The Real Problem with Nautilus (and his W)

The recent Nautilus changes got me thinking and messing around with Nautilus jungle (and even Nautilus top, tanky AP like Maokai). I've played him on occasion in the past, but he has never quite been as tanky as it seems he should be, nor even dealt as much damage as it seems he should. As I was thinking about what could be changed to make him a more viable choice, I came up with a few ideas.

Titan's Wrath (W): Cost: 80 Cooldown: 18 Nautilus gains a shield that lasts up to 10 seconds. While the shield persists, Nautilus's auto attacks deal magic damage over 2 seconds. Titan's wrath resets Nautilus's auto attack timer when reset. Shield: 65/70/75/80/85 (+7/9.5/12/14.5/17% Max health) Damage: 40/55/70/85/100 (+ 40% AP)

This on the surface looks awesome. With 40% cdr, if the shield lasts for its full duration it will only be on cd for .8 seconds. The damage is really solid. The shield itself seems to be awesomely tanky. There's one issue though: take a look at the possible duration of that shield. Can you come up with another shield that lasts even close to that long? The longest I know of is Sion's W, which lasts up to 6 seconds and is also connected to some of his damage. Even that can be reactivated after as few as 2 seconds and he will still deal its full damage. Basically, he can wait up to 6 seconds to reactivate it, tanking up however much damage they choose to deal to him, and as long as it persists for at least 2 seconds, it will still deal its damage. Furthermore, the cooldown on Sion's W starts whenever the shield breaks. That means if you reactivate the shield early or it is broken before you reactivate it, it will be up MUCH more often than Nautilus's W. If the enemy instantly broke Sion's shield, its CD would be 7.8 seconds with 40% cdr. In comparison, for Nautilus it would be 10.8. Without cdr, which you may or may not be able to get, it's 18 seconds vs sion's 13. Considering how much of Nautilus's damage and tankiness comes from that shield, that is absolutely devastating. He'll get 1-2 shields off in team fights, even long ones. Sion will get 2, maybe even 3. Furthermore, the damage coming from his shield is much more reliable than that of Nautilus's W.

Of course, even with how well these two skills can be compared, the two champs aren't identical. I'm not saying Naut's W should work exactly the same way that Sion's does. However, the cooldown on his W DOES need to be reduced to match the current pace of the game. The thing here is, buying more damage items will always benefit damage dealers. That is, getting another damage item will always let you deal more damage than if you didn't have any item there at all, and that can always be useful. However, building more tank items doesn't necessarily give you any benefit. Essentially, if significant spells do not come off of cooldown due to the extra time they survive because of their tank items, those tank items do not give any significant benefit. Right now, enemies can break Nautilus's shield, and then mostly ignore him for the rest of the fight. They'll still have to deal with his CC, but unless he built a lot of AP, he won't have enough damage to be a significant threat in that way. By the time his shield is back off cooldown, Naut's allies are likely to be dead, and the enemies can simply focus through his shield again. Furthermore, the super long cooldown makes it difficult for Naut to make use of the shield for its non-shield value. It's an autoattack reset- that should let him use it in really cool ways such as quickly applying his passive to multiple targets (Morello, this would separate the good Nautili from the great Nautili!). Instead, it's used pretty much exclusively for the shield and a bit of damage. There are two ways I can immediately think of addressing this problem in Naut's case: Duration: ~6 Seconds Cooldown: ~10 after shield breaks

or Duration: ~5 Seconds Cooldown: ~9 seconds

In the first of these options, his cooldown would actually be longer than it currently is if it lasted its full duration (8 seconds live, 10 in this). His shield numbers likely wouldn't need to be changed very much in order to make that change, and it would immediately make him more able to succeed even if his shield were bursted down.

In the second, his cooldown would (clearly) be a lot lower in all situations, but have the same % max uptime as in live. Due to the shield coming up more often, however, its shield values would likely have to be lowered to something like 6/6.75/7.5/8.25/9%.

Either solution seems to me to have some merits, but the first one (I think) is more easily balanced. In any event, Nautilus inherently has sufficiently limited mobility in the middle of a team fight that until he has a way of punishing enemies for not killing him after breaking his shield, I can't see him becoming a competitively viable choice. If that's what Riot wants, well... that makes me pretty sad because I think Naut is thematically an awesome champion.