Cho'Gath QoL Changes + E Buff Idea

Cho'gath, unfortunately, is still sitting at a very below-average win rate (46-47%) even with the buffs to his Ult.

I mained the void beast a few seasons back and have started playing him again recently (with a decent amount of success, despite his numerous drawbacks). There's a lot going for Cho, but a lot more going against him, even within his own kit. These are some ideas for some QoL changes that might help push Cho to that 50% win rate, as well as a buff to his (by far) most useless skill, E - Vorpal Spikes.

Q - Rupture:

Fine the way it is. Tough skillshot to land, high reward for landing it.

W - Feral Scream:

Oh god, where do I begin? Cho'gath used to be a great counter to mobile champions like and . Now they can easily E out of his Silence before it hits them. The delay that was added to "fix" the skill hitting champions after they had moved out of its range went the complete opposite direction of what should have happened and has turned this skill into the clunkiest thing to use in the game.

Obviously, the biggest question is why not simply make the skill apply instantly and remove the animation delay that was causing the damage to apply after flashes / dashes had applied? and both have instant cone-shaped skills, so there's precedent that an instant W isn't so out of the question.

Feral Scream, right now, feels terrible to use. The origin point is so tiny that it can't be used point blank without a huge chance of missing due to how weird hit boxes are, and the cone isn't large enough that you can get to a champion knocked up by Rupture before they are able to dash out of the short range of this skill. It's part of the reason is such a core item on Cho these days.

E - Vorpal Spikes:

This passive looks cool on paper, but it's actually extremely frustrating and counter-intuitive to use 90% of the time.

For one, it pushes the lane extremely quickly for a negligible bit of harass on the enemy laner. Cho is extremely easy to gank unless he's ahead, so pushing the lane too much is dangerous.

Two, the physical damage from his auto attack and the magic damage from the spikes apply at different times, meaning it's possible for your own minions to deal the killing blow in the middle of you attacking an enemy minion. As it is right now, Vorpal Spikes is a crappy last hitting tool: I lose at least 20 or 30 CS every game because I'm using this skill. You're better off keeping it off and just relying on basic autos. This needs to be fixed. Badly.

Three, the spikes don't count towards Thunderlords, nor do they do any extra damage to turrets (though they will, on occasion, draw turret aggro when I forget to toggle the skill off while attacking a turret and hit my enemy laner with a spike. What a time to be alive).

Vorpal Spikes feels like it was supposed to encourage an on-hit Cho'gath build, which I have played around with... But his lack of mobility makes this build extremely unreliable. You essentially cannot function without , which is one of the last items you'd build on Cho.

Which leads me to making Cho'gath feel more like the Juggernaut he is: what if Vorpal Spikes stuck to the target, applying a slow that scaled with the amount of feast stacks he has -OR- reducing the damage dealt to Cho by that champion, increasing for every stack landed? 4% slow per Feast stack, up to a maximum of 20 stacks? If an 80% slow seems extreme, keep in mind that I've never reached 20 stacks. My max, currently, is 16. (Ashe, for comparison, can apply a 60% slow at level 18 on Crits with every auto... From range).

Mainly, this slight slow adds a larger window of opportunity to land Cho's Rupture to the early game, or the damage reduction adds to Cho's "perceived" tankiness and makes an on-hit build slightly more appealing for duels with auto-attack based champions.

R - Feast:

Single target short range nuke is wonderful as it is... But getting stacks for health seems counter-intuitive when you become so large that you can't walk past a line of minions. I have actually been completely unable to move in the Twisted Treeline before due to a large wave of my own minions trapping me into the enemy team's base. Cho needs a passive tacked onto his R that ghosts him and/or damages minions he steps on. Or hell, completely replace his E with something like Alistar's Trample.

Let's recap:

TL:DR - Cho is fun and rewarding, but much of his kit works against him. W needs the delay removed to be an instant skill. E magic damage needs to apply at the same time as his autoattack, and have a new passive tacked on to it with a slow or damage reduction. R is great but as Cho gets larger he can't walk past minions. Fix this please.