I really, truly believe Koggy needs a remake

Rebonack··1 votes·391 views

He has the lowest pick rate of any ADC aside from Quinn. I suspect once Quinn's remake goes live in the pre-season, he'll gain the distinction of being the least used Marksmen in Solo. Problem is, you can't just buff the little Void Puppy since he's already quite solid at the LCS level due to the extreme degree of organization he gets there.

So no straight buffs, that would be bad.

And when you can't straight buff a champion, what do you do?

Make lateral changes, of course! Otherwise known as remakes.

The goal of the following remake is to preserve Koggy's identity as a long range tank busting pew pew monster. The goal would be to keep his actual damage output more or less the same. However, his damage consistency would improve at medium range while his long range damage would drop. Because if Koggy is going to be balanced in Solo without making him crazy in LCS, his long range damage MUST go down.

New innate Eldritch Acid: Kog'maw's skills and basic attacks shred 10 flat MR/Ar, stacking up to (number of times based on Koggy's level).

Why? Because the Innate he has right now serves no real purpose. By removing it from his kit that allows other aspects of Koggy to get shuffled around and improved as needed. Of all his various tools, I think his resist shred is the most workable thing to stuff into his new Innate.

Q: Kog'maw's next basic attack gains bonus range and bonus magic damage.

Why? This is actually pretty important. Kog's high range combined with heavy damage is a big part of what makes him strong up in LCS land. Divorcing the two aspects of his kit allows him to get actual improvements that will help him out in Solo. In this particular instance, Koggy gets a nice long range attack reset to afford him with a less gimpy early game. Koggy's poke remains strong, though his sustained super long range damage drops.

W: Kog'Maw passively deals (percentage) of the target's missing HP as magic damage OnHit. When activated, Kog'Maw instead deals (percentage) of the target's max HP as magic damage OnHit for (duration)

Why? This preserves Koggy as a damage threat pretty much all the time. It also gives Koggy a meaningful choice when it comes to using the active. Do you pop it to get a little extra kick out of his Qs? Or do you wait on it and activate it when someone gets into standard auto-attack range? As an aside, these changes might be sufficient reason to bump Koggy's base range up to 550.

E: No change.

Why? Because it already does its job, silly.

R: Kog'maw fires an artillery skillshot to the target location.

Right now Koggy's R is a delayed burst skillshot. It has the same amount of delay regardless of range. An artillery skillshot instead travels to the target location and then explodes. Think Galio's Q. Why? This would afford Koggy increased damage consistency at lower ranges while increasing the travel time at max range, giving enemies a bit more time to react to super long-range poke. This is, simply put, another change aimed at making his LCS play a little weaker in exchange for better consistency in Solo. And it honestly makes since that a skill called 'Living Artillery' should be an artillery skillshot.

So there you go. All changes aimed at shifting power around to up Koggy's damage consistency at medium range while lowering his long range threat a bit. I suspect the end result would be a champion that's much easier to balance at all levels of play.

4 Comments

Renthaeus1 votes

Yea. I think a few weeks ago when he was free, I saw a few kogs that died and literally, they just stood there. They didn't do anything they just stood and exploded. He probably does need a rework so people can know how to use him.

Rebonack1 votes

{quoted}

Yea. I think a few weeks ago when he was free, I saw a few kogs that died and literally, they just stood there. They didn't do anything they just stood and exploded. He probably does need a rework so people can know how to use him.

Less needs a rework so people will know how to use him and more needs a rework so that it'll be possible to make him an attractive pick in Solo without making him over-powered in LCS.

Right now Koggy is directly competing with Jinx and Trist for the long-range pew pew role. And with Vayne for the Tank Buster role. Despite having more firepower than Trist or Jinx when it comes to long range sustained damage, his lack of safety means he's never going to really work there in Solo. With this remake he's dropping sustained long range auto-attack damage, but his long range poke should be improving a bit.

Koggy's super long range damage needs to ease off a little if he's ever to be balanced at all skill levels.

Rebonack1 votes

One bump, then it dies peace.

Robbit Mang1 votes

he doesn't really need a rework IMO. I think that the other "hyper carries" need actual weaknesses. People will say that vayne has a bad early game, she does not, she can easily outtrade any ADC with 3 autos or a condemn.

Jinx has long range poke and good wave clear, scales super well into the lategame. Tristana is relatively safe and has a fantastic lategame.

On the other hand you have kogmaw, no mobility or escapes and he actually does have a weak laning phase. Him and Twitch are the only hypercarries with bad early game, and they happen to be the two hypecarries with the lowest pickrate.

quinn and corki have low pick rates as well, but corki is a midgame carry and quinn is honestly more of an assassin than a marksman because of how yolo she goes, causing her to die a lot.

The problem is that vayne and jinx just have no bad matchups. Caitlyn does somewhat good for zoning vayne during lane phase, but as soon as lane phase is over and vayne has item 3153 item 3046 , vayne will always win a solo fight unless caitlyn got SUPER ahead. Jinx can still farm even if zoned due to her ginormous auto attack range with rockets and free bonus damage/AS she can outtrade and outscale most other carries.

Twitch and Kogmaw can kill both of the dominant hypercarries right now, the problem is that they actually need most of their items while those two don't

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