Riot has encouraged League of Legends players to run it down more often as they just gave Kog’Maw’s passive its first-ever buff since the champions release.
Patch 13.8 for Riot’s popular MOBA League of Legends is currently on the Public Beta Environment. This means the newest update for League is coming up on the horizon, bringing about heaps of fresh changes and meta shifts before the Mid-Season Invitational event.
Among the heaping serve of balance changes came one rather interesting buff to a champion’s passive. Kog’Maw’s passive Icathian Surprise allows him to be controlled for a few seconds as a corpse, this corpse then combusts and deals damage to all surrounding enemies.
Patch 13.8 sees Kog’Maw’s passive damage increase by a small amount, allowing the champion to secure kills or trade with enemy champions after he’s been eliminated from a fight.
This buff comes across as a rather strange one from Riot, however, as Kog’Maw’s passive can only be used once the champion is slain. Therefore Riot is essentially encouraging players to die more on Kog’Maw so that this buff can see an impact on the champion.
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A few keen-eyed players noticed that the buff coming in 13.8 to Icathian Surprise is the first buff ever to the ability, with an investigative player going through Kog’Maw’s patch history to see if there were any other changes made. Through their research, they discovered this was the first buff ever made to the ability since Kog’Maw’s launch back in Patch 1.0.0.94.
Whilst Kog’Maw has gone through many stages throughout his time in League of Legends, his passive has remained as one of his most iconic abilities, being one of the only ways to directly damage things after they die.
Whilst the new patch brought about other small changes for Kog’Maw, this passive buff might be the reason players die just one more time in their games.
