engage on their carry, because they have 2 peel champs (e.g. Maokai and Nautilus/Leona) you want to peel your carry, and get your conq/lethal stacks up. Tanks don't stand a chance against Gwen, so it shouldn't be a problem if a Malphite dives your carry.

To sum it all up;
Play aggressive early and create a small lead, which you want to lead into a snowball. Decide whether you need to carry your team to victory in fights, or splitpush the game by yourself. Either way, Gwen is a 1v9 machine.
Decision making on Gwen is VERY important, as mentioned above.

If any of you have any other in-depth things on Gwen you would like to hear about, you're more than welcome to leave a comment and hit me up with some feedback. I don't bite (I promise :))
Furthermore, you're more than welcome to contact me on Discord at: v4lsted