Can we discuss Katarina's Shunpo combo and how ridiculous it is?

Yenn·Sep 2, 2017·2 votes·594 views

Shunpo to enemy -> Preparation -> Gunblade -> Bouncing Blade -> Sidestep any skill shots with Preparation MS -> Pick up Preparation dagger -> Shunpo to enemy -> Pick up dagger -> Shunpo to enemy

This entire combo takes about 2.5 seconds, with half of it waiting for the dagger to drop and no set up, and she's highly mobile throughout. With just level 9 and only Gunblade, this does around 1500 damage without her landing a single dagger pickup or ulting. This isn't including any other items, like a Dark Seal with a couple of stacks, and will kill the vast majority of AP carries or leave them with so little health that they have to recall, and she doesn't need any major cooldowns.

This is ridiculous and should not be possible. Landing her dagger pick ups should be a requirement.

1 Comments

0 HogapuSep 2, 20171 votes

Yee I know my PoV is biased and stuff. I'll still give it to you.

Katarina is not in a good state right now. She has a decent laning phase when it is about 1v1, but the thing is that she does not have that much tools to escape a gank. The shunpo needs a target to be used, which can't be guaranteed everytime. The MS from Preparation is not enough to survive ganks most of the time, and once Kat is behind, she really suffers from it (as when she is ahead, she's hard to calm down in laning phase) + being a melee champion that definitely does not help her laning phase.

My point is that, before reaching the power spike you are talking about, which is lvl 9 item 3146 where Kat's 1v1 potential is really good, you need to go through that hard laning phase. Furthermore around that time, teams are likely to be grouped, and it is barely never a simple 1v1, where Katarina can do something. I am not saying that she is bad in teamfights though ; but she is really easy to counter, especially with the amount of shields/heals in the game that are really hard to have a clear idea on how much it will be.

So yeah to conclude this powerspike of Katarina is REALLY huge, that's a point. But that is barely the only really good thing she has in the current meta, against decent ennemies (laners and/or teamfighters).

Katarina Bot