A Plea for Kayle

Hi boards,

What follows is the ramblings of a former main, and will likely be the single most overemotional, biased, and nonobjective post I will ever write on these forums. I waited for a couple months before posting this, in the hopes that her rework would grow on me like a rather malignant fungus, but it simply hasn't happened, and I pause here to air my frustrations regarding the rework. I tried to love her, but I simply cannot.

[cass-cry]

I played Kayle since season 4/5, and primarily (due to a diamond ranked league content creator by the name of Shakarez) played her in the jungle. I peaked at plat 4, and due to the competing obligations of obtaining my Masters degree and my fairly demanding engineering job never had terribly much time to devote to playing and getting any better. Kayle could always keep me logging back in to play, however, regardless of the extreme busyness of my life at the time.

What I loved most about Kayle was her versatility. As a Kayle OTP, she could be serviceably played top, mid, support, and jungle. When I hadnt the time to play her, I could learn from others: There were quite a few Kayle support OTP players on twitch, some as high as Diamond ranked. She had a simple, swiss-army-knife kit that did not require tons of stress or caffeine to use, which permitted my attention to stray more to macro considerations such as dragon timings, counter-ganking, map rotation, and objective focus as opposed to raw mechanical play. If the game was going well, she could carry. If the game was going poorly, her ult and W were surprisingly effectual, turning even the most desperate of fights if used properly.

She could be built Onhit, AP, or even Crit depending on the game. (If curious, you may check my older match history was surprisingly amazing and fun into the proper enemy team.)

When I heard she was being reworked, I was initially somewhat worried. However, when I heard @Riot August was doing it, I was excited, as was a wonderful, refreshingly simple design in a League of Legends that had become plagued by unnecessary complexity. I had faith that after some hiccups, Kayle would still feel like Kayle.

So far that is not the case, and although I am grateful for the likely countless hours of time and effort he has doubtless put in to the Kayle rework, I deeply hope work on her is not yet done.

Paradise Lost: The death of role versatility

From a business perspective, reworking was entirely necessary. Some (not me) felt she was boring, both to play as and fight against. Her pickrate was so abysmally low that I had many games where the enemy scarcely remembered what a Kayle even was. You cannot make money from a champion that nobody plays, so certain modernizations, such as the skillshot q, are a perfectly wonderful idea.

Her winrate is still more than serviceable, and provided one has jungle assistance she is certainly still quite viable, perhaps even more than her old iteration.

However, has lost what I loved most about her: Her versatility. She has essentially been nannied to where she may only be played top. Her level reliance precludes her from playing elsewhere effectively, and her now entirely nonexistent early pressure essentially consigns her team to an entirely passive 20 minute beating in the event of her Jungling. Furthermore, I seem to remember August himself saying that if ever Kayle takes smite, he will do what he has to to make sure she quits that nonsense immediately.

Late Strength, Early Weakness: How stark is the difference now?

What once was a champion that was merely weak early is now nearly entirely decorative, reliant on Kleptomancy and toplane farm to even begin to function. What once was a dominating late game is now UNSTOPPABLE, with a gimmicky blast of true damage just to give an additional middle finger to the enemy for failing to close the game in time.

Getting senselessly beaten to tatters early is not terribly fun, the lack of agency is crippling.

However, neither is the level 16 power-spike fun, it is too abrupt to feel entirely earned, and enemy counterplay against her is so miniscule at that point that the win at that point feels legitimately meaningless.

Her winrate is surprisingly high, but she is simply so much less satisfying to play.

With old , you did have a relatively weak early, but you still had pressure roughly equivalent to a ranged, slightly less oppressive Yi with a weak slow. Properly playing the map, taking advantage of available farm, and taking advantage of sufficiently overextended ganking opportunities permitted her to perform admirably in the jungle despite not being remotely meta. Getting to her monstrous late felt earned, and if the enemy managed to bait out your ult appropriately, you could still be outplayed and fail.

With this new iteration, I would have to be an incredibly malignant sadist to dare visit jungle on the four entirely innocent random strangers on my team. As a result, I have been desparately searching for another champion, any champion that could fill the void left by the loss of my winged accomplice. I haven't found it yet.

New and old Kayle bear no more than a superficial resemblance to one another, such that it is a wonder that they didn't simply release the rework as an entirely separate champion.

Farbeit from me to expect Riot to cater to such an incredibly niche use case as jungle Kayle, but it would be nice if they did not outright invalidate it. My voice may be but an insignificant spec in the wider universe of league, but still I would like to think that I am not alone in being frustrated by how her rework sits at the moment.

She is now once again a champion only seen once in every many games. A relatively rare niche champion plagued by crucial issues that prevent her from being commercially viable. I think this is more than fixable. And although I would adore a straight revert of my angelic muse, I firmly believe she can be altered into a less polarized state.

Kit Change Assessment

Kayle Passive: Level gated passives feel bad. The old one was not flashy, but it was still quite impactful, and required you to stay in the fight, commuting its entire effect on to Q in one blast seems unwise.

Kayle Q: I greatly enjoy the changes to her Q. The point and click variant was both underwhelming and un-interactive, and the new version provides much more interesting gameplay for both Kayle and her opponents.

Kayle W: Mixed feelings on this change. A champion all but required to play a solo lane benefits significantly less from a two-person heal (on which both the base numbers and the scaling were greatly nerfed). This would be a wonderful change if Kayle was actually usable as a support, but her reliance on levels makes that awful in practice.

Kayle E: Interesting, but quite limited. I much preferred managing the old, boring buff than contending with an E that only functions as a usable execute and auto reset. For much of the game, a miracle is required to cause the enemy to fall low enough to properly use this thing, and later on, the execute damage feels all but redundant as the entire enemy team has likely already withered into husks from the true damage...

Kayle R: Was cavorting about entirely immune to reprisal for three seconds whilst you dismantled their team once every 30 seconds entirely fair? Heavens no! But it was fun. The self-silence and damage reduction included on her ult make it feel quite awful for self-use, and cause Kayle to thematically fall short of where she once did. Her ultimate is still wonderful in teamfights, but again, a champion now mandated to play top lane by herself benefits far less from this sort of ult. Furthermore, the cooldown is positively punishing now. I am more than willing to lose the ability of this ult to deal damage entirely provided it could actually have a more reasonable cooldown, and perhaps it could also offer some other effect than damage? Healing/Shielding nova for surrounding team members perhaps?

Suggestions

I have read from many on the boards that it is insufficient to discuss a problem without attempting to offer a solution. I will attempt to do so here. However, I am not a game designer, and my suggestions are likely far from perfect.

Rather than continuing to cling to extremes, mandating that Kayle must remain utterly worthless early, and preposterous late I would plead that moderation be restored to her kit, and consistency restored. I would beg and plead, perhaps in vain, for her to be made a ranged character once more. I would beg that her late game be blunted such that power can reasonably be restored earlier in the game. I would ask that her level reliance be reduced such that niche positions such as Jungle or Support might be viable for those who have always adored the idea of being a bona-fide guardian angel.

Perhaps I plead into silence. But please, for the great and eternal joy of all three-ish human beings (All three-ish of us! REEEEEEEE!) that loved and were devoted to this champion previously, do not leave her where she is.

[sg-soraka]

It is possible that I am simply a bitter old league player resistant to change. As would say "Change is good!", but why not change things for the better? New Kayle has potential, it just might take a few iterations before a solution can be found to realize the perfect winged menace.

Thanks for your time, A Frustrated ex-Kayle Player

Edit: Is there any way to get proper visibility on posts like these? Kayle is a niche champion, and I'm not sure whether the lack of interest in this particular post is simply my writing being poor, the champion being too obscure, or whether there might be some other factor preventing any particular visibility for this post.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy blathering on with or without an audience, but I would adore it if I could get at least a little feedback from ~~August ~~ anyone on this rework, or if I could hear the opinions of others who loved/hated the old/new Kayle.