Kha'Zix's Many, Many Problems (Lane VS Jungle, Isolation Is Toxic, Bandaid Fixes)

Wow, was I wrong.

Going into this patch I was assuming that the removal of mana potions and refusal to compensate Kha'Zix for said removal was going to relegate him to the jungle for all eternity. Instead, I'm not having any luck jungling at all. It's actually anti-fun. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like to only way to get ahead at all is to just mid lane and deathmatch at every opening to snowball. I mean, I'm fine with that. I always preferred mid lane, anyway.

Mastery changes seem to have given him a bit of help in lane. Honestly, some games I just run +19 flat pen runes and start a long sword. The pen on Maw isn't unique and stacks with Ghostblade (or more Maws if you're into that). Maw is actually just all around an amazing item, it seems. If the enemy lacks pressure, you can have your Maw procced, kill them, and then just keep it up for minutes at a time by staying in combat, easily healing back to full health off of minions. Supposedly Death's Dance is favourable on him, but I haven't made up my mind, personally.

Now, that's all fine and good, but, Kha'Zix should really still be able to jungle, don't you think? I've tried every viable rune and mastery combination possible, had excellent leashes, you name it. Jungling just never feels right. Kha'Zix gets completely destroyed by the new jungle, and seems to be perpetually down at least a level on any competent jungler. His ganks really aren't anything special, but that's nothing new. Now the problem is that absolutely nothing of his is that good in the jungle.

Ravenous Hydra has been considered core for Kha'Zix jungle since at least preseason four, but now Tiamat just feels like a roadblock in his inventory. Sure, Hydra is still fine, but how often do you have the gold to just straight up walk into the shop and buy a Hydra? Tiamat just feels like garbage without the passive. It's tough enough to start with, so it doesn't get too pretty when Lee Sin starts chasing you around at your second buff.

I'm all for Kha'Zix being pushed away from jungle and into lane a little, but if that's the case, he needs a little more "lane identity", because right now, the only thing I could describe him as in lane is "slightly worse Talon" or "noticeably worse Zed". Definitely better than last season, but nothing to throw his jungle capabilities away over. The fact of the matter is, Isolation just doesn't work when it's almost completely reliant on the enemy's lack of skill.

The way I look at it, either evolved ult needs to grant free isolation if stealth is broken with Taste Their Fear, or isolation needs to be more accessible in general. Overall, what we're looking at here is that Kha'Zix's main targets, the ADCs, got buffed and his main competitors, the auto attack junglers, got buffed. In response, the main counters to the auto attack junglers, the super tanks (Rammus, Malphite, etc.), have become more popular and, go figure, they also counter the hell out of him.

On top of all of this, we have all of these bandaid fixes from various points in Kha'Zix's history that were a sort of stopgap to try and hold back an inevitable larger scale rework. Kha'Zix's isolation being harder to access, his W being locked mid leap, his evolved ult taking sixteen years to recast, etc. Just these clunky fluidity nerfs that, in all honesty, have no place on a champion that has to make split second plays. Then we have features of abilities that were arguably a huge part of Kha'Zix's identity, like his W proccing his passive and his ult being used to negate burst, that were just removed entirely.

The way I look at it, there's two options that could fix all of these problems.

1.) Kha'Zix needs access to isolation dependent on how well he plays, not how poorly the enemy plays. No champion should be a purpose-built pubstomper. That's toxic as hell. Removing some or all of those nasty fluidity nerfs could also be beneficial.

2.) Kha'Zix needs a large scale rework.

So, what does everyone think? Agree or disagree? Why or why not? I covered a lot here, but I didn't want to spam a bunch of threads or spread them out over the next couple weeks, either. Feel free to post your own ideas that could get Kha'Zix to a healthy (not broken flavour of the month) spot again.

Oh, and, no credit for this part-

A friend let me know that someone posted a thread (maybe here or on reddit?) talking about how dying wards negate isolation. I can't find the thread, but I can confirm that it seems to be true this patch. If you want to check for yourself, dying wards that are not near enemy units are isolated for a second.