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.

This may have been a bad week to try Kog’Maw as my champ of the week. I’ve actually had some enjoyable games with him but I’ve also been playing Vayne and, as far as anti-tanks go, she obviously has the upper hand. Let’s be honest, though, she’s more of an anti-anything-that-moves than she is anti-tank. Still, I’m forging ahead with the Kog’Maw testing so here are a few thoughts.

I had forgotten just how damn slow Kog’Maw feels. I’m playing with the amazing Monarch Kog’Maw skin, which may contribute to the slow feeling in part. When he’s hopping around flapping his wings he certainly doesn’t feel very fast, but in teamfights I always feel like it takes me longer to get any place than I would like.

The most common Kog’Maw build also lacks the burst that many other ranged carries build for. Since most of his damage is percentage based, he doesn’t feel much different from the point that you finish Madred’s Bloodrazor until the end of the game. It’s a unique mechanic, unlike any other champion currently in the game. It also translates strangely into his gameplay.

In my most successful Kog’Maw matches I regularly have a few fights in which I start out at half health and, at a time I would normally run on other ranged carries, I turn and fight whoever is in my face and often win that fight. The percentage based damage gives him the ability to do this fairly early in the game and continue to do it through the game’s duration. With other ranged carries I simply wouldn’t do that until I have a monster farm, if for no other reason than that so much of your damage comes from critical strikes. With Kog’Maw, though, it is usually a finite and unwavering number of attacks that will kill an individual target, affected only by the target’s purchase of magic resistance or your own build changes. In some ways that makes Kog’Maw very enjoyable to play, but it can be frustrating to think that just one simple crit could have meant a kill on a retreating carry.

My biggest problem with Kog’Maw right now is how much damage high magic resistance targets can absorb. Malady is really his only option for addressing that problem, and it doesn’t reduce MR by very much. The rest of the magic penetration items are AP based, which feels like a waste of money. You could get Sorcerer’s Boots, but Cloak and Dagger isn’t really designed for a champion like Kog’Maw. I’m going to have to try a few games with Cleanse to see if that would be enough.

I’ve done a couple AP champions and a melee assassin for this feature – I think it’s time for some ranged DPS. Looking at Kog’Maw’s kit it seems that, other than Vayne, he’s probably best suited for flat out tank killing. Ashe is likely still the best pick overall for a ranged DPS, but if Kog’Maw can get ahead, he can burn tanks like no other. That said, he’s very susceptible to crowd control effects and suffers from a fairly weak early lane presence.

Basically, I want to see how Kog’Maw performs against a variety of comps with an average farm. He is absolutely devastating if overfed, which also has me interested in seeing how well he can carry against tanky DPS teams. I think the changes to Wit’s End make it the perfect Kog’Maw item, so I’m going to try a few builds centered around a Wit’s End rush to see how well it scales.

Check back later in the week for more impressions. Hopefully I can get a few Vayne games in before the day’s end and have some impressions on her tomorrow as well.

The official bundles and skins post is up for today’s patch. For Karma, we’ll be seeing Sakura Karma and Sun Goddess Karma. As for the two other skins, today brings Lion Dance Kog’Maw, a Chinese New Year inspired skin that had been leaked on the forums, and Djinn Malzahar.

The Malzahar skin is expected, to say the least. He suffers as Xin Zhao does from a lack of originality regarding skins. It’s only fitting that we got a Djinn skin, I suppose. The Kog’Maw skin, on the other hand, looks really good. Kog’Maw has to have one of the best skin sets so far. His release skins were just recolors, but he’s since gotten Monarch Kog’Maw, Reindeer Kog’Maw, and now Lion Dance Kog. Good stuff.

First, I’d like to draw your attention to my awesome title for the champions introduced since season one launch who exceed most other champions at taking the solo lane: supermids. The reason I thought it up (I know, I’m so creative) was that I needed a way to talk about Vlad, Kog’Maw, Miss Fortune, etc. without typing that out every time I wanted to talk about the great carries in the game. Enough of that, though. On to the post.

I played two games tonight with a friend with hopes of breaking into the 1600s in ranked solo. I had been playing well all day and things just seemed to be going right. We lost. Both games. Hard. The biggest problem in both cases was our comp. In the first game my buddy was stuck in the mindset of 3s so he banned Singed. No biggie, still 3 bans, but we decided to joke around and ban Eve. That left a few strong toons on the board. Our opponent first picked Warwick so my buddy and I snagged Garen and Miss Fortune. Solid start for the team. Unfortunately, a teammate thought we couldn’t leave Kog’Maw on the board, so he picked him over some CC (Morgana was still available). Our fourth teammate chose Sona and I knew we were in trouble. Our fifth pick: Mordekaiser.

Sure, we had strong toons, but the sum of the parts was virtually nothing. Without crowd control to keep the enemy away from the carries, we got rocked. You can go too far in the other direction, too. For my next game I didn’t ban Amumu because frankly, a lot of people suck with him. The other team first picked Warwick again. I snagged Garen for a buddy and our second player picked Taric. We had said someone should get Amumu, but I was already thinking we were on the verge of being too tanky. With good DPS, though, we should have been fine. Our third player takes Shen and immediately locks him in, even though our fourth had said several times that he was picking Amumu, which he still did, leaving us with 4 tanks, short on damage. I had my friend pick TF in the hopes that we could stun them down. We couldn’t. Our outside lanes were getting worked and it was just a matter of time before our opponents had complete control of the map and we were too short on DPS to burn them down.

Even when the supermids are available, you have to focus on comp over individual toon strength. I asked everyone after the first game if they really thought we had a decent comp. The response was this: “You had Garen and Kog’Maw. Your comp was great.”

Sigh.

I had a pretty stellar game this afternoon as Kog’Maw. Granted, that’s not so tough these days, but I was rocking a significantly positive K/D/A ratio (22/7/7) in spite of a team of four negative K/D/As. I was playing with a friend who actually said over Skype, “You are the sole reason we are winning this game.” That’s a pretty great feeling, and it doesn’t happen very often.

More often my “carry” games are more subtle, and tell a small part of what can only be considered a team victory. I have been trying to pick champions that allow me to contribute in a big way, lately, and I think it has helped my rating. The key, to me anyway, is to pick someone that can really dish out the love. I am great at ganking, so playing gank toons allows me to maximize that part of my playstyle. I really like Vlad because he farms minions well for the entire game and his ultimate is a boon to any team. Kog’Maw is great if you have the space to farm (i.e. not laning against good harassment/stuns) and a team to distract people. Ezreal is an amazing comeback toon if your team starts down. I also like to play characters like Xin Zhao and Shaco, who can close the gap without risking too much in the process. As you all know, I’ve also been playing a lot of Master Yi recently, though I rarely feel like I carry with him. He’s often more like an annoying swarm of hornets – it hurts like hell and you can never pin them down enough to stop the pain.

So who do you use when you want to carry? I know a couple of mean Udyr players who really seem to turn games, and it’s always fun to have a pro Zilean or Morgana on your team. Drop your best carries in the comments (with a fun story if you have one)!

PS – Thanks for the pic, Miku! Front page of Google Images for Kog’maw so I linked back to your post.

Despite early claims that Garen was balanced, just that people were finally learning to use him, Riot has admitted that Garen may be a little too strong at everything he does. It is just a tad ridiculous for him to be able to buy survivability items and completely melt an entire team. Also, the fact that his W has both a passive damage reduction buff and an active seems like overkill.

Lucky for us, he’s catching a nerf, and I can’t wait. It’s not the Garens that dominate games that are causing the problems. It’s the other Garens, the people who think they know how to play Garen, that are the issue. You’ve probably seen them trying to tank three people at level five, turret diving from level one, and stacking armor against completely magic based enemies.

It’s not a problem unique to Garen. Any time the community realizes a given champ is overpowered, players do anything they can to play him, even if they don’t know the champion. It’s already starting to happen with Kog’Maw. The little alien got a buff and now a lot of people who had previously ignored him are both picking and banning him. It’s a trend we’ll probably see nearly as often as there’s a significant patch. For now, though, I’m happy to wait on the Garen nerf, and when it becomes a problem with other champions, I’ll anxiously await their nerf patches as well.

Though today is just barely slower than yesterday in terms of work and moving responsibilities, I can’t hold back on my patch impressions any longer. Yesterday’s patch had some sweeping impact on the state of the game. Urgot brings another new skill type to the game with his swap, but maybe more importantly, both Heimerdinger and Shaco caught significant nerfs – nerfs that could drop them off most players’ ban lists.

I’ll put together a complete Urgot review a bit later today, but for now I’ll say that he seems to have been designed as an Ezreal counter. The stun/swap combo means Arcane Shift only takes Ezreal back to the front of the battle, instead of outside harm’s way. He’s also extremely mana efficient as he harasses, so it’s easy to see him taking mid against a lot of the squishier carries.

The Heimerdinger and Shaco nerfs will be getting a dedicated post as well because they are so big. Riot has always said that it would trickle nerf, but in my mind they should have considered both toons for significant remake if they were planning to nerf this hard.

On to the less significant changes. Kog’Maw caught a rework to his Caustic Spittle, which now provides passive attack speed bonus in addition to the armor penetration active. Kennen also got most of the proposed changes. He now gains armor and magic resistance while in Lightning Rush, Maelstrom can hit more people, and Surge got an AP buff. In my mind it makes him highly desirable. Vladimir was only half nerfed – his Transfusion has a slightly smaller range but his Tides of Blood is larger.

Malphite also got some nice changes. He should be more mana efficient, and his Brutal Strikes now also grants bonus armor, synergizing with Ground Slam and providing some nice staying power, especially in the jungle. Lastly, Soraka got a small tweak in that her Infuse provides half mana to the target and half to her (Soraka gets the full amount on self-casts). Mana cost on her heal has also been marginally increased.

The last change that is actually very cool is that elixirs can be purchased when you have six full slots and will auto-activate. No more selling and repurchasing items.

That’s about it for the patch. The other posts I mentioned here will be up in short order (especially now that the servers are set to ‘busy’).

For Kennen:

Electrical Surge
Ability Power ratio increased to 0.55 from 0.45.

Lightning Rush
Energy cost reduced to 100 from 110.
Can no longer be slowed during Lightning Rush.
Now provides 10/20/30/40/50 Magic Resistance and Armor for 4 seconds.

Slicing Maelstrom
Ability Power ratio increased to 0.4 from 0.33.
Number of bolts increased to 6/10/15 from 6/8/10 (still retains the cap of 3 hits per target).
Removed the cap of applying only 1 Mark of The Storm per target.

Have fun laning against him. I’ve maintained since the beginning that Kennen is one of the strongest laning toons in the game with great teamfighting capabilities. His ultimate was a little underpowered in some situations, but it most cases I thought it got the job done. Now that Surge hits harder, he can’t be slowed in Rush, and his ult hits harder, you will be very hard pressed to outplay him in the laning phase. That ultimate will also devastate team fights. For the mathematically challenged among you, 15 hits at rank three means the entire enemy team is stunned if they stay in for two ticks – yes, two, because of Surge. Granted, that won’t always happen, but it also increases the likelihood that you’ll catch and kill two players, and still have plenty of ticks to chain stun another opponent if he steps in halfway through the ult.

Malphite:

Seismic Shard
Reduced the cooldown to 10 seconds from 12 seconds.
Reduced the duration of the slow to 4 seconds from 5 seconds.
Reduced the mana cost to 70/75/80/85/90 from 80/90/100/110/120.

Brutal Strikes
Changed the active effect to increase Malphite’s armor and damage by 20/25/30/35/40% instead of increasing his damage by 30/40/50/60/70%.
Reduced the cooldown to 16 seconds from 20 seconds.
Fixed a bug where the cleave percent would double dip on bonus attack damage.
Increased the passive cleave percent to 30/38/46/54/62% from 30/35/40/45/50%.
The cleave passive will no longer proc while hitting towers.

Ground Slam
Reduced the mana cost at all ranks to 60 from 60/70/80/90/100.
Updated the tooltip to display how much bonus damage Ground Slam gains from armor.

Unstoppable Force
Malphite should no longer be subject to CC’s while charging with his ultimate.

Granite Shield
The shield now recharges after 8 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
The shield will now automatically restore to full after 8 seconds of not being hit. Previously it would not replenish until a new shield activated.
Fixed a bug where the particle would not appear for a second after the shield activated.
Fixed a bug where the shield strength would not update after buying a health item until a new shield activated.

This is exactly what Malphite needs to make him more fun. Shorter cooldowns, lower mana cost, and a little better synergy between Brutal Strikes and Ground Slam. I also love the cleave removal during tower attacks, as you won’t pick up aggro just from trying to down a turret.

Kog’Maw:

Caustic Spittle
Spell Remade. Now grants:
Passive: Increase Attack Speed by 10/15/20/25/30%.
Active: Deals 60/110/160/210/260 damage and reduces the target’s armor by 5/10/15/20/25 for 4 seconds.’

Bio-Arcane Barrage
Cooldown reduced to 15 from 20.
AP ratio removed.

Void Ooze
Cooldown reduced to 12 from 13.

Living Artillery
Now has a 0.5 AD ratio in addition to the AP ratio.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. It’s obviously tilting him toward AD build, or at least Maldred’s with the passive attack speed buff. I think his real problem, though, was high mana costs, extremely low survivability, and one of the longest attack animations in the game. It forced you to blow skills to last hit creeps, if only because the delay between your attack command and the projectile landing was so damn long.

Riot has been pretty good about leaving vastly overpowered tweaks on the TR until they seem balanced, despite the release of some seriously OP toons recently. I wouldn’t be surprised if we only get one or two of these in the next patch. Personally, I’m hoping for Kennen.

The Kog’Maw patch brought with it two skills that make ganking much more difficult than it has been in the past – Hawkshot and Living Artillery. Both skills grant vision of nearby areas, including brush, making the bait-to-buff ganks much more difficult to pull off. As long as Kog’Maw is new, and Ashe is in basically every game, these skill will be so prevalent that they will tip the game to favor the teams with the best initiators.

Prior to the Hawkshot/Living Artillery, the only other skills that provided this utility were Twisted Fate’s ultimate and the summoner skill Clairvoyance. Now, though, you can bet those skills will be in every game. When Season One finally drops, I’ll be begging my teams to ban Ashe in every game, mostly for Hawkshot. To me it seems a little crazy that you would give one of the strongest carries in the game such a great skill. Kog’Maw’s is weaker, but still great for scouting before you rush into a dangerous situation.

I’ve already noticed the average length of my games going up because of these skills. Teams that are short on initiation are forced to the woods to try for ganks. The reveals start and both teams dance away from each other, waiting for the other to make a mistake. The standoff is insanely boring and prolongs what could otherwise be an exciting situation/game.

I do appreciate the attempt to move the game away from poking, but the move has taken the game beyond poking range to a standoff in which everyone waits for the reveals to wear off and the best initiator tends to win the fight.