Dear Riot, a Vayne Main's thoughts on Kai'Sa
This season, I have a 70% winrate on Vayne and mostly play her to climb. I enjoy the adrenaline rush, quick reactions, and the knowledge that one misstep can cost my team the game as an ADC. In my opinion, ADC is the riskiest and hardest role in the game simply due to the amount of basic mechanics and game knowledge needed. When I heard Kai'Sa was being based on Vayne, I was really excited!
Kai'Sa didn't perform below my expectations Riot. I give you that. There's some things you could have done better but she's done well. It seems like she was always in the works for some time and I like how you've combined other champion concepts on her E. It does offer a nice simply mechanic on top of the additive mechanics she has.
I have found some things on Kai'Sa that I do not know should happen:
- Ability animation cancels
- Brief period of untargetability/invulnerability
I think these are short mechanical gimmicks that, when used properly in a real game, would be entertaining to see. Since these events happened in the PBE, I cannot confirm they happened due to her kit or due to other events affecting her. PBE has a lot of discrepancies between player level when playing in one game so I cannot really state how she will play out on live servers confidently.
Let's get into her basic VO though and character.
You nailed it spot on Rito. [vayne-pose]
I believe you could have done better still as well, but with Kai'Sa - I believe you made her an actual human surviving the Void. It's like a soldier during war who survived without any social interaction and the grim promise of a different future. I've seen it happen and I've had similar experiences in terms of trauma to Kai'Sa.
I believe Violet Evergarden, an anime, truly would be a great study on how Kai'Sa could have ideally been like. She too is very similar to Kai'Sa in terms of trauma and social interaction.
Let's go into her builds.
I would love to make a guide on Kai'Sa, but right now - she feels really bad with a lot of items. I'm going to say this - she is not going to be an efficient of an assassin like Vayne. You will never pick Kai'Sa over Vayne unless you have a hard CC composition or are in low elo confident you can snowball. You will also never, ABSOLUTELY NEVER, lane against a Caitlyn if you want to win. It's a dodge at that point.
Her range is fine as any higher would make her more viable mid or jungle which she gets absolutely destroyed in due to poke and invades. I would prefer if she could get some critical strike scaling or better scaling with IE/Crit because IE feels bad. I also do want to say there are several scenarios where she is ideally "broken".
I want to see more players play her and find their preferred builds - but a team with hard CC/all-in potential will be a Kai'Sa's main wet dream.
Some little tips but not all:
- To play a good Kai'Sa, you need to recognize animations of different champions
- She excels in closed corridors like Vayne, so fighting in the jungle is her strong suit
- She can contest objectives very well
She beats Vayne with team synergy in hard CC but I don't see her ever beating Vayne in a 1v1 when they both have ultimates up.
I will make a guide on the boards about Kai'Sa's possible build paths and why I like them. Thank you for reading.
