Kha'Zix, An Isolated Incident of Balance: Why he's not so bad and how we can round him out.

This is Kha'Zix. I'm sure you're familiar with him, and love or hate, he's been quite the balance catastrophe for the past year and a half. For almost the entirety of the first half of Season 4, he was cleaving through entire teams with nary a thought, was able to brute force his way through teamfights just by being ridiculously tanky through his evolved ultimate as well as extremely potent in skirmishes and teamfights. Then patch 4.9 came along, and he had that stripped from him, and rightly so, he was an absolute monster, borderline unkillable and a nasty damage dealer. So Riot made the smart decision and stripped the damage reduction (which assassins do not need, their survivability comes from mobility, not tank stats like %dmg reduction or resists.) Here are the patch notes for 4.9 in case anyone was curious/ are unsure as to what exactly was changed:

Q does less damage and less isolation damage. Evolved Q no longer deals bonus damage on missing health, but deals more overall damage to isolated targets. W deals bonus damage to monsters. Evolved W now slows enemies by 50% and grants sight of their location to Kha'Zix. Evolved R no longer grants damage reduction (but keeps his increased stealth duration and additional stealth charge).

Up to now, most of our changes failed to give Kha'Zix meaningful weaknesses for an assassin because evolved R's damage reduction was letting Kha'Zix force fight initiations whenever it was up while his high base Q damage was letting him take out squishy targets even when they were actively trying to prevent isolation. As an assassin, Kha'Zix should be an opportunistic killer who needs to find isolated targets to munch on while the rest of his team jumps into the mosh pit of the team fight. What Kha'Zix shouldn't be able to do, however, is directly engage a full team fight with the expectation to live while also taking out high priority targets without isolation.

With that said, our philosophy behind these changes is aimed at reducing some of Kha'Zix's many strengths while refining his core identity as an assassin. First, we pushed more power to his evolutions so that he'll have to think more about the choices he makes in life (or the game). Kha'Zix's base Q is lower compared to live, but his evolved Q is guaranteed to deal more damage to isolated targets in the mid to late game. The added power to W and its evolution was to give Kha'Zix more fallback strengths when evolving W. It's also worth pointing out that while evolved R took a significant power hit with the loss of its damage reduction, it's still offering a lot of extra mobility for Kha'Zix in a fight (doubling his stealth duration while also adding an extra charge).

We'll be watching how these changes pan out, but we're hoping to see more opportunistic Kha'Zixes (Kha'Zixi? Kha'Zii?) who seek out isolated meals in team fights but can't just jump in to scrap with the frontline while also having the mobility and explosive damage to take out the backline. 

**Q - Taste Their Fear BASE DAMAGE 70/100/130/160/190 (+1.5 bonus attack damage) ⇒ 55/80/105/130/155 (+1.2 bonus attack damage) ISOLATION BONUS DAMAGE 45% ⇒ 30% Q - Evolved Enlarged Claws

new ISOLATION If target is isolated, deal an additional 10/20/30/40/50/60/70/80/90/100/ 110/120/130/140/150/160/170/180 (+1.04 bonus attack damage) physical damage (in other words, 10 x Champion Level (+1.04 bonus attack damage)) removed EXECUTE No longer deals bonus damage based on target's missing health

W - Void Spike newMONSTER DAMAGE Now deals +20% bonus damage to monsters

W - Evolved Spike Racks newMONSTER DAMAGE Now deals +20% bonus damage to monsters newUTILITY If target hit is a champion, grant sight of their location to Kha'Zix for 2 seconds SLOW 30% for 2 seconds ⇒ 50% for 2 seconds

R - Evolved Active Camouflage removedDAMAGE REDUCTION No longer grants +50% damage reduction **

Now, many people were unhappy with these changes at the beginning, they felt nonsensical. Even I was skeptical and made more than a few QQ posts upset with how useless I felt compared to the powerhouse that was pre-4.9 kha'zix.

But then I adapted.

I started playing the new Kha more and more and experimented with a number of different evolution paths as well as items, masteries, and runes.*** And I found him even more complimentary to the playstyle Kha is supposed to represent.*** And perhaps, more importantly for the game as a whole, I found him to be one of the most healthy designs for an assassin in the history of the entire game. 4.9 provided Kha'Zix the ability to obliterate isolated squishies. His Q evolved and Isolated is one of the highest single target physical damage nukes in the entire game, easily reaching over 1200 damage late game every 2 to 3 seconds with appropriate CDR. This monstrous nuke is allowed to exist because of the dynamics of isolation.

For Kha'Zix to achieve this damage on his Q, his target needs to be isolated, which means they have to be at least 500 units away from the nearest allied unit (Minions, Champions, or Turrets). This limitation is one of the best forms of counterplay to an assassin in the entire game, it allows both teams to mold gameplay around Kha'Zix and his isolation mechanic. For instance, Kha'Zix can pair up with heavy displacement champions like Blitzcrank, Gragas and Alistar so they can force isolation on targets. This synergy creates awesome gameplay opportunities for Kha's team to capitalize on his situationally high burst damage.

The enemy team can also take advantage of Kha's damage though, grouping and teamfights are where Kha is weakest, and unless he's paired with aforementioned displacement champs, he has to wait to pounce on people who stray out of position, and supports who like to stick close to their ADC and peel like Braum, Lulu, and Janna are extremely effective at keeping HPVs unisolated and safe from Kha'Zix. He's one of the few assassins that has actual, tangible ingame counterplay that isn't just "buy X item" or "don't step within X units of this champion." Just by nature of isolation alone Kha'Zix creates tons of gameplay and decisions that are otherwise non-existent on other assassin champions.

But it's not perfect.

If you remember, Riot was testing the waters with slight nerfs before 4.9. Most notably, 4.7 was the patch where Kha'Zix lost his 475 isolation range, and also changed isolation procing so that turrets count as allies, as seen here.

Targets now need to be further away from each other to be considered 'isolated' for Kha'Zix's damage amplification. Turrets now count as friendlies when it comes to preventing isolation. Kha'Zix now needs to wait a bit longer before re-entering stealth via his R.

As an assassin, Kha'Zix should be looking for windows of opportunity (or should be relying on his teammates to create those windows) to engage. Instead, Kha'Zix has so much raw power that he's simply forcing engagements and kills on his own. When assassins can start and end a fight without support, that typically points to an overall lack of tactical weaknesses (which champions need to have in order to maintain meaningful counterplay). These changes are to offer more windows of opportunity against Kha'Zix and should make him think twice before going all-in, but this will be an ongoing project as we examine Kha'Zix's core role and strengths.

Q - Taste Their Fear / Evolved Enlarged Claws ISOLATION RADIUS 350 units from nearest ally ⇒ 500 units from nearest ally

newGAMEPLAY Turrets now count as allies when determining whether a target is isolated

R - Void Assault / Evolved Active Camouflage STEALTH RECAST 1 second between stealth casts ⇒ 2 seconds between stealth casts

This nerf, while negligible to pre 4.9 Kha'Zix. (it stopped his early-mid game post 6 tower dives, which he was extremely effective at.) Absolutely devastated post 4.9 Kha'Zix. With how reliant assassin Kha'Zix had become on isolation after 4.9, the nerfs in 4.7 became extremely noticeable, and is the thing that makes him borderline unplayable for a lot of people in the game, and is what, I feel, is keeping Kha'Zix on the cusp of equilibrium. There a few ways to fix this, however, which I will go into right now.

1. Dynamic isolation

This one seems like the best solution to Kha's problems at the moment, if a bit hard to code. What does Dynamic Isolation mean? it means instead of Isolation being active or not, turned off the moment 2 allies get 499 units between each other, it changes Isolation damage to scale with distance between the 2 allied targets. The closer the 2 allied units get to each other, the less isolation damage they both take, and vice versa.

(Post Script Author's note: Scarizard commented on Dynamic isolation ranges in a reddit thread linked here: http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflege...ble_isolation/ In it he discusses the difficulty of dynamic isolation damage, both in programming and game clarity, Here's the quote from Scarizard himself:

Hey Zanesbro,

Let me begin by saying that i appreciate the time you've invested took to write your thoughts here. I know this post has fallen off the front page, but this topic/suggestion in particular is one i've seen a number of times and so i hope you don't mind me outlining my beliefs on the subject below!

Isolation as a mechanic has constantly suffered from readability - not particle-wise, mind you, but in terms of understanding where the power comes from. Variable isolation damage not only muddies the counterplay (I thought i was supposed to be near my allies? Sorry dude, you're 23% too far from them so Kha'Zix hit you for 37% bonus damage with his Q!) - but also i think hurts the positive feedback loop for a learning Kha'Zix player (Catch them alone/out of position, massive damage). Q Evolution hits pretty damn hard now, but how would you really estimate your damage accurately? 'I think i can all-in this guy, but he's only 50 units away from his minions instead of 100 - wait, how much damage will i do again?'

It's very likely a change like this would necessitate a nerf to his high end Q damage. That satisfying end-game ~1k chunk of Isolation damage for finding their AD mid-rotation? Sorry, we're cashing that in so Kha'Zix can do slightly more damage playing sub-optimally. Kha'Zix's Q having no downside is part of what got us here in the first place (Q evo previously did % missing HP /even when not isolated/).

We expect Kha'Zix players to adapt just as the champion does. Part of the intended experience of KZ is embracing his variable nature whilst being savvy and opportunistic to cover for it. If you value consistency, we have 119 other champions for you to play. If you value ingenuity and exploiting mistakes to murder the hell out of your opponent with a xenomorphic rainbow scyther, i have a bug i'd like to introduce you to. As a Kha'Zix main myself, i've found the Isolation range nerf tolerable - i actually have to find ways to draw them away from allies (or in the laning phase, finding ways to eliminate/manuever the minion wave), but i'm rewarded with an insane amount of damage.

TL;DR - I'm not at all afraid to hard commit and say that Variable Isolation damage will never happen. If Kha'Zix needs love after his changes (and we did increase his Q damage at all ranks recently!) - he'll get it. I'm of the belief we don't have to break fundamental rules of his play pattern and core satisfaction to get there.

edited a bit for formatting/clarificationzz )

2. Reducing isolation range.

This is the simplest way to fix Kha'Zix's issues at the moment, but is also the most volatile balance-wise. Reduce the Isolation radius from 500 to 425-400, giving Kha'Zix a bit more leniency when assassinating targets so every teamfight that isn't extremely spread out is not a 4.5v5 for Kha'Zix's team.

3. Give Kha'Zix the ability to force application to a target.

This one has been thrown around quite a bit, Although I'm not a big fan of it. This buff lets Kha'Zix forcibly apply isolation to a target that otherwise wouldn't be isolated, whether it be through his passive, evolved Void Spikes, or some other means. I would prefer this not be the fix because it takes away from the counterplay Riot has established during 4.9, That Kha'Zix cannot achieve high burst without pouncing on mistakes of the enemy team or without a team mate to disrupt the enemy's teamfight composition and push them away from each other.

So what do you say, guys? Will you give The Voidreaver just a bit more attention? With just a bit more love and care, he has the potential to become the baseline for present and future assassin design and counterplay, I'm sure of it.