So this is my first guide, and I have some things I'm going to add to it that I havent already, such as a video proving just how effective it is. To show how you just melt people. How that Allistar who took one to many tower hits for one kill can be saved from that leesin with full health + warmogs without you even getting touched.

Welcome to my first guide ever on the difficult champion, Kog'maw. This guide will help you play this DPS machine, but bare in mind, your basically a glass cannon cause you have hardly any escape mechanisms, which is why your summoners will be flash and ghost, with a 9-0-21 masteries for the decreased time on the summoners spells. Now there are 3 ways of playing Kog. AD, AP, or Magic DPS. you ask what is the difference between magic dps and AP is, and I'll tell you that your auto attacks rape everything with magic DPS, including MR stacking tanks. With pure AP, you only have burst limited on your cooldowns. In this guide, I'll cover magic DPS. I feel AD is not viable on kog because there are so many better options for AD champions, however, if you find the team comp your facing would be better fit for AD, look up an Ashe guide. AP is okay for laning phase, but when it comes to teamfights which in many cases will make or break games, you only do so much and usually only get one volley off before your dead. With the Magic DPS, your DPS at all times is high, any you'll make any single target that focuses you turn tail and run. Anyways, let's dive into the abyss with Kog.

Pros:
-Your damage end game is ridiculous and hard to counter.
-your range is extremely long with your Bio-Arcane Barrage.
-Ganking potential mid game is amazing with the slow of your Void Ooze, your damage from Bio-Arcane Barrage, and Living Artillery.
-Your joke is the most amazing thing to spam, especially right before you enter a teamfight. (Important note:a quick way to do joke is shift+1)
-Your passive can kill the person who decided to tower dive you.

Cons:
-Your the biggest focus ever.
-Team dependent; better choices for solo queue. Okay duo queue champ if your friend picks a complimentary unit like Sion, Soraka, or anyone with strong lane / crowd control.
-****py escape mechanism
-glass cannon
-some of your skins are just recoloring of the original.
-There is a skin... that shoots... FIREWORKS! WOOT WOOT.

x9: Magic pen is a standard rune on casters / magic DPS characters. Every little bit of Magic pen helps, especially with the Magic DPS guide.

Greater Seal of Replenishmentx4;
x5: The reason I don't get all of the same rune here is because the Greater Seal of Replenishment helps early game, and into late game, the Greater Seal of Scaling Mana Regeneration gives that extra MP5 you need to be boss. If you have to buy one or the other as a complete set, I'd recommend the replenishment ones, as early game, your skills are very helpful farming.

x9: Cooldown reduction helps you to be able to spam your skills more. This is particularly important for your Bio-Arcane Barrage, and your Living Artillery if you're using the magic DPS / AP build respectively.

x3: I used to start off with boots and 3 pot with kog, but with these quints, it makes early game a lot easier when your playing passive to help you avoid the other champions. You can also go for the Magic pen quints, but for all intensive purposes, this helps your mobility/ escapability.

9-0-21 is the best way to go, taking up the magic pen in offense, and the buffs+advanced ghost and flash + the cooldown on the summoner skills. Red and Blue are your best friends, red should always go to you if you do the magic DPS, since your attack speed is ridiculous, and you'll do more true damage with the buff then mostly any other champion.

Early game is all about getting your experience and your farm going. Typically with Kog, I'll harass the other characters when it also benefits my farm, such as landing my Void Ooze on the other champion when it also will hit the minions.

Kog is not a very viable solo lane champion with this build. His skills do not kill minions fast since you have very little AP at all. He's better mid, or in a lane with a character with crowd control, a taunt, or stun.

I prefer to mid with Kog, but laning is an acceptable alternative if there is a better candidate for mid.

Midding: When you start off mid, your first item is situational to who your PROBABLY going to mid against. For example. If your against a character who attacks in hit and run tactics, such as Vayne or Vladimir, boots are often a decent item to start with. If your laning against someone who's not a very aggressive mid, or needs a vantage point such as Ashe for her frost arrow, or Heimerdinger for his rockets, take the Long Sword, wait for the Health Potion, and ghost to lane, but stay behind your minions to avoid their harass. Dwindle down their health with your Void Ooze. Your objective early game is to get your blood razor and malady ASAP. Call for ganks periodically, and never be the one to initiate a fight.

Laning: Basically the same concept as midding, except your heavily dependent on your ally. Champions like Xin Zhao can just shred you apart, so you need to be close to your ally, and if you get focused, don't stand there and take the beating, flash and run unless they switch focus to your ally. Void Ooze gives you some crowd control advantage, and I'd save it for after your flash. Bare in mind, you don't have to hit the champion for it to be effective. As long as it slows, it may break off the confrontation, which is good for you, as you can continue to farm, return to base, or chose to re-engage. If your ally is obviously going to die, don't be afraid to run back to the turret without even damaging an enemy champion. Defending your turret is also a priority that comes over your ally. If your both dead, you can't defend that turret very well.

Mid game, you should have a pretty good farm going hopefully. Maybe even a few kills. Once you get your Blood razor and Malady, you should do enough damage to make whoever decided to harass you turn around and leave you alone. Your ultimate will also help them from zoning you now, and farming will be even easier. Don't forget to lead with your ultimate, and use it at random times. Not to often. Anticipate the move they'll make when you drop the Living Artillery. If you find yourself pushing mid or your lane hard, either gank, or get some monsters from the jungle quick. If you find a teamfight occurring, try to stand to the outside, undetected, as you bash one person. be behind your whole team when they enter, and if you have to, wait a few seconds before entering so you don't become focused. Often times, if a champion in your party is low on health, the team will try to kill him before they focus you. This will give you time to kill any of there major damage dealers so that you will be able to destroy the rest of their team, save the ally with low health, and push a turret.

This is where you make or break the game. Where glass-cannon is most emphasized. You can put out massive damage, but at the same time, so can their team, and if you get focused by their Ashe or Caitlyn, your dead. I forgot to mention that the major difference between you and someone like Ashe is that you kill squishies as fast as you kill tanks. Which generally from 6-15 shots (at, bare in mind, 2.5 attack speed, which is the max attack speed).A good Ashe can kill squishies in 2-3 shots, but cant hurt a tank (unless she has last whisper). So one on one, she might bone you. On the flip side, ashe will hurt when she hits someone with thornmail. Your auto attacks do hardly anything, you'll kill the tank before you kill yourself, but again, your fast attack speed will cause you to hurt yourself, and you want to avoid taking as much damage as possible being squishy. Focus the guy with thornmail last, unless he comes at you. Then only hit him till he runs away, which will be after 5-6 shots generally, and switch your focus to someone who is A. focusing your carry, B. dealing a massive AoE damage. C.Most fed. or D. focusing you.

Don't forget that flash can be used to reposition yourself very quickly in teamfights as long as you have ghost in case things go really bad and you need to get out quick. If the enemy has a tank, like morde, and he decides he wants you dead, you can flash to a different angle, behind your allies away from morde, and then focus him to get him to run away from you. The key here is to use your maximum range on your w. Void ooze will slow down anyone who runs in a straight line to get to you. Before teamfights, poke with your ult. It may not do a lot, but it may be the difference from their team killing yours with minimal health, or your team breaking threw theirs. be passive. don't initiate unless someone over extends. If you initiate on someone who over extends, and their team goes to fight, run back, then fight from behind your team.

So item's are VERY situational. This is only a guideline to what your items should be. They can differ varying on the other teams composition, their focus in fights, their most fed champion, and the items they get.

Note: ALWAYS LOOK AT WHAT YOUR ENEMIES ARE BUILDING. THIS MAKES YOUR ITEM SEQUENCE EASIER TO BUILD UPON.

Now, into the items I get.

CORE: , , ,

with Madred's Bloodrazor + your Bio-Arcane Barrage, you do anywhere from 10% up per hit with your auto attacks before magic resist is taken into consideration. With Malady and void staff, this ensures your doing maximum damage, shredding that magic resist, so you do hopefully true damage. If you opt to get an Abyssal Mask this helps for even more magic pen, ability power, and magic resist. Perfect item, and if the other team is AP heavy, it's a good item to get pretty quick, right after your malady to help with some magic resist.

To make it simple, your goal is to have the blood razor, magic pen, and as much attack speed as possible to be able to just shred down there health per hit while your Bio-Arcane Barrage is active. At least, this is the DPS aspect. Obviously, if your getting focused, other item's are more ideal, which leads to the situational items.

Situational Items:

: if your finding your getting focused fairly hard, dying quick, but the team fights don't last very long, as well as your team barely losing or winning them, this item is excellent in that you get the MR + armor, but more so the revive after you die. Think of it as a cheap Zhonya's Hourglass in that after you die, you have a short duration before you revive, then your back into the fight. The downside is the cooldown on Guardian Angel is fairly long, which leads to the next situational item.

: Like Guardian Angel, this item gives you survivability in armor, and its passive really helps when you get focused. The bonus of this over guardians angel, is that it also gives you a very high amount of AP, giving you more DPS.

: Item good for things like, oh say, karthus Ult, rammus taunt, sion stun. The health and MR are helpful as well.

: If you find that your dominating your lane or mid, this baby is a cheap way to boost your domination, while giving you some health. Very underrated item in my opinion. This with Sorcerer's Shoes gives you 50 Magic pen on its own when you factor in your runes. Early game, this gives you bonus damage with your skills.

: This is a great item to replace your Berserker's Greaves, but bare in mind, attack speed is a big thing for your DPS. Either boots are fine, and I personally replace the Greaves after I get my Phantom Dancer with these. Your runes + Abyssal Mask + these shoes + Void Staff = 50 pen + 50% pen with your masteries. With a character with 200 MR, this reduces there MR to 150, then 50% of that is gone, down to 75 MR, which is about 45% reduced damage. By this time, you'll have probably 12-13% dmg per hit, which is taken down to about 7% of their health per hit, + the malady damage, auto attack damage, and redbuff true damage. Keep in mind, this is a tank your hitting right now. 7% of a tanks health per hit is ridiculous at 2.5 attack speed. This means in a little more than 6 seconds, you've nearly dropped that Magic stacking morde who decided he was going to ruin your day.

Normally, I disregard items like these since they have low damage, no resist of any sort, but this item, to be completely honest, fits perfectly end game for this build, where everyone is everywhere, and you just found that random heimerdinger who Thanks god he might have the movement speed to get away from you, when all of a sudden, you attack him once, and hes slowed infinitely till death! or a team member comes and kills you because you weren't with your team like an idiot. This item, in all honesty, should come after one of your magic pen items, like after the zeal and abyssal, to where your already putting out a good bit of damage.

Elixirs:
The great part of DPS kog is that EVERY ELIXIR IS BENEFICIAL TO YOUR BUILD.
If i had to recommend one or two before a teamfight, I'd recommend the agility first, then the brilliance, then fortitude.

Potions:
is an item you want to get every time you go back. 2-3 is a decent amount.

Wards: A necessity for preventing ganks. You have hardly any escape mechanism. If you can prevent being ganked, you won't need to worry about escaping.

Since you have very little escape mechanisms, you always need to be aware of what's going on in all the other lanes. You can't always rely on MIA's because people don't always remember to give them, or the character that ended up killing you found there way quickly to your lane. In this regard, you need to take precautions to keep yourself alive. Ward your lane CONSTANTLY. Tip: if your playing against an Eve that isn't fed yet, a very good indication she's about to hit you is if the other person in your lane is about to randomly attack you. If Eve is on the other team, know your enemies attack distance, and stay out of it unless Eve is shown somewhere else on the map. Vision wards in the middle of the lane for invisible characters like Evelynn or Twitch. Try to always keep one summoner spell (particularly flash if you can) up, since it's a major part of your escapability. Your one of the biggest damage dealers in the game. You will get ganked, you will get focused, and you will get tower dove. The way I keep tabs on the other lanes is constantly glancing at the minimap between last hits just to see who's MIA, in what lane, and how hard they're pushing or being pushed.

All in all, Kog'maw is a very fun character to play if you play him right, with a team who understands your potential, and builds around your protection. This guide isn't going to make you win with him overnight. He's a character you need to play a few games with first before you go anywhere with him. If you have no map awareness, your not going to get anywhere with him. It's like riding a bicycle. You don't just hop on and go, you need to learn the mechanics of cycling. Same applies with new champions and builds.