@RIOT Katarina - A recurring pattern
I've had 3 different smurfs ( plat and diamond) lane vs silver katarinas in my games, and they lost lane and died to her. Yep. All of em. -game 1: platinum kassadin vs silver katarina, dies at lv 5. When I asked him to explain why: " She outsustained me" (it was corrupting pot kass vs boots 4 pots kata)
-game 2: diamond Brand vs silver Katarina: dies at lv 6 from an all in while being 75% HP and her full. He was shoving her in wave after wave, and constantly harassing her under turret. He interrupted her ult but because he had no minions around and had just W'd he coulnt kill her so he just stunned her ult and flashed away. Katarina just flashed q ignite and killed him. "She healed up all my poke " he said.
-game 3 : diamond yasuo vs silver katarina. After constant trading she barely kills him at lv 5. " too much sustain "( she had started cloth 4) But the Yasuo was using a very broken setup of longsword 3 + warlords bloodlust+ full atk speed runes.
I know these were not the best matchups or the smurfs may have made some mistakes themselves, but In general i drew the following conclusion: -Katarina is EXTREMELY safe, like you cannot imagine safe. SHe can either play safe and stay back and q poke during the majority of the laning phase which not only gives her a lot of free CS but also effortless free harass that cannot be dodged. ( yes not even by yasuo( q is too fast to winnwall and has too long of a cd) You cannot gank her at all even if she pushes with q spam, because of INSTANT wardhop. SHe can also choose to play aggro while still remaining very safe. She can jump to u for her full combo which is all of her damage, while minising the amount of damage you can return, with her W speedup and her E damage reduction .
The biggest offender out of em all : Her sustain . She is not punished for starting boots even though that is a weak dueling setup. She gets to keep spamming poke while keeping CS higher than any other zoned champion would, and whittling down her oppenent q by q until she can all in. 4 potions is enough to ensure any poke received is mitigated.
To add insult to injury she gets a massive power spike at level 6 . her ultimate hits way too hard just with its base damage. ( considering how this ability scales tremendously well ) Add free damage from thunderlords and ignite and you have so much free undodgeable damage.
WOrst thing is even if you do manage to stomp her somehow all she needs is a couple of kills from roams and snowball harder than even Draven the snowball master himself.
I don't want you to propose counterpick or what to do when she roams. I want a healthier champion RIOT. A champion that feels like you are actually doing something yourself and is also fun to play against. A champion That actually has a resource and Doesnt mindlessly spam poke without punishment whatsoever. A champion that abides to the rules of the game that the rest of the champion s( well most of em ) are ; that is cant poke and cs at the same time while also being ZONED, (playing safe /staying back ). A champion that is not a massive stat stick that one shots everyone if fed.
Please tell me riot that Katarina is a candidate for a large scale rework somewhere in the future.
