Kayle: Smoothing out her laning phase in return for slightly curbing late game power

Profirix·7/24/2019, 6:44:50 PM·3 votes·3,376 views

Following Kayle gameplay update, she was relegated to a top lane late-game hypercarry position, but even then seems to fail too hard early to even reach her critical level 11 powerspike. By the time you get your auto attacks to be ranged, your lane is almost always lost beforehand and you suffer significant CS difference to pretty much every top laner. Compare this to Nasus who has a weaker early game but can withstand the melee range harass because of his heavy slow and the large amount of lifesteal (which costs him nothing to sustain with, unlike Kayle's weak heal). Unless your jungler spends almost all of the time in top lane, Nasus is pretty much guaranteed to be a scary threat mid-late game. Kayle, on the other hand, has such a weak presence early game and virtually no way to hold up against the litany of top laners who can steamroll her hard enough early (with relative ease I might add) to prevent her from ever reaching that powerspike before the game is essentially lost unless the rest of our team is hard carrying.

My suggestion is to perhaps give her a little more power early so that she can at least survive the role she has been forced into with the update and curb some of the later game nastiness in return. I'm not saying that she shouldn't be a hypercarry, but I am saying that her early game now is worse than Kog'Maw's early game and needs to be addressed for her to actually see play.

8 Comments

Critmaster Garen7/24/2019, 7:40:42 PM3 votes

remove the true damage on her lvl 16.

seriously, as if being permanently exhalted is not enough. this power could be put into her early/midgame instead.

bluefire mark 27/24/2019, 6:54:55 PM2 votes

I'm fine with her early game as it is. The probem is she's designed with a bad early and hypercarry late but even her late game is pretty bad. Why pick kayle when any other hypercarry carries better then her late game atm? The problem isn't her early game its her late game. In my opinion that is.

Meteora7077/24/2019, 10:09:50 PM2 votes

kayle's early game isn't weak, its conditional just like her late game which makes her a very odd pick.

holystack7/25/2019, 6:13:06 AM1 votes

Honestly, It might be a rare opinion, but I like her current power curve. Managing a character's bad early game is a skill of it's own, but Kayle is greatly rewarded for lane knowledge and patience. I've only played Kayle mid exclusively, so my experience may differ from top. But mid lane, I find myself relatively safe, with little fear of getting dove. First few levels are really tough, as you mostly fight ranged matchups, but the lanes are much more poke oriented while top is heavy all in.

Kayle's sustain is pretty nuts if you decide to max W in lane and literally spam it, you can literally turn the lane into a battle of attrition if you play conservative. Giving up mid lane priority until lv8-9 sucks, but she plays a lot like a Kassadin mid in that regard. I'm usually a little below my opponent in farm and half a level behind, but I never feel like the gap is insurmountable.

So no, I personally find her early game fine for the most part. Playing her top might be different, but I find her very enjoyable to play mid lane.