Did Riot balance her against ranged champions and then go "oh shit, we forgot we had melee champions in the game!"
... no wait, they did remember melee champions because they gave her a 20% health magic damage nuke so she could shred them even harder. And a knockup. Because she really needed more ways to fuck over tanks and their tenacity.
Old Man Teeto65 votesKalista is an abomination.
Not only does she remove the "smite contest" for objectives if her team starts it first, she's melee immune, skill shot immune, a tank killer, and has no mana problems.
With Riot wanting to increase skillful play and proper counterplay between champions, which means an increase in skill shots and a decreased overall power for guaranteed or targeted abilities, she just stomps over the best champions for every other role currently.
"We feel Ryze Q should be a skill shot"
Riot DOESN'T like low variance, high reliability, powerful champions. Even those like Ryze with severe drawbacks.
So they put some variance into competitively viable champions, and make a champion which counters variable abilities.
Of course she's going to be bull-shit OP in the higher levels of competitive play.
Changes that should be made
Kalista's E max damage against Dragon/Baron reduced to maximum 10 spear stacks. - Smite fights are core to the objective fight
Kalista AA range reduced to 525
Kalista's R Cooldown increased to 100/90/80 from 90/75/60, putting it at the same CD as Ashe's ultimate. (Varus's is 110/90/70, the other AoE CC ADC ultimate)
Those are love taps that should've been in her initial kit balancing.
SNSD Tiffanyx41 votesI think riot just hate top laners
pretty sure it's proven riot hates top laners
yeldahman1310 votesthey dont even touch riven. Every time i say riven is op there is always that one guys that says "Riven isn't op she has a high skill cap!" really a fighter with hard cc, 4 dashes, a barrier, an ult that buffs her, scaling health, scaling armor, scaling mr, scaling damage, and an impossible to miss "skillshot" that dam near kills you on its own. Pretty much everything a fighter can ask for. Yeah, not op at all.
OblongOtter2 votesGuys, Riot released a champion with scaling Health, Armor, MR, AND Damage! This is crazy and unlike anything we've seen before! Honestly though Riven is a bit strong and I wish they would go through with that thing that was on the PBE and then nerf her according to how strong she is with that. Riot doesn't want to touch her because her skill cap makes her basically two different champions.
Also they nerfed her shield duration (and strength too I think) as well as her defenses. If they do decide to nerf her, I feel that making her Q do something like slow instead of being a knockup would be nice, although that would also kinda kill Tank Riven.
yeldahman136 votesHmmm, sounds like you make a good point. Yeah, I kinda get mad when I talk about Riven, akali, fizz, and kalista, so if I say anything that is stupid please excuse me.
SNSD Tiffanyx4 votesexcept most adc can get away from riven unless she has flash, even then they got mikaels/qss and a shit ton of mobility. so your riven argument doesnt really stand
Yo Sup3 voteshow riven works: R, flash into adc (or do the ninja q e combo)(flash is better cuz blink op) -> W (stun doesn't allow adc to flash) -> R again = ally has been slain riven uses remaining abilities to 4v5 gg wp no re report adc no positioning, report support no peel, tank, report jgl, mid, top and better nerf irelia
SNSD Tiffanyx7 votesbecause the moment you flash into the enemy adc you wont get hit by a billion peels/cc from his team right?
ChaoticPinecone3 votesif peeling was so easy, Kalista would have a useless passive.
SNSD Tiffanyx4 voteskalista's passive isnt to get away from flash stuns, its so that as a melee, unless you got a 3 second stun, you can never REACH her to attack her. That was why C9 banned lissandra when sneaky wanted to play kalista, lissandra's 1.5 second hard cc prevents kalista from getting to her kiting mode after the initial CC was burnt.
The Red Warden33 votesI just find it funny that they are still making the mistake of buffing champions before seeing how they are used by someone who has mastered them. Kalista did have a urgot-level win rate, but that was mostly caused by people not having mastered the new high-skill, teamwork focused champion. OF COURSE, a champion like that will have a low starting win-rate. No one knows how to use them.
When 
was released her power level was correct for how much utility and mobility she had, but they buffed her anyway. Now she is OP, and it is caused by her getting buffed before anyone saw her full potential.
The same exact thing happened with the releases of 
, 
, and 
.
Alpharite3 votesNope, Lucian was BAD on release. It wasn't his skill cap, it was the fact his Q cost way too much mana.
The Red Warden9 votesRight after the buff, he was considered OP and stayed top-tier for 3+ months. If Riot had waited with the buff and saw how people played him more they could have done a more delicate change that didn't just make him one of the best marksmen in game.
What Is Smite2 votesI had a friend who could play Lucian really well before they changed the mana cost on his Q, he was probably the only person at my college who played him before he got better and could win the games he played. Onto the topic they really do need to gather more data than they get within a 1 month time span to accurately balance out a champion.
Hawkefire10 votesActually, the very first buff to Gnar made sense (where they increased the width to catch the boomerang, but left the hitbox for hitting the enemy the same). It was the subsequent buffs that shouldn't have happened and did not make sense.
Skalista19 votesI find this reaction almost disturbing. There is a very big difference between a champion being annoying to play against and being OP. Have you even played Kalista? How many games? Here's my take from around 100 Kalista games played. She is a very situational pick. Her counters absolutely destroy her and she absolutely destroys the champions she counters (usually).
Lets start from the beginning. Counterplay is a real thing that some champions have and some don't. Champions that don't have it are very binary. They either win or lose because their numbers were bigger or smaller than the opponent, and the only variance is that if the opponent of said champion had more counterplay, then there is a potential for the low counterplay champ to overcome lower numbers but not the other way around. The resulting conclusion is that these low counterplay champions should be tuned slightly weaker so that they do not become oppressive (and I am not trying to display Kalista as a low conterplay champion, as you could consider almost any AA-based champion/hypercarry in the same catagory).
That being said, what does this have to do with Kalista? Kalista doesn't have any damage steroids like most traditional ADCs, but a very strong movement steroid. What does this translate to? She has incredible potential to exploit counterplay, but her "numbers" as stated above are inherently lower than other ADCs and champions so she struggles in a lot of matchups. Kalista's success has mostly to do with champ select. That being said if you wanted to, say, nerf her in any way to "bring her in line" with the melees that she can counter, you have to do it in a way that doesn't weaken her other terrible matchups, since she just doesn't put out the damage that other hypercarries do and she doesn't have the option to sell her boots lategame like other champs because her boot tier affects jump distance and it would compromise her mobility.
Additionally, you see her success in LCS, but that has a lot to do with player coordination. SoloQ Kalista play is much harder to pull off when you are not actively talking to your support and many people in SoloQ don't even know how to lane with her properly. Most supports don't realize that they can farm for Kalista with W proc and most supports don't realize how important the W proc on champions is either. Also in the late game it is much more rare to get your W procs on champions because many supports dont AA MUCH (but I'm not saying this is true of all supports) and so even though the 20% Health damage proc on rank 5 W is quite strong, you won't get it on every champion in a fight most likely, and you probably wont get it to happen more than once per target either (even though the cooldown for another proc is 6 seconds).
I will also mention her AA range is not the issue. If you have ever played Kalista you should probably know it is not easy to maintain a "sweet spot" with hops where if she hops away, she can end up out of range and the enemy can just walk away, or if she hops too close and gets CC'd and dies instantly. Some might compare this to, say Lucian, he has the shortest AA range and he can manage, but he's a caster carry. Kalista doesn't have the ranged abilities that can compensate for a lack of AA range.
Have you ever played Kalista versus Katarina? Akali? Tristana? Pantheon? Zed? LB? The list goes on, anybody who can destroy her if she hops even an inch too close is almost impossible for Kalista to deal with. Playing a kiteable champion with counterplay is literally picking into your counter and saying that it's OP. She has tons of counters. The problem isn't that she's overpowered, it's that she is binary in terms of who she will and wont beat to an extreme.
I will say that Kalista's ult is quite powerful. And in a premade, it is worth getting a nerf, it is similar to pre-nerf Yasuo ult in that respect. But I can't tell you the number of times players will miss fire Kalista's ult in SoloQ. It happens all the time. Maybe if she sees more play in SoloQ and people know more about how to play with, as, and against her, then this ult should be scaled back a bit. Maybe a range nerf and a CD nerf, but it is also worth noting that it does no damage.
Next off, you want to cap the damage on her E on monsters? That sounds reasonable, but I will argue that she only gets to place her massive amount of stacks on a single monster when you are the one to control the objective, so it's not like it is oppressive as Nunu was as a stealing tool. It would be a fair change though, since many champions have abilities with capped damage vs monsters. Also, even if it out-damages smite with enough stacks, many people combo high single target damage with smite to secure objectives, so it's not like it's impossible to steal from Kalista. Kalista also doesn't have any easy indicator of how much damage her Rend will do, so it is very possible for a Kalista to mess up, rend early, and lose the objective...The faster your team takes it, the smaller the window for stacking as well.
Lastly I will just say that I am by no means a game designer or a member of a balance team. I am not a pro player. I am not saying that I am right, only that this is my personal opinion of a champion after my personal experience with a reasonable sample size of games. Yes, I am somewhat biased because I actually play her, but this is an honest opinion that has had a lot of thought put into it on how she fits into SoloQ meta and how she interacts with other champions.
TL;DR: Scroll back up and read about how Kalista isn't OP. Reading isn't that hard.
UnawareLettuce9 votesHave my children.
MrBuffington14 votesThe problem isn't that she's overpowered, it's that she is binary in terms of who she will and wont beat to an extreme.
Couldn't have said it better myself :)
Thighlander1 votesAshe too is like this. Nobody really complains about her though.
MrBuffington2 votesI'd argue that Kalista is more extreme, and certainly more flashy/frustrating to play against. Like, a lot of people (myself included) complain about Fizz E, very few complain about Vlad pool. Ashe (and Vlad) don't viscerally feel as threatening as Kalista or Fizz, in addition to actually not being as threatening (to a degree, depending on the circumstances).
Toben5 votesGood thoughts, but there is way too little formatting for so much text (it's just a wall of words most people don't want to read). Next time, break it into several paragraphs, and make sure that the first sentence in each paragraphs basically tells or introduces what the paragraph is about (this breaks your text into several different, organized sub-thoughts, and people can choose which parts they want to read). I only say this because your thoughts on Kalista are worth reading, so if you formatted it better more people would be likely to read it.
Skalista3 votesThanks for the advice, I wrote it in a bit of a rush so I wasn't really considering formatting, nor have I ever personally minded reading walls of text myself, but I did a bit of editing to this end.
PoisonedTea3 votesThe ult in itself would be a weak skill if it didn't throw an Allie.
It is just a knockup with no damage that you cant control the direction.
but it throws and Allie and it can get them out of hard CC.
It is powerful as a dash for that Allie with a knockup.
Skalista2 votesYes, it can be quite powerful since it is (almost) like giving any champion an extra ultimate(, Imagine any champion + malphite's ult). But although this is a reasonable analogy, there are several other things to consider:
Both champions must be present in order for the ultimate to be used, and this is also an important consideration for her w proc, it means that she is significantly weaker if her support roams or if they are separated for whatever reason.
The champion getting ulted doesn't have control over the initial cast, only their final destination, meaning that if you are not on the same page it can be quite unfortunate.
The ult does 0 Damage, which is very important.
When the knockup hits, it places the thrown champion their AA range away from the target, this can prove to be anti-synergy in some cases like with Thresh (even though Thresh + Kalista is quite good) or Morgana.
Subject 516 votesRiot creates champions specifically for a player made meta, which is not healthy for the game.
Raptamei3 votes[{quoted}](name=Subject 5,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=f3lxHL1n,comment-id=0009,timestamp=2015-02-01T20:52:34.762+0000)
Riot creates champions specifically for a player made meta, which is not healthy for the game.
They prefer to enforce fair fights between similar champs in lane at the expense of being able to 3v1 or pick a lane stomper and win the lane without an actual fight as in Dota.
This is not entirely a bad thing.
Omiwom10 votesShe spits on other ADCs with a free resettable twitch e, vayne q mobility on no cd, hard cc, random mobile wards and %hp dmg
The amount of mobility is really insulting. She doesn't have to worry about positioning very much.
When you give a champion a strength this gigantic, they HAVE to be weak in other areas, but you can see how versatile riot wants all their new champions. People asked about her weaknesses, so somebody came up with this 'she can't cancel her autoattacks' crap. I've heard that she doesn't do as much damage as other ADs but.. after seeing the latest LCS matches that can't be said.
Riot goes on about how they want to create new concepts like infinite dash champs,reksai burrows, azir soldiers, and these are really cool in theory, but for the sake of the game, release them on the weaker side and buff them over time, instead of giving them all around strengths on top of the concept.
there's too much in these kits they leave other champions in the dust with no room for outplays
SpongebobIsLife15 votesidk what you guys are talking about. She has no ad or attack speed steroids, and her q, is a very very thin projectile that is easy to miss and easy to dodge. Graves, Jinx, Caitlyn, and Tristana are in a better spot than she is. It's pretty easy to play against kalista in actuality. Champions with gap closers, champions with targeted cc, champions with mass aoe. Kalista imo is like katarina, you don't pick her into every team, just teams that are lacking with champions of a certain type. You also have to realize that her percent health damage and knockup require 2 ppl. not just her. Kalista is a balanced adc. You just don't know how to play against her. Sorry.
Major Sparkles9 votes[{quoted}](name=Its Spongebob,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=f3lxHL1n,comment-id=00140000,timestamp=2015-02-01T22:46:20.670+0000)
idk what you guys are talking about. She has no ad or attack speed steroids, and her q, is a very very thin projectile that is easy to miss and easy to dodge. Graves, Jinx, Caitlyn, and Tristana are in a better spot than she is. It's pretty easy to play against kalista in actuality. Champions with gap closers, champions with targeted cc, champions with mass aoe. Kalista imo is like katarina, you don't pick her into every team, just teams that are lacking with champions of a certain type. You also have to realize that her percent health damage and knockup require 2 ppl. not just her. Kalista is a balanced adc. You just don't know how to play against her. Sorry.
This guy says it all. Kalista is just the new champ to complain about. First Lee, then Zed, now Kalista. Sigh*
Zoof5 votesPretty much this, She has a terribly hard time in lane and gets rolled by most meta ADCs, all she has going for her is her crazy late game. Also her positioning is super important believe it or not, it's rather easy to get instakilled once you're cc'ed as she has no mobility other than her passive. At least Vayne can stealth tumble, Corki can valkyrie and so on, it's just getting to her that's the hard part.
Frikgeek2 votesIt's easy to get killed once you're CCed? This is totally different from all other adcs, right? What's that? You bought QSS? Well, have fun with your pentakills then. Also, her rend scales with 30% AD per spear and has infinite stacking. If used properly it's basically 30% of your AD in free damage, I'd call that a prety decent stereoid. And who needs stereoids when you have a 20% MAX HP nuke?
If you're a melee she's basically unkillable. She's balanced around champions with targeted ranged CC ONLY, and this game has quite a bit of melee champions that are suddenly useless because she exists.
AbodyHUN6664 votesSince when did tanks with no gapclosers want to go after the enemy's mobile carries? Most people seem to forget that immobile champs are supposed to be meatshileds and peel for their carries. If you go after Kalista you are as good as someone chasing Singed.
Vegas Dad2 votesSince when did tanks with no gapclosers want to go after the enemy's mobile carries? Most people seem to forget that immobile champs are supposed to be meatshileds and peel for their carries. If you go after Kalista you are as good as someone chasing Singed.
Indeed fun game you get to play where noone can "go after you or kill you", nice retarded singed comparison as well, you just forgot the part that singed is absolutely useless "running from you" aka singed MUST COME TO YOU to do ANYTHING, and infact he has to get to you and run past you to pose anythreat.
Oh the final irony, that singed could never in a million years ever touch kalista, and that kalsta could chase singed just fine and near eat a drop of poisen dmg.
Frikgeek2 votestanks with no gapclosers
Kalista can and will kite some of the most mobile champions in league, as long as they're in her autoattack range. Riven, Zed, Lee, Renekton, Irelia all stand no chance against Kalista after she gets some AS and QSS.
Meanwhile, Annie with no mobility whatsoever can just dumpster her from range, even if she has QSS, as she won't be able to autoattack to kite as long as you don't throw out Tibbers too soon.
lojician9 votesThe really disgusting part is how careful they are to limit mobility when designing melee champions like sion. They want to ensure that they're kiteable and for there to be counterplay. But then they just blatantly don't remotely give a shit when designing ranged champions. "Lol counterplay? This game is rock paper scissors now. Except melee is rock and range is paper. Just 2v1 our broken ass adc designs, melee scum."
Gank in Progress4 votesThe really disgusting part is how careful they are to limit mobility when designing melee champions like sion. They want to ensure that they're kiteable and for there to be counterplay. But then they just blatantly don't remotely give a shit when designing ranged champions. "Lol counterplay? This game is rock paper scissors now. Except melee is rock and range is paper. Just 2v1 our broken ass adc designs, melee scum."
funny how youre right in the case of sion, its hilarious. but dont forget the maokai rework, his W is still as much bullshit as before.
i think sion is well designed. just kalista is terrible, same goes for other certainlyT champions. Zyra, yasuo, thresh, kalista. theyre all either broken or useless. i hate that champion design.
VDc0zCqe0w5 votesZyra is perfectly designed, she got clear weaknesses and strenghts, she hasn't got anything in her kit that screams broken (passive is even useless)
other ones are bullshit yeah
Gank in Progress1 votesZyra is perfectly designed, she got clear weaknesses and strenghts, she hasn't got anything in her kit that screams broken (passive is even useless)
other ones are bullshit yeah
i wouldnt say perfectly, she is a burst mage that requieres only her E to successfully hit. kinda like veigar, with a couple of slows. retarded if you ask me. but i agree on the clear weakness part EXCEPT that she can AOE knockup everyone around herself if she gets caught. another reason why even viegar is the more healthy ap burst mage.
VDc0zCqe0w3 votes[{quoted}](name=Quality PIayer,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=f3lxHL1n,comment-id=0010000000000000,timestamp=2015-02-02T03:50:08.475+0000)but i agree on the clear weakness part EXCEPT that she can AOE knockup everyone around herself if she gets caught. another reason why even viegar is the more healthy ap burst mage.
sorry but i guess you have never ever played Zyra if you say something like that: if she gets caught she's dead, there's absolutely nothing you can do about that; if you get caught the only thing you can do is 1vs1 your opponent and hope to win the duel, since you are never going to escape; she has got one of the lowest base stats in the game (HP and armor) and 325 movespeed, there is no way you are going to survive if you get caught, she has got zero defensive skills, she's not Orianna who can shield + speed up herself, she is no Morgana who can snare+ult+blackshield meaning you'll never ever kill her
yes she just requires E, but that's the same thing Syndra does (except Syndra's stun has got like 4x Zyra's root speed), or Xerath does (with his stun) or Morgana, i can go on for years...
Q is a normal poke skill, nothing exceptional there, E is really strong, R is really strong, W is quite fair, passive is shit
you got 2 fair skills, 2 strong skills, a useless skill, a good AA range and animation (575), bad base stats, i think it's pretty fair to me
Gank in Progress1 votessorry but i guess you have never ever played Zyra if you say something like that: if she gets caught she's dead, there's absolutely nothing you can do about that; if you get caught the only thing you can do is 1vs1 your opponent and hope to win the duel, since you are never going to escape; she has got one of the lowest base stats in the game (HP and armor) and 325 movespeed, there is no way you are going to survive if you get caught, she has got zero defensive skills, she's not Orianna who can shield + speed up herself, she is no Morgana who can snare+ult+blackshield meaning you'll never ever kill her
yes she just requires E, but that's the same thing Syndra does (except Syndra's stun has got like 4x Zyra's root speed), or Xerath does (with his stun) or Morgana, i can go on for years...
Q is a normal poke skill, nothing exceptional there, E is really strong, R is really strong, W is quite fair, passive is shit
you got 2 fair skills, 2 strong skills, a useless skill, a good AA range and animation (575), bad base stats, i think it's pretty fair to me
As i said, zyra just presses R on herself to deal some kamikaze damage before she dies. that is stupid. you cant deny that, and no i wont play zyra because her movement speed is so fucking slow that she is not fun to play
VDc0zCqe0w5 votesfacepalm
EVERY champ in this game presses R and deals "some kamikaze damage before he dies"
Lux SYNDRA GP Amumu Cassio Gragas Jinx MF Azir LISSANDRA Veigar yeah i can go on for years but i'll stop here
your most played champions are REKSAI, Kha zix and THRESH, i mean you said 2 posts ago that you hate Thresh champ design and you still abuse that, and Reksai is cancer incarnated
and you complain about Zyra's design, LOL
Oleandervine8 votesI think that whoever is the chief of the design team should take any champion design CertainlyT makes and pumps through the processes of development and proceed to bash whatever champion comes up over the head until it's next to unviable, and then push it for release. That way, it will be super balanced on account of CertainlyT massively overloading and overpowering every champ he makes.
Altricad6 votesCorrection!
*Let Morello have a go at it with the nerf bat before it's released
Kuroi864 votesHave any high rank players even bothered with Kali yet? Any time I see her she out right tanks. I mean like 1/8/0 or worse.
LeeDark4 votesYou haven't been watching the LCS, have you?
Kuroi8620 votesNewp, always bores me to sleep.
Rock Rockburgh3 votesShe's been getting picked up fairly often, since Runaan's is so ridiculous on her. (It procs Rend. Possibly Sentinel passive too, I'm not sure.)
Sooko2 votesChange the %HP to Physical damage, the knockup seems fine to me since it deals no damage, but there is no reason for her to be able to deal almost true damage if she is in a full AD comp and you only stack HP and armor.
Dreadlocks11 votesplz dont make it physical oh god no
