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One of the marksmen affected by the preseason update was Kog’Maw. Among other changes, the team attempted to further focus him towards an attack speed-based AD Carry, cutting down on his damage but making him the only champion in the game to ignore League’s attack speed cap. The idea was to lean into his identity as a late-game hyper carry who needed support, protection and time to get there.
That’s ... not exactly what happened. In his current iteration, Kog’Maw hits a power spike around 25-30 minutes in, and is so reliable at building his own power that he’s even seen in the jungle right now. He held the top win rate on Patch 6.17 among AD Carries (54.55 percent) and fifth-highest among junglers (52.75) according to Champion.gg’s statistics of ranked games Platinum and higher.
Well, changes are coming in Patch 6.19 that will partially revert that preseason update, with context from Riot Axes posted on the boards.
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.
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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.
So that’s that. Axes clarified reverting updates is not something they plan on doing, but for Kog’Maw it worked specifically because his “pre-update state was a successful kit.”