You’re 40 minutes into a grueling game of solo queue. You’re playing Jhin, and you’ve finished building your Lord Dominik’s Regards to deal with the huge enemy front line. Your Gragas flops into the fray, initiating a teamfight. You’re ready. Or at least, you thought you were ready.
That’s when the enemy Cho’Gath comes lumbering through your front line like it was a gentle Autumn breeze. You try to damage him, but he has 11 stacks and 8,000 health, and that’s before even activating his Gargoyle Stoneplate. You can’t touch him. All you can do is try to run, but you’re just delaying the inevitable. Before you know it, he flashes forward, and with a single ability he gobbles you up into his belly and wins the fight.
Normally, this would sound like a bizarre horror film. A Cho’Gath that scary? Impossible. Or so we thought. The ol’ Cho underwent some changes in last week’s patch, and although they were honestly very cool changes that added some intelligence to his most brainless ability, his E, he’s definitely way too strong now. Don’t believe us? His win rate is the highest of any champion at any role in the entire game, according to League of Legends stats site OP.gg.
Essentially, his Vorpal Spikes were changed from a toggled ability to a cooldown, and upon activating it, his next three auto attacks deal a lot of damage based on the target’s max health.
This opened the door for him to deal with pesky front liners, because let’s be honest, he’s really slow. Often times, the front line is all he can get to. It was a good idea, really. That ability just hurts so incredibly much now that all we can think about is how quickly we’re going to ban him in the next game.
Don’t worry, because nerfs are on the way. His new Vorpal Spikes, specifically, are being hit. The flat damage is being lowered at all ranks except the first, ultimately taking a 20 damage nerf at max rank. The percent health damage is being lowered by one percent as well, which is admittedly not a huge deal, but it helps nonetheless.
These nerfs just hit the PBE yesterday, and while they won’t be enough to stop him from his ascendance to the top of the meta, they’ll surely take some edge off of his OP status.
