rumble feels absolutely horrible to play

when rumble was first released, and for quite a while thereafter, rumble had one of the strongest lane presences of any toplaner in the game. he didn't have CC, he didn't have any flashy stuff in his basic skill-set......just a couple of low-cooldown spells to slug away at enemy champions, and win the long-game/acquire a big enough lead just in time to (hopefully) be burly enough to throw yourself at people in teamfights after dropping the Big Nuke on them. more to the point, he was a much more appropriate pick across a wider spectrum of matchups, revered by a lot of players not only for his strong counter-picking potential vs melee ADs but also his ability to make youtube-plays when outnumbered/pinned under turret with a sliver of health left. in fact, there was a time where rumble was so strong that him and a couple other popular-picks basically dictated which non-ranged champions were viable up there. i'm not asking that riot go so far as to restore rumble to that level of strength, but there are a couple things that I think riot should take into consideration.

first and foremost, rumble's former identity as a snowbally, lane-winny champion--with a very steep drop-off should he fall behind in gold income--has translated very poorly into this season. due to an abundance of movespeed and sustain provided by the new runes reforged overhaul, rumble's pattern of short trades and well-timed disengages with his shield carry a lot less weight than they had seasons prior; the cumulative-effects of things like DShield on top of Second Wind/Grasp/Taste of Blood/Ravenous Hunter, coupled with whatever sustain many champs innately have, greatly stifle the amount of damage rumble is able to do to them, and the surplus of movement speed that many melee toplaners now enjoy basically invalidates part of what made rumble formidable when his shield is properly utilized. this means that rumble's best shot at winning lane has gone from dueling people as intended early-on to biding the lanephase until he can get his first item up, then just spamming flamespitter+shield and hopefully winning the Statball Fight. on a lot of toplaners this wouldn't be an issue......but rumble's usefulness, relative to other champions especially, is almost-entirely measured by his ability to get those early gold leads. its easy to see how a situation like this could corner a champion into a sort of feast-or-famine situation over the course of a few seasons.....if they're too strong, you nerf them, but if you cant buff them due to the nature of their kit and how they mesh into the game, they stagnate....its happened to quite a few champs. what boggles my mind is the degree to which rumble is impacted by stuff like this, and often for extremely-long periods of time (barring hotfixes/item changes/et cetera).

the other thing I wanted to point out was how item-gated rumble is. in order for rumble to do well, either in lane or in teamfights, there is a hypothetical checklist of items that rumble needs to adhere to. moreso than the vast majority of toplaners, to be frank. sometimes it's lyandris, sometimes it's rylais, morellocon, void staff, hourglass......whatever. there is a commonality between a few of these items beyond just giving AP....a lot of them offer a defensive component as well, and it was the cumulation of these little defensive boosts coupled with whatever per-level stat increases rumble got from getting a level-lead on people that allowed him to frontline effectively. ever since his toplane presence has waned, and since getting a leg-up on the other team's champions has become excruciatingly difficult, it often puts one in the position of either having to dump everything into offense and succumb to being a backline ult-slave past the 20 minute mark, or invest in items to keep him alive at the cost of doing less than half of a FotM-champiion's damage output. and because AD champions have such a breadth of MR items to buy, at pretty much any point in the game, it's more like they have the leg-up in most cases.

this is all weighted against rumble being arguably very strong in other matchups, a pretty sizeable chunk of which also being toplane misfits who haven't had a thorough revisitation from riot in years, and to the tune of a very strong ultimate that is not in line with the rest of his kit. i'm not an expert, i'm not arguing that rumble needs to be a top-tier toplaner at all times, and I have no clue what could be done about it, but 99% of the time he feels like a really inappropriate pick and not nearly as effective as he used to be. sorry for the rant.