My thoughts on Tahm Kench changes

Before I start the actual part of the post yes I am a Tahm Kench main and I play him a lot, lately have been playing him more top lane because the bot meta of only poke supports is too much torture for me to handle with him, but anyway onto the actual part of the post.

So I just played 1 game with him on the PBE and I think I did well, we did lose because their Lee kept doing so much damage (my goodness why did they buff him so much). I was against a Lissandra who was a bit annoying but I still was able to deal with her.

Q changes: You may think the changes on his Q is a nerf but honestly it depends on the situation. In a duel it is so much better but in team fights it is weaker. In a duel you can spam this thing so much you might run out of mana. Plus by spamming the shorter cooldown Q it feels like you can permanent cc the opponent, if they try to run away after trying to fight you, you can stun them and by the time they try to dash again you cc them again and missing 1 Q does not cause you to instantly lose a fight.

However if you are against a mobile champion it can be harder to reach them since your slow does not last as long. This is especially a problem in team fights, because of the slow duration being nerfed it's more difficult to reach your target, yes you may have a shorter cooldown but if your target's allies body block your Q's then they pretty much shut you down from even getting close to your target.

W changes: his W I'm not as big of a fan of it. I may not like that the devour duration has been reduced to 4 seconds at all ranks but I guess it makes sense since his Q can permanent cc you. I do love his reduced mana cost because now you won't run out of mana as easily.

However, I do really hate the cooldown on his W. Again in a duel it feels the same but in teamfights it is worse. I get the point is so you can't constantly devour allies to save them but the problem is that once you use devour on an ally, you pretty much can't use it for the rest of the teamfight which does hurt his ability to be aggressive and defensive a lot.

How team fights felt for me was that I saved 1 ally then I would get 3 stacks on a target and keep trying to Q them except someone on the enemy team kept body blocking my Q's and then I could never press W to get the target I truly wanted to attack because my W was still on cooldown. What I would change this ability is to go back to the 14-10 second long cooldown, remove the half the cooldown effect, but make it where if he eats an ally, he can't eat an ally again for an additional 10 seconds. Basically his W would be off cooldown 10 seconds after eating an ally but he has to wait 10 more seconds if he wants to eat an ally again but he can still use devour on an enemy champion or minion. That way he could only eat 1 ally per teamfight but he can still use it to devour enemies.

Overall I think these are the pros and cons of these changes. Pros: Better top laner, better duelist, more cc, can play more aggressive, better early game. Cons: Weaker support, worse peel, worse in teamfights, more important to have 3 stacks on a target, worse late game, more annoying to fight against.

I would say these changes are more of a buff than a nerf and thank god because after how much he has been nerfed, he deserves a buff.