Vel'Koz's rework makes him highly dependent on landing E

I did a long math writeup (in which I inadvertently overestimated vel's damage) based on what was on the PBE. 6.9 patch notes for Vel'Koz toned down the numbers on his passive and his ult (R was going to be 1050 base dmg at rank 3, now it's 950, for example).

The long and short of these changes are that Vel'Koz is now highly reliant on procing his passive to kill almost anything that isn't a willing participant in its own death. Once you're done laning, procing his passive pretty much requires landing E or teammate cc. Old Vel'Koz could whack a squishy with Q, half of W, and then finish them by landing 80% of R. (You could do some really cool plays with just Q-R by throwing out a Q, then slowing them with R so that the Q hit them). He'd proc his passive twice doing so. Now, that combo won't even proc it once, and his damage suffers greatly for it. Consider the following figure.

Each graph shows how much damage Vel'Koz will do with given mpen. You can get 24.72 from runes and sorc boots, 39.72 by adding a haunting guise, and an extra 35% with a voidstaff. Pick an AP and target MR, and the contours will tell you how much damage level 18 Vel's Q-1/2W-4/5R combo does wherever the AP and MR intersect.

http://s32.postimg.org/69d44e99h/velkoz_Rework_Patial_Combo.png

Note that old Vel'Koz could dump 1250 on a squishy with this combo with only sorc boots and ZERO ap. New Vel'Koz does less than 900 in the same situation. If you've got 200 AP and have ~40 mpen, you'll dump in excess of 1600 damage on a squishy. New Vel: < 1250.

Now, it wouldn't be fair to post just this, because if you look at his new numbers, against tanks, they are disgusting. I mean just absolutely ****ing disgusting. Here's the graph.

http://s32.postimg.org/5sdal28h1/velkoz_Rework_Analytical_Full_Ult.png

400 AP buys you almost 3250 damage against a target with 150 MR. 150! And stacking MR doesn't even help that much, thanks to ult and voidstaff. Like... Yow. I don't know which section of that chart is more impressive: dumping 5000 dmg with 600 AP on a 50 MR target or the fact that if that guy goes back, buys and , he'll still take more than 3000 damage.

BUT, here's the thing: Vel could always absolutely erase squishies that stray too close. Even though now he can erase tanks, too, he needs to land an E first to do ANY of it. I think a side-effect of these changes was to make him highly E reliant.

disclaimer This isn't a complaint about his rework, just an observation, because I'm not sure what happened is precisely what was intended.