PBE 10/10/13 Corki Changes (Please Save AP Corki)

Since the beginning of season 3, Riot has been continually buffing Corki in order to make him more viable in the season 3 meta. This rate of his Big One missile was increased while his mana costs for Missile Barrage, Valkyrie, and Gatling Gun were all reduced throughout the season. The combination of these buffs created the off meta pick of AP Corki who in my opinion is not overpowered. I believe that Riot intend's to balance Corki because he is considered overpowered at his traditional role of ADC/Marksman after the trinity force changes. The new patch notes for PBE are as follows

"Corki

Missile Barrage [ R ] - Now deals 100/180/260 (Down from 120/190/260)
Missile Barrage [ R ] - Cooldown is increased to 2/2/2 Seconds (Up from 1.2/1.2/1.2)

General

• Base Attack Speed reduced Missile Barrage
• Base damage reduced at earlier ranks
• Cooldown between missile shots increased
• Cooldown between missile shots can no longer be reduced by Cooldown Reduction"

All of these changes will considerably help to balance Corki at his role of the marksman. However the last change which states that Corki's cooldown between missile shots will be unaffected by cooldown reduction will do very little to help balance Corki as a Marksman. Corki as a Marksman will not even be building CDR as the most common build paths prioritize attack damage items such as Trinity Force, Last Whisper, and Infinity Edge. If Marksman Corki does get some CDR it will most likely be late game with a blue buff or blue pot, which should not affect Riot's primary concern (his early damage).

Making the cast time of Missile Barrage increased to 2 seconds AND making it unaffected by CDR should hurt AP Corki very much because he relies on being able to spam missiles quickly to do damage, especially in short "all in" team fighting. This ability to do massive AOE damage in clustered team fights is one of AP Corki's defining characteristics, and the additional cast time would essentially remove him as a viable niche/off meta champ. For example, a max CDR AP Corki and a max CDR Ziggs would both have access to a similarly ranged aoe ability on around the same cooldown (2 seconds vs 2.4) however, Corki will eventually run out of rockets.

I suggest that the casting time should be increased to 2 seconds but still affected by CDR, so that AP Corki will only be nerfed slightly, while the problem of Marksman Corki's level 6 burst can be balanced.

Thank you for reading this post, please support or comment if you wish to add anything about the state of AP Corki.