Boards›Gameplay

How's Katarina right now in terms of balance? Is she being looked at?

GetLeBonked·11/22/2015, 1:01:20 PM·2 votes·578 views

Katarina is really...weird. When shes strong, both in the overall meta and in a particular game, she feels stronger than like any other champion(at least in yolo queue). And vice versa. In the past, before her repeated nerfs in late s4/ early s5, she terrorized solo queue and was nearly perma-banned. And in game she actually had a strong laning phase with her high sustain 4 pot start and high base damages early. She'd often win lanes around levels 5-7 when her Q poke and superior effective HP with potions would allow her to whittle down opponents and force them out of lane/kill them. And if she got ahead early, or got some kills in a skrimish, she'd snowball the game out of control, because a fed Katarina could duel any squishy and even win 1 vs 2/3s, with little counterplay unless you had point and click hard cc(which isn't enough if she's sufficiently ahead). Present day Katarina can do the same thing if she gets snowballed, but her laning phase is only describable as terrible. IIRC she has the 2nd lowest base health regen after Riven, and her base health was nerfed at some point too. Coupled with base damage nerfs on her E and R and she has lost her ability to trade effectively without her ultimate and lost her ability to sustain through poke. My point is present state Katarina feels really really weak in lane (and by extension weak later if she didn't find a way to snowball) but really really strong if she does get that early lead, and she still retains the ability to instantly annihilate groups of squishies with items. She's very black and white in terms of power, and I think her identity as a champion should lie more in her cleanup and opportunistic nature than in simply snowballing and exploding everyone.

I think Katarina needs to move away from the overbearing snowball playstyle and be more clearly defined as a clean-up champion. I don't really know how to accomplish this but if I had to try I'd say maybe give her better ratio on her W(.25 to .35ish) and maybe some base damage (like 5 per rank, so 25 extra at lvl 5?, but reduce the ludicrous .25 AP ratio per dagger on her ultimate (2.5 overall) to some thing like .2 per dagger? This would give her less insta-gib potential but a safer lane and a bit more damage with resets. And I think she deserves her base health regen back(but keep the flat health nerfs). All these DoT mages that are really strong with the new mastery are dumping on Kat in lane even with her 4 pot start. If it turns out these changes made her laning phase too strong again then maybe the initial Q damage could be lowered but the proc damage increased, to prevent her from Q spamming as harass.

Another idea I have is adding another part to her passive, where if she gets a kill/assist in 3 seconds she gets a bonus % increase in her damage, or bonus magic penetration. (if this were implemented then her numbers would probably have to be tuned again.) Or something else entirely.

8 Comments

Princess Emma11/22/2015, 2:14:28 PM3 votes

I wouldn't call her ''balanced'' per say since balance can be subjective to each person, but her strengths and weaknesses are clearly defined once you get some game knowledge and her role in the game has been pretty defined as well because of it.

Yes she is snowbally, but she still retains her cleanup and opportunistic nature when it comes to team fights or when late game arrives. Go in to early and that is it for her. Move in too late and enemies may escape and her team will be close to dying if not dead already.

New players or those with little game knowledge do not know how to deal with her so of course she has an easier time snowballing and getting kills.

Those who do know how to deal with Katarina have a much easier time, unless their team has no crowd control whatsoever, but of course you can't always depend on your team mates to know what they are doing, which I understand. Despite that Katarina in my opinion is one of the main champions people both will and need to learn to deal with when they start out and they will eventually know before they hit 30, unless they did co-op vs ai a majority of their time.

She definitely does not need that % damage bonus or magic penetration because that has a high possibility of making her a tad overbearing even with number tweaks, unless the damage bonus isn't too high.

I both see and understand what you are saying, don't get me wrong, but Katarina's place in League seems to have been set. Of course with more changes to League in the future ; she may get a little something something, but I wouldn't count too much on it.

NoPaxt11/22/2015, 2:24:45 PM2 votes

Make her untargetable during her ult... that all she needs.

Vekkna11/24/2015, 9:43:49 PM1 votes

Right now she basically is a clean-up champion. Basically, Katarina only gets to be oppressive when you can kill somebody faster than they can react to stop the 70% of her damage she does with her ulti (or Flash, blink, barrier, etc). That's a huge snowball; like a 7-10 kill lead by mid game. Meanwhile, tons of champs can be far more oppressive with a much smaller lead, much less counterplay, much stronger laning phase, and much less reliance on teammates.

Leblanc, for example, has a total 4.6 AP ratio on her full combo, which is executed in less time than Kat's ulti channel. Only .8 of that 4.6 can even be disrupted by soft cc if you can catch her in her mid-W. And LB basically has Kat's E reset baked into her W for free without even needing a kill.

Just for reference, Kat's total AP ratio on her entire QEWR combo with a full ulti channel is only 3.6, and it's closer to 2.1-2.5 in practice because of interrupts or people just walking 5 steps away from you. A ton of bruisers are also much more lethal than Kat with a smaller snowball.

In general, people just think Kat is scary because her entire playstyle is designed around sniping your team's kills with a DoT ulti that ticks every .25 seconds. Her numbers are more threatening than she is.

People also think she's scary because she's very fast and forces quick reaction times, which triggers actual panic response in human players. If a Kat kills you, it's usually when you're at 30% hp and takes about .5-1 second. With a bruiser it feels less oppressive when it takes 5-6 seconds to take you from 100-0. Nevermind the fact that you'll be sitting in a stun for 2 seconds, eaten, perma-slowed, or knocked up incessantly. All of your buttons are locked, but your brain has time to process what's happening; that feels more fair than being low hp and dying before you can even react.

Tengrichan11/24/2015, 9:46:29 PM1 votes

She needs a rework.Probably a full scale one.