He has a 58% winrate in the first 25 minutes and that drops to 53% by 40+. Moving AS to W is a mistake that just made him too strong early while doing nothing for his AP variant. By comparison, look at a normal hypercarry graph from Vayne. 41.9% winrate in the first 25 minutes and 56.4% winrate at 40+. That's the way Kog'Maw is supposed to look too.
Rebonack49 votesHe's been like this since Riot removed the AD ratio from his W and replaced it with a flat 2% max HP OnHit.
Honestly, Riot's patch notes on him have been really confusing. They keep saying they want him to be a hyper-scaler, but they keep buffing his earl/mid game and/or nerfing his late game. It's absolutely baffling.
Supreme Senpai6926 votesThey wanted him to be a hyper-scaler but everybody complained his early game was so weak and games were ending so fast that he could never hit his power-spike. So they added power to his early game and to balance it, took away some power from his late game. Obviously they put way too much in and this is a problem, but I don't think it's confusing.
Rebonack12 votes[{quoted}](name=Revan Senpai,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mER6o8iA,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2016-02-16T16:25:38.460+0000)
They wanted him to be a hyper-scaler but everybody complained his early game was so weak and games were ending so fast that he could never hit his power-spike. So they added power to his early game and to balance it, took away some power from his late game. Obviously they put way too much in and this is a problem, but I don't think it's confusing.
But they keep saying he's a hyper-scaler.
They said that every time they've changed him. He hasn't been a hyper-scaler since the W change, he's been a mid-game carry.
There's nothing wrong with Kog being a mid-game carry, he was before the remake as well. But it would be nice if Riot were a bit more clear about what their vision for Kog is.
Stillname3 votes"Supposed to be" and "Is" are 2 different things. It is really weird that he went from bottom 3 worst adc to best adc with one change that didn't seem that big.
I can't say I saw a single person talking about the kog changes but they might end up being one of the bigger changes in winnrate in league history from one patch to another.
Rebonack3 votes"Supposed to be" and "Is" are 2 different things. It is really weird that he went from bottom 3 worst adc to best adc with one change that didn't seem that big.
I can't say I saw a single person talking about the kog changes but they might end up being one of the bigger changes in winnrate in league history from one patch to another.
He jumped from 35% to 48% when he got hotfix buffed. His win rate dropped when his W AD ratio was removed. When Fervor of Battle got buffed Kog inched up to 50%. Then the most recent W change launched him to where he is now.
Spaceman5pff4 votesWas watching Wingsofdeath last night, and he had a Kog on his team.
This Kog had 
and just flashed over a wall alone into 4 people, hit W and clicked on someone.
I think it took no more than 2 seconds for him to net a Quadra. Granted they were all like half-ish HP, but still, Kog was only like 4/1/1 at the time. ( "only" lol)
Still, the fact that protect the kog comps can work in SoloQ is crazy to me(
bottom, 
mid) seems pretty common at high elo atm
Sire Hippington2 votesthat's not suprising. If the right setup is picked, a protect the hypercarry comp is easy to play. Even in high Elo, most soloQ setups are a random bunch of champs with no real synergie or strategie.
If people now start to actually but some thoughs into their picks and go for an actuall strategie, they are at a clear advantages regardless of how powerfull the strategie actually is. Strategie>>>>>>>>>>>>>no strategie by far.
The only thing that a random comp can do vs an actuall strategie is winning lanes and snowball from their. The latest buff mostly buffed kogs early laneing, so this option became less likely vs him. The winrate increase is a result of the sudden rise on strategie if a kog is in the team, and the buffs to his once vulnerable laneing.
notmebuthim1 votesYeah, once he gets those 2 items his damage spike is crazy. Like 0-100 real fast
Dengeden1 votesYou're basically saying that Koggy should build AD items after rageblade, that's ridiculous. His W gimps his AA damage and he's very much in love with AS items.
Hyrum Graff1 votesYou're basically saying that Koggy should build AD items after rageblade, that's ridiculous. His W gimps his AA damage and he's very much in love with AS items.
Different use of the word "should," friend. He's not saying AD is the best build, he's saying a normal adc build should be the best build.
Dengeden1 votesThat wasn't the case for pre-preseason Kog'maw, why should it be the case now?
Hyrum Graff1 votesThat wasn't the case for pre-preseason Kog'maw, why should it be the case now?
What did pre-preseason kog build?
Axis the Dragon1 votesTri-force into Bork (or the other way around, I've seen both work), actually. Which is technically a mid-game powerspike Koggy. :x
Granted, he still got stuff like IE and Statikk by lategame. xD
Hyrum Graff1 votes[{quoted}](name=Axis the Dragon,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mER6o8iA,comment-id=000000010000000000000000,timestamp=2016-02-17T07:33:55.633+0000)
Tri-force into Bork (or the other way around, I've seen both work), actually. Which is technically a mid-game powerspike Koggy. :x
Granted, he still got stuff like IE and Statikk by lategame. xD
Thing is, Triforce, BoRK, and IE are three of the most expensive items in the game, at 3800, 3400, and 3600 respectively.
Rageblade is 2800. The other 3 zeal upgrades are 2600. Wits end is 2800 and nashors is 3k. The pen items are all 2700 or less.
It's no wonder Kog spikes earlier than other adcs -- he's at full build nearly a full item ahead of them. This is also why the incoming base AS nerf is TOTALLY the right direction, if you want to turn him back into a hyper carry: he'll scale worse with AS, so it'll make more sense to buy AD on him, pushing his power curve back to hyper scaling.
Sire Hippington2 voteshis W doesn't gimpo his dps. 55% X2 = 110%dps compared to without it, so while it isn't as massive as on-hit, his AAs actually scale harder than they did befor the rework.
Dengeden1 votesIf he could actually get off 2 AAs every time he attacked (which is just unreliable), sure. But if you also consider the negligible/lack of AD scaling on his other abilities (which I totally didn't forget to mention), a traditional ADC build doesn't really work.
Sire Hippington1 votespeople did build him as adc in the past, and it seemed to work. His rework buffed his AS/lvl, his as from Q(now W), and gave him 10% aditional dps on W, and the ult recived an ratio buff vs anyone below 50%. So if adc builts worked befor preseason, they should work now aswell. It is weaker than the on-hit builts though, and thats the point. On-hit lacks support from items, which is the main reason kog spikes at midgame, adter guinsoo's, botrk and hurricane, he lacks items that really give a powerspike. And this 3 item point, his on the pinnacle of his power curve, all relecant skills maxed out and all powerfull items built.
If you do go for an carry built with like 
, your damage at lategame will most likely be higher than with the currently used builts. But your midgame will be alot weaker, and with the current game paceing, midgame is way more important.
Dengeden1 votesHe built Tri - BoRK into standard ADC build, that's not an option now since both of those items got changed in ways that don't synergize with his kit and the meta doesn't favor it either. He needs to actually get his target that low for his poke to mean anything and if he did, the fight is already his.
That build is far from traditional, it has no armor pen and shiv is used for waveclear now that it's no longer the cheap version of PD. I did try building him like that btw, only with rageblade instead of BoRK (and they're both on-hit items, so I doubt it matters) it failed horribly.
Rebonack1 votesYou're basically saying that Koggy should build AD items after rageblade, that's ridiculous. His W gimps his AA damage and he's very much in love with AS items.
Not really. It makes his Ult and auto-attacks stronger. Kog is mostly interested in OnHit effects, but AD doesn't hurt.
Before the AD ratio was removed on Kog's W, it effectively gave him 1.4 to 1.7 AD scaling when his W was up depending on the target. There were some neat Mura-based, Ult focused builds that had lower attack speed but hit like a howitzer before the skill was changed. Riot pretty much shoe-horned Kog into building only OnHit and nothing else.
Dengeden1 votesWell the intention was to not punish him for building AS items since his W is and was his primary source of damage.
That Mura based build sounds like blue Ezreal without mobility, I'm a bit skeptical as to how effective it really was. Kog can't really build Gauntlet because CDR is a terrible stat on him and Tear-Triforce is excessively expensive.
Rebonack1 votesWell the intention was to not punish him for building AS items since his W is and was his primary source of damage.
That Mura based build sounds like blue Ezreal without mobility, I'm a bit skeptical as to how effective it really was. Kog can't really build Gauntlet because CDR is a terrible stat on him and Tear-Triforce is excessively expensive.
You didn't build him like blue Ez. You built him for tons of raw AD, good OnHit, and decent attack speed. The AD was amplified by his W's ratio, making each basic attack hurt quite a bit more while the lower attack speed meant that Kog could actually get some degree of mileage out of kiting. Because his Ult also scaled with bonus AD, that meant you were vaporizing anything under half HP while having Mura to give you a decent mana pool.
I ran this mostly on Dominion, so the build ended up looking something like- 
. Pillager's bleed was especially nice since it doesn't care about the reduced damage on Kog's W.
OyddAWqJ5r1 votesThe problem is that the items he builds typically cause a huge midgame power spike while every item after that is far less synergistic, leading to a slow degrade in power level compared to other champions who only get more viable as the game continues.
Reasons for this: + innate low base health meaning he only becomes easier to kill as the game goes on and other champions unlock more options to kill him. He has items he can build to mitigate this weakness but the best he can do is probably 1 second more of survival.
If they truly want him to be a lategame hypercarry they need to further increase his synergy with AD items. Because right now he can't build further than the typical on-hit proc items for damage without wasting gold on near-useless AD. He's better off building defensive items like 
.
RyzeRework1 votesHe's been like this since Riot removed the AD ratio from his W and replaced it with a flat 2% max HP OnHit.
Honestly, Riot's patch notes on him have been really confusing. They keep saying they want him to be a hyper-scaler, but they keep buffing his earl/mid game and/or nerfing his late game. It's absolutely baffling.
i think the item choice is what makes him early/mid game untill he gets ragebalde he doesnt do much for damange unless he snipes off ppl with his r but i find as soon as i get rageblade as kogmaw noone can stop me ive had 2v1/s the support and adc in lane with rageblade
Sire Hippington1 votesi agree, On-hit is a poorly supported built. You have guinsoo's, hurricane and botrk, that's about it, and no item that works as a force multiplyer(unless you jungle a melee) It's rather obvious that kog spikes midgame if he goes for on-hit builts, as he gains major powerspikes on his first 3 items, and after that he lacks great choices, and the entire multiplyer is his kit, which now hits max at lvl 9. If they want kog to be a lategame hypercarry, they either have to focus on crit builts rather than on-hit, or, which is what i would prefer by far, they finally deal with the rather horrible on-hit itemization.
SKT T1 Maddog9810 votesRemember when everyone kept saying that that change won't do anything? Yet people wonder why Riot doesn't listen to a majority of the Board's complaints.
Deadly Mittens3 votesHey, I happen to know that I'm right 100% of the time on rare occasions.
Orangesilk3 votesPeople were saying those changes were aimed in the wrong direction, buffing his early and not his late.
They were right.
Iqqi7 votesyes KogMaw is extremely strong. He can still be burst down. The thing is if anyone has a problem with Kog'Maw its because your team just picked whatever champions they wanted and didnt pick to win the game. All it takes is 1 assassin on your team and it is a 4v5. Kog'Maw has no escape. Every melee Assassin just got a huge buff. Again it isnt the champion its your team.
RocketRelm2 votes 
Take your pick.
Orangesilk3 votesOut of those only Lulu can do something when something like 
decides to click on him and burst him for all his life, with duskblade and deathmark as backup.
Steelflame2 votesYou say that like Poppy can't. Poppy sees the Zed ult start, she channels her R. Zed is gone, unless he blows his only escape to get back to the fight. At which point, Kog still has access to QSS to negate the Zed ult and Duskblade mark. And the super popular 2-3rd item Steraks right now is making a lot of ADCs way more tanky than they should be.
Rinky Dinky1 votesI can think of 10 different ways a decent zed can outplay poppy ult.
Steelflame3 votesNot at the exact moment he is popping out of his ult. Can he outplay Poppy's ult easily normally? Yes. But the time he is traveling in from his ult is time he can't do anything to evade it. Won't kick him far, but thats all it takes to force him to blow his second R proc or his W to get back in range to get the kill. Which leaves him in range to easily be killed back, making it a 1 for 1 trade.
Sire Hippington1 votesif they pick a proper peel comp, which suprisingly much peaople do at higher elos IF they have a kog, a single assasin won't cut it. You need a good dive comp, or a powerfull poke comp.
Iqqi1 votes[{quoted}](name=Don Pavoni,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mER6o8iA,comment-id=00050002,timestamp=2016-02-16T23:49:34.946+0000)
if they pick a proper peel comp, which suprisingly much peaople do at higher elos IF they have a kog, a single assasin won't cut it. You need a good dive comp, or a powerfull poke comp.
Ok sure? if we want to play the infinite scenarios sure absolutely.(NA Stats) 28% of ranked players are bronze, 42% are silver and 20% are bronze. So just out of ranked so a safe estimate is roughly 75% of ranked solo queue players are not "running comps" in champ select.
If you want to say that the very top tier of players are "running comps" in solo queue thats great. I have no reason to assume they do or they do not. What I do know is a great majority of all 5v5 games, players are not drafting for a "team comp" they are either picking a champion they like, or they are trying to counter pick in lane.
So yes at the very extreme spectrum of solo queue, you are likely right. One assassin might not be enough. It is also unlikely that a ADC player is ever going to pick Kog'Maw into assassins in the first place. Probably much to smart for that.
In group queue same concept. A great majority of people still just pick what they like, counter, or what they read online as "strong". The great majority dont draft for team comps. They just hope it works out. Besides with how popular assassins and fighters (fighters have become basically unkillable assassins. They just dont have the escape) I find it extremely likely your team will have 2 champions that fit that category. Better plan just bring 4 assassins to blow up Kog'Maw.
What you need to kill him? Will always depend on team comp. Most people dont think far enough ahead and 1 person on Kog'Maw is usually going to be enough. Yes there are exceptions. There will always be exceptions and we can all go "but this or that" just crap. The great majority of games all you need is 1.
Andrionar6 votesActualy I would law to play ap Kog mow. It was hilariously fun times, before Rito ruined hes ultimate scalings.... :/
HigeR6 votesUhm, well, vayne has that HP% thing AND is slippery, Kog, sadly is a machinegun turretpost, he'll melt anyone's face given enough time but by lategame everyone is pretty mobile.
The graph doesn't show his damage output on lategame (which is probably way higher than vayne's) but his effectiveness over time. Last time I checked a hypercarry is someone who's damage is scary in lategame but winning depends on many other factors not damage alone and sadly Kog lacks a lot of those in exchange for a LOT of damage.
edit: though I realize that your complain is that his early game seems to be pretty reliable nowadays and I must agree, he's too reliable all around to have that winrate.
ValyrianBlade2 votesThanks for your edit.
Anyways, I think the overall point that OP is trying to make is that the rework and recent changes were not good for Kog'maw.
He was always supposed to be a hyper-carry. The rework itself had the idea of giving him loads of attack speed to deal insane on-hit damage and instantly blow up any enemy as long as his team protects him from being CC'd or 100-0'd. To be successful he would still need to be a part of a protect-the-kog'maw comp.
Except he's received so large of a buff that he's now a lane bully. He's hitting his late-game damage spike at level 9 thanks to everything being on his W. His damage is sufficiently high that it doesn't matter if he doesn't have protection - he can 100-0 the enemy ADC before the enemy assassin can 100-0 him. Sometimes he can 100-0 both? He's still weak to CC which is keeping him under a 90% win rate thankfully, but he's really overtuned right now. He was over 50% win rate before his latest buff - there was no reason for it...
HigeR1 votesYeah I agree, his buff was way too good, actually having his AS on Q was a good way of differentiating good kogs from bad kogs because maxing Q was the way to go, the increase on the shred is... or was, Kog's prime mechanic for melting, people who maxed W were just either trying Kog or they thought that by maxing w he was going to reach his machinegun status inmediately at lvl 5, which is simply not true... or well... it wasn't.
Skia Asteri2 votesYeah I agree, his buff was way too good, actually having his AS on Q was a good way of differentiating good kogs from bad kogs because maxing Q was the way to go, the increase on the shred is... or was, Kog's prime mechanic for melting, people who maxed W were just either trying Kog or they thought that by maxing w he was going to reach his machinegun status inmediately at lvl 5, which is simply not true... or well... it wasn't.
Yet for some reason games where Q was maxed first he had significantly lower win rate than when maxing W first, even before the latest change.
astralwit2 votes[{quoted}](name=Skia Asteri,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mER6o8iA,comment-id=0007000000000000,timestamp=2016-02-16T18:15:09.944+0000)
Yet for some reason games where Q was maxed first he had significantly lower win rate than when maxing W first, even before the latest change.
The reason was simple. W max gives you range and lower CD so it gives you more uptime as well as safety. Maxing Q gave you none of those things but increased burst and max DPS. It was a clever way of gating his power from whoever designed Kog'Maw. Kog had to make a choice and Q max would only be better with insane peel.
Celestial Lion124 votesThe reason for this is that he now has a really strong early game however by late game hes so immobile that anyone can do enough damage t burst him down. and other ads will have more upfront damage than him since kog doesn't build crit a lucian or mf on him will hit crit twice and hes dead.
BeatinWarDrumz4 votesInstead of making his earlygame good, they should either make his lategame so good that even if the games are shorter it's still worth it with the right comp, or just fucking rebuff towers and make the games longer.
John Viande3 votesThis champion is ****. Before he had a poor winrate because he was completely static although he did insane damage. What riot did? Buff his damage to such an extent that even being static is not a problem since you melt everything in 2 sec. This is so braindead.
No champion in league should have such extreme characteristics. It will just make him very difficult to balance and he will be either too strong or too weak.
ofart3 votesApparently they have a REALLY stupid base AS nerf on Kog'Maw for 6.4 instead of just reverting the AS being moved to W. Typical Riot, can't admit a mistake and just goes to adjust based on that mistake instead of fixing what was wrong to begin with.
LaughingStapler2 votesNerfing his base AS hurts AP Kog too and nerfs Kog's late game as well, where he's supposed to shine. They're just too proud to be intelligent and just change it back. They always do this after what was clearly a bad decision. All Kog needed was some mana cost love.
Chuck Charles3 votesso ironic. when kog rework came out myself and others called it out and said "that is going to be busted"
initially weak. QQ on the forums about how garbage kog is and its impossible to get to his late game.
now you can be strong in the early and mid game(you could before btw, kog spiked good with trinity/bork before rework)
but suddenly it reveals his broken kit and now we have QQ on the forums again. it really is sickening sometimes. people called for kog buffs. you got em. and now he's a broken af. he was before, just never had a means to not get crushed in lane. as long as his W stays the same it is only a matter of time before kog maw becomes the 1v 5 stand in place dps machine that he is. the idea was honestly really cool, but in execution its always going to be overpowered in its current state.
the W just needs to apply on hits every other auto so the DPS for on hit is the same and you aren't encouraged to build cheesy shit like rageblade/bork...and then they can buff the AD ratio to something higher like 70% so he would scale super well into the late game with raw AD as well. right now you can build bork/rageblade/hurricane and 3 items and just melt people. on hit on every hit was a bad decision. he just needs a higher ratio on the AD he can actually take time to scale like a normal AD would. on hit items are just cheaper, and way easier to buy and super efficient when you can double your attack speed.
The Deckowner3 voteskog has ligit no scaling, they pretty much made his q useless while his r is extremely unreliable in terms of accuratcy and dmg. kog is all about the w and it has 0 ad scaling i dont understand. isnt hypercarry suppose to scale off massive ad not onhit dmg?
Andrionar2 votesThey're probably going to change it to early-mid-late game hyper cary... kappa If he won't get nerfed, why not to pick him over vayne? Yeah, vayne might feel more fun to play and has high outplay potential, but with Kog you're able to win much more games.
Rebonack9 votesThey're probably going to change it to early-mid-late game hyper cary... kappa If he won't get nerfed, why not to pick him over vayne? Yeah, vayne might feel more fun to play and has high outplay potential, but with Kog you're able to win much more games.
If they do end up nerfing his base attack speed a bit, it'll be cementing him as a mid-game carry.
Given the way games play out right now, that's stronger than being a straight late game carry.