why i think that the tahm kench changes are a bad idea

i just want to bring up the subject of the recent tahm kench changes on the pbe. and honestly im hoping that a rioter will see this and give me some context behind thee changes from their perspective. because one of the frustrating things about these changes to me is that i have been unable to find a specific example of a riot employee explaining the reasoning behind them.

i myself am not a high elo played but i know quite a few of them and have a welth of knoladge regarding this champion, i am currently silver iv and have about 130k mastery with tahm kench

but enough of that, lets get into it. the changes made to tahm kench are in the link, but the two most significant ones are

1. the damage from his ult passive has been moved to his actual passive, and Nerfed substantially, from 2/4/6 % health to between 1 and 4.5 depending on level and how many passive stacks the opponent has.

2. the efficiency and thus the overall size of his e shield has been cut, but the cooldown has been reduced.

now on to my thoughts, these changes are obvious nerfs to top lane tahm as well as the rarely seen but i believe still notable jungle tahm, as they simply destroy his damage output and the consistency by which he wins 1v1s even against favorable matchups. while the damage nerfs are not as significant to support tahm, which is clearly the only role riot wants to let him be played in, the shield changes are noticeably worse, specifically because the lower cd on the shield really isnt helpful since it isnt used off cd very often regardless.

the real issue with these changes in my mind however, is that they remove what little remains of tahm kenches core identity. on release tahm kench had specific identities that created a unique playstyle and role which he filled well (dont mistake this as me saying release tahm was balanced) but in the process of tuning him down since then, he has been stripped of all his meaningful uniqueness until he is simply outclassed by another champion at everything he can do.

the best solution i feel, if these nerfs have to go through are to make one of the following additional changes.

1)reimplement his movement speed buff when carrying an aly in his belly, this is sub optimal as a solution because as riot said when they removed this effect, it has too little counterpla and is too reliably effective to balance, but it would allow him to once again compeet with the likes of janna and lulu as a dedicated peel and disengage support, an identity which he currently struggles to do reliably.

2. returning his auto attack range to 200, or slightly upping the range on his q this could allow the support playstyle to shift into a place where he is played as a more aggressive trading support and/or is more capable of setting up ganks or plays in the botlane

3. buffing the range on his devour slightly, or (my preference) allow the Q+W interaction that allows him to eat minions from range be performed on ally champions or even enemy champions who already have 3 stacks ( although i doubt riot would ever consider this in a million years)

this could allow for similar identity shifts as the first option because it would allow tahm kench to peel for an aly in fights withought having to always flash in and get ccd to death or chased down untill the adc pops back out of him, this could also give him a very unique identity as a peel support that can reposition teamates who get too far away.

4. balance him around toplane, increase his ap an hp% ratios slightly while nefing his base damage and base stats enough to where he needs to have solo lane gold to survive and contribute, this would imho be the easiest way to fix things but it would mean that riot would have to acknowledge that tahm might work better as a laner than a support and admit that, and it also means that we would loose out on one of his playsyles which i think is unessasary as there is no reason in my mind he cant be balanced in all his roles.

thats all i have to say, and now i want to hear what everyone else has to say, if you think there is a better way to balance the catfish champ please let me know. if you can provide any better context on the current changes or why they are justified please do that as well and,

thanks for reading!