I'm a bit concerned about the IDEA behind Kalista

Withthegoodrice·11/24/2014, 3:08:00 AM·62 votes·6,349 views

Not necessarily a QQ thread, but just a question about the idea of her design.

For instance, Lucian is a short ranged ADC with high damage within his range. His spells focus on speeding him up, or making him mobile to dodge enemies. As such, he doesn't have CC.

ADCs with high CC, such as Varus and Ashe, remain immobile but rely on using their CC to kite and help their team.

Yet other ADCs don't have much hard CC or mobility, but really high range and damage like Kogmaw.

Why does Kalista have innate kiting with mobility, while having a slow, while having mixed % HP DMG, while having an ult which applies hard CC, along with the utility of her sentiles. Whats her kit supposed to represent, or fall off with? She seems to excel in everything.

82 Comments

aperson111/24/2014, 3:14:43 AM37 votes

Morello must have either got fired or lied to us, because this is the exact same thing that happened to toplane for ~2 years, that he said wouldn't happen again. They are releasing champs with more and more overloaded kits into the ADC role, to compete with the last released champ who had an overloaded kit. I guess if we coin the phrase "Better Nerf Kalista" they'll get around to fixing it sometime late 2016.

Anonagon11/24/2014, 3:25:33 AM22 votes

My main gripe with the ideas behind her is with the Oathsworn thing. If we had seen her much earlier in development, I would have told Riot to cut it and leave it, for a multitude of reasons:

lack of synergy with character (a spirit of vengeance shouldn't be trusting anyone. I get the entire "it costs your soul to take vengeance" thing that it says in her lore, but that isn't partnership like Oathsworn is supposed to be)
increased punishment for AFKs - self explanatory. If a support goes AFK, what happens to Kalista? What if Kalista goes AFK, and you picked Alistar for nothing?
increased punishment for matchmaking randomness. Kalista will be near useless in Bronze and Silver because of bad teammates.
if you look at the rest of her kit, it seems like she's been designed so that if she has a uncooperative or AFK support, she will still be useful, which simply means that she is broken when she does have her support. Despite Oathsworn being something that you would really expect to define a kit, it really doesn't play that huge a part. She has another identity as a kiting master (which tramples on Ezreal). Really, Oathsworn plays just a big enough role in Kalista's kit that you wonder why she has it but isn't defined by it.
Kalista entrenches the duo ADC/Support bot metagame far more than any other thing Riot has done. You could point at Leona, but she does well with any damage oriented lane partner, and she also makes a good jungler. Her teamwork based passive isn't limited to a single person. But with Kalista, Riot is saying that they like the ADC/Support bot meta, and they don't want to do anything to change that.

Hayaishi11/24/2014, 4:15:31 AM20 votes

That is exactly my concern. Despite she not being overpowered at the moment it just feels shitty how Riot releases champions that are no longer bound to their design values (If they ever had one) while previous released champions do.

Anyone remember Meddler saying "Oh, i think the problem with mobility creep is that we make mobile champions without making them have a fair trade off to balance said mobility" Then Kalista is released.

Talamare11/24/2014, 4:36:41 AM15 votes

Because she is designed by CertainlyT, who feels the need to not only include everything but also include OP things

Direwolfiez11/24/2014, 3:31:08 AM11 votes

Short answer: because CertainlyT and his buddies in balance. I swear, it's like every new champ they release wasn't tested at all. Riot talks about doing something about the mobility creep, and then they release Kalista. I mean, that's just like a huge middle finger.

TheI3igDaddy11/24/2014, 6:06:21 AM8 votes

Because Riot doesn't care that their game is being power and mobility-creeped to hell. They seriously do not care because of E-sports.

Otherwise CertainlyT would've been fired by now.

LupusNox11/24/2014, 6:50:14 AM7 votes

she represent mobility creep

Kalista the spear of power creep

Anzell11/24/2014, 8:38:14 AM7 votes

This is by far the most unbalanced patch I've had the displeasure of playing in years.

disregardable11/24/2014, 3:18:20 AM6 votes

She has no burst. She's designed to be an auto-attack reliant champion, and her auto-attacks are very hard to use as a result of her passive. So even though she's very mobile, she really has to be because it takes her a long time to try to kill someone without being killed first. This also puts close matches in a difficult situation; how long can she afford to keep getting those spears in him? If she mis-judges and realizes she can't kill him, she'd just die without the mobility. Ashe is in a similar situation, except her crits give her significantly higher damage over time.

I agree, the slow AND the passive is a bit unnecessary with her kiting though.

GundayMonday11/24/2014, 5:02:20 PM5 votes

I always thought Kalista's power came as a tradeoff to playing the Comcast gambit. If your oath sworn DCs, you don't have an ult :3

redlightman11/24/2014, 9:44:02 AM5 votes

I just want to make sure that the people talking about mobility creep realize that Cassiopeia was released during a time where AoE dominated everything.

xl Kirito lx11/24/2014, 5:43:07 AM3 votes

She has insane kiting, I'll give you that. Her slow is tied to her damage. If she uses it at the start of a fight, then her overall damage for the fight drops significantly until rend is off cd. Her % HP of magic damage is tied to one other member on your team, can only proc once every eight seconds, and thats assuming you are both able to attack the same person. Kalistas ult does provided cc, but it's another all or nothing ultimate. You throw someone at their team, you are forced to engage there, you can't exactly run away from a fight. Again, it's nice, but it's not like getting a 5 man yasou ult, or alistar q. Sentries are nice, aside from the long cd's, the easy ability to avoid them, and the fact that people consider sentries to be a free ward.

People want to make Kalista out to be an incredibly overpowered champion with nonstop mobility. She does have the nonstop mobility part, but she's not overpowered. There are ways to play against her, she still dies to any targeted cc, or assassin. I understand you aren't trying to make this thread into "OMG Kalista OP rito nerf.", but she has specific counter play to her.

DaCush11/24/2014, 5:15:20 AM2 votes

Her early game is terrible, she has to rely on her teammate to do the hard cc that does 0 damage. This is exactly how people looked at Gnar when he got released. OMG overloaded kit, has slows on everything and got released being extremely underpowered and nobody played him and you were a troll if you did since his ult was so unreliable. It wasn't till he got buffed that he became viable.

I Main Swain11/24/2014, 4:09:02 AM2 votes

I feel like she should be the shortest ranged adc to compensate for her passive, and her %hp dmg when she and an ally attack the same unit is just a lot retarded. I mean, really? 20% at rank 5?

commi66611/25/2014, 2:29:43 AM1 votes

Dont forget to go leagueofgraphs, scroll allllll the way down to the bottom in the champions section and find Kalista sitting there at 43% winrate. Keep complaining about her being OP

eyes wide shut11/25/2014, 3:34:36 AM1 votes

I find it rather humorous that all the pros think kalista sucks, her win rating sucks, and yet all you kids in silver and bronze can NOT stop bitching like she's the most OP thing you've ever seen. Her early game damage sucks, her 1v1 is absolute GARBAGE compared to every other single adc.

And to that one guy who said this is the most unbalanced patch he's played in years? Someone must not have been around for The Patch of Black Cleavers, or the original Blade of The Ruined King, or hell, Ap Yi/Ap Trynd. Or when AP mid annie didn't have many counters and flash tibbers was the root of all evil. Or, Liandry's Mushroom Teemo Minefields, Rengar infinite heal, Rengar instant kills, Olaf the giants belt king... I could go on forever.

Takes me back to that time when Lucian was released and everyone said he sucked ass. Flashforward to many nerfs later and kids still cry OP about him. So many blind people. Everyone must be LeeSin

The5lacker11/26/2014, 12:32:02 AM1 votes

"B-but she doesn't have a steroid!"

No, just an infinite stacking execute with functionally no cooldown that can be moved to another target with her low-cooldown harassment spell.