Kog'maw lost his identity

Riot hastily shoved Kog'maw into the role of an MG champ over what he used to be - an artillery cannon.

Here's what I mean by his:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/155fire.jpg

Before - Artillery:

• Immobile
• Slow firing
• Impactful shots
• Explosive
• Extreme range

Regardless of if you went ADC or Mage'maw, each shot off of Kog's attacks - whether it was his R or just an auto - actually bloody hurt. He wasn't just scary as some machine-gunning turret, you handed him blue and sat back while he lobbed death on his enemies.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Three_Marines_and_their_machine_gun_on_Guam.jpg

Now - Mounted MG:

• Immobile
• Extreme fire-rate
• Heavy-caliber, yet not devastating
• Non-explosive
• Long-range but not the farthest

Since we've put basically all of Kog'maw's focus into his W, he's moved from what he used to be as the long-range sheller to... slightly longer than Jinx's rocket range. Granted, it's the exact same range that he had before, but his ult's such a laughable waste now that it's almost just token to have it. He's nothing but an MG turret. His other abilities have nothing to them and he is basically just what Jinx's minigun dreams it could be. He just fires fast - but Jinx fires fast. You know who else fires fast also? Tristana - in fact, her Q is called goddamn "Rapid Fire". Lucian's ult makes him fire really fast in a line, Miss Fortune's W causes her to fire fast as well, Jinx literally gets AS boosts off of kills and her Q winds up to practically max out attack speed even before the update - so what's special? He fires faster than them? That's it? The fuck's so special about him?

You introduced him as a glass cannon, but glass cannon isn't a champion, it's a build - I can choose Yi and go glass cannon. You introduced him as immobile, but Jhin and Xerath both literally plant themselves in the ground with their ults. You introduced him as the fastest firing champ in the game, and that's actually true, but begs this simple question: Why?

And if you don't know what I mean by "why", it's because it can and does mean a whole slew of things: why make him this way, why have that be his central mechanic, why choose him over anybody else, why why why? He's supposed to have the highest damage output of any ADC in the game so long as you protect him, but I've seen a full-build Lucian and Kog'maw duke it out and Lucian literally dashed, AA'd, Q'd, and AA'd again and 100/0'd Kog'maw in the amount of time it took him to lay down his E and start firing. So highest damage output from afar? But to get to that point he has to go through an entire period of being the not-most-damaging ADC in the game, so actually seeing this output can be spotty. I mean, you kind of fixed this a bit when you transferred his AS increase into his W, but I'd rather not point out how asinine that idea was and focus on what he was supposed to be when he was advertised.

So what should he have become? Well, while the novelty of basically sitting there and mowing people down is cute (ish), it's boring because it's not new. It's really not that innovative - it's just breaking some of the already established rules to make something outside that to exist as an outlier while being just that - and outlier. He's not really special, he's just an outlier that doesn't have to abide by your rules, yo, deal with it. No, if you really wanted to make something new in practice, you should have actually looked back to what you scrapped - hi, old Xerath. You want to call something immobile? Let's talk about the champ that literally planted himself into the ground on a pivot and shot electricity from across the goddamn lane.

What would have been interesting:

• Passive: I've got nothing. Dunno what we'd change it to, honestly seems like a bit of a staple to what he is.

• Q became a targeted marker that would do okay damage (or maybe even no damage) but would basically allow sight on the enemy by causing them to be covered in the stench of bile and increasing the rest of his damage to them (like a catalyst of sorts).

• W plants Kog'maw backward on his tail as he arcs his head up. His autos change, losing the ability to target enemies, but now act as his ult does now - fire downward on enemies and rain chaos on them as they continuously try to dodge AoE, long-range artillery shots (for a limited time, of course, or the lane harass would be absurd). The range is fixed and is relatively short at first, but will increase with ult levels.

• E would remain largely unchanged, honestly - it's his primary safety and is really the main tool that has always synergized healthily with the rest of his kit in terms of gameplay.

• R would become a toggle - with an added passive, this would increase the max range of his W with each level in the ability. This also then turns into something like Jinx's Q - basically, his W's autos now consume some amount of mana with added effects. Personally, I like the idea of this causing his W autos to spawn child-shells on impact with their own reduced blast-radius, but I'm sure there's plenty of buffs that you could put in this instead to make him function as what this game has come to lack since Kog'maw was changed - that chaos-inducing artillery cannon that eventually pumps out absurd amounts of damage and really applies the pressure to do something about it.

Now no, I'm not saying that this is necessarily exactly how it should have went down - there would probably be some major balance aspects to work out which would be much easier with a team of people rather than one guy, but at least I put something here that's different. Yeah, there are some things here that are like other champs - Jhin is a champ that is like other champs as well, but would you say he is any other champ? No - he plays rather uniquely for what he is and actually feels significantly different to play as than other champs do, which is the opposite of what you'd be led to believe by staring at his kit. That's where Kog'maw - and several others - all fell short in the marksman update - Caitlyn kind of feels more opportunistic now, which is nice, and Graves definitely has his own thing going for him, not to mention Corki does some weird shit now that can make him right at home in an area-control team. But Quinn's practically Lucian if Lucian had a roaming device for an ult, Miss Fortune's thematics are lost in what is basically "I do bullet-time and not a ton else", and Kog'maw sits in the comfortable place "I fire fast". They don't really do much differently from others (though maybe I'm being more critical on Quinn than I should be, she does have her own style a bit). They're just exaggerations on already established things.

... So my point is Kog'maw's fucking boring thematically and I'd rather him have gone a different direction that didn't sacrifice what I'd actually remember about his kit all the time, and that was him lobbing puke-bombs on me from the goddamn fog of war that felt like getting pegged with a brick shot out of a wrist-cannon.