Riot pls: Can we finally get an answer about Kat?

VaVahik·Mar 26, 2018·3 votes·2,055 views

Can you share few words on the state of Katarina? First Rengar and Leblanc get reverts that shorten their kill times, now you release Irelia that feels like she will become my new main instead of Kat and this makes my heart split in half. I know she is not considered an assassin anymore, but more akin to Fiddlesticks or Kennen (AoE mage that traded all utility/cc for mobility) , but she doesn't snowball games anymore AND at the same time, she is not very consistent in late game.

I will just post something I discussed with BelugaWhale during Thunderdome:

Her win rate dropped to about just 50% right now (And under 50% for any ELO range excluding dia+), while her play rate dropped by at least 2.5 times. Moreover, she doesn't have the early game dominance she once had (Her win rates are only positive between 20 and 28 minutes of game length , suggesting that she is both mediocre in lane and falling off easily.

Rengar and LeBlanc got their reverts and we are jelly. Not that we want old kat back (I don't), but we would love some QoL smoother gameplay. Of course, that pair had it most bad after assassin rework. However, once Kat got nerfed and the extra unneeded damage was stripped off her, her design problems became more apparent.

We don't think damage is the problem, kat had just superfluous damage ever since preseason 8 gave her domination tree that synergizes perfectly and is pretty flexible within, and we can run any of the 4 secondary trees depending on tastes. We knew she had to be nerfed damage-wise , and we love the ability to adapt that new runes give. It's just reliability/smoothness issues that make Kat feels less enjoyable, regardless of her performance (which we ignored so far , because well, she was OP)

Our main problem is dagger falling speed. Since Kat's E Shunpo CD got up, she is more about timing it right in the early game and that's fine, but come lategame, every time you jump on a Tristana/Vayne/Taliyah/Janna etc, you get pushed back and killed before you can even pick the W dagger unless you manage to miraculously predict their skills and Q>E>flash in a direction that makes you fly into your Q dagger.

The change BelugaWhale suggested was to reduce her dagger drop times at levels 6,11 and 16 quite significantly, in exchange demanding to hit two daggers to perform an ult-less kill. She is a Draven of mid lane, and his axes fall distances scale with his MS to account for that. Why can't ours get a similar QoL change?

Suggestion: drop the scaling down to 0.55 / 0.60 / 0.65 / 0.7 AP and 0.85 AD, and lower the drop time from flat 1.25 seconds to 1.25 / 1.10 / 0.95 / 0.8 seconds.

Since majority of supports/adc defensive options work instantly, this shouldn't be a problem and will keep Katarina's fluid feel from her midgame to lategame, where she still keeps dancing to get multiple daggers off , rather than fishing for unaware enemies or rely on her team's CC to even be able to damage anyone. This feels bad for both Kat players and those unlucky souls that step on a dagger once she gets a few items.

Please Make Katarina Great Again! [katarina-love]

25 Comments

SwiftKitten88Mar 26, 20182 votes

i would LOVE for Katarina to be reverted.

back then she had ONE shunpo, she screwed it up she died...

now, you are never going to hit her with any form of skillshot...

Dead flag bluesMar 26, 20181 votes

{quoted}

i would LOVE for to be reverted.

back then she had ONE shunpo, she screwed it up she died...

now, you are never going to hit her with any form of skillshot...

or if she got like 3 kills early game she became and unkillable point-and-click assassin who can just 1v5.

CatastropMar 27, 20181 votes

{quoted}

i would LOVE for to be reverted.

back then she had ONE shunpo, she screwed it up she died...

Someone who actually understands my pain. I miss my relatively low skill floor but still risky to play champion as opposed to this piece of crap that they gave us.

VekknaMar 28, 20182 votes

There are a lot of issues with Kat, imo.

She's basically balanced around Gunblade active, which is bullshit
Her W is counterintuitive; you have a 1.25 sec MS buff and have to stay in a tiny area for 1.25 second to pick up the dagger.
She has too many level-based scaling thresholds on her passive (AP, E cooldown) that are just artificial exp gates to slow her gold snowball.
W delay should scale down with W rank or CDR

I also wish that her ult tossed a dagger on the ground when dealing damage to fewer than 3 targets. So 1 target tossed out two daggers, 2 targets tosses out one dagger, and 3 targets tosses out 0 daggers. That's obviously not an "issue," but it would certainly help her grabage dueling with AD melees.

PoskeMar 26, 20181 votes

Rengar and Le blanc players are jelly?

Rengar got reverted BECAUSE OF FKING SWIM MEME... he became a worse champion. every rengar main I talked to didnt want the change

Le blanc revert makes me unhappy and I am the most loyal Le blanc player worldwide

The only thing which should change abuot katarina is input shit reggarding her E which causes bugs / doesnt work when queed with other commands

Katarina is one of the most successful reworks up to date

VaVahikMar 26, 20181 votes

Lol. Doesn't change the fact she is a time bomb that makes you alt f4 after 30 minutes.

PoskeMar 26, 20182 votes

{quoted}

Lol. Doesn't change the fact she is a time bomb that makes you alt f4 after 30 minutes.

Katarina is viable in chall and you are plat 3.. you can improve

VaVahikMar 26, 20181 votes

She is unviable as long as you don't put enough effort in, and as I have other life matters more important than honing my blade skills I just won't. I don't enjoy her as she is now, that after 28 minutes I feel like quitting, while before that I have to full tryhard to finish the game ASAP. Probably isn't enjoyable for enemies either that they have to get tortured for 30 minutes straight until I fall off.

And my opening post is not only my point of view, but majority of Kat mains' and the Rioter who invented her rework.

Infinite SaughtMar 27, 20181 votes

What you probably fail to understand is that her playstyle changes drastically the higher up the ELO ladder you go. You don't play her as a teamfighter, rather you play her as a roamer that ends the game before anyone can stomp you after mid game. In lower ELOs you can get away with it because people don't respect the daggers as much.

PoskeMar 27, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Infinite Naught,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LsjBEvPh,comment-id=0001000000000001,timestamp=2018-03-27T02:50:23.837+0000)

What you probably fail to understand is that her playstyle changes drastically the higher up the ELO ladder you go. You don't play her as a teamfighter, rather you play her as a roamer that ends the game before anyone can stomp you after mid game. In lower ELOs you can get away with it because people don't respect the daggers as much.

I dont fail to understand that.

I do realise the higher you climb the more impossible it becomes to win straight up 1vs1.

VaVahikMar 27, 20181 votes

And what does it mean for an asasssin with slowest kill times 1v1, as well as currently one of the biggest "counterplay delays" they introduced into the class, then shyly moved out of for the worst offenders?

PoskeMar 27, 20181 votes

{quoted}

And what does it mean for an asasssin with slowest kill times 1v1, as well as currently one of the biggest "counterplay delays" they introduced into the class, then shyly moved out of for the worst offenders?

Has it occured to you that your personal assassination speed is slow? That you are slow katarina?

I delete people inside a jump

VaVahikMar 27, 20181 votes

Nope, any other assassin performed at semi decent level will do this shiet faster. And, if by assassination you mean killing the first target, yeah, it is doable instantly if you don't need those passive daggers. Which is pointless, while this is the main reason Kat players even get gunblade (to delete people without relying on unreliable damage sources). Waiting 1.25 seconds for a dagger is asking for enemy to be retarded if they can move away 500 units casually in those 1.25 seconds.

It's like, Riot gives you a kewl rollercoaster and then you just decide to take the elevator instead, because the end result is the same - you are at the finish. Your personal assassination is faster just because you try to assassinate without using daggers, and if you do it the intended way, it becomes one of the slowest kill speeds.

As I said, come lategame, Kat gets deleted before her daggers fall to the ground, and if she doesn't, enemy still can walk out of them unless your team CC's them or they are straight retarded. Essentially a worse version of Fizz, because his main damage is fit onto his shark and once you land it, it stays.

PoskeMar 27, 20181 votes

Dude dont get me wrong I was against every nerf which hurt her laning phase 1vs1 potentional

I hate it when Riot creates snowball champs and then nerfs their snowball tools resulting in Push farm lanes

Katarina rework actually made her viable in high elo so I am up against any KAT Revert

Katarina shouldnt kill people instantly given that she is resset assassin,

Infinite SaughtMar 28, 20181 votes

To be fair, she's not considered an Assassin by Riot anymore, so... yeah.

PoskeMar 28, 20181 votes

[{quoted}](name=Infinite Naught,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=LsjBEvPh,comment-id=0001000000000001000000000000000000000000,timestamp=2018-03-28T15:06:51.864+0000)

To be fair, she's not considered an Assassin by Riot anymore, so... yeah.

Yes she is

Infinite SaughtMar 28, 20181 votes

Nope! Greater Beluga Whale says that Katarina isn't considered an Assassin kit wise (by themself and the design team) and more like Lissandra, Fiddlesticks, and Kennen.

CatastropMar 27, 20181 votes

{quoted}

Katarina is one of the most successful reworks up to date

Admittedly true despite my absolute hatred for it.

dank jeffMar 27, 20181 votes

Please Make Katarina Great Again!

im sorry but you sound like trump*[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]*

VaVahikMar 27, 20181 votes

That's intentional, cuz Katarina needs RADICAL help.

Not power-wise, just feel-wise.

KailyouMar 27, 20181 votes

well i loved the old kata. hating new one. i just want the old kata back ...

Der LindwurmMar 27, 20181 votes

I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Katarina gets totally reworked AGAIN (at which point I think they should just give her mana if she's so impossible to balance without it).

Can't help having my hopes up for what that might be like, though I ought to know better by now, as the trend is clearly toward more minigames and more contingencies. But, maybe it'll be something that'll make her less clunky and more of an assassin again.

EminenceVoidMar 28, 20181 votes

how about make it that katarina can catch her W dagger "in the air". like when you E>W on an enemy champ, you have a kinda wait for it to fall which is...weird, let her catch it earlier if shes right under the radius of her dagger at all. That would fix alot of the delay kat players face (which i dont think is a huge issue imo). im just pissed about her early game nerf. She doesnt feel like an assassin anymore. Every other assassin can all in lvl 2 and get a kill and lvl 3 is a definite kill if you set up everything right, but for kat? she doesnt give that threat anymore. In fact she all about poking down so much. The thing with kat was the risk of jumping onto your enemy for a poke cause of ganks or how they counter it. Now you dont even get good damage off and usually end up getting out traded hard. I feel the damage reduction was way to big. Shes lost her assassin fear now.

Avocado S10Mar 31, 20181 votes

Agreed , But like we dont want the old kat back because the low skill floor , like we want just to scale the speed of her E , the rework was so good . Like kat became more difficult to play and that's what i like because when u can play kat u are unstoppable (you can only take the lead at early-mid game , at late game kat falls because of the w speed is low) Riot PLEASE MAKE ME HAPPY TO PLAY KAT AGAIN ...

Vampire DiariesApr 8, 20181 votes

Yes pls old kat is all what kat should be speed and reaction time. She was so good . Old kat had her weaknesses too if you fk up your shunpo your dead it was pretty much as skill shot new kat is the biggest fk you for immobile champs xd and she is way too easy predictavle and lets not talk about how clunky she is with the dagger fall speed and that cast time... Bring her back to when she was fun and actually being katarina her self