It's Time to Talk About Cho'Gath

Warning: Incoming novel.

Once upon a time, Cho was sitting as one of my most played champions. Not only is his identity amazing (GIANT VOID BEAST THAT GETS BIGGER THE MORE HE EATS), but I enjoyed playing a tank that felt like I was doing more than just absorbing damage. He trades his lack of mobility and a crappy late game for some great CC during the early game and mid game. Built AP, he can do some pretty excellent damage, deleting a squishy like an ADC from a teamfight (if he managed to land his Q).

I recently dusted him off for the first time since his nerfs, and his W is now one of the clunkiest skills I have ever used. Old W applied the damage and silence for the entire cone a few moments after it was cast, regardless on whether or not the enemy dashed out of the AoE during that delay. This was wonderful and felt a little bit like ranged autos that follow champs. It also gave a bit of time for the enemy to fight back with their own CC or damage before the silence actually applied. Most of all, however, it was wonderful at stopping dashes.

In its current form, enemies can actually be in the cone for the entire duration and not get hit by the silence or damage if they dash during the animation. This completely ruins the purpose of Cho's silence in general. I'm not sure if this is a bug or not, but it almost feels like the damage / silence is applied from Cho moving out to the largest part of the cone during a short period (as in, it follows the blue sound waves). Now, Riot has called the old interaction a bug and said that it lacked counterplay. That's fine, but it needs some better compensation than removing a few seconds off the still-lengthy cooldown, especially when you've also knocked down the silence duration.

Cho is currently sitting at a 48% win rate, putting him in the bottom 1/4 of all champions. So how can we improve him? Here are some thoughts:

Q: Steals speed from enemy champions hit like Malphite Q (more enemies hit = better speed boost) -OR- remove Cho's casting delay -OR- Up the slow duration / amount of the slow.

Right now, even with landing a Q, I still find it difficult to get to an enemy champion without burning flash due to the considerable delay where Cho stands still while he's casting it. For such a difficult skill to land (especially late game), it doesn't feel very rewarding.

W: Revert it back to its previous form -OR- Up the duration back to 2.5 seconds.

That silence is Cho's bread and butter. It's the only reason he's really worth playing and the only impact he brings to teamfights.

E: Stacks with itself up to 3 or 4 times (more spikes landed on the enemy, the more damage the next ones do) -OR- Enemy champions with spikes in them take additional damage from Cho's other skills / lengthen the slow and silence durations -OR- Attack speed ramps up the more spikes landed -OR- Let E damage towers.

This would reward Cho players for actually managing to get on top of an enemy champion (no easy task) before unloading other skills. That or he can actually reliable splitpush.

And, while we're at it, can we fix the bug of the physical and magical damage applying separately? I can't count the number of minions I've lost because the spike damage applies slightly after the auto attack.

Right now, Cho just doesn't seem very viable in a meta that values mobility, ranged champions and damage over crowd control. These are only some ideas I have to bring the void beast back into play, and I'd like to hear what everyone else thinks.

TLDR: Cho's sitting at a 48% win rate. Was it because of the W changes? How can we improve his champion identity as a whole and make him more meaningful in fights, especially late-game?