@Meddler and friends: How to make Kog FEEL rewarding

Because at the moment he really doesn't. Kog's niche is poorly defined. He doesn't bring that much to the table compared to other champions that are supposed to fall into the 'Hyper-carry' role. What's more, he actually falls off in the deep late game when contrasted with other champions of his class due to a combination of poor itemization, the short duration of his W, and how vulnerable he is to being pounced on by full-build foes.

What's more, Kog's current state has completely alienated AP Kog players. Before the remake, roughly a third of Kog's player base ran him AP Mid. Now that has dwindled down to practically nothing.

So I'm going to make some suggestions here. Suggestions to patch up some of Kog's way-too-numerous weaknesses so that he has a well defined niche, consistent, long range, single target DPS. Because right now, Kog has comparable damage to other hyper-carries when his W is up. When it is down he has the worst damage output of any Marksmen in the game. That isn't terribly consistent or sustained.

Icathian Surprise: Kog'Maw's skills and basic attacks attach Void Spores to enemy units for four seconds. Void Spores stack, refreshing the duration. After four seconds, the Void Spores catalyze, dissolving the victim for (amount) True Damage per Void Spore. If an enemy Champion is killed before the Void Spores catalyze, Kog'Maw is healed for (amount) per Void Spore and the cooldown on Bio-Arcane Barrage is refreshed.

Upon taking fatal damage, Kog'Maw remains active for 3 seconds, losing the ability to use abilities and basic attacks but becoming untargetable and invulnerable and gaining bonus movement speed over the duration, increasing to up to to 40% bonus movement speed. At the end of the duration he bursts, inflicting all enemy units hit with (number) Void Spores.

Some tweaking of Kog's Passive to help improve his trades and ability to keep churning out damage in extended team fights. Right now, Kog's W tends to crap out in the middle of battle, meaning that he's going to get mulched when the clean-up happens. Hence his weakness late game. Kog's W could still be baited out, giving the powerful steroid some counter-play. Kog's explosion should be dealing lower damage if he doesn't get any attacks off on his target. Just spitballing it, if each Void Spore did one tenth the damage of Kog's current passive, then his self-destruct should be infecting enemy units hit with four spores at most. Reward enemies a bit more for managing to take Kog down before he gets a chance to fight.

Caustic Spittle: Passive: Kog'Maw permanently has bonus attack speed. Active: Kog'Maw launches a corrosive projectile in a target direction, dealing magic damage to the first enemy it hits and reducing their armor and magic resistance for 4 seconds.

Retain the current passive. That's it for there. Over-loading his W seems like a poor plan. There are other ways to make leveling it more attractive. Case in point:

Bio-Arcane Barrage: For 6 seconds, Kog'Maw gains bonus attack range, doubles his total attack speed and attack speed cap, also halving his ability cast times.

While Bio-Arcane Barrage is active, Kog'Maw's basic attacks deal 55% AD physical damage to non-minions, though on-hit effects are still fully applied, and deals (1.25% per 100 AD, 0.75% per 100 AP) of target's maximum health bonus magic damage, capped at 100 to non-champions.

This OnHit effect has a minimum damage of 10/15/20/25/30.

See, when you guys removed Kog's W AD ratio, it massively restricted the items that are attractive on Kog in addition to destroying his hyper-carry curve. Adding back in the AD scaling would open up Kog's itemization and give him back the punishing late game damage he's supposed to have. Adding minimum damage to his W makes putting points in the skill actually relevant and prevents his early game from being absolute garbage.

If the old AD scaling is too high, it can be dialed back. That's an easy fix. But this is a component of the remade Kog's kit that shouldn't have ever been removed.

Void Ooze: Kog'Maw spews a ball of ooze in the target direction, dealing magic damage and slowing enemies for 1 second. The ooze lingers for 4 seconds, Slow icon slowing enemies who stand in the ooze and persisting for an additional 0.25 seconds.

Slows for 35/40/45/50/55%

The power one point in this skill grants needs to go up. Kog is extremely vulnerable. More so than any other Marksmen in the game. Giving his E a little more oomph at lower levels would help Kog do his job since any kiting means he's losing a pretty big chunk of his damage output.

Living Artillery: Kog'Maw launches a ball of acid into the air that drops after 0.6 seconds at the target location, damaging all enemies hit and granting sight of them for 2 seconds.

Living Artillery's base damage and bonus AD ratios are doubled against enemies below 50% maximum health, and tripled against enemies below 25% maximum health. The AP ratio remains at (50%? 60%?) regardless of the target's health.

Each subsequent Living Artillery within the next 10 seconds costs 50 additional mana, capping at 500 mana per cast.

This one is for AP Kog. Giving Living Artillery a static AP ratio would help to resolve between his AD and AP builds. AD would have a much more powerful execute while AP would have fairly strong poke regardless of the target's health. I think this change would go a long way toward making AP Kog players happy.

So there you go. Covering some weaknesses, bolstering some strengths, and keeping his core downsides (total immobility) intact. Kog should be the go-to Marksmen pick if you want raw, health bar crushing damage rather than the oodles of other things that other Marksmen bring to the table. Lets make it happen.