Let's congratulate the new ADC with the lowest winrate and a way forward

Congratulations on that ~47% Kog'Maw! The mid winrate is even more impressive at ~45%. Considering he's a niche champion with an overall pick-rate of less than 2%, this is incredibly bad. Even the dedicated Kog'Maw fans like myself aren't excelling with him anymore.

I know people HATE these threads but every champion deserves to have an equal chance of success in the right circumstances. Right now, I don't think Kog is the best choice in any situation - even with a team built around him. It's a fact that this game is never 100% perfectly balanced but we should strive to get there instead of pretending it doesn't exist and is all about player skill/situation. That just isn't true.

Pretty much every part of his kit has been weakened early but without sufficient late game compensation. The gimmicky 2x AS isn't that attractive when you consider that Kog's AS growth has been reduced and W now has the following nerfs:

• 1/3 of the old base damage (from 6% to 2%)! HUGE NERF ^^^increasing the on-hit % with ranks by .25% per level could help
• 40 mana cost instead of 0 ^^^this matters a lot because it means you have to give up much more CS in lane or avoid certain trades to save mana + you can have situations where you're OOM after a few ults. and can no longer fight back
• .75% AP scaling instead of 1% ^^^increasing the AP scaling would help an on-hit AP build immensely and give at least one viable path
• duration reduced from 8 seconds to 6 (this one hurts for the on-hit builds)
• longer CD if Kog builds CDR such as Nashor's or uses CDR runes ^^^old Kog W cd = 17 sec but starts upon activation so with 40% CDR it's 17-(17 x .4+8) = 2.2 sec ^^^new Kog W cd = 7 sec but starts after expiration so with 40% CDR it's 7-(7 x .4) = 4.2 sec
• your auto attacks do only 55% damage
• impossible to kite once you get a few AS items so it makes Kog more predictable and less able to outplay

Is all of this even worth the 2x AS? In my experience, it's a net nerf to W until perhaps very far into the game. Even then, the benefits aren't worth how much weaker you are in the early-mid game.

The ult. was tweaked heavily too but it's in fact a nerf and makes some strategies almost unviable. First of all, the base damage is worse unless they are at 1/3 HP. A Luden's + Rylai's + Liandry's build is definitely a lot weaker now but I'm not sure the alternatives are that much better either.

The biggest problem is that R no longer functions as an effective long-range poking tool since most of its damage is for targets below 50%. If you've got someone down that low, it usually means an engage has happened (at which point you're no longer playing a poke strategy). Thus, the playstyle with Kog has an intractable long-range artillery is pretty much dead. To have parity with old Kog's R damage, you'd need to build more AP and also land EQ. Both of those are fairly easy to dodge skillshots and doing so becomes even easier the farther you're aiming. Thus, Kog has to seriously expose himself to engages in order to actually land it vs a thinking player. Even with all that danger on a low mobility champion, you'd only have the damage old Kog did at 1800 range.

If that wasn't enough to kill Kog as a poke AP mid, they increased the mana cost to 50 and changed the refresh time from 6 seconds to 10. This is actually a huge problem because it makes it hard to reset your mana costs during a fight and also means you're far more vulnerable to engages if you've just poked a few times. Once you've got 3 stacks, you're basically useless as far as the ult. goes because of how high the mana costs become.

Kog is as vulnerable to CC, assassins and engages as ever but his tools have only gotten weaker. It makes me really sad as an AP Kog main. It feels as if my favorite champion just got deleted. His old poke playstyle is pretty bad now and on-hit isn't really great either for mid-lane. I've tried pretty much every build including the Rageblade and Gunblade styles. He had a unique identity and playstyle for multiple roles and now he is weak in all of them and more constrained to on-hit builds.