League of Legends LXV: What threads are mine to make, little Lamb? All, dear Wolf.

[Olinser]

AP Kog (and Marksman Kog, imo, but I haven't played him enough because bot-lane assassin Tristana is so much fun) is much more hurt by the faster meta than his rework (though the numbers were definitely a little on the low side pre-hotfix, and still might be). I've played a few games with the 'traditional' AP Kog build, and it's still capable of outputting obscene amounts of damage when you reach that 2.5 item mark.

The loss of base damage on his R hurts a little, but the combination of Luden's and Liandry's procs are still enough to put some poke damage on full-health targets (Deathfire Touch is a really valuable mastery on any Liandry's user), and then once people start dropping below that half-health mark he's an obscene clean-up threat (think Darius but with 8x the range). He's a great addition to a team that already has some poke or burst that gets people close to or under his execute threshold, and of course taking Baron is always going to be a dicey proposition against him if you end up tanking a little too hard and he blasts you straight back to the fountain from the other side of the wall.

Once the tower changes next patch come through that slow the meta down a bit, I see Kog definitely coming back as a better pick. He was apparently OP on the PBE and got preemptively nerfed (too much) before coming on to live, so there theoretically should exist some space in between there where he's decent.

AP Kog has fallen all the way from #10 of 52 in win rate mid to #52/52 mid. That's not him being hurt by the meta. That's the rework being utterly terrible for the build.

Not really. Sure he was a bit weak early, but AP Kog became a terror as soon as he finished Luden's (base tear - Luden's gives you a big power spike just as most teams are looking for teamfights).

I mained AP Kog mid in solo que in S5. Liandry's was crap on him, btw, and still is. Luden gave you a huge power spike at 1 item, and with just Luden you forced opponents to either commit to a teamfight or get poked down to the point they couldn't fight. 2nd item Rylai meant you had pretty respectable peel and utterly amazing pursuit. Luden-Rylai-Void and you are a terror on the battlefield. Liandry just doesn't do enough damage to warrant sacrificing the 'LOL NO RUNNING' and survivability that Rylai gives. Hit a squishy with a single spell when you have Rylai and without some variety of cooldown or intervention they are dead as long as you have mana.

The loss of base damage on his R was only part of it. He already did 100% bonus damage to champions with his R before. At below 50% health he's now doing the same damage he was already doing, and you have to get them below 25 to see increased damage (in which case they were dead anyway, a bit more damage on R doesn't really help).

The much bigger nerf was from 6 seconds to 10 seconds on his mana cost reset, AND the mana cost increase. So you do significantly lower damage when using it to poke before fights, it costs significantly more after just a couple shots, AND you have to wait on a cooldown nearly twice as long to poke more without burning through mana.

The loss of poke damage hurts far more than you gain by the increase to somebody generally about to die anyway.