Let's talk about Rammus

This is wordy, so I've bolded important stuff and put several TLDR's scattered around if you're not a strong reader.

I want to talk about Rammus and have a healthy discussion about it. However, I don't want this to be "You nerfed my favorite character bring him back he's never op at all qq" post, or a "a rammus beat me one time nerf him into the dirt" post. I want to talk about what's right, what's wrong, and what's OP, and what's UP about him. I encourage people to politely disagree with me and change my mind about things, or add their own experience.

Disclaimer: I play a little ranked, but it never really struck my fancy. I think I didn't even play my promo matches last year. If you are going to say "Shut up noob you're not even gold," then I beat you to it. Yeah, I'm not gold, but I understand healthy game design and I do think I can provide insight to this particular champion.

Let's start with the Preseason 5 nerf: Here is the patch reasoning:

Rammus's uptime between ganks have made him quite the monster, and we're not even talking about what happens when he finishes his Homeguards. Scaling the cooldown on Rammus' Powerball should give opponents better windows to react to his ganking cadence, while lowering E's shred makes him less of a duelist (how is Rammus dueling!?). That said, we're not quite sure how Rammus will be affected in the preseason. If the Armordillo's eating a healthy portion of struggle salad in 2015, we'll double back to make sure he's staying healthy.

I can say I appreciate and accept the motivation behind this change - Rammus could gank all day, from anywhere. Yes, being mobile is part of his kit, but there is a point where being everywhere at once (cough MS Udyr) can be too frustrating. However, I'd say the unintended effects of the change were more damaging than the intended nerf. With a nearly doubled Q cooldown, Rammus cannot use Q on jungle mobs as often. This means more damage taken, less damage done, and more time spent on a pack, all on a champion who already had a very weak jungle clear.

To make things worse, Q wasn't just a mobility move or a jungle monster damager, it was one of Rammus's crowd control moves. Before the change, Rammus typically would Q in to initiate, taunt someone, throw down an ult if post-6, and then use Q again to catch and CC stragglers fleeing from the fight, or, in bigger fights, to interrupt a channel or peel an enemy. Now with the longer cooldown, it's changed his ganking pattern. I've found that, until very late game, he cannot use Q twice in a fight. That means that he can either initiate well, or have that second CC in a fight.

The end result is that Rammus feels gold starved and ineffective in the early half of the game - he can't gank as often, he can't gank as well, and he can't jungle as well, whereas the patch indicated that they only intended to nerf his frequency and distance of ganks.

One solution that came to mind is that, like Thresh, Rammus's Q could have a shorter cooldown if he hits a champion or a jungle mob, and a longer cooldown if it expires or hits a minion. That would preserve his ability to initiate and still have CC in a fight, preserve his ability to use it to damage mobs, but reduce his ability to powerball all over the map - particularly for ganking multiple lanes in succession and that ever frustrating Rammus retreat.

TLDR for Preseason 5 Nerf: The purpose of the Preseason 5 Q nerf was to slow Rammus's ability to use powerball to get all over the map and gank willy nilly, but it had the unintended consequence of giving him one less CC move to use in a fight and fewer damaging moves to clear jungle camps with. ** I propose the cooldown gets reduced if he hits a champion or a jungle camp, and increased cooldown if he hits only minions or nothing. That would restore the unintended nerfs on his Q and preserve the intended one.**

But Rammus NEEDED nerfed power: Maybe! It's really hard to judge what champions are OP and for what reasons, but I would say that Rammus's ability to throw down two CC's in a fight instead of one isn't why he's OP, if he is/was. Leona certainly gets away with more CC than that, as do Blitz and Thresh. So what is the difference? If people hate playing against Rammus, why is that?

Here are some reasons that you may hate Rammus:

**1) **Taunt is one of the hardest CC's in the game, and it's a point and click. **2) **He can flee very well, and people that are impossible to catch are very frustrating. **3) **For being one of the tankiest and most mobile characters in the game, he does surprising damage, between his armor pen, his reflective armor, his ult, his comically high AP scaling, and his passive that gives him AD.

Let's talk about #1 first. League is moving away from abilities with low counterplay, and taunt's counterplay amounts to "don't get close to Rammus," which is kind of silly, considering the fact that Rammus can get close to anyone he wants. Even other hard, point and click CC like Leona's stun has more counterplay, because you CAN stay away from Leona if you don't let her hit you with skill shots.

So, if you hate Rammus, the nerf to his Q might give you the reprieve from your nemesis that you wanted, but it doesn't fix the reason you hated him, probably. You hated getting unavoidably CC'ed. So, what's the solution? A skill shot is one option, but for a champion who can walk up to point blank, skill shots almost become point-and-click moves; perhaps it could be a ranged skill shot that had better effect at longer range, but I'm not sure if that would fit well into his current kit of "get up in your business." Maybe make it a suppress where Rammus can still move and attack, but getting CC'ed himself ends the taunt. Taunt TLDR: If Rammus had power problems, it wasn't in the amount of CC he had, it was in the low counterplay of Taunt - you just can't avoid it. How to add counterplay? I am not sure... suggestions welcome

Problem number 2, his fleeing, is partially solved by my suggestions to Q in the section above, in my opinion

Problem number 3, his high damage for a Tank. Even though it would make me sad to see it go, if it was deemed that his damage was the core problem, this is an easier fix that can be done while maintaining his core gameplay and utility. Sure, they'd have to account for his reduced Jungle clear, but I would say having a healthy set of initiation and CC is more important to me on Rammus than the unusual amount of damage he can do for such a tanky dude. I mean, I will be sad to see the day where I can't get mega fed as a pure tank, but it's not a necessary part of who he is. One point that comes to mind is his Ultimate. Perhaps take some of the damage out of it and replace it with a slow, or something. Hell, maybe he doesn't need ArPen on his taunt at all - they're already hard CC'ed and taking damage from the spikes and thornmail - do they really need to blow up faster? Maybe have it shred just jungle mobs. However, maybe that's just the way I play Rammus. If other people disagree and think his damage is essential to how he's played, then maybe I'm wrong.

No way, Rammus needs a power buff: Also maybe! I'm running out of time to discuss this, but if Rammus needs a buff, it's not in his Taunt, if that's what you're getting at. If you want taunt to go back to a three second CC, I would disagree. If anything on Rammus needs a buffing, I'd say it's his currently abhorrent jungle clear. If you think some part of Rammus needs a buffing, I'd love to hear your reasoning.

Total TLDR:

1. The Preseason 5 Q nerf might have been necessary to reduce his map control and gank frequency, but I think he needs his ability to use it for jungle damage and in-fight cc back - give him a reduced CD if he uses powerball to hit a champion or jungle mob, perhaps, or something similar. It has the added bonus of adding conterplay to his Q - it makes using minion shields more potent.
2. His Taunt has no counterplay, and for the life of me, I don't know how to add that. This is probably the most annoying part about Rammus.

Edit: A lot of people in the comments seem to disagree with this statement above. Specifically, people are saying that his Q isn't guaranteed to get him to the enemy, and that's where the taunt counterplay is. Perhaps they are right - I was simply trying to be balanced about it and presenting the opinion of someone who doesn't like Rammus, and it seems I might have overcompensated and invented a strength that doesn't exist.

3. He does unusual damage for a Tank... maybe that needs to change? Maybe not?
4. I'd love to hear a healthy discussion about what you think about Rammus, and I'd love to hear it be thoughtful and balanced, and not "QQ, and good riddance, devil-turtle" or "dingos nerfed my baaaaaby give him baaaack."