Ok, 9-10 year Kat main here.
These are the things which make her underwhelming to play:
- She's literally just Gunblade the champion.
- She relies on her opponent's plays, not her own, unlike other assassins such as Zed, Yasuo, Talon.
- Shunpo's cast time is still there, and it's inconsistent.
- She's in a damage meta
- A single defensive option shuts her down
Oh yeah also, probably should've mentioned she also lacks a laning phase, so that's fun.
Now, let me expand upon these points.
1.There is no build diversity for Kat outside of picking up a Death's Dance on top of Gunblade if you're running Conqueror. It's literally Gunblade into stack magic pen and Zhoyna's (if needed) every single game. Banshee's is borderline unusable because every mage has Luden's, AD Kat is pretty much dead thanks to damage being prevalent right now (the moment you go AD you get nuked without being able to solidly nuke), Luden's is now a mage item, Spellbinder is only useful for the stats it provides (the active is almost never good enough for Kat since she NEEDS magic pen) etc.
Point being, her build is fairly homogenous over all of your games with her (builds on almost every champ in the game are homogenous at this point tbh). However, Gunblade is definitely an outlier, and an abomination imo. The moment you pick up Gunblade you actually turn into a champion and if you get it early enough you decimate your opposition in skirmishes.
Gunblade is an outdated item, remove it and buff/rework/revert the champions who pick it up as their core item.
2.When you play Kat you're accepting that your opponent is the "playmaker" here until you get your first reset. As Kat you can't actually do anything unless your opponent picks the right option which agrees with your selected option on your flowchart of "which dagger will my opponent die to this time?".
Sure, you can force your opponent to pick an option which agrees with your selected option, however, you're relying on them being foreign to Katarina. The moment people know your options you're a borderline unusable champion. Kat as champion relies on your opponent being bad to win, that's not fun.
3.Yeah, so much for "we removed the cast time on Shunpo", it's still there for like 10 frames. Along with that, it's not a consistent 10 frames, sometimes it's lower, sometimes it's higher. I don't know why they said they removed it, but they didn't.
The backloaded delay isn't too bad, but when you combine it with some Shunpo bugs which have resurfaced (all to do with the auto reset), such as Kat freezing for almost a second when you kill a unit with Shunpo (as well as cancelling all movement commands), not being able to auto reset off of ally creeps on tower etc.
They did fix these bugs initially, but hey hey, Riot coding, am I right?
4.Why pick a champion that deals damage over the course of 2-3 seconds when you could pick Zed, Talon, Yasuo, Ekko or Leblanc who all have instant burst?
That's just part 1 of this. The part 2 is that almost every other lane just instakills you thanks to the runes and/or buffs that Riot gave the champions. Case and point, Renekton with Conqueror just oneshots you at all stages of the game. Kha'zix with ONLY a damage item component oneshots you at all stages of the game. Any ADC oneshots you with their crit items, or better yet, if they're Draven, Kai'sa or Vayne, they manfight you. Mages in the mid lane take half of your HP with one skillshot out of lane. Assassins in general destroy you unless they're a much lower rank than you.
Even supports are in on this, since mages are run are supports down in the bot lane.
So, you're picking a champion which gets oneshot by everything in the game, can only oneshot when extremely ahead or when enough criteria is met and has to build extremely squishy to be relevant?
The only reason I can think of as to why you would still pick Kat would be either because you think/know she's fun or because of her insane skirmishing power when ahead. Or both.
5.Hexdrinker, GA, Stopwatch, Zhoyna's, Abyssal Mask, shields (special mention to Kai'sa), mass mobility/escapability, Aftershock, Fleet Footwork+all other healing runes, Banshee's, HP items in general (special mention to mage items that grant HP), Wit's End etc.
All of the above defensive options destroy Kat or at the very least invalidate her lead. Combine these options with turtling or simply just tanks/bruisers and you've just successfully made that fed Kat useless.
Hexdrinker is definitely the most frustrating though. The moment your opponent picks that item up you can no longer solo kill them, even when ahead. Zed, Talon, Yasuo and Talon are all already incredibly difficult for Katarina, but the fact they have a fallback option to invalidate you is absolutely disgusting. By building Seeker's/Zhoyna's you're delaying Gunblade, and as previously mentioned Gunblade is an insane powerspike and you need it ASAP. When AD mid lane champs build Hexdrinker they're not much damage at all.
Stopwatch is also an outlier here. It stops Kat from getting a reset or resets, gives her opponents a get out of jail free card; which they can use to bait you etc and it helps them to reach Zhoyna's or GA which both also destroy Kat. It's a dumb item and concept in general.
Here's a quick summary if you're too lazy to read or want something that's less of a rant and more concise.
- Gunblade is what makes Kat a champion, without it she's pathetic. That, and her build diversity is just dead.
- Your opponent decides if they live or die, not you as the Kat player.
- Shunpo still has a cast time (and an inconsistent one at that) as well as many previously fixed bugs associated with Shunpo.
- There's no reason to pick an "assassin" which deals all of their damage over an extended period of time when you have other (better) assassins who can perform in a manner almost identical to pre-season 7 assassins.
- Defensive options destroy Kat in general right now, or just invalidate her lead. Fuck Hexdrinker
5:5. NO LANING PHASE
It's sad really. Her rework is honestly quite fun and I've grown to love it, and yet...it pales in comparison to other assassins and champions for the matter in a balance related scenario. Mages are better than Kat, as are your typical assassins. Kat is a niche, and tbh she's probably only really a counterpick champion at this point, as she's lacks any of the qualities you need to pick her mid lane consistently, with those qualities being safe and fast waveclear, CC of any kind and reliable burst damage.
Idk, maybe she needs a revert or a partial revert or this point. Or maybe the game just needs to revert runes reforged and certain reworks/buffs. Seriously, we have perma-stealth Vaynes, Rivens with no cooldowns, mages with infinite mana, everyone one-shotting each other, junglers who can perma-camp your lane. I mean, what's going on here? Something's just not right.....
And then we just have Kat who somehow has to compete with all of this nonsense.
Bleh, I hope you can take away at least one thing out of this mess of a rant. Playing Kat is so frustrating right now for so many reasons, a lot of which I can't even go into any depth on because I'd likely exceed the word count.
