@Riot (Anyone that does Champ Balance or Otherwise)

Can we please talk about Katarina? She has many problems that don't get addressed because the community doesn't like it when you try to change her (inb4; January 2015*) anymore.

*Note: That sounded okay from an AD standard, but it made her a literal trash tier Pre-Rework Fiora.

The first problem that's extreme about her is that she has the worst feast-famine in the entire game at the moment. The more fed she is, the less stoppable she becomes. However, if she doesn't get fed, and she get's behind, she's fucked. She might be able to pick up maybe a few kills, but it really isn't enough when their laner gets out of control. If she's not really fed, but didn't really feed, but her opponents build tanky against her, she's fucked if her team doesn't do damage beyond her.

tl;dr of the above section: If she doesn't get fed, she's basically fucked. If she does get fed, the enemy team is probably fucked.

Secondly, she's the single worst duelist assassin in the entire game, with respect to if she is fed or not (but then again, what assassin doesn't blow people up/melt them when they are fed?). Because she has the worst combination of things for being an AP Assassin, it causes her dueling to be almost non-existent, save for the opponent that doesn't know how to deal with her.

Thirdly, her AD build is mathematically worse than her AP build due to the changes in AD Items, the lack of Dual Penetration, the lack of synergy with AD (She doesn't stick to champions like Xin or Fiora do), and the fact that her engage with AD is extremely weak compared to her AP. Her AP Build does more DPS with Death Lotus than with an optimal AD Build, let alone her full combo. She would need to build Attack Speed, Rylai's, and a lot of heavy AD items in order to even try to break even with AP's mass damage. The resets become silly at that point, and you're downgraded from a team assassin to a mediocre assassin. Note: We don’t build hextech funblade because it gives hybrid stats or vamp, we build it because the active has a scaling instant burst and slow. The other two things are just icing on the burst cake.

tl;dr of above section: her kit doesn't reward her for building AD because there's no good synergy between pure AD and all of her abilities, let alone attack modifiers.

Lastly, with extension to the first point, she’s still not stable even when she gets fed, and is still weak compared to other fed champions. Katarina isn’t a hypercarry because of that reason, AND because everything that isn’t Death Lotus has shitty ratios and base damage. Her Death Lotus is never used all the way through because by then, you can either kill someone then their team, or die/get stunned then die. That said, she’s the only champion that has the lowest absolute damage, and is very reliant on team to make sure all that damage is used. Outside of that, she’s a sitting duck.

the lowest absolute damage, and is very reliant on team to make sure all that damage is used. Outside of that, she’s a sitting duck.