Rumble Nerf Impending

It's no surprise that Rumble's getting nerfed since he's one of the top solo queue winning champions at the moment. However, what's interesting is what Rioters have to say is their reasoning behind it.

Apparently, after the buffs during the Jayce patch, the balance team accidentally made Rumble's flamethrower a little TOO strong.

Here's what they have to say:

There will be Rumble nerfs - we buffed him a LOT in the Jayce patch by fixing his flamethrower. Now, it does broken damage (since the skill was balanced when it was really buggy and never hit as much as it should have) but the skill actually hits  

Basically, we need to boing the buffs back a bit, though Rumble will be stronger than before we buffed him in the first place. Xypherous did the fixes and may be able to explain in more detail. 

tl:dr: We're nerfing him due to overbuffing in the last patch, but he'll still be good.

- Morello @ Source

The ability is basically free, has a 6-second cooldown, 585 base damage with a 1.56 AP ratio. (Danger Zone)  

The dude casts rank 1 Crowstorm faster than most casters cast regular abilities. 

Only reason it was balanced before was because it didn't hit half the time. It does now.

- Phreak

The old way Flamespitter worked, is that periodically, on a hidden time interval that players couldn't control or really, have any knowledge of - it would shoot out 6 cone hits of damage. Essentially, this means that Flamespitter randomly attacked something in front of you, on a timing interval you couldn't see. 

Learning to "control" this flamespitter was impossible, due to how this timing worked. :/ 

I basically added tweening logic, updated the tick rate and made the damage a continuous burn - so that new flamespitter techniques are actually possible (like, say, the spinning fiery blossom of death tactic akin to classic Pkunk - or repositioning yourself during flamespitter, while marking the opponent or simply spraying the lane down side to side - all tactics impossible with the old flamespitter).  

However, this raised the average number of hits a rumble player got from 4'ish to 5'ish in most cases - which amounts to a crazy DPS increase overall. I understand there's this certain mystique about using something incredibly clunky and getting disporportionate power out of it but generally it's only positive if that incredibly clunky thing could be controlled in the first place and not simply offered the illusion of control. While I'm all in favor of 'controllable but hard' skills, like classic railguns or skillshots - Flamespitter worked closer to a 'press this button for a 50% chance of doing 700 damage.'

- Xypherous @ Source

All I gotta say on the matter is: Shucks. I thought I was just really good at Rumble.

Arr...a Yordle's gotta have his secrets!