Where did Kat's counterplay go?

Valhalla Rising·Apr 2, 2017·28 votes·1,115 views

CC used to do more than stall her inevitable nanosecond hyper mobile burst damage, and she used to actually have to score a takedown before she could repeat her dashes.

It seems like she doesn't have to commit to anything anymore either, where as before she had to position and time her plays very strategically.

I hate to say it but she really went from high risk high reward to no risk high reward.

And her rework made her early roam potential disgustingly strong.

Way overloaded.

22 Comments

DethflashApr 3, 20179 votes

If you dont have point and click stuns its pretty damn near impossible to cc a decent kat

manbearswineApr 3, 20171 votes

Better nerf lulu.

freeloader25Apr 3, 20176 votes

she had counterplay when she actually had to kill anything in order to reset her e which she needs to get out of a fight. now its "i'll just shunpo in. if i make mistakes ill just run to one of my daggers which cant be destroyed by enemies and the enemy isnt allowed to stand close to one anyways if he doesnt want to die."

i guess thats a good idea, make her main defense tool her main offensive tool aswell. /s that allows for a lot of counterplay because if katarina decides the fight isnt going well she will go for a dagger and you sadly cant follow because she easily can turn the fight around if you do. im talking about her absurd e reset on her passive that negates any risk and any made mistake kata should have to respect when jumping onto an enemy.

its comparable to the idea of ori getting a shitton of tanky stats to the point where you cant kill her faster than she can kill you while being close to her ball. she would stand close to it all the time and since you cant force her to leave the ball area you'd NEVER be in a situation where you can win a 1v1 while she will just always run up to you and zone you away without any downsides.

tldr: having a ZONING tool be used as the main defensive tool for the user when being close to it is an incredible bad idea because said user will be completely overwhelming in the influence area of the zoning tool and most likely underwhelming while not (again: compare this with ori. she has to choose if she uses the ball to shield OR to use it as zoning tool. kata can use her daggers in both ways at the same time)

ZT XperimentorApr 3, 20171 votes

Sounds like skarner is a better comparison than orianna.

freeloader25Apr 3, 20171 votes

its true that there may be other champions that have comparable potential with some changes. ori was just the first coming to my mind :) i feel its difficult to really find a comparable ability that offers as much zoning, offensive use and defensive use all at the same time and independent from each other without being used multiple times like katarinas passive

there is only one champ coming to my mind that has one single ability that offers all of that aswell: ekko (ult). but ekkos ult shadow can be a disadvantage to use because he cant exactly chose where he ends up and at least its an ultimate skill. for kata its never a bad idea to grab her daggers.

ZT XperimentorApr 4, 20171 votes

Fair enough, it hadn't crossed my mind how reliant on zoning oriana is either XD

Hmm, now that you mention it I'm drawing a blank who else has similar zoning potential; I'd want to say auralionsol but he's quite risky to play against anyone with low cooldown mobility, perhaps illaoi since she can sustain off of her hits while being a bully.

SmitemuffinApr 3, 20175 votes

Assassins aren't supposed to have counterplay. They're supposed to be mages with higher burst, lower cooldowns, better wave clear and tons of mobility. Didn't you get the memo?

AmazoXApr 3, 20171 votes

Kappa.

PureSilvrrApr 3, 20173 votes

Half her damage is in her passive and the other half is in her ult, dodge those and your golden. If she uses w to get out of a fight she loses half her passive damage.

Asayake 5150glowApr 3, 20173 votes

{quoted}

Half her damage is in her passive and the other half is in her ult, dodge those and your golden. If she uses w to get out of a fight she loses half her passive damage.

No, 3/4 of her damage is in her passive and 3/4 are in her ult, the other 1/4 are in her 3 E's and Gunblade shot.

Her damage is too high in general - a Kata rarely has to hit both daggers and a decent duration of ult to kill you.

RavenMagusApr 3, 20173 votes

Her damage comes out slower now so she's super hard countered by exhaust in teamfights. A team with 3 exhausts will just demolish her purely with summoner spells, and the moment you pick Kat the enemy team pretty much instantly locks in 3 exhausts.

She is really ridiculous early game now though. She's like an AP version of Riven, and she has similar power spikes and all in potential in the first few levels.

RewtApr 3, 20172 votes

I would like to see more damage shifted onto the ult. While it was annoying to die in less than a second to her ult at least if you saw in coming you could prep the CC for when she came in. It gave the ability counterplay. The new Kat really is too strong in Gold and below. (which is around 95% of the playerbase according to riot.)

She really isnt that good at high elo. she gets countered pretty easy in diamond, but in gold and below she is a monster. she is pretty unstoppable and it really makes her a pick ban in many situations. She doesnt really have counterplay in low elo and it is pretty toxic for the players down there. Something needs to be done about her kit, sadly its going to hurt the high elo kata mains, but its just getting ridiculous down in the lower ranks

doodlebob666Apr 3, 20178 votes

in diamond up she is even more ridiculous with a 53.6% winrate while having a +50 ban rate she just needs a flat amount of power removed

Asayake 5150glowApr 3, 20174 votes

{quoted}

I would like to see more damage shifted onto the ult. While it was annoying to die in less than a second to her ult at least if you saw in coming you could prep the CC for when she came in. It gave the ability counterplay. The new Kat really is too strong in Gold and below. (which is around 95% of the playerbase according to riot.)

She really isnt that good at high elo. she gets countered pretty easy in diamond, but in gold and below she is a monster. she is pretty unstoppable and it really makes her a pick ban in many situations. She doesnt really have counterplay in low elo and it is pretty toxic for the players down there. Something needs to be done about her kit, sadly its going to hurt the high elo kata mains, but its just getting ridiculous down in the lower ranks

Terrible idea, she can already kill you with Q+E+E+gunblade+R+ignite.

She needs less damage in general. Her daggers will kill you if they hit, and her ult is literally just a fallback most of the time. Which also works really well, just exposes her.

RewtApr 3, 20171 votes

"shifted" this means remove damage from the daggers and put it on the ult. Also wanna know why Katarina is fucking insane?

55/70/85/100% AP scaling. (1/6/11/16) and a 100% AD scaling at all times. + a base damage. on her daggers

Asayake 5150glowApr 3, 20171 votes

{quoted}

"shifted" this means remove damage from the daggers and put it on the ult. Also wanna know why Katarina is fucking insane?

55/70/85/100% AP scaling. (1/6/11/16) and a 100% AD scaling at all times. + a base damage. on her daggers

Mhm

Now show me her ult scaling, won't you?

Acheron16Apr 3, 20172 votes

{quoted}

I would like to see more damage shifted onto the ult. While it was annoying to die in less than a second to her ult at least if you saw in coming you could prep the CC for when she came in. It gave the ability counterplay. The new Kat really is too strong in Gold and below. (which is around 95% of the playerbase according to riot.)

She really isnt that good at high elo. she gets countered pretty easy in diamond, but in gold and below she is a monster. she is pretty unstoppable and it really makes her a pick ban in many situations. She doesnt really have counterplay in low elo and it is pretty toxic for the players down there. Something needs to be done about her kit, sadly its going to hurt the high elo kata mains, but its just getting ridiculous down in the lower ranks

So you're telling me that you'd rather have more power in her ult, (making her more feast-famine) that requires CC to stop (meaning that CC'less champs are screwed) over a simple positioning counterplay (since every champion is able to move and reposition itself)?

Thank god Riot doesnt always listen to random board posters...

RewtApr 3, 20172 votes

she is an assassin. she should be feast or famine. she should have good base damages but bad scalings to make her have to snowball into the midgame and less relevant late game. Right now she has the best of both worlds and it is making any player who gets further than the basics on katarina able to get very high winrates due to her having no real weak point in the game.

Katarina isnt an ungodly monster that is unbeatable early but she does have some pretty good in lane harass and she is pretty safe while doing it. Once she gets Hextec revolver (not gunblade) she gets a HUGE powerspike (This is like maybe 8 min in so its still early game) With this item alone she actually becomes very powerful in the lane phase setting. and she only gets more powerful from there. Midgame is where assassins shine. All of them. Including Kat. Late game she is still amazing due to her damage being so hyper mobile AND AOE. After she has done the dagger combo in a teamfight which will have killed 2 squishies, she pops ult to finish the job.

Lets compare this to zed. Zed is semi mobile due to all his mobility is stuck on one of his main combo pieces that DOES NOT RESET. He is pretty good in lane and during the midgame he is a monster. He is able to oneshot most champions as long as he didnt fall behind. Late game though he loses some of his presence and because his ult makes him a sitting duck for CC he becomes possible to deal with.

Katarina doesnt have this kind of counterplay. The daggers are not nearly as easy to dodge as everyone is making it seem, and the thing is dodging them doesnt even reward you. it just means you didnt get one shot because she still has enough follow up damage to kill you since instead of fighting her you have just been running away. She has been attacking you this whole time and just waiting for cooldowns. you have to 100-0 her in about 2 seconds after dodging the initial dagger combo (and you havent hurt her during this time cause you have been running to dodge the daggers) or you have to repeat the fucking process. If her main abilities had significantly longer cooldowns to offset the power of the daggers that would be 1 thing. But they are standard length cooldowns.

Kat doesnt have windows. Zed for instance has a long W cooldown that you can play into. Kat has reletively low cooldowns for an assassin. If they upped all the cooldowns on her that would be one thing. give a larger window to fight her. but as it currently stands the window is so incredibly short that only super meta mages like ahri can actually do anything about her.

GULAG 4 UApr 3, 20172 votes

Dodging her daggers. Except the radius is immense as fuck.

The DeckownerApr 3, 20171 votes

Every time Rito tries to make a "high skillcap" champion they always fuck up and made them super overloaded. Azir Leblanc ryze Kat Kalista etc all are products of this horrible design philosophy. These champion will eventually end up in the gutted ville once they dominate and ruin a season or two.