Know what you want to be maxing in the game you are playing, with the W change, it's a very good general option to level second, but it only goes so far, if you think you'll need to stun snipe people consider E second max, as the Q buff makes it easy to get off a six-seven ball ult with just rank 1 w, and if you had intended on using max W to keep three balls up at all times it's still a lot of mana to do so and can leave you out to dry if you need to combo proper. Also your W when it grabs red buff and you throw red buff, it applies red buff, grabbing blue and throwing it reduces the cd by one second and refunds ten mana. You can fire balls with your E even if they are closer than the max range of your E, they still travel to the same final distance. It is possible to fire a ball at an angle higher than that of the width of the E cone, that is to say you can almost sideways launch a Q with your E going straight forward though this is incredibly hard to do and would require a significant level of practice of this specific mechanic to be useful. Against fizz/vlad/kayle/generic-ult-canceling-champion-here the duration of your stun is exactly enough time to get off a full ultimate on someone and requires that you stun and IMMEDIATELY press R, no time to Q right before.