Kalista is not doing so well right now and has a low winrate for several patches

Dear Riot,

Kalista is not doing so well right now and has a low winrate for several patches. I don’t play Kalista though, but I have supported my friend who was a Kalista main since season 5, so I am aware of her strengths and weaknesses.

Kalista is meant to a mobile hunter who chases down betrayers like in her cinematic. She doesn’t quite capture that idea, which is where I think her kit could use some improvement because she feels like an engager, not a chaser/hunter. Her biggest problems in the current Kalista kit heavily revolves on her rend and ult, and her kit having to be complementary with a support, in a way to make her kit complete, which neglects her ability to be independent. Kalista’s rend ability deals a lot of flat physical damage per spear. This is extremely strong both early and late game as this ability gets better with more attack speed. It ends up being a reliable source of damage when ahead and securing objectives. When behind it feels quite weak since it’s flat damage. This is one of the things that gets her ahead and does well when she is ahead. Otherwise if not it falls flat.

Her ult is also too strong as a reliable engage and a disengage. This ability is very hard to dodge since its hitbox is large. Not to mention that it is a knock up (which has quite a long duration from 1.5/1.75/2 s) which is a strong cc since it cannot be cleansed or qss. When used, it usually almost sets up guaranteed kills. Hence it is why she was so highly contested until her ult cd got nerfed. It is also such a reliable escape tool for the support too if they are caught out. However it is a utility spell since it does no damage (eg Taliyah wall, Ryze ult) meaning that her other abilities are stronger. But her q doesn’t do a lot of damage and her ghost don’t do their jobs very well which is why her rend remains so strong.

When I mean her kit is only complete when she is with her support, it means that she isn’t enhanced by the support like other adcs. Eg Kaisa’s passive is added when someone lands cc. What this means is that she is in a solo situation, she is much weaker because essential half of her kit/strength is missing when your support is not there. Eg you cannot ult, you lose ad stats, you cannot proc your w passive by yourself etc. Basically she gets gated by her support in a weird way. This is problematic if your support is absent from the game whether it is by afking, disconnecting or choosing not to co-operate. While you’ll get punished for doing so, even if you can rebind with someone else who may not be present in lane, if you’re a Kalista, you shouldn’t have to worry about depending on this variable. This is why I don’t think her kit should be support focus orientated.

But that said, her kit isn’t bad, her power just need to be shifted in other areas so that her strongest aspects aren’t the things that make her playable. Here are some things that could be changed:

• **Split the damage of her rend with flat damage and health percentage. **

The combination of both flat and percentage health as damage makes it so that her rend isn’t going to crush someone early while giving some reliable scaling throughout all stages of the game when ahead or behind. Would be also nice if it had an execute indicator if enemies are low enough.

• **Allow anyone to be called by her ult, slowing at location instead of knocking up target, giving ally a shield/damage reduction. **

She uses fate’s call as a way to deliver her sentence by calling upon an ally. The current ult is only limited to the binded ally which can be problematic when they are not present in the game. While you can rebind, it is inconvenient. When in combat with enemy champions she can chose to select who she wants to throw or picks whoever is closest to her. Then the support will chose where to land just like the old one.

The change on her ult to be less restrictive and slowing instead of knocking up targets will still keep this ability as an engage, but less punishing and less of an escape tool. It will still make unconventional supports still viable since it’s still a good gap closer and won't kill them because of the shield/damage reduction. But it will allow other ways of setting up engages. Eg with your jg, top laner, mid laner. Not just the support.

• On her w, allow her to trigger her passive, but requires 4 aa, working the same way as the old one. Any forms of cc will apply 1 or 2 stacks similar to Kaisa’s passive. Additionally, instead of making her ghosts just walk up and down lanes, make it search for nearby souls. These ghosts are attracted to living souls and will flow very fast towards it granting vision along the way. If it spots them, the ghosts go into their bodies, slowing, dealing dps and giving true sight of them.

This could be used to search and start a fight or chase enemies who escape from Kalista, rather than just providing vision which isn’t very interactive at all.

• Allow her q to crit or deal increased damage based on a targets missing health. For the crit version, the cit chance is increased, depending on how low the target is. If they fall below a certain threshold, it will always crit.

The idea of this is to make it an execute, not just for poke and add stacks to rend. It is also meant to reflect how she executes her targets like in her cinematic by delivering the final blow.

• Her rend should not be the primary source of damage and revert the ad ratio on her aa.

Back then her e was so strong, so they nerfed her aa damage. This ended up making her a rend stacking champion rather than an auto attack carry. By retuning the damage of her rend to her aa, she will become less rend focused and more aa based. About her aa range, I’m not sure on that one.

Kalista is too coordinated and reflects too much competitive play because of how her kit is made. This aimed at making her more independent without changing all of her abilities which is a good thing so they can keep the current animations. I hope this helps and worth considering when evaluating Kalista’s state as it is not good right now. Currently sitting around 44%. One of the bottom three. This is disregarding the current adc meta and changes as it’s too early to say. It is not to make her designed around the meta, be meta, but to be playable in any meta.

Sorry if it sounds confusing and a bit over the place. I just wanna help by offering an opinion. :)