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Does Kalista make anyone else cry?

Olath Quortek·9/2/2015, 5:45:48 PM·58 votes·3,444 views

See it's funny because most people will see this and think I'm crying about Kalista being op or something but really I'm just sad that Kalista is a shadow of her former self... I mean what exactly is Kalista's identity? Here's Riot's current lore for her:

"Kalista is an eternal spirit of retribution, who possesses a cold-burning hatred for all betrayers, deceivers, and traitors. In life, she was a legendary warrior, but while trying to avert tragedy she was betrayed and slain by those she trusted most. Now, she is an undying entity that can be invoked to exact vengeance, but only at great cost: the supplicant's soul becomes forfeit, bound to her for eternity."

So... Where exactly does it say that she figured out that if she could only attack faster and jump around more then she wouldn't have to care about her "Oathsworn" anymore? Here's Kalista's most recent patch notes:

"Since her addition, Kalista’s had a split-identity; she’s both one of the more independent carries in the league (thanks to her passive’s mobility and Rend’s resets) as well as one of its more team-dependent (due to her Oathsworn damage procs and Fate’s Call’s flexible engage/disengage). We’ll spare you the song-and-dance; like Fizz’s changes this patch these identities are at constant odds, changing what might be an all-or-nothing risky marksman into one that has very few weaknesses to attack no matter the stage of the game.

The below changes reflect a commitment to her ‘solo-carry’ style, making most of her ally-empowered power excessive by contrast. Lowering the extraneous power in the frequency and impact of her Oathsworn interactions open windows for opponents looking to brute force their way through the sheer skirmish and kiting power Kalista presents."

Honestly I'm just sad that they aren't pushing her into into her "more team-dependent role." We have plenty of hyper carries in the game... Kalista was the first adc in the game that actually supported their support and now they're weakening that bond in favor of strengthening her "solo-carry" style. Makes me cry a little... ;(

For the record I do understand that correctly balancing a "carry support" is a complete nightmare and they have to be very careful with what they give a marksmen for fear of them being completely unstoppable. XD

But... Morde can have a dragon... So maybe they'l actually make a carry support someday... I can dream right...? Even if Graves can't have his cigar... :/

Edit: I'm editing this because I'm really not concerned with viability. I don't think I made that clear enough... I'm crying for her loss of character and depth as a champion... I liked her... Not for what she did... but for who she was... ;_; Maybe I should have posted this in "Story & Art" instead of "Gameplay & Balance." XD

59 Comments

Sasogwa9/2/2015, 6:56:20 PM23 votes

"Kalista is an eternal spirit of retribution, who possesses a cold-burning hatred for all betrayers, deceivers, and traitors. In life, she was a legendary warrior, but while trying to avert tragedy she was betrayed and slain by those she trusted most. Now, she is an undying entity that can be invoked to exact vengeance, but only at great cost: the supplicant's soul becomes forfeit, bound to her for eternity."

So we decided to create a cancerous bouncing kangaroo with spears, with an ultimate that can also launch allies. We thought it would fit her theme very well

Rito pls

luckmallory9/2/2015, 5:48:55 PM6 votes

She will be plenty strong as long as she has that stupid passive Percent max health magic damage, uncapped damage that is gated only by cooldowns, and hard cc as an ult that can also save anyone from any situation

Only Play Darius9/3/2015, 3:17:06 AM6 votes

This is the exact same issue with CertainlyT's other fine creation, Yasuo.

He was supposed to be the first melee ADC that wasn't absolutely worthless to his team when he falls behind, with windwall as utility for saving teammates, tornado's for decent crowd control, and an ultimate that would help him follow up on engages and possibly turn the fight around. Of course, on release he was having all this utility on top of hypercarry damage, which essentially created a champion with no weaknesses. Instead of trying to preserve his original design as a non feast/famine mADC, he instead lost all his base defensive stats and base damage just so that he could keep his double crit and all the free stats and obnoxious powerspikes that comes with it, turning him into yet another win hard/lose hard hypercarry that either gets ahead and singlehandedly melts entire teams, or falls behind and dies before he can do anything useful.

With Kalista, they wanted to further explore the interactions between support and ADC, but her mistake passive on top of the slow and resets from rend made her too much like Vayne in that she didn't even need her support most of the time and did just fine, except that she also got a massive power boost having her support nearby. Well, as you can see they essentially gave up on her original design of an ADC that was created from the ground up to work in tandem with her support, by nerfing literally every part of her kit that involved coordination with her support, just so that she can keep her hops and overloaded rend.

So much for trying to focus on "Unique strengths".

AutoreactiveCD49/3/2015, 2:44:13 AM3 votes

I can't believe they didn't catch this one before release. Her passive is all about kiting, the more you can kite the more stacks you put on which translates to more damage. But they swore she was the teamwork ADC. I'd love for her to go in the team dependent route.

My idea is to have her jumps only happen when she is in a certain range of her soulbound or for a period after she triggers the W passive. It would emphasize team play and let her keep the passive we all enjoy to play against oh so much, but there will be periods its down.

Pale Pirate9/2/2015, 8:19:01 PM3 votes

Kalista's designing as a kit and as a theme is the biggest LoL failure since lollipoppy.

freeformline9/3/2015, 6:26:04 AM3 votes

I remember being really excited about Kalista's teasers because of the promise that she and her support would be deeply interdependent. Hearing that her oathsworn interactions are being nerfed specifically because her partnership was less important to her identity than her jumping was quite disappointing. It is my sincere hope that this decision will be reversed in the future, so Kalista's identity will be solidly planted in her lore and thematics rather than the most frustrating part of her kit.

OnanThaMan9/2/2015, 7:52:44 PM2 votes

I don't think she is op, she is just no fun to face, i don't feel like i got outplayed when i lose because of her. I feel like they used a broken mechanic to win, in this case her passive. What is even worse is that Riot won't address the issue about her either, they'll just nerf her enough until she fades out of favor.

thumbnail99/2/2015, 7:13:26 PM2 votes

Um Kalista will never not be a good pick because muh free jump every auto.

Teridax689/3/2015, 11:16:45 PM2 votes

I'm sad that Rito nerfed Kalista's ally-dependent power in favor of making her more independent, and I think they should have gone in the complete opposite direction. By dint of having an entire subset of abilities that rely heavily on an ally, Kalista should by all rights be the most ally-dependent marksman in the game, and was touted as such during her release.

Overall, I think Kalista's sort of been treated wrong since her release, too: she has this cool utility and unique interactions with her support, but the main reasons she seems to be picked competitively are her godlike kiting (which I think is super irritating and sometimes impossible to deal with as a melee champion), objective control (she can out-summoner 11 junglers for no real reason) and overall personal safety. Even after being saddled with really bizarre nerfs (e.g. 90% AD autoattacks, which sounds massively counter-intuitive, too), she's still one of the most independent marksmen in the game, in complete contrast to her theme and intended core fantasy, and if she gets pushed too far down the wrong line she may eventually need a rework.

Remlap12239/3/2015, 11:55:39 AM1 votes

Honestly, Kalista pisses me off so much I refuse to get engaged in her lore. Same goes for Volibear and Shaco, but Kalista will hold a special place in my heart for champions I could give less of a shit about if they were "accidentally" deleted from the game.

TyroneWatermelon9/3/2015, 12:17:21 PM1 votes

Gnar

Chromatic Eagle9/3/2015, 9:15:22 PM1 votes

This is why you shouldn't dump any random feature to a champion. You make it a pain to balance and you lose out on a champion's identity.

CasterGilgamesh9/2/2015, 10:15:32 PM1 votes

i feel like riot made kalista so out of place she should get the vayne passive to move faster to enemies since she is a person that ruthlessly seeks out targets,and she should be able to share this passive with her oathsworn.her w should be stronger but she should have lower base attack damage she should be more reliant on her oathsworn being around her i don't mind her rend since it really does fit her lore.she stacks these spears on her target representing the burden of revenge she is carrying out upon them.again i also don't mind her having good vision they should buff that by increasing the width of it and let her know when it's killed.