Why Tahm is bullshit, proposed nerfs that don't destroy his identity

Mirror of the post on GD: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/GD/B6eqxRwT-why-tahm-is-bullshit-proposed-nerfs-that-dont-destroy-his-identity

Tahm is ridiculous because he can use his W (Devour) to eat an ally with almost repercussions. His ability to eat enemies is generally negligible except for some max hp damage, that combined with eating an enemy is both difficult and can backfire means that this ability is almost exclusively used to save allies from danger. The fact that this literally gives the specific ally you want a zhonyas as early as level 1 (in most cases 2) making them untargetable and unkillable is what makes this ability so oppressive.

That being said, it would appear that this is the identity that Riot wants Tahm to have. it's why he is such a good support, unparalleled in his ability to peel. As such, my proposed nerfs will target his safety when he tries to save an ally by devouring them. At the moment he can devour allies with almost no penalty.

My proposed nerfs are not to his W. My proposed nerfs are in fact, to his E. Thick Skin is the ability which gives him Grey health that regenerates HP after a few seconds, and it's active ability lets him instead use all of the grey health as a temporary shield instead of regenerating a percentage.

The problem with this ability is that it makes him almost impossible to poke in lane. He maxes it first, because Devour is not an ability that you want to spam and his Q, Tongue Lash's CC does not scale with rank beyond a minor percentage increase. The Stun duration is flat and based off stacks of his passive. As such, Tahm will regenerate a moderate amount of the poke you deal to him absolutely for free, so you have no need to max Q. The Active portion of this ability makes killing him when he makes a mistake nearly impossible, as the shield is huge because he stacks health.

Thick Skin

Upon regenerating grey health, the passive is put on a cooldown of 50/40/30/20 % of Thick Skin's cooldown. This does not affect his active ability. It only puts the passive on as a debuff.

• This means that while he can regenerate health from moderate poke, poke that is constant will have a bit more sticking power. At later ranks the cooldown becomes almost negligible, at 40% cdr and max rank coming to about 1.4 seconds. This is meant to nerf his passive lane sustain.

The Active shield now disappears after 2/3/4/5 seconds. If the shield is broken, half the cooldown is refunded.

• This means that it's less rewarding if he gets caught out of position, however if he calculates what damage he will take from incoming poke, it rewards reactive usage to mitigate poke or burst. This also gives enemies a chance to play around it by baiting the shield and waiting for it to fall off in order to punish him for mistakes.

Overall, this tries to shift power away from passive use to active and reactive use of the shield, rather than just tank poke and rapidly regenerate it like a Garen.