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Kalista needs a new passive.

Electro522··31 votes·2,339 views

Lets be honest, every problem that has EVER plagued Kalista since her release has stemmed from her passive. Riot has needed to nerf her so far into the ground, that her passive now makes her autos deal only 90% of her attack damage. She is the only champion in the game that has a mechanic like this that actively keeps her from reaching her full potential, and for good reason. We've seen how scary her full potential, and never want to see it again.

So, why not completely rework her passive? Maybe instead of giving her awesome mobility, reward her for focusing a single target. Rend's passive of impaling her targets becomes her normal passive. When autoing a single target, the more spears are in that target, the more attack damage and attack speed she gets towards that target. If she switches targets, she loses these bonuses until she goes back to her original target, or until she pumps in the spears into her new target.

Just an idea I had that should make her far easier to balance, without the risk of her becoming an unstoppable monster in the right hands. I feel that it also fits her overall theme better than her current passive.

25 Comments

Romans VI XXIII15 votes

I think your completely wrong, i think the issue with her is actually the infinite stacking of spears. Its not her passive that makes her stupid to duel, its the spears.

Just comparing it to other AA stacking abilities it completely outshines then.

ChaosThief5 votes

I would say it's the endless spears combined with her passive. One or the other isn't too bad (oh she hops around a lot, great, not much damage, or hey she can stack spears in me endlessly, but she's not very mobile).

Romans VI XXIII1 votes

I could agree with that

OyddAWqJ5r2 votes

Yknow what you're right. I could see a balanced Kalista that had a cap on spear stacking, making her have to either use it for the damage or save it for the slow when needed.

Maybe make it deal less damage with less spears in them so she doesn't just get a flat reward per auto but rather a heavy reward for max stacking but a minor negligible one for casting E with one or two impales.

morris13 votes

Honestly, Xayah's feather mechanic is what I wished Kalista's rend could be. But they decided to make Xayah instead of reworking Kalista, so now we're stuck with this.

Ahristocats9 votes

yeah people are ignorant about kalista

her passive makes her AA locked, while she can dash she can't cancell her AA, other adcs are able to ORB WALK meaning they can cancell their aa in midanimation making them able to kite melees

kalista kiting isn't special, kalista's dashes make her stronger at dodging skillshots, not at kiting, every single adcs are able to kite

ChaosThief7 votes

Kalista may be incapable of orbwalking like other marksmen, and you also forgot one weakness: if the target moves out of vision before the spear lands, the spear misses. Kalista is the only marksmen who can potentially miss an auto attack.

However powerful orbwalking is, Kalista is styled completely differently. In the right hands, every basic attack is a dash, negating the need to orbwalk. Every basic attack doesn't lock her in place, but instead allows for easier repositioning. When Kalista is good, she has no effective weakness to capitalize on, besides inherent weaknesses of being a squishy character. Which is the main reason why she was guttered.

Her kiting, with the proper attack and movement speed, is better than the average marksmen if you master the dash mechanic of her passive, which does take quite a lot of getting used to.

If she had to rely on DPS alone and just wear down the target so gradually that this hopping had to be necessary, it would be one thing. However, combined with the rest of her kit (designating a partner, and pulling spears out), she really just had too much to work with.

Kalista's passive alone is enough to build around a kit. The endless spear mechanic combined with the dash on basic attack is the only reason, in my opinion, that she was essentially left to die.

Ahristocats3 votes

{quoted}

When Kalista is good, she has no effective weakness to capitalize on, besides inherent weaknesses of being a squishy character. Which is the main reason why she was guttered.

again the ignorance is strong first kalista is garbage in 1v1, literaly garbage

she loses a lot of power without W passive, she loses %hp damage and attack speed she has 90% ad ratio on AA instead of 100%, she will lose against anyone except immobile melees, if you kill her sup she will be the worst adc ever. "but she can ult to save the support" that's the problem with kalista kit it's not her dashes, or her spears or w/e, it's the ultimate that has no counterplay

Masala Chai7 votes

Wrong. Kalista is broken because of how broken she is when it comes to objective control and team fight utility.

Free vision from Sentinel so that you always know where the enemy jungler is, objective control with Rend, high teamfight power with Fate's Call.

If you're complaining about Martial Poise, then you may as well complain about Lucian's Relentless Pursuit and Vayne's Tumble, because those are low cooldown dashes that increase their DPS and makes them almost as slippery as Kalista, if not more so. Orbwalking is nothing new on ADCs.

Morgy Morgy2 votes

fuck kalista idc if she's even good anymore she's still a pain in the ass whatever it takes to remove her stupid passive is fine by me

DeathBurst2 votes

her autos deal only 90% of her attack damage. She is the only champion in the game that has a mechanic like this that actively keeps her from reaching her full potential,

Technically, MF, Graves have a very similar mechanic, and Corky had one too. Even Jhin can be seen this way. Modified basic attacks to not deal straight your AD in damage are not that uncommon. The 90% AD ratio on basic attack has nothing to do with her mobility. It's tied to her rend. If she auto+rend you, the total has a 150% AD ratio, despite the basic attack reduced damage.

I'm not really disagreeing with your point that Kalista has too much mobility, but don't blame the ratio on aa on that passive. It's unrelated.

GrReaper962 votes

Pretty much what happened to Kindred then

Darkdemon6531 votes

[{quoted}](name=Paleo Electro,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=B2fHXaEB,comment-id=,timestamp=2017-07-29T21:05:39.909+0000)

her passive now makes her autos deal only 90% of her attack damage. She is the only champion in the game that has a mechanic like this that actively keeps her from reaching her full potential, and for good reason

Just to point it out, Yasuo's critical auto-attacks and Qs do 90% and 75%.

Raven Redeemed1 votes

True, but overall he is still overall more gold efficient with crit due to double crit chance. Kalista strait up has her ad nerfed without a buff to a different stat.

Romans VI XXIII1 votes

And since her AD is decreased its technically a 10% decrease on crits aswell just like yas

Romans VI XXIII1 votes

He also has 2 passives as a passive.....sooooooo

And since kal has AD decreased, it thus decreases crits by 10% as well.

Masala Chai1 votes

25% total with IE, 20% reduction on crits.

BALDG1VEN BOOMER1 votes

Cause Riot likes to nerf things around the champion first instead of the the root problem, look at Syndra for exmaple.

Rıots Bad Client1 votes

What about a system like this. **Martial Poise:**So she has an ammo of 6. When she has no ammo left. She can choose to leave Combat for 3-8 seconds, Kill a creep. Also, when She out of ammo, she can no longer jump, and turns into a regular adc. So maybe she deals good damage with her ammo, but her damage tanks when She no longer has ammo.

**Q:Pierce ** Landing a Q Makes others spears deal bonus damage when rend'd. (Costs 1 of the ammo) This is only to make up for the net loss for damage while giving an window for counterplay

W:Sentinel Ally(That is linked with Kali) can auto the enemy with a spear to return 1 spear to kalista(To her ammo system), but the stack remains in the enemy for rend. (we could also move this to her ult so they scale return on level, so like 1/2/3 spears return for every auto of ally)

E: Rend Returns her ammo. (After rending, shes Deals -10% Less damage and removes ??? base Speed. for 5/5/4/4/3 seconds or like 4 seconds on all levels (Maybe, IF she rends; and she KILLS a Champion with it, she doesn't get the debuff)

Overall, this fixes her Infinite stack with autos(still possible) Allies will feel finally making a difference with kali Extended kiting is not really possible without sacrificing damage

PLEASE take my numbers with a grain of salt; And just suggest or point out flaws.

Cronofuge1 votes

Yeah it was a cool idea in concept but far too powerful in practice. ADC kinda already uses an archetype of building insane, unavoidable damage and relying on lifesteal and the user's competence at dodging skillshots to survive with little resists. Now throw in a champion who makes dodging skillshots easy, as well as kiting melee champions who might have the cc to stop her and you start to have a problem. Throw in better defensive itemization for the class as a whole and you have a problem that has persisted to this day.

The only problem is that taking this away strips her of her "identity." People love identities, and hers is insane mobility tied to auto attacks. Luckily she has a few more key elements of her kit that could be highlighted if her mobility was removed. She has her ties to her support and her spear stacking. We could spit in the face of her old identity and make her that "rooted machine gun on-hit" champion riot tried making Kog'maw into in season 5. Only problem is that seems like something a kit should be designed around rather than reworked into.

What a mess this champion is.

Also #DeworkGraves

Carteeeer1 votes

its a really cool part of her kit, hopefully she gets some changes down the road to make her much easier to balance

M Dragon141 votes

There's three things that make Kalista's kit. Her passive, her E, and her ult. You significantly change any one of these three things, and you change the champ entirely. Removing her passive would ruin the champ without major changes to the rest of her kit. So instead of doing that, lets try to see if there's a better way to manager her power of her passive.

What would make more sense to me would to switch her W passive with her current passive, and remove the ghosts. What the new W would do is be a toggleable ability that allows her to switch attack styles. While her W is active, she does reduced damage per auto (like current 90%, could start lower and scale as it is lvled), and reduce her AS when she is jumping. You could even remove her jump distance scaling with boots, and replace it with the lvl of the ability. Every auto jump would cost mana.

Something like this would make more sense to me for Kalista, than removing the jumping ability all together.

SanKakU1 votes

Her passive is pretty good right now...but I have to turn off autoattack every time I play her. Do to the way LoL target acquisition works, I have it turned on for literally every other champ in the game. And yet I almost never use autoattack in Dota 2.

[zombie-brand-facepalm]

Guy Fox Teemo1 votes

Kalista's identiy is tied to her passive, just like Tryndamere's ult is tied to his identity.

Every champion has something they're really good at , an iconic ability that defines them. Remove her passive and well thats a new champ.

Nevrankroaton1 votes

So if you touch Leblanc kit, it is terrible but if you remove Kalista very core identity/gameplay/part, it is better?

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