As with every new patch, I’ve been spending my time in game playing with the new features and the new champion, Kog’Maw. From what I’ve seen so far, Kog’Maw is a heavy-hitter with an excellent chase ability whose balance lies in his slow movement speed and low damage resilience. Oh, he’s also a load of fun.

I started out a little unsure how to build Kog’Maw, but after seeing the incredible range granted by his Bio-Arcane Barrage it seemed like attack damage would be great. I’ve spent most of my games since playing AD builds so most of these impressions will be about his position as an attack damage character. There are definitely some situations in which hybrid is probably best, and I’ll cover some of those in another post.

I think Kog’Maw’s great advantage is his ability to deal heavy damage from range. With just a little bit of attack damage and the percentage based buff from Bio-Arcane Barrage you can deal heavy damage from long range. I’m a personal fan of rushing an Infinity to get your early damage up nice and high. My basic method is to position myself lateral to the target and either hit him directly with my slow or land it behind him. From there I attack with regular attacks, using my ultimate for vision if the target runs into brush. It’s important that you save the active on Bio-Arcane for when your target is leaving. A combination of long-range shots and your ultimate should be plenty to finish off a running target. Always make sure you lead the target by just a hair. The blast radius of Living Artillery is big enough that you can miss behind your target. That’s important because it makes it that much harder to avoid for your target.

For teamfighting, Kog’Maw has to stay as far away from the fight as possible. He is extremely squishy, and while your passive can be nice in the midst of a fight, it’s not nearly as effective as your regular damage output. Another thing to remember is not to spam your artillery, at least not when you’re starting a fight. You need that mana for your percentage based damage and your slow (which is a fantastic control mechanism for any fight). Save the mortars, which get costly after a few casts, for chasing down anyone that runs or dropping on compact groups of enemies.

Overall, Kog’Maw is a very strong carry – among the strongest in the game – but he is so squishy and so easily killed that you need to have a strong team in front of you, and more specifically a team with good croud control. It’s very easy for your opponent to rip you down if they get close, so you need a team that can keep you out of trouble. If you have that, you’ll have a blast playing the newest creature from the Void.