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Dat hyperscaling ADC with the execute ultimate...

Daetnas·9/26/2016, 5:40:18 PM·10 votes·2,128 views

"Ideally, we try to buff them by enhancing their strengths and nerf them by enhancing their weaknesses. That's the formula necessary to preserve the sharp distinctions among champions. Otherwise everyone tends to drift towards being pretty good at everything."

Papa Ghostcrawler in the recent AMA.

So how does this philosophy work out in practice? It is clear what identities you don't want him to have anymore: -Poke/artillery, pretty much neutered this playstyle with the R nerfs in the rework. -Turret thing that does a lot of on-hit damage, however stupid and unbalancable a gimmick this was, at least it was something unique.

But what is the defining gameplay identity of him that you want him to keep?

There are 2 things I keep hearing: -Hypercarry

Immobile, needs a team to protect The first one is not descriptive of his gameplay, just how strong he is at certain points of the game. The second one is actually a weakness that can be part of his core identity. But a weakness can't be his whole identity, the same way you don't call a pizza "not a taco".

So what IS the identity of Kog'Maw?

35 Comments

Teridax689/26/2016, 9:52:58 PM5 votes

Personally, I think his identity as an unmoving death turret was fine; the issue was that it took the reliability of point-and-click marksman damage and turned it up to 11. Raining massive damage from a static vantage point is fine, giving enemies no option to dodge or mitigate the bulk of his damage while within a certain range is not. Right now, his identity is supposed to be the ultimate damage-based hypercarry marksman, able to dish out tons of damage while under the protection his team, and extremely vulnerable otherwise. It's not really that unique in the age of Jinx and Jhin, plus a ton of other marksmen that have both tons of damage and mobility, but he still stands out in that he has even more damage than all of them, in exchange for less crowd control and no mobility.

What saddens me about Kog'Maw is that it feels like his issues come more from Riot having trouble working with certain sets of champions, namely low-mobility damage-dealers and artillery champions, than from his identity being unhealthy. Several Rioters have mentioned how they have trouble designing around "eye of the storm" champions, and artillery champions in general, because they can't seem to make them interactive enough, and that has cost Koggles his long-range poke. Despite their update, marksmen are still so heavily stat- and item-dependent that any major deviation from their common rules ends up causing a boatload of issues, which is partly why Kog can no longer double his attack speed.

Personally, what I would've liked to see would've been for W to make Kog'Maw basically go into siege tank mode, i.e. root himself in place, and use right-click to lob a stream of projectiles at the target location. It could've reinforced his immobile artillery fantasy and, though reduced reliability on his attacks, made fighting against him a lot less binary. With an autoattacking paradigm like that, he wouldn't even need doubled attack speed to stand out, and it would also make him value his teammates more for protection.

TyroneWatermelon9/26/2016, 5:47:09 PM4 votes

Statistics point out that she's actually hyper lane bully and mid-early game focused.

Astôlfo9/26/2016, 7:27:30 PM3 votes

If you want to make it more successfully clickbait, put the imgur link for Jinx formatted like this:

It removes it from the body of the post, but not the preview image.

Tormentula9/26/2016, 6:21:35 PM3 votes

Who the fuck are we even talking about, Jinx or KogMaw ?

Slythion9/26/2016, 7:25:02 PM2 votes

why did you post a picture of jinx...was it because she relates to the same identity of kog maw? Even so, it's extremely misleading and should be replaced by a pick of Kog

Sukishoo9/26/2016, 8:58:43 PM1 votes

execute ultimate

They removed the close range damage from her so it's not really an Execute ultimate.

Yaskamasandwich9/26/2016, 6:08:31 PM1 votes

I'm never a fan of the whole late game champion becomes early game or vice versa. It happened to a lot of bruisers and tanks like Nasus, Sion, and maybe Jax. They used to be late game but now since they are melee they have to be early-mid game. Still thrown off at this day when changes to a champion happens thay way.

Daetnas9/26/2016, 10:37:49 PM1 votes

I have an idea (I'm not claiming these are all my original ideas or that these are objectively good ideas even ,just how I imagine an ideal Koggles at the moment) for Kog'Maw's identity: the 'zone control' or the 'area of effect' ADC with some artillery elements.

He'd have access to his universal (heavy max health and armor shredding) ridiculous damage but he'd need to set up the enemy first.

Poke the enemy with a few Living artillery shots at high range or finish off enemies with it after the battle(Living artillery would be on an ammo system stacking up to three shots maximum).

Hit the enemy with Q to slow them and shred their armor over time.

Cast E to apply grounded to the enemies in the goo and make his damage easier to hit

Then when the opportune time arrives ground himself and unleash the AOE targeted delayed missile swarm and finish off the enemy.

I've got to admit, I'm pretty optimistic with this design, as stronger spells like these would probably make him more suited to the midlane than bottom, but removing the damage from his E (maybe just against minions) could be enough to make his laning phase too weak for midlane play, as his other main way of waveclear, his W, would put him in great danger.

The other issue is, some players may not like the self root effect at all, or they just like his reliability and hypercarry style and would not enjoy this playstyle. And they're not wrong; having some reliable characters in the game is a good thing.

Just an idea, what do you guys think?

FantasySniper9/26/2016, 11:35:23 PM1 votes

Kog'Maw is supposedly a health-shredder. Problem is that so is Vayne, and her % health true damage got massive buffs (a while ago, for those who can't remember), making her infinitely better than Kog'Maw at the task of health shredding with her innate safety and dueling capability. Twitch is also an honorable mention simply because of the way he builds and blows everyone away with a ratatatat. (And can run out bullets while still running away).

Kog'Maw is also supposedly a great artillery cannon. Problem is that Ezreal and Corki are better at poke by a reasonable margin because they're extremely safe and capable of cheese builds.

Kog'Maw supposedly deals shit-tons of damage. Problem is... everyone else has been dealing shit-tons of damage as well, especially Jhin and Jinx.

Limrick9/27/2016, 2:03:17 AM1 votes

I wish they had not reverted him. It's so easy to balance the W too. Just make on-hit effects only 55% effective. Not that hard. Better than boring ass generic ADC Kog.

Vallalan9/27/2016, 10:57:24 AM1 votes

despite what people say, a full build kog maw will straight up do more damage than a full build jinx. by a wide margin no less. he gets free damage/stats in his kit.

jinx only gets the advantage of aoe crit rockets and a 10% damage increase on those rockets in exchange for significantly less attack speed.

Kog Maw gets free % max health damage on EACH auto (not every 3rd like vayne) and a good chunk of attack speed for free just for leveling up. combine that with regular crit/damage items and good base attack speed/scaling and he is unmatched in dps later in the game.

Vayne rivals him for sure, but her dps has to all be on the same single target whereas kog can switch targets and lose no dps.

Jinx is too strong right now, but let's not pretend she is better than kog maw late game. jinx just has an easier time surviving her early game.

Yawnli9/27/2016, 11:19:29 AM1 votes

how does this apply to vlad? they removed spell vamp from the fucking game completely and now he has some garbage ass sustain which doesnt apply to e, reducing his tower defending capabilities way too much. The poor people that had to rework the champion must have had so much trouble figuring out a way to make him viable after those item changes...

Requiemsfire9/27/2016, 11:50:56 AM1 votes

The whole idea of focusing all his damage into one ability which is also an attack speed steroid with on hit % health magic damage to a marksman where basically he stands there and autos everything he can is something that I think is absurd balance-wise. Due to the nature of on hit effects, they are fully applied by item 3085 hurricane with his increased range. This now becomes a game of can you CC the kog before he melts you but it became really hard to itemize against him because of his % HP and magic resistance shred along with a lovely item 3091 and item 3153 .

As a support main whenever my ADC picks KogMaw I immediately pick Taric and have had major success with this to such a point where me and Kog'maw practically 2v5'd a team at one point.

Honestly I'm not sure if Riot expects people to play around Kog'maws W's downtime because even though it is a big weakness this relies on letting himself get engaged on while his major ability is down which is not really something I agree with.

Otter Fire9/27/2016, 4:05:05 PM1 votes

I think this current Kog'Maw is fine, if not better. Now that you don't have to worry about going for only on hit items you can build more efficiently on Kog'Maw. I feel that having a 5.0 attack speed effect could be applied as an ultimate instead of a W. This makes using the ult more meaningful and if you were to mix it with some sort of attachment you could make the adc mobile.

My thoughts on this 5.0 attack speed ult is this, put it on Omen. His auto attacks are his spikes, he has different on hit effects to play with and his ult would attach Omen to an ally champion and then he would double his attack speed in the time that he is attached. This would force him to go where the champion goes. The mechanics would be weird, but I think they could make Omen based on this.

Case and point. Revert Kog'Maw is better, give 5.0 attack speed to Omen as part of an ult.

Kog And Balls9/27/2016, 7:36:18 PM1 votes

Kog is in a real bad state right now in that he doesn't stack up real well compared to other marksmen. I hate to call it power creep, but the fact is the marksmen Riot are putting out nowadays deal a shit ton of damage not only through their auto attacks, but through their abilities as well and Kog just doesn't have the luxury of AD scaling on all of his abilities.

Kogs kit is simply outdated for the marksman role and Riot needs to sit down and have a serious discussion about if they can salvage his current kit or if he needs a new one. I honestly hope they come to the conclusion that he needs to be fully updated cause when I played Yorick for the first time after his update it honestly felt great to play this age old champion who had been neglected for so long his abilities flowed so well together and his kit reflected the new lore they had crafted for him I want to experience that feeling with my favorite champion in league.

TLDR FKIN GIVE KOG A GAMEPLAY UPDATE INSTEAD OF THE HALF ASSED BULLSHIT YOU PULLED IN THE MARKSMAN UPDATE

Rebonack9/26/2016, 6:36:00 PM1 votes

Kog has always had three competing identities in his kit. 1) Artillery platform 2) Long range machine gun 3) Tank-busting ranged bruiser thing.

Riot has more or less destroyed identity 1 with the changes to Kog's R. They tried to focus Kog on identity 2, but we all know how that went down. So that basically leaves identity 3.

TanKoggy.

Or bruiser Kog if you want to be more accurate, but that doesn't roll off the tongue quite as well.

And I honestly think Riot could probably pull it off. Kog already has most of the components he needs for it (punishing base damage, steroids, OnHit, resist shred), it would probably just take a little bit of tuning to pull it off. We've already got a Marksmen/Fighter in the form of Graves. Why not let Kog be the Marksmen/Juggernaut? If Riot DID decide to go that route, then Koggy's range would probably need to be gated a little differently. He could probably stand to get some of his innate tankiness back, too. And honestly, it would probably make Kog easier to balance. Right now his only levers are 'damage' and 'more damage'. If the levers were 'damage' and 'survivability' then that would give the Live team more wiggle room with adjusting him.

And for the record, Kog has never really been a hyper-carry. His power curve has always been some approximation of 'awful early game, spikes mid, levels off in late'. So he doesn't drop off like early game bullies do, but he doesn't grow exponentially into late game like the true hyper-carries, either.

Veraska9/26/2016, 6:48:44 PM1 votes

Kog'maw is supposed to be the late game glass cannon that you draft your whole comp around. his long range and in kit %health damage means he'll tear through the enemy team kike paper provided you keep him alive long enough to do it.

In comparison jinx is ramp up hyper carry where her early teamfight presence is lacking compared to other hyper carries she ramps up with her passive stacks and becomes a whirlwind of death and tower destruction if not dealt with.

Both hyper carries but with slight differences

I hate jinx so so so much but i dont think her presence prevents kog'maw from existing. Kog'maw has always had a low playrate due to his lack of agency and team reliance