Whilst undeniably awesomely designed champions, they're both dominating competitive and they sorta crowd out some solo queue picks even post nerfs. (Well, mostly Rek'Sai, Kalista hasn't gotten much substantial). So yeah, wondering if there's any upcoming plans to hit their strengths or weaknesses.
RiotMeddler19 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Lynbro Senpai3 votesThanks for letting us know!
Kingsgrave8 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Have you thought about lowering Kalista's range?
PotatoPrincesss2 votesPlease no...
Lowering her range will suck. A lot.
I'd prefer a flat stat change. At least if you lower the range, you'll have to increase the speed and responsiveness of the jump to keep her from feeling clunky and getting caught in AOE cc.
Xrusa15 votesHOW ABOUT WE PUT A STACK LIMIT FOR MONSTERS ON HER E HMMMMMMM
Quietus Star2 votesRend can only stack up to 254 times... There is a stack limit
DisasterSola1 votes[{quoted}](name=Quietus Star,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WA4q6QRP,comment-id=000100020000,timestamp=2015-06-26T07:14:23.862+0000)
Rend can only stack up to 254 times... There is a stack limit
People, unfortunately, want to gut kalista for no reason. She was relatively balanced before, she only needed reduced boot scaling on her passive. But now that her passive has been nerfed, people are still "GUT THE SLUT. GUT HERRR!" because ADC hate bias. Kalista is already essentially a top laner; she doesnt work well against traditional bot laners anymore and you only ever see her in a team fight (And OC, KR, and CH dont even USE her anymore.)
Saintshing9 votesAnd OC, KR, and CH dont even USE her anymore
Wtf. Kalista has 100% pick/ban rate in LPL and LCK right now... http://lol.esportspedia.com/wiki/SBENU_Champions_Summer_2015/Statistics http://lol.esportspedia.com/wiki/2015_LPL/Summer/Regular_Season/Statistics
BiggestNoob3ver3 votesHoly. She is the most banned champion for those regions. lol
So I guess in that sense she isn't used.
lB2kGRlc8y1 votesYea, nobody ever plays melee champions so there's no way infinite back dashing whilst applying an infinitely stacking nuke to them could be considered OP.
DisasterSola1 votesYea, nobody ever plays melee champions so there's no way infinite back dashing whilst applying an infinitely stacking nuke to them could be considered OP.
Yeaaaaah... Youre complaining about her passive. And singed syndrome; there are some champions you just dont chase. Kalista is one of them.
And in pro play, no one ever DOES pick melee champion and expects to get kills. they play burst champions or ADCs.
lB2kGRlc8y2 votesThe thing is... ADCs have to be chased down and killed, otherwise they mop up the field, the fact that you're comparing her to singed means you clearly don't get the point. If singed was able to penta kill a team that wasn't actively running through his poison cloud, he'd be broken as shit. The fact that you think melees shouldn't be viable and that an ADC with singedrome is nontoxic makes you really hard to take seriously.
DisasterSola1 votesThe thing is... ADCs have to be chased down and killed, otherwise they mop up the field, the fact that you're comparing her to singed means you clearly don't get the point. If singed was able to penta kill a team that wasn't actively running through his poison cloud, he'd be broken as shit. The fact that you think melees shouldn't be viable and that an ADC with singedrome is nontoxic makes you really hard to take seriously.
"Herpa derpa ima just gonna chase this thing who loves to be chased because thats whatcha do derpa herpa"
<_<'' I said that, like singed, she isnt a champion you chase down like every other ADC. Its called a metaphore.
lB2kGRlc8y1 votesYou're clearly too stupid to get the point, so I won't go through any more elaboration for your sake.
Sadistic Panda1 voteswell you see I beleave you are wrong because in singed case all he is supposed to do is run around being annoying as hell; in kalista's case you can counter her easily with a moakai or anyone with a root/stun or just burst he with someone like talon. the only way she can get Penta's is if people ignore and don't chase, but this will happen with any adc Jinx, Trist, Varus, Graves any of them can get Penta's. Also singed had really good counters too that just make him so unviable in any fight. From what I've gathered about what you said was that you are saying she shouldn't be able to get penta's kills by dancing in a fight well she can't cause no one is stupid enuf to leave an adc for the last person to kill; this is like saying teemo is the best champion becuse he can stand still and 1 v 1 a 20/0 Master Yi because of his blind. All you have to do is treat her just like any other adc, use hard cc on her and/or burst he before the adc can pick up the penta
M Dragon141 votesNoooooo! Logic? Wtf you thinking? Why do something smart and easy when we can just remove all the fun parts of the champ and give them no ability to be viable. How dare you. /sarcasm
Slamurai Jack5 votesHOW ABOUT WE PUT A STACK LIMIT FOR MONSTERS ON HER E HMMMMMMM
People actually think that this is the problem and not her very strong early game, her 2 second knockup late game, or her 1400 range cock blocking ult that makes catching the enemy support impossible. Enough whining about her E already.
Saintshing32 votesIMO there is no reason for kalista's ult to be a 2s knock up. It is already one of the best escape tool for your support in the game and removes the weakness of many hard initiation support with no gap closer/escape(this is extremely powerful as those supports are balanced around having to reply on flash). The ult should be used only for escape and a gap closer rather than a long duration aoe cc itself(knock up is also the strongest form of cc in game). Another problem of kalista is that her rend damage isnt capped against monsters. Afaik every execution move against monsters have a damage cap(I guess you can argue it is fair because she has to build up stacks). Also, 20% max hp every 6 second seems pretty high compared to say zed or j4's passives.
For reksai, I think her knock up radius is fine. She has to get into melee range to use it and it is her only cc, with a reasonably long cd that cant be reduced by cdr(tho its hitbox does seem to be a bit bigger than the visual effect). I heard more people complain about her tremor sense. It is a really big counter to champions like rengar, evelynn, shaco and also very useful for checking baron/ambush. Maybe you can nerf its range a little bit.
Edit: I forgot to talk about the mana cost of kalista's rend. Her e has a mechanic similar to twitch's e. Their cd's and base damages are similar but Kalista's has a higher ratio(it also scales off total ad not bonus ad), has a slow, the damage is uncapped, and can be reset, but rend's mana cost is only 40 while contaminate has a mana cost of 90 at max rank. Kalista can basically spams it. Sometimes you can even see people just use her e to last hit one minion. If you want to take away some of her power, maybe we can increase her e mana cost by a little bit.
Dragon Snack4 votesI heard more people complain about her tremor sense. It is a really big counter to champions like rengar, evelynn, shaco and also very useful for checking baron/ambush. Maybe you can nerf its range a little bit.
Maybe that's because it's supposed to be a counter to those stealth champs? Ever thought of that? No need to be salty over a champion if it counters your stealth champs so much.
Acnológia8 votesFirst of all, you are the salty one here pal. He said "I heard more people complain about her tremor sense"
He's not beeing salty in any way, so calm down pal. Sounds more like Rek'sai is your beloved champion going hard against anybody who dares to criticise her.
Learn to accept criticism.
B2T: I personally think Rek'sai's knockup is just as good as it is. The radius is completely ok. Maybe you can incrase the time on knocking them up again. But everything else is ok. TBH I don't see Rek'sai often in my games. She has slightly above average winrates (53-55% on average) and her banrate is not a problem as well beeing at around 28-30% I don't see the proble with her or playing against her. She was way more annoying when she was that durable and had assassin'ish dmg when she came out.
There are other champions to tone down and who should have a higher priority to balance. Gragas for example. Nearly 100% Ban or pick rate. Ekko (hopefully the nerfs hit him a bit and he'll tone down now) etc. etc.
For Kalista? I guess people finally got used to her and her harder mechanics. I think there isn't much counterplay to her. People who train with her and adapted to her passive have an easy time to avoid skillshots and be rather safe. It's hard to count with the stacks she is doing to you (maybe add a debuff where the stacks are counted which you recieve from her rend) so you can actually kinda predict her dmg output more in a fight. People who don't play her often underestimate her output at the end and of her W passive. And yes Q+R poke with some ad hurts allot. She is "too" safe to pull that off. Graves for example has to be point blank to do that amount of dmg. Maybe change some of that stuff? Her ult...Well...idk about that. Heavily depends on the support. The knockup itself isn't that bad. The followup ult's and stuns from a Leona/Nautilus for example are devastating. 90 sec CD rank 1 is ok, 100 Mana is pretty normal, it doesn't hurt people initially since the dmg is 0 and there is kinda no restiction if you bind your support since you are most likely in his range. Bonuspoints if you are in Teamspeak with that guy. Maybe change it to a lower knockback instead of a long knockup? Hard to balance.
manbearswine1 votesShe has slightly above average winrates (53-55% on average) and her banrate is not a problem as well beeing at around 28-30%
How is this thing even upvoted? what the bloody hell?
53% is a very high winrate,55% is massive, 28-30% is an insane banrate.
Might be worth noting that I'm not sure where you got these numbers from(banrate seems consistent with lolking,winrate not so much).
Sadistic Panda1 votesThat is not that high of a win rate when comparing to other junglers like gragus and sej I went to lol king and looked at a weekly ranked solo q chart and I didn't see rek'sai in any region or rank on summoners rift but I did see sej amumu gragus wukong and even some skarner but no rek'sai. This being pointed out why do you think this is a high win rate
manbearswine1 votes[{quoted}](name=Flux Capasitator,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WA4q6QRP,comment-id=000100050000000000020000,timestamp=2015-07-04T20:07:33.972+0000)
That is not that high of a win rate when comparing to other junglers like gragus and sej
Except that it is a very high winrate,even compared to them,she just doesn't have it.
I went to lol king and looked at a weekly ranked solo q chart and I didn't see rek'sai in any region or rank on summoners rift but I did see sej amumu gragus wukong and even some skarner but no rek'sai. This being pointed out why do you think this is a high win rate
And what were their winrates? more than 53-55%?
Sadistic Panda1 votesThe Win rates for grag/sej were at 56% and rek'sai was around 52%
manbearswine1 votes[{quoted}](name=Flux Capasitator,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=WA4q6QRP,comment-id=00010005000000000002000000000000,timestamp=2015-07-05T17:12:05.125+0000)
The Win rates for grag/sej were at 56%
And when exactly was that? I don't remember gragas ever being that high,sejuani also dropped that a while after her ult nerf.
and rek'sai was around 52%
So not 53-55%,my point stands.
Atsuki Kimidori3 votesUlt are suppose to be the strongest skill of a character kit, while other adc have ult that deal ton of damage or game changing in some way, you want kalista ult to be just a free escape that many other characters have as their basic skill? be reasonable please, there are nothing wrong with a high cd skill to have some of those power.
Saintshing4 votesKnock up is the strongest form of cc in the game(not affected by tenacity, cant be qss'ed like suppress). Kalista is the only champion in the game with a 2s knock up. Even malphite ult is just a 1.5s knockup. Not only that, it also amplifies the initiation power of your support. Annie already has one of the best engage in the game but she relies on her flash. With kalista, her engage range is increased by 1200 and she can do it every 60s.
In addition, it is one of the most powerful escape ability, it is a reposition skill and it renders your support untargettable for FOUR SECONDS. Zhonya has a 90s cd(kal ult has 60s cd at max rank) but it only makes you untargettable for 2.5s and you can't move(same for liss ult). Kalista+thresh is basically ungankable. Even in competitive, you can see kalista+thresh escaped 4 men gank by mao+sej+naut/annie.
4nth0l0gy5 votesI really like Reksai's tremor sense as is. It's one of those things that makes her really unique. I wouldn't want that changed.
Reksai is, by design, the quintessential jungler. She has poke, cc, vision control, a gapcloser, hypermobililty on ult, AoE damage, sustain, and no mana gating. As such, I think she will always be a decent pick, barring huge number nerfs.
What I would say is that her power should be shifted away from the tank build that she's using now. She can only get so many knock ups off because she can survive that long in the midst of combat. If you give players more incentive to build her with damage, as she was originally, I think you'll make her a more fair pick on the whole.
I don't know exactly how that can happen, unfortunately...buffing warrior might be a good start...but I think that's the direction to go.
Nameless Voice2 votesDo Riot actually think that Kalista's kit is healthy enough to be properly balanced by numerical changes alone?
Her passive makes her the definition of a binary, hard-counter champion. Her enemies need to have one (or preferably more) of the following to be able to do anything against her:
Any champion who doesn't have one of those has extremely few options to deal with her. They will lose any fight unless an ally with the above can either lock down Kalista for long enough for them to interact with her, or burst her down quickly enough to take her out of the fight.
This means that she tends to win or lose games based entirely on which champions the enemy team have picked. While that tends to make her roughly "balanced" in terms of win rate, it directly contradicts Riot's own stated Design Values:
League isn’t won at champion select and no phase of the game should be decided before a team steps up to fight.
.
A fight loses its excitement if the first punch wins – it's what you can do after that adds depth and complexity. We try to prevent hard counters and abilities with no room for reaction, as no game should be over without a real show of skill.
Judging by the many threads that have been made about her here on the boards, most people seem to agree that her passive hopping mechanic is simply not fun to play against if you happen to be one of the (large) subset of champions that she excels against.
Outside of the gameplay and balance issues, her theme is a vengeance spirit that works together with her soul-bonded invoker to hunt down and punish her target. All of her other abilities fit towards that purpose, but her passive doesn't. A vengeance demon that hops around like a rabbit, and mostly uses those hops to rain down death while running away (and being uncatchable) doesn't fit that theme at all.
Her kit has enough unique abilities in other places that she would still be an interesting and usable champion even without her current passive.
Omega Pudding4 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Let's be honest for a second, you make most balance changes to the game based on professional play, no beating around the bush on that one and these two champions are definitely in that category. With that said, Rek'sai is such a strong pick professionally because of tremor sense, not her knock-up. At the end of the day even if you reduce the radius on it, as long as she can knock-up the priority target it won't matter. Meanwhile, she'll still have tremor sense to scout out the enemy team giving much more valuable information.
Alternatively, if you are so keen to this knock-up nerf (which again is asinine) it could make sense that for whatever reduced range you are considering still has the full knock-up and the rest of the range that currently exists just sorta pushes champions aside. It's like Rek'sai jumps out of the ground, hits a champion with her head and is like "pardon me, will you please make way for my head?".
EGOtyst2 votesWhy not just move 'The Black Spear' to her ultimate, i.e. not giving her access to it until Lvl. 6? She hits 6, casts TBS on an ally, and gains the same benefits it gives now.
This would make her ult have a damage component (augmenting the W) and the knockup component it currently has.
It would knock down her early power, but save almost all of her gameplay.
Shroom Junkie2 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Personally I think if you just made her E more of an execute(missing health % rather than flat), I think it'd make things a lot better. And maybe remove that damned slow, why does she even need it with her passive?
Rinky Dinky2 votesShould probably compensate some of her damage back if that is the plan.
I never did understand why aatrox gets his puny circle while rek'sai gets to knock up an entire team with ease.
Risurin1 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Sentinel [W] : Soul-marked passive : If Kalista and her The Black Spear item.png Oathsworn ally attack the same target within 2 seconds of each other, the target will take additional magic damage equal to a percentage of their maximum health. This effect cannot occur on the same target for 6 seconds. This is 12% max hp at rank 1. That's what make her so strong early. It's way too strong with only 1 point in it.
Honestly, i'm surprised how many people focus on her jumps and rend. Even the spike too hard with early AD sound weird. Sure Rend can do a lot of damage if stacked up, but you need to stack it up, whereas with 1 point of Sentinel, Kalista and her support take down 12% of someone's hp with only 1 auto together every 6 second. Think about it, technically if well coordinated, in a minute you either get a kill or force someone out of lane.
On top of decreasing the damage of this/increasing the cooldown before the next W passive damage, i would like to see melee support get more rewarded then ranged support on this.
M Dragon141 votesSentinel [W] : Soul-marked passive : If Kalista and her The Black Spear item.png Oathsworn ally attack the same target within 2 seconds of each other, the target will take additional magic damage equal to a percentage of their maximum health. This effect cannot occur on the same target for 6 seconds. This is 12% max hp at rank 1. That's what make her so strong early. It's way too strong with only 1 point in it.
Honestly, i'm surprised how many people focus on her jumps and rend. Even the spike too hard with early AD sound weird. Sure Rend can do a lot of damage if stacked up, but you need to stack it up, whereas with 1 point of Sentinel, Kalista and her support take down 12% of someone's hp with only 1 auto together every 6 second. Think about it, technically if well coordinated, in a minute you either get a kill or force someone out of lane.
On top of decreasing the damage of this/increasing the cooldown before the next W passive damage, i would like to see melee support get more rewarded then ranged support on this.
I'm actually surprised they buffed her W after release..... I feel like the damage on W should scale with rank..... make the ability worth putting points into. This is what makes her broken early. All she has to do is auto with the support then back off and auto win lane.
Risurin1 votesI'm actually surprised they buffed her W after release..... I feel like the damage on W should scale with rank..... make the ability worth putting points into. This is what makes her broken early. All she has to do is auto with the support then back off and auto win lane.
yeah ! the sad thing is, they gonna go thru with those weird clunky nerfs, she might still be too lane dominant, then they will nerf W and maybe other stuff, the champion will be just too weak to be worth playing, and then they will wonder why she wont be played anymore....literally tehy just need to nerf how much of a "1 point win lane" W is right now...
M Dragon141 votesyeah ! the sad thing is, they gonna go thru with those weird clunky nerfs, she might still be too lane dominant, then they will nerf W and maybe other stuff, the champion will be just too weak to be worth playing, and then they will wonder why she wont be played anymore....literally tehy just need to nerf how much of a "1 point win lane" W is right now...
Idk, I think they will just change W and her Q a little. Or at least I hope so. Her W is the only reason she has any lane presence at all. Pretty easy to balance her really :\
Carnicore4 votesYour approach to Rek'Sai is completely off the mark. Her combat ability has already been nerfed over and over. The reason she's 100% pick or ban right now is because she has that insane map pressure. That's why teams counterpick her with Evelynn, because she's the only champion that can theoretically keep up with her. I hope you've talked to professional players about this.
Chor grunkular1 votesI agree 100% with this, since her first few nerfs I haven't seen here be "offensively" oppressive(i.e. poping up and killing ppl, 1v1 etc.), she's just all over the place creating potential pressure that** tends** to keep enemy teams honest. Her power is mostly psychologically power not physically powerful, and that power comes from tremor sense, tunnels and her ult(basically what makes her who she is). Physically speaking she isn't really intimadating, atleast not anymore.
IRL Apache2 votesHave you ever though about slowing down the radar on tremor sense? e.g instead of the tremor sense updating where enemy units are every .5 seconds(rough guestimate) change it to .75 seconds? I feel tremor sense is a bit too reliable and has no counter play. make it so reksai has to follow up tremor sense with her burrowed q , to relay more reliable information instead of just camping tremor sense.
Synx72 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Cool, I was about to buy rek'sai this week, guess not anymore. She's been receiving nerfs since her release. I don't want another 
state on my champion pool.
Hizsoo2 votesRek'Sai have a lot of options for unavoidable gank paths with her tunnels and can apply even more map pressure with her tremor sens and Ult.
THAT is the main reason why she is banned.
Raxistaicho1 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
Rek'Sai's gonna be bumping shoulders with Elise soon, no doubt about it.
Mansana1 votesWe're assessing the best way to trim a bit of power off both Kalista and Rek'Sai this week.
Current thinking with Rek'Sai is that the frequency with which she knocks up multiple enemy champs may be too high. We're going to test a smaller W radius as a result.
In Kalista's case we're looking at her power curve, with the working theory being that she spikes in power too hard with early AD.
I think one way to trim power is her global presence and map awareness. Maybe tone down her tremor sense radius and let it scale up per rank or per ult rank?
LaceUp231 votesAre their any plans for Fiddles? He literally has the highest playerbase averages games played at well over 200, yet his win rate is in the bottom half of junglers. Then you take away his jungle item. Do you not see this as a problem, or is it just a simple, "he doesn't make LC$ big plays, so forget him"? I'm truly curious.
Miraweave7 votesI agree that they need nerfs, but how is Kalista an "undeniably awesomely designed champion"? Her passive is the epitome of hard-counter gameplay. The way I see it the only champion in the entire game who's got a worse designed kit than she does is Poppy.
Lynbro Senpai4 votesYou're welcome to think that if you want, but she's very much catch-able, and she has exceptionally interesting and engaging gameplay patterns. Comparing her to the broken mess that is Poppy is quite frankly, stupid.
laserdançe4 votes2 things. Firstly kalista IS catchable. It's just that there is a MASSIVE subset of melee or short range champs that do not posses reliable cc. They are undeniably countered by her passive. With other escapes like fizz's e or vlads pool, it goes on cd after a single use and enemies can play around it. Kalista's kite mechanic however Is endless and thus while it's not impossible to catch her with those specific champs, it's just extremely infuriating.
Secondly your attitude really gives me the impression you don't really care what we think. I mean you didn't even discuss WHY you think our view is stupid. You just say. It's stupid. While I get where your coming from (comparing kal to poppy is a little futile) BUT you haven't actually answered his main issue with kalista. The fact that she is EXTREMELY frustrating to play against with a few SPECFIC champions. Which goes against the riot philosophy of not having super duper hard counters
Atsuki Kimidori2 votesbasically you want every ranged champ to be easy to catch? what will stop melee from dominating the game then?
Nameless Voice2 votesStrangely enough, melee champions didn't dominate the game before Kalista came out.
Ranged AD carries deal massive sustained damage, both to enemies and (importantly) to structures. The downside of that is that they are supposed to be fragile and need very good positioning and/or the protection of their teammates to survive