In what situation is AP kogmaw viable? It seems that the only utility from the range is during laning phase... and you don't get ap until late or mid game.

The only thing that AP really does for Kog is damage on Bio Barrage and Living Artillery. The AP scaling on Bio isn't worth much and the bonus to Artillery is only 30% of AP. So it's not really ever worth it when compared to the benefits you get from AD and attack speed. What is nice is the magic resist debuff from Malady. It makes your Bio and Artillery hit harder without really having to stack any AP.

I'd say building AP/AS would be good, more shred damage (focusing on magic penetration).

I LOVE AP Kog'maw. I find him incredibly fun. His 'E' and his ult combine from some incredible damage. Combo that with a Rylais and he's a kiting master. His ult has like a %150 damage increase on champs so he hits surprisingly hard. Saying that; however, actually hitting landing his ult is difficult. So it takes skill/luck to be effective.

What I also love is that you can just sit way outside the range of combat and rain death upon team fights, that being said, he really needs blue to reach his full effectiveness.

I build Archangels, Rylais, Deathcap and then defensive afterwards.

R>E>W>Q

Step 1. Get madreds
Step 2. Get Malady and IF
Step 3. Wait for team fight to begin before making appearence decimating everyone with Bio-Arcane
Step 4. ????
Step 5. Profit

He already does a lot of magic damage from his %health, so he's already got heavy mage power. I'd probably go attack speed and AP, as previously suggested. If you've got another AP carry and another AP carry, I'd say go for it.

As mentioned, AP Kog is suboptimal. He already does high base damage with Puke and especially Ult, so AP just doesn't give it much of a boost.
In fact, most of the "AP Boost" is simply people taking the effort to use their Ult more and taking items that give em enough mana to do so. (or taking blue buff).

A normal kog can easily get a Chalice to pretty much fix their mana issues along with Meditate mastery and some MP5 runes. It even plugs his MR hole...all for 890g.

Artillery is fine and all, but is best during static tower fights. You can't be guaranteed of this though and pure artillery/puke just doesn't do enough damage. It DOES hit hard, but it isn't burst and you have to do maybe 2 shots max then wait the 3 sec.

Kog ALSO has a fantastic bloodrazor effect built in. It is dumb to ignore this. By boosting attack speed, Malady, sorc boots, MPen runes, Kog can shred enemies at 750 autoattack range!


The best Kogs use BOTH of their tools in their inventory: Good harassment and laning thru Puke/Ult, AND look for an opportunity to shred an enemy with Barrage autoattack.

AD kog is sub-optimal. I will explain why:
As AD kog, you will be getting items that prioritize attack damage, crit, and maybe lifesteal, rather than attackspeed and ap. Becaues of this, AD Kog'Maws will generally be dealing a mix of both ap and ad damage. The problem though, is that AD abilities like crit and lifesteal don't stack with the AP damage of your Arcane Barrage. The other problem with AD kog is that he will generally go either armor pen or ap pen, but either way, the effect is crippled if you go AD. If you get last whisper, your ap damage will be quite low. If you get void staff in an AD build, your AD won't do all that much dmg.

So what should you build?
AP/Attackspeed mix.
Items like malady, bloodrazor, and void staff are great for Kog. The attackspeed increase scales with his W because you will land more attacks with it. The AP items will increase the % damage of W, making you shred tanks even more. Void staff + 15% pen from talent tree will make you deal roughly 6-7% pure damage, per hit. That's Vayne's silver bolts x2.5.

Avoid items like IE, Bloodthirster, and phantom dancer, because there are better alternatives. Kog does NOT need crit or lifesteal. EVER!

The only time I would ever recommend going AD kog'maw is if your entire team auto-locked AP champs, after you have already made your choice.