Boards›Gameplay

Another 50% winrate champ heavily buffed....

MazeMangler·2/13/2016, 5:46:34 PM·14 votes·1,397 views

After his rework this champ was a mess. But after a few buffs and people finding the right itemisation, he shot to 50% winrate, tendency going upwards. And then patch 6.3 hit and he went to 55%.

For those who want the changes:

Q - Caustic Spittle No longer passively grants Kog'Maw bonus attack speed

W - Bio-Arcane Barrage Now passively grants Kog'Maw 15/20/25/30/35% bonus attack speed Now deals at least 15 bonus magic damage at all ranks

What you can see here is a design philosophy that deeply troubles me. As you can see, riot shifted strength from his q to his w, which he always maxes first anyway. That means the spell is superoverloaded AND he gets access to this power right away in the early stages of the game.

Giving the ability a basedamage on lower levels is outright brutal. I want you to take a look at this please : http://champion.gg/champion/KogMaw/ADC

As you can see, kog maw is an earlygame lanebully now that scales extremely well (he did that one before already) and then a little bit down at the end because of his lesser synergy with the last whisper upgrades. Kog maw, THE lategamecarry, a lanebully now - ridiculous.

We can see the lux-syndrome here: Take a balanced champ and make him another burden for the players who have to face him.

What troubles me most is the balance philosophy behind those buffs:

League got faster (more global gold, weaker turrets, stronger assassins) and instead of focussing on the lategamequalites of a hypercarry, they buff his earlyperformance so he can compete with the earlygame damage of the other carrys, increasing the speed of the games in which participates a kog maw even more now.

This mindless statbuffing has to stop (see xin). There is a border after which a champ doesnt care much about his weaknesses anymore (xin - kiteability, kog'maw mobility) when his stats are high enough.

As a last word: Please look at Udyr.

16 Comments

MunchCrunchLunch2/13/2016, 8:33:06 PM8 votes

to be fair. everyone was here crying for kog maw to get buffs. and he did need them. am pretty sure his winrate was more like 48%. though i do agree. that kog maw. is very overwhealming when hes too strong.

Robbit Mang2/13/2016, 9:58:54 PM4 votes

the rework shat all over his old play pattern, and completely destroyed him as a champion. So what people decided to do was take his ONLY strength (max 5 attacks per second) and exploit the fuck out of it. For whatever reason onhit effects are not reduced like his normal attack damage and crits, so a build of like... item 3153 item 3124 item 3091 item 3036 item 3085 item 3006 will completely shred any tank that comes anywhere near kogmaw. It was like this before his buff, which before it using W caused you to lose trades (the magic damage it did early on was like 4, now 15 minimum its a gigantic improvement but less than it used to be). I just wish theyd change him back or something, but they probably wont. he was honestly my favorite adc

Bonipherus2/13/2016, 5:54:40 PM4 votes

I thought riot knew what they were doing with kog after the marksman update but now I think they have no idea what they are doing

Simpumba2/13/2016, 10:05:29 PM2 votes

Kog'maw is super strong, but he's literally the most immobile adc and easiest to blow up.

Quantum Lotus2/13/2016, 9:49:24 PM2 votes

He is so squishy though and extremely immobile. And the only form of cc he has is the slow on his e. He should do a lot of damage. The same way illaoi does a lot of damage but is extremely slow with annie level attack speed and lacking next to no cc except for the slow on her e that procs only when someone becomes a vessel which isn't often. Maybe the damage is in the wrong places? He does feel easier to play than before the patches but I honestly liked him better before his rework.....

Maybe riot buffed him because he didn't seem like he wasn't doing anything different from before his rework. aside from his increased attack speed. But the numbers on his w were so low that using his w was practically useless because about 3 W empowered auto attacks would be equivalent to one normal auto attack just without the increased range. It was a dumb ability that did nothing for him. He was basically getting the same dps with w as he was without w because of the damage decrease when he used w. That is what made him so bad and why people complained. But a kit like his, and quite a few others cough cough xin being a big one, is hard to balance in the first place without a complete rework.

Maybe riot could take away some damage and allow him to have some cc? Maybe if someone is in his e and he Qs them, they get snared/stunned? Buffing utility for a champion seems to work more often from a "balanced" perspective rather than just pure stats in my opinion. compared to other slows in game, his e also doesn't slow that much.

Slamurai Jack2/14/2016, 12:10:50 AM1 votes

Don't worry, Ashe will have a 55% winrate too when Riot buffs her next patch for no reason.

La Barbotte2/14/2016, 1:11:28 AM1 votes

yes kog is super strong when he sits in the back and murder everything but ITS HIS FUCKING JOB, STOP WHINING AND THINK, if they have a kog maw, you need something to reach him, and there is A LOT of champs to do this is every role, now dont come here complaining about blind pick and you cant know, you want to play a fair league game, first it has to be draft, bans, no mirrors etc

Twitch Chat2/14/2016, 5:24:35 PM1 votes

I think the passive shift from Q to W was a good idea that fixes the strange issue of maxing W not actually giving him any damage but they needed to compensate for it with something somewhere else. Being able to completely ignore Q without missing out on its attack speed is just too good.

In the end kogmaw's rework means there's going to be a very thin line between an overpowered Kog and an underpowered one. Since he can't move he's just going to stand still and rightclick and either his opponents will die before he does or they won't. It's hard to balance an AD carry once you largely remove kiting from the equation.