Cho’Gath to get shiny, new abilities that actually make sense for a tank

The champion has been out for eight years, and his abilities show it. It's time for an update.
Image via Riot Games

Cho’Gath has finally been confirmed for a gameplay update, according to Riot’s post in the developer section of the official League of Legends forums. This is great news, because, frankly, he desperately needs it.

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The update is small, but it should be exactly what the void monster needs. His kit lags significantly behind today’s tanks in terms of complexity, fun, and intelligent laning matchups. To be clear, that’s not a terrible thing on Riot’s part. The guy has been a champion since the game’s beta in 2009, and aside from tweaks to his ultimate and Feral Scream, this is the first time an ability has been completely gutted since his release. The fact that he’s been more or less viable, which is the bare minimum a champion can strive for, is impressive.

One of the more glaring shortcomings of Cho’s kit is his lack of interactivity with his lane opponents. His Q and W are both skillshots, so they’re OK, despite being a little boring. The biggest problem with Cho’s kit is definitely his E, Vorpal Spikes. It’s a toggled ability that costs no mana and gives Cho some cleave and bonus damage on his auto attacks, and it’s essentially just something he uses to farm more easily.

The current idea from Riot is to remove the toggle from the ability and put it on a cooldown. After activation, the next few auto attacks would shoot Vorpal Spikes and deal a percentage of the target’s total health rather than just an insignificant amount of magic damage. This would give Cho’Gath another tool for trading in lane, and it would allow him to damage tanks if he doesn’t have a route to the back line to blow up a squishy target with his ultimate. Being able to trade damage with other tanks is something that every tank with an updated kit can do in League, so Cho’Gath should finally feel up to snuff with the rest of them.

Overall, this is a great idea for Cho’Gath, because it will actually allow him to trade damage at meaningful times, rather than just being a glorified crowd control bot when his ultimate is on cooldown. The change is slated to arrive with Patch 7.14, so we should see it arrive on the PBE for testing within the next few days.


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Author
Aaron Mickunas
Esports and gaming journalist for Dot Esports, featured at Lolesports.com, Polygon, IGN, and Ginx.tv.