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Thoughts on Kayn and his forms.

XvWrathfulvX·8/1/2017, 5:12:59 PM·1 votes·976 views

Since Kayns release he's seen some ups and downs without even having to be nerfed too much. While he's certainly a very unique champ concept I personally feel that his passives both in Darkin form and Shadow Assassin form are simply too strong currently. For those who don't know I'll give a brief overview. Kayn's Darkin passive allows him to heal for a percentage of the damage done by his abilities and adds a massive lifesteal bonus to his ult. Whereas Shadow Assassin Kayn's passive makes it so that for the first few seconds in combat with enemy champs he deals a bonus percentage of his damage as magic damage alongside his current AD. While unique these two passives create some very hard to deal with problems. You get Darkin Kayn down to a sliver of health but he jumps inside one of your team mates and after a few moments jumps back out and escapes with half his health back. Meanwhile Shadow Assassin Kayn builds Duskblade and suddenly he's nearly one shotting your tanks because of his passive mixed with Duskblades. In summary this character is simply too much to deal with as he currently is. A semi skilled Kayn player can go into Shadow Assassin form and hyper carry an entire team. I had it happen twice in a row the other night were a Shadow Assassin Kayn player had 20+ kills while the rest of his team was being destroyed and carryed them to victory. I'm not asking for a major nerf to him. Instead what I want to see is the ratios on his passives toned down a bit to make him a little easier to counter. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter please feel free to discuss as I welcome CIVIL conversation.

5 Comments

Umbra Z8/1/2017, 5:25:45 PM1 votes

His pre transformation state is so easy to abuse I feel he's in a decent spot..

Sujiren8/1/2017, 5:38:06 PM1 votes

Exacly post level 4 I feel like he is the weakest champion in the game till he transforms.

five oh tree 8/1/2017, 7:39:10 PM1 votes

Kayn main here, his forms are strong because of how weak he is before he gets them. You just have to abuse him and get ahead of him before he gets to his form, simple counterplay. It's like complaining vayne's really strong at 3+ items... of course she is, she's a late game hypercarry. Rhaast is the closest thing league has to a hypercarry fighter (not talking about the skirmisher subclass, as they're technically not fighters), and his powercurve shows that.

SA is just an assassin who relies on dealing damage to use his escape/burst. He has poor engage for an assassin, so having even a decent support dedicated to peeling your back line will thwart him. SA is still not as good as zed in terms of assassination potential.

But anyway, of course his forms are good- it takes him 15 minutes of being useless to earn them, so his mid-late game should be just as strong as it is.

Jesuszilla8/1/2017, 8:56:22 PM1 votes

Well, what you see as "issues" I see as the function of the champion. He's supposed to be tankier and more difficult to kill with the ability to sustain in fights when he is in his Darkin form and his Shadow Assassin form is meant to be a melee hyper-carry style of gameplay with high damage and the ability to quickly kill enemies.

If you nerf either of these aspects the champion will do literally nothing. Darkin form gives up the heavy burst damage and mixed damage as well as mobility and range that Shadow has in order to be tankier and survive longer as well as gaining a small cc move. Shadow Assassin gives up that sustain and crowd control to be more mobile, longer range, and higher damage. These are traddeoffs and they work rather well. There is absolutely NOTHING wrong with the two extremes of the champion, and I think you are looking at the wrong points here.

The biggest issue with Kayn isn't even his gameplay, it's his consistency and the lack of it with his abilities. Mainly his starting passive is utterly trash in nearly every aspect. Not only does it do nothing to impact the actual game for him, the visuals are poor and don't offer any clarity to the player playing Kayn, the wording of the passive is misleading to the way the orbs actually work, and the massive difference in viability between the two forms leads to VERY weak gameplay with a feast or famine style that really sucks.

Currently Kayn's Passive sounds like it does this:

Gain orbs from dealing damage to enemies, red for melee blue for ranged. After collecting so many total orbs, gain a transformation option based on which orbs you collected the most of.

What Kayn's passive ACTUALLY does:

Gain orbs from dealing damage, or much MORE orbs from a kill (not assist from what I can tell). Red orbs from melee, blue orbs from ranged. When you collect a set amount of ONE single color of orbs, gain that transformation.

Currently the negative aspect of the passive is this:

If you have collected 80% of the red orbs needed for the transformation and you gain blue orbs, you will gain NO PROGRESS toward completing the quest for your passive. This makes zero sense, puts an unnecessary amount of pressure on camping a single type of champion until you transform (since one whole color of orbs doesn't matter), and doesn't offer Kayn dynamic gameplay like the passive should.

i'd love to see Kayn's passive begin as a half and half yin-yang styled globe. One half showing red and one showing blue. As you collect orbs the globe slowly fill in with that color, you can mouse over the orb to see percentage of completion toward the form, and when one of the two orbs hits the 50% marker (the marker at which point that form becomes guaranteed) the whole globe turns that color and the form option unlocks once you finish filling it.