Is Kat Balanced ?

Elderwood Lily·Apr 9, 2015·3 votes·929 views

I know that kat is a faceroll champ and stuff , everyone hates her and stuff but i hear some people saying she's balanced. i just see her as a broken champ late game. What do you guys think ?

15 Comments

DreadlocksApr 9, 20155 votes

Someone made a very detailed post about how to fix her.. I agreed with the guy 100%. To summarize, katarina has no "cast animations" all of her abilities are instant, meaning all of her damage is instant. The fact that she can E W around so quickly with the resets and her high damage makes her bullshit. Even her Ulti, althought channeled, The huge chunk that it does the second she presses R is too much..

Silent PaceApr 9, 20151 votes

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DreadlocksApr 9, 20151 votes

exactly.. then she cleans up with QEW resets lol

ChessburgerApr 9, 20154 votes

People don't believe me when I say that she's so BS to play against because she can unleash her Q E W and the important high damage portion of her ult before a normal caster can hit 1 skill. She has no cast animation, they do.

Oh and she has probably the best synergy with luden's echo out of all the champs due to the reason above. God forbid somebody dies then it's reset + luden proc town

PassionlipApr 9, 20151 votes

{quoted}

People don't believe me when I say that she's so BS to play against because she can unleash her Q E W and the important high damage portion of her ult before a normal caster can hit 1 skill. She has no cast animation, they do.

Yeah, and she for doing this has to go IN YOUR FACE.

Even Annie , with one of the lowest range of the game has a bit more safety while doing their combo.

ChessburgerApr 9, 20151 votes

If I recall correctly her E has 700 range. Annie mostly has to use flash to unload her burst on the backline squishy and doesn't have anything after blowing her combo. Kat can combo in, bait out a CC, zhonya it, wait out her CD on at least W depending on how much time has lapsed between her last E and the zhonya and run out or keep going if somebody else on their team has managed to kill the chunked squishy/ies.

The skill on the Katarina player's part is in tracking enemy spells, all in timing and quick thinking in the midst of a fight. If that is done skillfully there is less and less of a window of opportunity for appropriate reaction of the enemy team because they have to worry about the other 4 people on the enemy team as well.

Let me pose you a question. Have you played vs a kat player with above qualities? I would specifically emphasize that she had to be calculative and wary of her actions before a swift execution not just the usual mindless E all in on a squishy and mash buttons then get CCed.

While most kat players aren't something you'd talk about or describe as a problem, the few really good ones illustrate that outside of very specific champion picks against her she doesn't have nearly as much counter-play as the people on forums would like to argue.

She's also one of the few assassins who doesn't get destroyed by being instantly exhausted. Because you get the Q E W damage out before the exhaust can even be applied due to no cast time on E and W. In the worst case scenario you wait out the exhaust in zhonya stasis. Something like a riven/zed are a lot more prone to being shut down by an exhaust after they commit.

SerevasApr 9, 20153 votes

I think Katarina is balanced in the same sense that Master Yi, or Fiora are balanced. They're exceptionally strong in low elos because people don't know how to play against them.

They then work quite well in high elos because they're still strong and require team coordination to stop. They are all highly susceptible to hard cc though as they typically build straight damage, hit them with a stun, and/or knockup they'll blow up in a matter of moments.

Elderwood LilyApr 9, 20151 votes

So they probably won't nerf her , right ? (dosen'tmeansheneedsone)

SerevasApr 9, 20151 votes

Yeah I don't imagine so, I think she's in a pretty good spot, the meta is shifting towards tanks anyway and that's not very favorable for bursty assassins like her.

Don't get me wrong if she gets ahead early enough in the game she's a real pain, but you'll often see at least 2 tanks in a game and they've got a ton of CC to stop her from being too much of a threat.

Additionally poke and control mages are swinging back in popularity, so I'd expect to see Xerath, Ziggs, Orianna, returning to the mid lane with high frequency all of these champions have CC and range to take advantage of Katarina in a matchup as well as stop her ult, or get her away from them quickly. They also bring a lot more to a teamfight than a standard assassin does, so they're all around favorable right now.

Finally Athene's was just buffed up big time, while still being largely overlooked it provides those poke and control mages with more survivability and mana regeneration to benefit their playstyles heavily especially when against those domineering AP assassins, like Katarina and LeBlanc.

LilxPaprikaApr 9, 20153 votes

i for one think her ult needs like .5 second winding up to full speed. so she starts out throwing daggers a bit slowly then fast. often when she ults and you try to cc her with say taric stun the ult is already done b4 it hits.

Togekiss24Apr 9, 20151 votes

Her major weakness is that her ultimate is susceptible to being stopped by CC, which cuts off a good chunk of her damage there, and in higher level play just about everyone carries at least 1 champ who has disables.

The reason she's hated is primarily because soloque/normals have the coordination of chickens with their heads cut off. She specifically punishes inexperienced players who don't realize how its easy it actually is to pressure her out of the laning phase and choose a champion that works against her mechanics. Thus, much like Master Yi, she's a pub-stomper.

ChessburgerApr 9, 20151 votes

That was true before her rework when she only had the Q, E and R be damaging abilities and more damage was loaded into R, so getting a lot of your R damage in was paramount to be successful. Right now she has a very low CD no cast time aoe spell that gives her a MS boost. Which means she casts Q E W in 1/4 or 1/2 of a second and chunks a squishy for at least 50% depending on the stage of the game. The ult is just the cherry on top but it isn't absolutely crucial to win. You can get 1/2 a second of the ult in and it's enough in most cases.

The only thing that is important to a kat player is the angle of approach and the timing of the all in. Everything else can be worked around, especially if you have a zhonya.

Another point is that all her greatest lane counters have been nerfed and silences removed. And Riot has been very busy making almost every CC a skillshot so it's extremely easy to avoid considering you have a no cast time blink in your kit and all the linear skillshots have a cast and travel time.

JayenKeiApr 9, 20151 votes

I think she'd be okay if she had more counters in her lane. I would like to see more silences (but the community hates it). I honestly would be fine with more champions having the ability to cancel channels.

Overall, she's fine, just in my elo she facerolls everybody because bronze/silvers don't know how to cc/exhaust an assassin xDDD

Voluug13Apr 9, 20151 votes

She is ridiculous in the same way Riven is. Their animations are bullshit.

Riven can animation cancel everything to abuse her passive, while most of the damage Kat does is so instant that even her ult while stopped can take away 50% of her opponents hp.

Elderwood LilyApr 10, 20151 votes

lol what ? , i was just asking if Katarina was balanced and i got downvoted , wtf