I usually save this post for Monday (though depending on my workload it has occasionally been later than that), but I think I’m ready to wrap the week of Kog’Maw and look ahead to my next champion.

Playing Kog’Maw this week served as a reminder of why I liked him so much at launch. He has a lot of flavor and a solid laning kit. He also scales well into late game but with enough weaknesses that he feels balanced. He performs well against a variety of champions, though I would suggest picking someone like Ashe or possibly Caitlyn if you’re up against a CC-heavy team comp.

I tried a few different builds over the course of the week, most of which relied on Bloodrazor for maximum damage output. Bloodrazor is ultimately a good item for Kog, but I think he’s actually more fun if you run with a Wit’s End/Malady build early in the game. The cost is only marginally higher and I felt like I gained better defensive stats from the Wit’s End stacks than just the cloth armor in Madred’s. Also, the build was just more fun. When I run Bloodrazor I feel like I have to max W first, and I don’t think that’s always the best option. Running Void Ooze and Caustic Spittle gives Kog’Maw a lot of early burst, though it is a bit mana intensive. It’s great when you’re laned up against a squishy opponent.

I think it’s tough to overstate the utility of Kog’Maw’s ultimate, too. If you’ve done a good job harassing your opponents you can shackle them to the lane by repeatedly breaking their recalls. I’m not usually one to break recalls but with Kog it feels like effort well spent.

If I could change one thing about Kog’Maw, I think I would change his W from magic damage to true damage. I know that sounds a little nutty – I’m not much of an advocate for true damage in most cases, but a little magic resistance goes a long way against Kog’Maw. The percentages on his W aren’t as high as Vayne’s, and they might need to drop a bit since it’s an activated skill. I don’t really think Kog’Maw needs much, and that would probably be enough to push him over the edge.

Trundle drops tomorrow, bringing the field up to a total of 65 champions. The announcement post confirmed the skill list that was leaked around his initial debut, a skillset that I think is among the more interesting in the game.

Trundle is, as far as I can tell, a debuffer. His skills seem to be aimed at breaking the tank/physical DPS metagame by stealing stats from those archetypes and providing support with an AoE slow. In all honesty, my first thought was, “Wow, this is what Mordekaiser should have been.”

Abilities:

Rabid Bite: Trundle bites his opponent, dealing damage and sapping some of their attack damage.

Contaminate: Trundle infects a target location with his curse, gaining attack speed, movement speed, and crowd control reduction while on it.

Pillar of Filth: Trundle creates a plagued beacon at a target location, which becomes impassable terrain and slows all nearby enemy units.

Agony (Ultimate): Trundle immediately steals his target’s health and a percentage of their armor and magic resistance. Over the next six seconds the amount of health, armor, and magic resistance stolen is doubled.

Decompose (Passive): Whenever an enemy unit near Trundle dies, he heals for a percentage of their maximum health.

Trundle is melee, and from the sound of things he’ll do very well with some sort of tanky attack speed build. That does make me a little wary, as it was my chief complaint with Irelia, but his passive is worlds better than hers and he has some additional utility that appears to be castable from range.

I’ll be most interested to see how his ultimate works out. The design seems much more interesting than Mordekaiser’s, to the point that I wish Kaiser had been released with this skillset instead of his own. It has a nice, short duration during which it will still provide a massive benefit to Trundle and a solid debuff on the target. It’s solid against tanks and carries alike, and it doesn’t have the ridiculous all-or-nothing pet system that Children of the Grave uses.

I don’t want to say much more, because his skills could go a lot of different directions. I could see his Pillar of Filth being either very useful or very situational. The same goes for Contiminate. In any case, you definitely will not want to fight him one on one. Check back tomorrow for my full impressions.