Upcoming Kog'Maw Changes
"Kog’Maw has some significant changes coming in patch 6.19 that we wanted to give some extra context on.
When we set out to update Kog last preseason, it was with the intent of doubling down on his already unique and well-supported identity of being the Marksman you could rely on to deal most of your team’s damage as long as you protect and enhance him - reinforcing the notion of ‘protect the Kog’ as a team strategy. By breaking the usual rules of attack speed, we amplified his damage even further while making him functionally less mobile in combat because he can’t move much between shots.
Unfortunately, that direction hasn’t proven successful. His unique attack speed interactions undercut the core identity that we intended to reinforce. The items and masteries that scale best with his new direction provide early- and mid-game power rather than late-game power, warping his power curve. More importantly, the ability to move in between attacks is essential for him to serve as most of his team’s damage output. He needs to be able to keep up with a moving teamfight, or else his opponents simply avoid his range and his allies can’t rely on his damage output as the primary or potentially only major damage dealer on a team.
Given that prior to the update, Kog’Maw was a unique and sustainable design that represented a strong long-term direction for the champion, we are partially reverting his update.
Specifically, his W will no longer break the attack speed cap, apply only half damage from AD, or increase attack speed gained from items, and we’ll be looking at tweaks to his other basic spells to support that direction. We are not reverting changes to his ultimate, however.
One point on other champion updates: we are reverting Kog’Maw because we believe that his pre-update state was a successful kit which hit our goals for champions in general and for Kog in particular, not simply because the update didn’t achieve its goals. We have no current plans to revert any other updates, as there aren’t other similar cases where reversion would bring us to a long-term direction."
- Riot Axes
When we set out to update Kog last preseason, it was with the intent of doubling down on his already unique and well-supported identity of being the Marksman you could rely on to deal most of your team’s damage as long as you protect and enhance him - reinforcing the notion of ‘protect the Kog’ as a team strategy. By breaking the usual rules of attack speed, we amplified his damage even further while making him functionally less mobile in combat because he can’t move much between shots.
Unfortunately, that direction hasn’t proven successful. His unique attack speed interactions undercut the core identity that we intended to reinforce. The items and masteries that scale best with his new direction provide early- and mid-game power rather than late-game power, warping his power curve. More importantly, the ability to move in between attacks is essential for him to serve as most of his team’s damage output. He needs to be able to keep up with a moving teamfight, or else his opponents simply avoid his range and his allies can’t rely on his damage output as the primary or potentially only major damage dealer on a team.
Given that prior to the update, Kog’Maw was a unique and sustainable design that represented a strong long-term direction for the champion, we are partially reverting his update.
Specifically, his W will no longer break the attack speed cap, apply only half damage from AD, or increase attack speed gained from items, and we’ll be looking at tweaks to his other basic spells to support that direction. We are not reverting changes to his ultimate, however.
One point on other champion updates: we are reverting Kog’Maw because we believe that his pre-update state was a successful kit which hit our goals for champions in general and for Kog in particular, not simply because the update didn’t achieve its goals. We have no current plans to revert any other updates, as there aren’t other similar cases where reversion would bring us to a long-term direction."
- Riot Axes
