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Kog is the only Marksmen with his niche wholly tied to a longish cooldown

Rebonack··5 votes·490 views

Every ADC has a pretty well defined niche at this point. They all use their longer cooldowns to support or augment that niche. And if their niche is tied to a skill with a longer cool-down, they either have a way to reset or reduce the cooldown on that skill.

Except Kog.

Kog'Maw is the only ADC who has no niche when his core skill is on cooldown. When his W is up, he's League's immobile machine-gun turret champion. When it's down, he's nothing.

Totally disregarding balance for a moment, if Kog is every go to feel fulfilling to play, he needs to always have access to his double attack speed/half damage effect by mid game at the absolute latest. There are many ways to accomplish this. His machine gun effect could be moved to his Passive and the self-destruct axed. W could scale down to zero cooldown, possibly with levels in his Ult shaving off the last few seconds. His W could be turned into a toggle. His W could have its cooldown refreshed on champion takedowns. Any of these could accomplish what Kog needs to be functional in different ways.

It's the only way Kog is going to ever feel decent to play without absolutely breaking him by just piling on more damage.

13 Comments

ShuffledPancake4 votes

Sivir

Rebonack2 votes

{quoted}

Sivir

Sivir's movespeed is always available, though I'll admit her Ricochet probably puts her in the closest situation to Kog. However, given that her main niche is engage rather than long range sustained damage having a giant team-wide burst of movespeed on a long cooldown is far less crippling than having a long range sustained damage tool on a moderate cooldown.

Moulin Rouge3 votes

Twitch

Rebonack1 votes

[{quoted}](name=Moulin Rouge,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=8LTJWnhv,comment-id=0002,timestamp=2016-01-25T16:36:59.482+0000)

Twitch

His stealth active resets on takedowns, giving him a way to mitigate the cooldown should he play well.

ShuffledPancake2 votes

Permanent (Near permenant) max attack speed Kog after 15 minutes, no, you don't toss aside balance, if you do that, he isn't allowed to have any other skills. K? , that would be balancing

Rebonack1 votes

{quoted}

Permanent (Near permenant) max attack speed Kog after 15 minutes, no, you don't toss aside balance, if you do that, he isn't allowed to have any other skills. K? , that would be balancing

You know Kog's basic attack ratio is cut in half while he has W active, yes? And he has to build attack speed items to reach 2.5 (while W is down) just like everyone else. Unless you're building a pile of Stingers, I have trouble imagining a situation where Kog would hit 5.0 attack speed by 15 minutes.

But why don't you go try out Stinger Kog in game? Let us know how it turns out.

Stratavotis1 votes

they fixed the attack damage on W. though i agree that ithican surprise should be scrapped for something more worthwhile (how about something like "if kogmaw has not attacked in the last 2~5 seconds, he gets a movespeed boost" (this could still be called ithican surprise too) and making his W a toggle with a mana cost per attack (let's say 7 mana per attack) and reducing the AD dealt while active by 40%?

Rebonack2 votes

{quoted}

they fixed the attack damage on W. though i agree that ithican surprise should be scrapped for something more worthwhile (how about something like "if kogmaw has not attacked in the last 2~5 seconds, he gets a movespeed boost" (this could still be called ithican surprise too) and making his W a toggle with a mana cost per attack (let's say 7 mana per attack) and reducing the AD dealt while active by 40%?

Riot isn't going to give Kog any sort of mobility in his kit any more than they're going to be providing Ashe with mobility. The only stat that his kit doesn't provide that would make sense is some source of sustain, though I doubt Riot would do that either since it would make his early game slightly less awful.

A toggle on his W could work, potentially, but a mana cost per shot would absolutely wreck his mana pool. He already has some pretty serious mana problems. If his W became a toggle, a flat mana cost per second like Singed or a ramping mana cost like Swain would likely be the way to go.

SaltyKracka2 votes

Ashe

Rebonack1 votes

{quoted}

Ashe

Four second cooldown on poke is solid. Her slows have no cost and no cooldown.

SaltyKracka1 votes

And yet her R is what her entire kit is focused around.

Rebonack1 votes

{quoted}

And yet her R is what her entire kit is focused around.

Not really?

Her kit is build around her perma-slow/persistent AoE poke and consistent damage output. Yes, her initiation with R does use a good chunk of her power budget, but an initiation tool being on a long cooldown makes sense. Initiating a battle is a thing a champion should only be doing every few minutes.

Kog's niche, by contrast, is long range sustained damage. When his W is down, he does no long range sustained damage. When Ashe's R is down, she can still poke and slow to her heart's content.

Rebonack1 votes

I'm sure some people might wonder why I keep making all these Kog topics. The reason is pretty simple.

There's a good chance that Riot will be buffing Kog in the near future. Simply giving Kog more damage is more likely, in my option, to catapult him into into too-strong land. Thus, I would rather see my main get changes that will improve his performance via consistency rather than by making him potentially overbearing.

Basically, I want Kog to be balanced and healthy for the game.

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