Kog'Maw Passive Update Concept

Let's be honest: Kog'Maw's current passive does not make a lot of sense for an ADC. Although it requires dying to utilize, that's not the biggest issue, for the utilization itself is rarely satisfying or effective. As a long-range ADC (or for an AP, R-spamming artillery), Kog'Maw is not meant to be anywhere near the enemy. If he does his job right and stays far away from the enemy frontline, any deaths he has should be the result of some bigger bug jumping on him from the shadows (, I'm looking at you). When deaths like those happen, he shouldn't be expected to run all the way from the backline into the enemy team to try to deal some (mediocre) damage. Even then, the enemy can often avoid the damage with heals, shields, and mobility. For a new passive, I wanted to keep the feel of the current passive while making it more suitable and satisfying for an ADC. This concept draws inspiration from the passive of another champion with a similar passive and damage-dealing role: Karthus. While Karthus's has a similar life-after-death damage passive, Karthus's passive is especially advantageous because it allows him to cast his ult, a vital element of his kit, uninterrupted. Kog'Maw could benefit from a similar concept.

Instead of trying to run at the enemy in the undead state, Kog'Maw would be able to fire his W-empowered auto attacks uninterrupted and, unlike Karthus, be able to move but not cast any abilities. Kog'Maw's notorious squishiness is arguably his biggest weakness, so this passive would give him opportunities to still deal some damage even if he gets blown up at the start of a fight (ahem, , etc.). Because of this added damage opportunity, Kog'Maw would have a better chance at surviving in assassin-heavy or mobility-heavy metas.

Since this passive has the potential to do a lot more damage than Kog'Maw's current one, here are a few ways to balance it or just tweak it (these are not mutually exclusive):

1. Kog'Maw fires his normal auto-attacks instead of his W-empowered ones.
2. Kog'Maw has only a certain percentage of his normal movement speed during the passive (e.g., 30%-100% at levels 1-18, or he could even get a speed boost at later levels). Alternatively, Kog'maw could not move at all, but this would probably produce awkward/unsatisfying gameplay.
3. Kog'Maw has access to his ultimate. This would help AP builds more than being restricted to auto attacks, but would also add another element to balance around.
4. Lastly, the duration of the passive could also be tuned, but must be set at a certain number and must not scale (see note for reasoning).

There are probably other balance concerns and ways to address them, and I don't think this concept is perfect by any means. For instance, having a major source of the enemy team's damage still alive for a time after you use all your cooldowns to kill it might not feel very good to assassins. I mainly just wanted to put the concept out there to see what people think.

Thanks for reading! Feel free to post thoughts and feedback!

-Nova

A note on scaling duration: A scaling duration would be problematic. If the duration scales up with level, Kog'Maw's increased attack speed from items coupled with the increased duration on the passive will cause the number of auto attacks he could fire within the duration to increase exponentially, creating a potential balancing nightmare. If the duration scales down with level, the maximum number of auto attacks will not scale so wildly, but the Kog'Maw player will essentially have to race against the exp bar, trying to get enough attack speed and items to not miss out on dps that would potentially be lost each level.