Will Kog'Maw EVER BE VIABLE Again?

XShadowAlkX·7/21/2018, 5:07:08 PM·1 votes·1,814 views

The people are crying about all the nerfs to crit items are ignoring the adc who has suffered the most, Kog'Maw. While certainly, crit adcs may be in a bad state, Kog sits barely above a 1% play rate and has about a 46% win rate. This isn't the lowest win rate thanks to champions nerfed for the LCS like Azir, Ryze, Ornn, and Gnar, but Kog'Maw was never nerfed for the LCS, he is just plain bad no matter what level of play he is played at. Kog'Maw's current state of being bad is a combination of many changes that ended up indirectly nerfing him to his current abysmal state. The buffs to crit items won't help Kog'Maw at all and I am worried he will stay this way.

With the introduction of Runes Reforged Kog'Maw lost his most valuable keystone, fervor of battle, while other champions, like assassins, gained more powerful keystones (TLD to Electrocute). While lethal tempo may look nice initially, once you see it takes 1.5 seconds to activate while assassins have higher burst than before, it seems like a miracle to survive 1.5 seconds in a fight. If bone plating was a keystone option for Kog, it would be 10x more useful than lethal tempo. Kog benefits very little from new runes and gets bursted much faster than before.

Another issue were the marksmen nerfs. All adcs had their armor reduced. Now Kog is even easier to oneshot. Also riot buffed a lot of other adcs to make up for the nerfs but never included Kog in those buffs.

Also, champions like Kai'sa and Varus were abusing Kog's one core item, rageblade. Instead of nerfing those 2 champions, riot nerfs rageblade instead, which was almost the final nail in the coffin for Kog.

The FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN for Kog was the enchanter nerfs. Riot nerfed all the enchanter items that increased heal and shield strength while also reducing the duration of many shields. The most significant part of this change isn't that Kog'Maw has weaker heals and shields to protect him, it's that now Kog'Maw has NO SHIELDS OR HEALS TO PROTECT HIM AT ALL. These enchanter nerfs pushed protective supports entirely out of meta so that damage supports fill the bot lane. Now Kog can't even survive 2v2 bot lane, much less a team fight. The only way I see Kog being viable again would be if riot massively over buffed his passive which is basically his main source of damage at this point. Anytime I see a Kog nowadays I feel like 99% of the damage I take from him is his passive bomb after I oneshot him.

RIP Kog'Maw. I really enjoyed playing you, you little stomach acid spitting team shredding ugly void thingy. [zombie-nunu-bummed] item 3070 item 3073 KogMaw item 3073 item 3070

8 Comments

Swarmer7/21/2018, 5:36:21 PM1 votes

Well, hes more viable than all adcs except lucian and kaisa, but since anything that is an adc is unviable, i say naah, especially in this 2 seaso long assassin meta

Arcane Blue Boi7/21/2018, 6:46:40 PM1 votes

If deathball becomes a style again, KogMaw will do great the problem is kogmaw cant shine in an assassin reliant meta

SwiftKitten887/21/2018, 6:59:30 PM1 votes

after 6.21 i waited a year and a half for my baby Nidalee to be viable

if the game survives long enough he should be again.

SugeMinPikk7/21/2018, 7:00:34 PM1 votes

Not when Kaisa is viable. When Kaisa is meta, she eclipses both Vayne and Kog.

Veraska7/21/2018, 7:01:32 PM1 votes

it wasn't too long ago when lulu-kog was an auto win in champ select, he's a late game glass cannon he probably shouldn't be very good in an early game meta

Sukishoo7/21/2018, 7:19:06 PM1 votes

Probably not till after the day he gets a VGU

JoeAnarchy7/21/2018, 7:22:36 PM1 votes

why not build rageblade and nashors tooth on him and go ham? he has an AP scale also, but everyone is focusing his crit AD potential, and ignoring his AS+AP potential