Can Kog'Maw ever get his AP ratio back on E?

CleverCactus·6/21/2019, 8:12:55 PM·2 votes·875 views

Kog'Maw could be a niche artillery mage back in the day, he had some good wave-clear with his E to get through laning phase. Although he had no mobility or hard CC whatsoever, his long ult range let him have presence in fights later in the game.

However, his E was nerfed back in 2016 for the sake of making ADC Kog stronger. They whacked a whopping 20% AP ratio off of it as well as some base damage, making it so it was completely unfeasible for him to survive laning phase.

Switch back to today, where Kog'Maws immobility and lack of CC, as well as the lack of any prevalent tanks in the meta make him a less popular ADC than Kalista. In fact, his highest winrate is when he forgoes levelling E at all until level 13, only putting points into QWR. With Rageblade being his core item now, I think it would be okay to put his the 20% AP ratio back on his E.

3 Comments

hhaavviikk6/21/2019, 9:10:56 PM2 votes

pretty sure they nerfed his E so he couldn't jsut E a wave and almost delete it allowing him almost to afk farm mid.

Also I personally hope AP kog`maw never comes back, come late game it is not fun to constantly be bombarded from 1800 range

L Psy Kongroo6/21/2019, 9:07:55 PM1 votes

I did love me some AP Kog back in the day, and I would definitely be down for improving him. However I don't believe Riot will do so. The problem with buffing AP Kog is that his playstyle is extremely uninteractive. Champions who can clear the wave with one ability, then play safe until the cooldown is up, are generally disliked. Viktor was nerfed for this same reason: his E was too effective at clearing waves and he got a free pass through lane phase. It's also the reason they nerfed mid Morgana, Malzahar's W, and probably Zyra's plants as well (though in her case it was more about completely denying the wave with her zoning potential).

Just to play devil's advocate with myself, it's worth mentioning that all of the other mentioned champions have ways of defending themselves via CC in addition to their great waveclear, which Kog does not have. This would theoretically counterbalance his strong waveclear by making him an easier target in lane.

That said, AP Kog in the mid-late game plays identically to any other artillery mage, which begs the question: why play him over Ziggs/Xerath/Vel'koz? The others have utility and stronger poke, making AP Kog's identity rather redundant.

Lord Dusteon6/21/2019, 9:44:03 PM1 votes

I think they could, but there really isn't much of a reason to since AP Kog is just a worse version of other artillery mages until lategame, where he becomes a highly uninteractive vomit cannon. Even when he is picked, his complete lack of any mobility or CC means he explodes when looked at by anyone so he isn't really viable mid anyway.

Also as a side note the "best winrate does not take E" is a very misleading thing. Less then 4% of Kog's do that; it is akin to saying Hail of Blades or Maw of Malmortius are great on Kog due to winrates without looking at the fact those are only taken in maybe 1% or 2% of all games Kog is played in.