Katarina Rework Discussion

Vahn65·2/5/2015, 4:32:55 PM·2 votes·814 views

i think katarina needs a rework. theres just something about her that i dont like. not that shes "OP" or "broken" because i personally think she is very balanced. the thing is i just dont like how she plays for some reason. while she is fun to play theres just something that irks me about her.

with all of the reworks happening i can see it happening to katarina in the near future.

one thing i would kind of like to see is changing her to an AD champ and not AP, or possibly both (like akali). idk if this would be a good or bad idea but i think it would be an interesting change on her.

if there was to be a rework to her what would you all want to see?

keep it clean keep it friendly :)

6 Comments

Stonington2/5/2015, 5:09:21 PM2 votes

I think she's fine. Her W and R scale off both AD and AP. The new gunblade is actually a good pickup now. I'll also build hydra from time to time.

She doesn't need a rework she's perfectly fine.

Em0SceneStabr2/5/2015, 4:59:58 PM1 votes

If i'm not mistaken the majority of Katarina's abilities scale from both AP and AD. Her W scales Purely off of AD and her Ult Scales off of both. I personally build her like this item 3074 item 3089 item 3006 item 3031 and then This item 3143 or this item 3102 The build is so wonky people usually don't even know what i'm going for. I always grab Hydra because people assume i'm gonna go Ap.

AMYS GRAVE2/5/2015, 7:17:40 PM1 votes

honestly, it's her resets that bother me. riot just designed her to be a penta machine. she shunpos around entire teamfights and there's not much you can do without targeted cc, which riot has been removing more and more of.

Der Lindwurm2/5/2015, 7:50:52 PM1 votes

I love Kat, but her kit could be better. I know that fans of the old Kat didn't really like her 2013 rework and I'll bet anyone here $1 that Riot wasn't totally happy with it either, as evidenced by the fact that she still has AD scaling that only comes into play if she's ridiculously fed and bored. The sinister blade: make her more powerful with a magic hat and an hourglass! I doubt that is totally consistent with their original vision for her. So, what we have now was probably some kind of stopgap and another rework at some point is inevitable anyway.

I just hope it won't be a huge nerf dressed up as a "buff" that wouldn't solve any of the current issues, which is what they proposed a few weeks ago.

As for those current issues, if you ask me:

Her W is borderline useless early in the game. It can be good for squeezing out last hits and tacking a little tiny bit of extra damage onto an attack, but that it barely even tickles early on weakens her so much in early laning.
The mark on Q is also more of a cute gimmick than anything actually helpful in most situations early on. She would benefit more from more damage on the initial hit without the mark, even if fewer targets were hit.
E is her only single target ability. That is kind of weird if she's supposed to be an assassin. She's cool as a mass-murderer, but it makes her seem a little confused about what it means to be an assassin. Also, more emphasis on E as an attack rather than mobility move would be nice, something akin to Akali's R that doesn't stack. I also don't disagree with the idea of removing the damage and making it strictly mobility if they could do that without it being made so clunky and contingent on so many things like they were proposing. And if they did that one of her other abilities ought to be made into something single-target oriented.
She is just way too dependent on her R. I probably don't need to go into any explanation here. Riot has apparently acknowledged this as a problem but I've never seen any changes proposed that might actually do anything towards solving this problem.
If characters like Darius and Fiora take mana I really wouldn't have a problem with her needing mana too. This could potentially unlock more build options as well if she were given other mana-related benefits.

Her resets are really fundamental to who she is as a champion, though. Maybe they could make it so assists don't affect cooldowns as much as actual kills do, but giving her something else altogether would really turn her into a totally different champion than the one whose presence opens up the can of worms it always does (I think this is a good thing that makes the game more interesting and that we should want!)

Yulen Xoshxius2/5/2015, 7:56:31 PM1 votes

I liked the mobility concept that Riot intended to do with Katarina's E, as well as its damage reduction increase.

Abyssphere2/5/2015, 8:09:51 PM1 votes

She actually has one of my favourite kits. I think there's a really nice flow to her kit, with the only thematically weird thing being her primarily AP scaling. However, I really couldn't care less about that - makes no less sense than Akali having AP scaling and I don't have a problem with that either. And doesn't Thresh, the guy who flings hooks at people, scales with AP too.

I'm not sure what I'd do for her if I had to rework her, honestly. I think shifting some damage from the Bouncing Blades on-hit to the mark would probably be cool, but that would weaken her easy poke and be unnoticeable late so...

I like a lot about her really. Shunpo is one of my favourite mobility moves in the game, the small utility buffs on both that and Sinister Steel are really clever ways to help her without being too obvious/in your face, Bouncing Blades feels like perfect early game poke for her (and that multi-hit noise is so satisfying to hear) and Death Lotus is probably the single most iconic move in the game. I guess shifting some more damage from Death Lotus to her other abilities would work but it's a 2.5 second channel, it needs to be satisfying.