AP Kog'Maw has seen bouts of play on mid lane, but bot lane people want DPS. Nashor's Tooth is a viable item on ADC Kog'Maw, but otherwise you want to focus on DPS over poke, which is what AP mostly provides.

Relic Shield isn't good on ADCs anymore.

Press the Attack was stronger than Lethal Tempo up until last patch. That being said, Fleet Footwork is now stronger than both of them and I've switched my guide to that.

Yeah you can pick him in any situation if you just really want to play him, I do it too. :P He just synergizes a lot better with Lulu than any other support. Also the meta's changed to become a lot favourable for him anyway so the "only pick with Lulu" idea's kinda out-dated rn.

hi

All 4 players you linked are Korean. World class or not, they play on the Korean server, the server that plays the least Kog'maw, even less than NA which has nearly half the playerbase it does (KR, NA, EUW).

Out of ~7.5k Kog'maw games played on KR this patch, only 722 of them were used with Stormraider's Surge ; it also has the highest win rate of any keystone on KR for what it's worth, but this doesn't mean much with such a low sample size. What we do know is that KR barely plays Kog'maw and when they do, they don't play with Stormraider's; Kog'maw has the 7th highest win rate of any ADC on KR.

EUW on the other hand has the highest Kog'Maw games played of any region, at ~16k games played. Again Stormraider's Surge is the highest winrate keystone, while also being the most popular and therefore the most likely to be statistically accurate of its power. The second most used is Fervor of Battle with 6k games and it has 3% less winrate than Stormraider's Surge does.

NA has the 2nd most Kog'Maw games played (though still far less than EUW so I don't take as much notice of it), but again Stormraider's Surge is the most popular, with 4k games vs Fervor of Battle 's 3k games, while again having a higher winrate despite the higher sample size. The difference isn't very big, but this is with about half the sample size EUW has.

I did my research on the subject of masteries for this guide, and based on the fact that every single Kog'Maw I see in EUW high Elo runs Stormraider's Surge (and reks with it), along with the fact that Stormraider's Surge is the highest winrate keystone in all regions (both with low sample sizes and large sample sizes), that it's the single optimal keystone on Kog'Maw. The other 2 options are not bad, but if they're not the best then they're not worth running, period.

Stormraider's Surge is king because it allows you to take Precision, which is perfect for Kog's mixed damage. It doesn't force you to pick between Battering Blows or Piercing Thoughts , and it also gives you more armor pen than Battering Blows , and more magic pen than Piercing Thoughts . Precision doesn't give you the DPS of Fervor of Battle , but it helps close the gap. Stormraider's Surge 's MS on the other hand will regularly cause you to out-damage Fervor of Battle in situations where you'd land less auto-attacks without the MS boost. Warlord's Bloodlust doesn't give you anywhere near as much movement speed as Stormraider's Surge does and it doesn't allow you to take Precision. Similarly to why Corki will never want Warlord's Bloodlust because he'd lose Precision, this is also a dealbreaker for Kog'Maw, who deals similarly mixed damage and definitely doesn't benefit anywhere near as much from Battering Blows or Piercing Thoughts .

I did definitely notice during my research that almost no Koreans run Stormraider's Surge on Kog'Maw, but after more research I've concluded that this isn't because they think it's worse than the other keystones, but because SS Kog'maw is basically completely undiscovered/untested on the KR server as a whole. NA and EUW both use it because the regions' playerbases are so connected through Twitch/Reddit, so what gets discovered on one region is simultaneously discovered on the other (I have no idea who came up with it first, it's impossible to find out; it slowly grew in popularity on both servers). But SS Kog'maw is to KR what top lane tank Akali was to NA/EUW before the Reddit post that brought it to light in our regions too; you have random *** plats/Diamonds who have no idea what they're doing just stumbling onto it one way or another, whether experimenting or thinking they've discovered the next hot **** (which in this case they arguably have), but it has yet to spread to pro players and high Elo KR as a whole.

Even if you want to bring up the age old Reddit argument of "Koreans have analysts that do maths for them, if they're not running something it's because their analysts have disproved it as strong", then that explains why KR pros aren't running it, not why the entire server has a 9% usage rate, while EUW, the region that plays the most Kog'Maw, and has the highest solo queue win rate with Kog'Maw, has a 46% usage. And additionally; you can't mathematically calculate the value of movement speed (and slow reduction) vs DPS since they shine in completely different areas.

I'm fairly sure that Koreans are just being slow to adapt to a great innovation by NA/EUW, whereas usually KR are the ones innovating and NA/EUW copying them. The adaptation by KR is taking so long because the playerbases are so separated that they don't really notice what we're doing in solo queue. Especially since none of them worship Western solo queue like the West worships KR solo queue. It would take for SS Kog to get played internationally or at least competitively on a semi-regular basis for KR teams (and KR solo queue soon after) to notice it, but for now Kog barely sees the light of day in pro play, so SS Kog goes unnoticed by Koreans.

It's also worth noting that Kog'Maw gets played a ****load more by the West despite us having a far bigger ban rate on him than KR does. SS Kog'maw is terrorizing NA/EUW solo queue while having the 21st/16th highest ban rate in their regions, respectively. Meanwhile KR has the least success with Kog'Maw, while playing him less than other regions and this despite his ban rate only being the 90th highest of the region. The difference between KR where he's mediocre, and NA/EUW where he's a terror? They're not using Stormraider's Surge and we are.

I could go with the mindless "copy what Koreans are doing" route, or the cowardly "I prefer SS, but these other 2 keystones are also good and equally viable!!! :)" route (you definitely can't go wrong doing either of these in guide writing!), but in this case my brain is telling me that Stormraider's Surge is king, based on what I've seen from others in my games, my own experience, and statistics. And I will stand by this until anyone can prove me wrong. And "Koreans aren't using it" isn't proving me wrong.

As for the other stuff: I disagree with Mercury's Treads and Boots of Swiftness ever being optimal, only Berserker's Greaves and Ninja Tabi are actually viable. Ninja Tabi will be added soon™ since it seems clear that they won't be nerfed for now (which is incredibly dumb).

As for BotRK, guide was written just before the BotRK change and I had to give it time to see how this affected Kog'Maw. It's clear what effect it's had on ADC as a whole, but I haven't yet seen how it's affected Kog'Maw specifically. I may be adding it in as the new first item when I get round to evaluating it, but for now I'm busy, and I don't want to make the decision based on a quick browse of ProBuilds that shows people experimenting with BotRK rush just as much as people actually rushing BotRK because they've decided it's best; with no clue how to differentiate between the two. For what it's worth, op.gg shows Guinsoo's rush still being the most used build in all 3 regions, and all 3 highest win rate build orders have Guinsoo's before BotRK, so I don't feel guilty leaving Guinsoo's rush as the main build order for now.



Even if I were the best ADC out there, skill has nothing to do with it. Anyone that's put in the right research has a better idea of the best setup than a random Korean pro saying: "Ahh, let's try good old Koggles, haven't played this guy in a while. I'm not meant to build Triforce anymore, right?".