Rammus Changes, an open letter to Riot

Dear Riot,

This pre-season I started playing Rammus as my main jungler. I acquired enough mastery points to hit 7 in two months (yes S< is difficult vs. competent folks. Though when I got mastery 7 it felt like a real accomplishment on him.) Recently you changed Rammus's kit and I believe what you've done has completely gutted him. He was already extremely easy to counterplay, and he'd still hit minions (during Q) even when they were not in his path. I've fallen in love with Rammus's carry potential and this is the third nerf in a row to him. This will be the first and last time I write about the previous nerfs to his Ult CD, which in of itself was quite taxing to his only power spike in game and his ineffectivity of W on Dragon/Baron. Note he still can use W on Epic monsters in Howling Abyss. But no one really takes 3's seriously.

Your new re-design has sucked all of the strength out of his kit, and turned him into a support tank that has no damage ability. I shall now list what I remembered about him in your recent overhaul nerf.

1. His W has been utterly gutted. Pre-6 people would feel when they would attack a Rammus, I've won many level 3 trades because of the inherent strength of his W, now his hobble and slow instead of feeling obligated to continue fighting they realize they can simply walk away without fear of being chased. When I could at least stick to them to an extent opponents would at least experience some bloodthirst but now they just ignore and run away because they have no reprisal otherwise with his melee range.

Now let's move on to our new resistances bonuses.... it was already taxing on getting the mid-game power spike but now that I don't have the safety net of the 120 magic resist on maxed W I must invest an additional 2800 gold to get back to where I was pre-nerf. If I'm trying to run away from an Ahri, I used to be able to shield some damage with W, but now that I'm slowed because of this it's just basically giving a free kill to any mage on their team. I can foresee poor mid-laners getting less ganks simply because of this. I also want to note, this 2800 gold is also taken out of his damage output (which he was already lacking.) If you were going to so thoroughly remove so much power out of his W, you could've at LEAST buffed some of his other skills. This feels like new Rammus has become the pre-reworked Sejuani.

2. His Ult. Rammus used to be a good initiator. However now that the damage is essentially halved on his ult, Tremors should be renamed to Tickles. Now his ult just slows and tickles folks for 1 tick before they run away. It'd be helpful if the slow was more immediate. Going into a lot of 5 of those turds, casting W and Ult doesn't feel nearly as epic as it did 4 days ago. Now when I ult + W everyone just runs away and attacks from out of range of my Tickles. Only way to keep them in range of my Tickles is to shed my defense to do so, which sucks now... like sucks alot. He want from "I'm the Juggernaut b!tch!" to Tickle me Elmo, except he's getting royally screwed in the process. I also want to note that the nerf to cinderhulk damage vs. players also hurt this poor guy's damage, so in the last month or so he's been hit twice on his Tickles/Bami aura.

3. His Q was fine the way it was, now being a channeled spell feels really bad. Pretty much a crap knock-up and there goes the engage. Everytime I get channel locked it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I used to be able to force my will on my ganks, now people don't even feel threatened. (I suppose I'd be fine with this really if it wasn't the third turd on the dung heap.)

4. This change to E I suppose is nice in helping jungle clears, but it was more helpful giving lethality to my top and bottom laners. Maybe I can solo a dragon now, but I haven't tried since the changed dragons attacks to not trigger his W anymore. (It was a stealth nerf but I wasn't upset at the time cause I didn't play Rammus much)

5. His Passive. I haven't done the math, but it was nice being able to deal both magic AND physical damage. It gave him a mixed combo which helped with his 1v1. Now it just feels bad to try to 1v1 anyone.

6. Itemization - I dislike that I'm now forced to buy Abyssal Scepter, that is all to see here, now move along.

His ONE saving grace that I am happy to see was more AP scaling, but who plays Rammus acquiring AP....

Anyway, I hope you read this and take this to heart. Making him more kite-able and less burly in the damage department has taken away any potential for a Rammus carry. I don't understand why you took so much power out of his kit just to give his Q more speed, and his ult a slow. I would much rather gamble the other way. The slow on his ult is absolutely negligible because now he's hobbling around with his W.

Very Respectfully,

A sad Rammus player