Nerfed Kalista now what?

Kalistas been steadily nerfed while at the same time being given some changes to increase some areas focused towards her rend stacking. As a result her power is so skewed in this direction that in order for her to be really effective anymore you need to dump at a minimum 6 or more rend stacks in someone early game. With some supports Kali can be potent no doubt but with the nerf to her W passive her long held identity as a dominant bot lane bully is all in the past. You get out traded by everyone and even if you try to all in, getting off the necessary damage to even take out a single target you and your support focus is 50/50. Especially without ignite you're most likely going to fail that all in. Compared to someone like Lucian where you DONT need to set up the perfect scenario to win a 2v2 at all in since your Q does so much front loaded damage and his passive gives him many autos.

The bot lane is just dominated by Lucian, Caitlyn and Ezreal, for many of the same reasons mind you. They all have escapes, two out of the three's escapes provide immense amount of damage. An E->empowered auto-> Q from cait lv2 will chunk half if not 35-40% of the enemy ad or AP support. I'd know I do it often when I play her. It's getting tiresome, botlanes gotten stale with trinity ad lineup of Lucian, Ezreal and Cait. I can make meaingful trades/all in's on these ad's with virtually any support, even if I mess up a few times I wont get punished as hard as I would on Kalista. You can't be aggressive either on Kali because she just straight up lacks the necessary damage to threaten a swift all in. If you all in you either dont do enough damage because rend is just super weak until you have 3 items on her at rank 5 and thus they turn the fight and kill you, or well you just get camped and ganked all game because her early game is super weak, super exploitable, and easy to shut down.

Mid to late Game her teamfights can be good, she can kite but a while back you guys made a Q change to Kalista. This prevents her from casting her Q mid hop, which took away a pretty substantial identity of kalista to change position fluidly while dealing damage. You also nerfed her martial poise passive, slowing down her attack wind-up and only granting her an increase in hop speed/distance from one boot tier and not both. It really makes her kiting that much harder and gives the user yet another thing to master. She also has to deal with cheeky bush "plays" from enemies in lane and out of lane; ever since her change to her autos in which they do less damage and do not affect players outside of her vision. You also nerfed her rend making it cost alot more mana due to it not refunding as much from killing a single creep or even multiple. So even skilled kalistas, who have shorter auto ranges than most of the popular ad's right now cannot even get leads harassing in lane. It's much to risky, often times when I try to do this I am almost out of the necessary Mana to use my ultimate or use Q -> multiple rends to execute a target. Rend is naturally weak and it costs a lot of mana? Like are you serious, how am I supposed to be aggressive in lane or even trade? Now compound on to the recent nerfs to her W passive and loss in attack speed scaling, all of these changes really started to coalesce into this really hard to play weak early game Kalista.

You cant duel ANYONE at any stage in the game without your support, your early game is massively weak even WITH YOUR SUPPORT, your kiting is clunky and your damage only turns on with 3-4 items roughly /or . Oh speaking of items shes forced into pretty much going Runnans first due to have such a weak early game (cant duel anyone remember?) while also lacking in waveclear. Can't go first or first because they are simply just less efficient first completed item buys. In fact in many of my games recently since the mage update (and prior to arguably) going BT at any stage would almost never happen. Since Mercurial gives lifesteal, a cleanse, and MR. On top of that Maw is a better item buy to buy alongside mercurial because it (and ) give MORE MR, a shield, Life steal WHEN that shield is popped and a lot of AD.

Meanwhile Lucian over here can go the traditional essence reaver build or the new ghostblade build and see no massive downgrade in performance or strength at almost any point in the game. Ezreal can honestly still go AP as well. Kalista is just so weak in every regard right now her kit just doesnt work the way it should anymore. She's supposed to be a strong early game 2v2 and teamfighting Adc but Lucian, Caitlyn, Ezreal and even Sivir beat her out by a mile. You dont get rewarded for creating a proper all in until you have many items. Even if you do manage to get a kill lv2 in an all in, you're stuck with a weird item buy (recurve/vamp scepter) until you get runnans and in that time anyone of the aforementioned Adc's has the potential to out trade and win a 2v2 against you, the Kalista who just went 2-0 and is up 10 cs. All of that because your W passive was nerfed, despite you Riot clearly stating that Kalistas strength is with her support. You cant go Bloodthirster first item buy anymore (yup, no go getting an early BF anymore, eventhough that USED TO BE VIABLE!) because again your passive is massively nerfed in all stages of the game, you can't go Botrk cause again your passive early game doesnt help you win trades and your attack speed has been massively nerfed due to it being reliant on being near your support. You HAVE to go runnans because you need the attack speed, ability to pop rend multiple times due to runnans passive AND it's crit.

And even THEN you still are weak until you get Botrk and another damage item (hex drinker/pickaxe) then with a proper engage you can start to do well in team fights. The spike for her is so late, she so weak for so long and its really saddening, because you're forced to farm until you have 3 items. Caitlyn, ez, lucian all massively spike at 2. Even prior to that they have much easier times taking down enemy ad's in lane with proper synergy with their support and maintaining their lead due to the nature of their traditional buys. Someone like Vayne who also goes Botrk first or focuses attack speed can get away with it because her passive still does incredible damage to squishies, on top of being given a massive attack damage boost with her ult at lv6. What is Kalistas Identity? She doesnt have one and she excels at nothing right now because she was massively nerfed and forced to play around a VERY weak ability. Rend does have a high ceiling but it takes much too long to get there. If you're going to force Kalista to be reliant on her support and be a team fighting monster you need to return her W passive to what it was or simply buff it from it's previous state for her to be competitive with the other ad's right now. Also you should really consider buffing the ad ratio or base damage of Rend, it's super weak and cannot even properly execute.