Rengar: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and some Sollutions

Folks on Reddit don't seem nearly as supportive as the folks on the League Forums so I'm posting/linking the discussion here

I'll also preface this by saying I was a long time Rengar main, and played mostly Rengar Seasons 3-6. Additionally I have experience in game design, so I understand some of the jargon and thought process Riot has to go through when taking on a project such as reworking or rebalancing a champion or game mechanic.

With that being said, let's get into it...

#Old Rengar: The Murder Cat
When players think of the Old Rengar, one of two things come to mind depending in which perspective they took. Either they were the Rengar, who enjoyed the feeling of chasing down unsuspecting prey and eviscerating them in the blink of an eye -- or they were the victim who more often than not experienced a great deal of frustration.

###The Good
Rengar was incredibly fun to play. He had a clear identity, and fit his theme as a Hunter stalking Helpless Prey far too well.

###The Bad
The fun that Rengar players experienced came at the expense of his victims. With the exception of "Bush Outplays" players would Never say "that was pretty cool" after being killed by a Rengar after receiving no warning.
Rengar was able to walk right through your team and kill you without your team being able to do a thing for you except get revenge. What's worse, Rengar would continue getting stronger and stronger by killing you over and over and you just had to live with it.

This was not fun. This has to be changed.

###The Ugly
Rengar's passive allowed him to abuse the same player(s) over and over again, accumulating a multitude of bonuses that he would not lose upon dying (there was a time where you lost these bonuses, but this made Rengar too inconsistent and a change was made to his passive to keep bonuses permanently)

Rengar's Stealth allowed him to walk Through a team fight instead of Around it like a true Assassin should.

Rengar's Ultimate gave virtually no information to the enemy, allowing him to engage from a distance and Attack before the enemy was able to react.

#The New Rengar
The rework attacked every one of Rengar's major issues, but also attacked issues that others Mistook for issues (ie, Rengar's 1 shot combo, his Q, and the vision utility of his ultimate).

###The Good
Rengar is healthy! His prey are no longer helpless and abused. Players on the receiving end of a Rengar ultimate are given time to react and reposition themselves to avoid being picked off.
Rengar also has a means of Surviving his all-in engage rather than leaping into a team fight to kill one or more enemies before likely dying.

###The Bad
The information gained by both teams through Rengar's Ultimate is still unfair. The entire enemy team knows where Rengar is, but Rengar only knows where the nearest enemy is.
Additionally, the range that this information is given by creates too much of a cushion between Rengar and the enemy team. Unless Rengar ults for an enemy nearly within Leap Range, the enemy is able to simply walk away.

Rengar's new survival mechanic promotes a Bruiser build path and play style rather than those of an Assassin.

###The Ugly
The logic behind the Q changes is that the Old Q had too little counterplay. If he could leap to you, you were going to take damage without the use of an Unvulnerability skill. However, there was a clear way of fixing this issue without changing the core of Rengar's bread and butter ability, which will be discussed below.

The logic behind the new W is that the Old W was lackluster, and by making these changes Rengar will have to be Reactive rather than Proactive, and be forced to make a decision between waiting before using it (to maximize the healing) and using it asap (but wasting the heal) in order to get to max Ferocity faster and dealing extra Damage with an Empowered Q.
However, this ability is far too abusable both in lane as well as in team fights, and creates a huge gap in the effectiveness of Bruiser builds and Assassin builds. Even worse, this new W is so powerful that it's singlehandedly redefined Rengar from an Assassin to "Diver". This tells me that Q is no longer what defines Rengar, but his W.

So what can be done?
#Possible Solutions

###Trophies and Thrill of the Hunt.
Two distinct problems come to mind regarding Rengar's current TotH.
1.) The threat indicator range coupled with Rengar's Movement speed.
2.) The number of enemies Rengar can see.
I feel that resolving Both of these issues may be a bit overkill and would effectively revert his Ult -- so let's approach this as if we're going to only fix 1 issue and leave the rest to the Player to resolve.

Regardless of which change we intend to make, there's a common change I'd like to make to both iterations.Remove the Free Crit, but keep the Indicator (enemies Do need some readability on Rengar's ultimate for Health issues -- it's just a matter of balancing the Threat Distance and Movespeed Rengar has to compensate.

1.) If we keep the Range that enemies receive the Threat Indicator as 2000/3000/4000 units, then we need to give Rengar a chance to Chase and Catch his intended prey. In order to do this, I think it would be appropriate to give Rengar movement speed as a Trophy Reward. For example -

Rengar gains 8 Bonus Movement Speed (Per Trophy) while Out of Combat. Additionally, Rengar gains 20% Bonus movement speed (Per Trophy) while Camouflaged.

Why? This will give Rengar the mobility he needs to find and chase down his intended target if they've wandered to far away from their team.

2.) If we keep the current Movement speed that Rengar enjoys during TotH, then we need to change a couple things -- specifically the number of targets Rengar can see and the way enemies receive information about TotH.
For example -

Rengar lets out a monstrous roar, alerting all enemy champions (global sound, similar to Kled, Sion, Nocturne, etc) and gaining 40% bonus movement speed and true sight of all enemy champions within 2000/3000/4000 units. The nearest enemy champion within 2000 units receives the mark for Thrill of the Hunt (no free crit, this is purely an exchange of information so that the enemy team has Some sort of readability on his ultimate).

In an attempt to make things a bit more fair, the number of units revealed by TotH can scale with Trophy Count (ie, you see 1 target by default. +1 at 1 Trophy, +2 at 2.... you can see up to 5 targets at 4 Trophies. For argument's sake let's say you get a free crit at 5 trophies or something, and with the Head of KhaZix let's just say the vision is Global or something -- idk.

The core idea here is Rengar either needs to be able to move a Lot faster to close the gap enemies can make in the time they have to react, or the Range of the Threat Indicator needs to be lowered drastically to allow Rengar to get into position to catch his prey.

###Savagery
Rengar's Q was his bread and butter, a defining ability in his kit. There were clear problems with it (bugs that often prevented him from using on-hit effects such as Trinity Force, and allowing the damage to follow through Dash/Blink abilities).
In order to satisfy both parties, we should bring back the Enhanced AA version of Q in all it's glory (attack speed steroid, AD steroid on empowered cast, etc). However, it should be changed to allow enemies to Dodge the damage if they've timed a Dash/Blink ability properly (similar to Skarner R, Fizz Q, etc).

###Battle Roar
The problem I have with the current W is that it was intended to allow Rengar to survive when he jumps in to kill a target. However, in order to kill that target, we have to pump out as much damage as we can (cast Empowered Q) as quickly as possible. And in order to do that, we have to burn W before we've started taking damage -- wasting the heal entirely.
This means we're better off building Bruiser, dealing respectable damage through Q and chasing with enhanced Movespeed and Autos, abusing the massive healing from W/Empowered W, Visage passive, and DD. It's neither fun for Rengar nor the player that unloads their entire combo only to have Rengar walk right through everything virtually unscathed.
We need an ability that can help us survive an engage, but won't be abused by beefier builds. This means we need something that scales off of Damage, not Health. For example-

Rengar gains a Physical Damage shield for 3 seconds (Base value + Bonus AD Scaling).
(Empowered) While the shield persists, Rengar is immune to Crowd Control effects.

Effectively, a self-casted Morgana shield that absorbs Physical Damage rather than Magic Damage. Additionally the base value of this shield can scale with the number of nearby enemies in order to avoid being Overwhelming in 1v1 situations, but not so underwhelming in Team Fights.

###Final Comments
This is all I had time for today. Apologies if I started to become incoherent towards the end. As I was typing this up I was actually thinking of a completely new concept for a Rework and may have lost some of the details I intended to share here -- perhaps down the road I'll share the details of what I'd like to see Rengar remade into. But for now, I think this is a good starting place to at least get Rengar back into shape while retaining what makes him healthier than what he was prior to the rework.