Kha'Zix needs slight tweaks to his skillset design, not more nerfs, Riot!
TL;DR
Because I know that this is a long a strenuous read, I'm placing the TL;DR on the top.
Kha’Zix is always in a state of imbalance and has been overpowered whenever he’s become relevant. In my opinion, this is because his skillset has always put him in an ambiguous state. I personally feel that
Kha’Zix’s kit should revolve around his Taste Their Fear (Q) and Leap (E) because those motivate an Assassin playstyle. To promote this playstyle, Riot should add mechanics in Evolve Spikes and Camouflage to benefit two different styles of Assassin play. so people would Evolve Spikes or Camouflage depending on their own playstyle.
Thesis
As we all know,
Kha'Zix has always been in the spotlight to receive nerfs and changes to his playstyle because Riot never seems satisfied with the new playstyles that
Kha'Zix players adapt to. The constant changes to
Kha'Zix have always confused players as to what type of champion
Kha'Zix actually is. Is he a sieging poker, a tank, or an assassin? He's always held more than one identity to players, right now you would argue he's a sieging assassin which is definitely problematic. Before this, he was a tanky assassin which is again, problematic. But before that, he was just a full-fledged assassin. This is what
Kha'Zix's identity should truly be, a full-fledged assassin.
Obviously
Kha'Zix had a lot of counter play errors when he was a full-fledged assassin, back before his isolation range got massively increased and before his Void Assault gave him crazy damage reduction. The**biggest counter play error **was that he was able to jump in while stealth and one-shot just about anyone that wasn't within 350 range of a teammate. Erased from existence until their death timers would call for them.
As everyone knows, Riot does not like Assassins that can instantly burst you without counterplay. The reason why Assassins like
Zed are so great design wise is because
Zed wants to be in combat with his marked target for the duration of the mark, usually he'll be in the middle of the fray for about 2 seconds before getting his ass out. There is good counter play in that because there's a decent enough window to know who's killing you and you can definitely fight back before his mark pops.
My proposal is that
Kha'Zix should become a full-fledged Assassin and have his playstyle based around his evolved Claws and Wings. Why? Because those support an Assassin playstyle; you jump in to kill your target and if you succeed you get to jump out. To promote this playstyle, I would suggest that instead of directly buffing the evolve bonuses of
Kha'Zix's Taste Their Fear (Q) and Leap (E), Riot should change the evolve bonuses of Void Spikes (W) and Void Assault (R) to work with
Kha'Zix's Q and E.
Evolve Spikes
As of now, Spikes is a heavy poke tool and back when the evolved form used to pop your passive as well, it was even more of a headache to balance. However, this is/was incredibly problematic because Void Spikes is such an easy spell to hit when it has been evolved and it allows
Kha'Zix to poke before team fights and siege at towers with ease. In response to that, Riot is nerfing Void Spikes' damage on the PBE to make the spell less effective as a poking tool. This is a correct response by Riot in regards to
Kha'Zix's poke being way out of control. However, this does not solve the problem with
Kha'Zix players prioritizing the poke playstyle because there is still no better alternative to evolve.
I propose that Riot should change the spell as a whole to work with
Kha'Zix's Taste Their Fear (Q) and Leap (E) and nerf the damage on Void Spikes (W) as a whole so it wouldn't be a problematic poking tool, maybe even increase the mana cost so
Kha'Zix would be required to think and decide when to use it properly instead of just casting it to cast it. My suggested changes would be:
-
Increase the mana cost of Void Spikes to promote good use of Void Spikes.
-
Change the damage scaling on Void Spikes so that it will be just as strong at early levels but will be considerably weaker at later levels so it may not be abused as a poking tool.
-
Give Void Spikes the ability to mark a target once that may be popped with Taste Their Fear (Q) or Leap (E) giving bonus damage upon successful cast or Void Spike’s heal respectively.
-
Enhances Void Spike to fire three spikes in a cone, increases the slow to 50% and grants vision of champions hit for 2 secondsmarking all enemy champions hit by the explosion twice. Casting Taste Their Fear on marked Targets will deal additional bonus damage and consume one mark. Additionally, casting Leap on marked Targets will heal
Kha'Zix for the amount Void Spikes heals for and consume a mark. Multiple explosions upon the same enemy do not deal extra damage and the vision does not apply to stealthed units. Being within multiple explosions does not heal
Kha'Zix for an extra amount.
With this,
Kha'Zix will be motivated to jump in after landing a successful Void Spike on prime targets. Also, the 2 marks system allows
Kha’Zix to both jump on an enemy champion to Heal via Leap (E) and then deal bonus damage instantly via Taste Their Fear (Q), or in duels, he may choose to save his marks for 2 Taste Their Fears (Q) and deal more damage in the long run.
Evolve Camouflage
Right now, Camouflage is debatably the worst Evolution, mostly because it just doesn’t do much in terms of utility or damage. In history, Camouflage was only evolved when Taste Their Fear (Q) was at its weakest state (
Kha’Zix release) and when it was hilariously broken. The only reason this spell was problematic was because it created a phase where
Kha’Zix would be able to run in and out of team fights unscathed, it also opened a tank build for
Kha’Zix which is incredibly unhealthy for any Assassin. Riot’s response to this was to directly nerf Taste Their Fear (Q) into the ground so
Kha’Zix wouldn’t be able to deal immense single-target damage and be tanky at the same time. Although this was the correct response at the time balance wise, this was an incredibly unwise decision design wise. Riot basically removed any possibility of
Kha’Zix becoming a pure Assassin again unless they were to rework Taste Their Fear (Q).
I propose that Riot should add new evolved bonuses to Camouflage so that it would work with
Kha’Zix’s spell kit as a whole and benefit
Kha’Zix’s Assassin playstyle and would reward
Kha’Zix for prioritizing prime targets. My suggested changes would be:
- Allows Void Assault to be cast up to three times and the stealth duration is increased by 1 second (total 2 seconds). Killing an enemy champion during the time that Void Assault may be recast and within 3 seconds of the last cast will grant
Kha’Zix a shield for 3 seconds. Additionally,
Kha’Zix will gain bonus movement speed for each enemy champion damaged by Leap up to 3.
With this proposed change,
Kha’Zix is motivated to get into team fights quick and execute targets allowing him to gain a shield. The shield’s purpose is to reward
Kha’Zix with safer clean up potential when killing priority targets quickly. While this evolution doesn’t provide quicker clean up potential, it provides a much cleaner and safer clean up by granting bonus movement speed for landing Leap on multiple champions and a shield for killing champions.
Conclusion
Although the evolution changes I have suggested may not be the best, I hope that it will steer Riot towards a different direction when changing
Kha’Zix; there are other options out there to motivate a healthy Assassin playstyle instead of just dropping numbers and raising others. I feel the evolution changes I have suggested really mold two healthy Assassin playstyles that are completely different. A
Kha’Zix that looks for quick opportunistic kills and also a
Kha’Zix that seeks to clean up in a slow, but safe manner. I hope that with this thread that I have expressed my thoughts on how
Kha’Zix may be redesigned into a pure Assassin.