is Kalista no longer a viable champion?

Tupaco·Jul 4, 2016·7 votes·1,731 views

I don't see her in lcs, ranked, or on any videos anymore is she dead after those nerfs? ?

25 Comments

CrazFight Jul 4, 20165 votes

no kalista is dead

Eunbi BiasJul 9, 20161 votes

Duh. She got three spears in her chest from Hecarim Get on my level we all know she is dead and is a vengeful spirit*[zombie-brand-facepalm]*

Rico NastyJul 4, 20164 votes

She's dead rn, mainly cause of nerfs but honestly her ult is kind of useless now imo.

GULAG 4 UJul 4, 20163 votes

at least ppl remember who's kalista

Aatrox ^^^^^^^^^^^^ Who teh f0k is this guy??

TupacoJul 8, 20161 votes

new champ?

GULAG 4 UJul 8, 20161 votes

I guess he's tryndamere when he forgets to use e?

Without the cries too

AptestJul 4, 20163 votes

my examination into the state of kalista indicates she is fine.

her mains reach 55+% win rate.

I.E. she just requires skill and practice, and owns properly.

Masala ChaiJul 4, 20163 votes

the statistics here say otherwise http://champion.gg/champion/Kalista

She now sees less play than ADC Varus.

AptestJul 5, 20161 votes

no they do not.

there is a whole bunch of numbers on this page like "win rate that includes noobs that play her once and can't handle the hops" but none of them is "win rate for players with over 100 games with kalista and who also play her more than any other character".

I.E.: with respect to the potential power of a champion overall win rate is a lie. what you are looking for is, how well can the champion be used by good players that know how to use her, not how well it is used by the masses who know nothing.

champion.gg does not report this statistic.

if you **main **Kalista you can expect a win rate of 53-56%. That is in line with maining most other champions in the game.

Masala ChaiJul 5, 20163 votes

"Win Rate % by Games Played"

44.54% for people with over 125+ Games played

My personal ranked winrate? Well have 126k MP: 47%

C9 Sneaky's winrate with Kalista? 35%

hi im gosu's winrate with Kalista? 50%

Other ADC players in LCS do have 70% or so winrates with Kalista, but none of them have played more than 5 Kalista games since her most recent patch, always opting to go something like Lucian or Caitlyn.

and 2. How about Kalista's prescence in Premier Tournaments, since her gutting?

NA LCS Summer Split, 0 Games Banned, 1 Game Picked, 0 Games Won

EU LCS Summer Split, 3 Games Banned, 5 Games Picked, 4 Games Won; pretty much from the same team

LCK Summer Split, 0 Games Banned, 9 Games Picked, 4 Games Won.

For perspective, Vayne, Draven, Lucian, Caitlyn, Twitch, Ezreal, Sivir, Ashe, Varus, and Jhin have more prescence in professional tournaments since her most recent patch.

Kalista is a mediocre ADC, and is nearly Urgot Level along with Corki, plain and simple.

AptestJul 9, 20161 votes

for what it's worth, i do not like kalista's design with the mini hops. the reason being, that this invalidates a whole like of characters that depend on walking to reach targets. as a result, as a melee it is impossible to fight kalista in any kind of prolonged engagement. therefore you have to burst her.

Kalista creates a "burst or bust" situation for her opponents. ADCs being insta-gibbed by assassins and mages is already a not-fun part of the game. to make the game more fun and allow for less instant adc blow up, there needs to be less "if you can't kill me in one go, you can't kill me at all" situations.

Masala ChaiJul 9, 20161 votes

I can think of a lot of other characters that can have similar mobility (though not as much) as Kalista and can create fairly similar problems.

The burst of bust situation kind of exists for several other ADCs, such as Lucian, and Vayne. If you don't kill Lucian immediately, he'll just Relentless Pursuit out of it, use his W on whatever's convenient and the Culling while also have access to Relentless Pursuit WHILE he's channeling the Culling; all at a much safer range than 550

Vayne poses a similar problem, she has Tumble on a extremely low cooldown; and can use Final Hour to grant her stealth while tumbling. As they removed Pinks as a Trinket she is pretty much allowed to Tumble in any direction to kite, and if a bruiser gets too close she can simply Condemn them into a wall.

They don't have dashes on every auto attack; but they sure are mobile, and they have extra tricks up their sleeves.

TupacoJul 9, 20162 votes

I can see your down voting everyone with a different opinion then you even though they are providing a better argument...

AptestJul 9, 20162 votes

i am not downvoting anything. especially not RefurbishedIce because the guy is providing arguments and im definitely in favor of arguments.
they are saying "the facts are x" I am saying "the facts are y". they are saying "this is proof that facts are x" i am saying "no, it is not proof". what we have here is a simple disagreement. I think the facts are Y and they think the facts are X and that's the sum of our disagreement.
how about you go do some research that extends past seeing op.gg's numbers? I do not believe they are reporting a number that is indicative of Kalista's potential as a champion. go crunch some sample data yourself and see if you agree with op.gg, or not.
because if a small sample size is heavily in disagreement with op.gg, than it is highly probable that op.gg's data has some kind of problem with it that makes in non-indicative.
but that's just my humble opinion.

P.S. RefurbishedIce's response to me has good arguments, and I accept that you agree with him (?). I do not, for the following reasons:

sneaky is not a kalista main. gosu is not a kalista main. they are exceptional players but not being kalista mains, they do not represent kalista's potential "against all comers" (people who main character take them against the bad matchups too).

LCS in general is not a good sample size as indicated by RefurbishedIce

When I go to lolking and search for kalista and bring up a list of people who play her a more than any other character, the list is full of people with >55% win on her. Having gone and checked that, I automatically doubt any argument that contradicts this.

when I look at champion.gg's win% by games played (49.13% at 125 games) the shape of the graph is super odd. y would you get a better win rate when you know nothing about her, then have your win rate drop sharply as you learn the character and only after 100+ games you get to have an acceptable win rate again?

the shape of the graph is super odd which means it's built on a very lacking sample size. Even so, you can see that once you reach 100+ games the slope of the graph i.e. delta(win%)/delta(games_played) is very steep i.e. i expect the person with 150 games to definitely have >50% and the person with 200 games to definitely be with >55%.

Which is what my lolking sample shows.

GibberwattJul 4, 20162 votes

My theory is play whatever you like, and eventually, you will get gud enough to make it not matter. For example, I play Artillery mages ( Anivia Velkoz ), which kind of suck in this meta. However, I do fine with them, when not a lot of people play them and do well

DefendedJul 4, 201614 votes

{quoted}

My theory is play whatever you like, and eventually, you will get gud enough to make it not matter. For example, I play Artillery mages ( ), which kind of suck in this meta. However, I do fine with them, when not a lot of people play them and do well

anivia brand and vel koz do not suck in this meta.

GibberwattJul 4, 20162 votes

ok, maybe not. However, not many people play them that much. similarily, not many people play kalista, but that doesn't mean that it is possible to become godly with her.

AbyssphereJul 4, 20162 votes

Well yes but there's a difference between how easy it is to win with a 53% win rate Anivia and a 45% win rate Kalista. Someone being unpopular doesn't mean they're hard to win with, someone having a sucky win rate means they're hard to win with.

Masala ChaiJul 4, 20161 votes

With a high average playerbase, and a rock bottom winrate. She is almost as viable as how Pika310 says how Sona is viable.

Blue Moon WolfJul 4, 20162 votes

No, she is still viable. One of the big issues though is her Ult. It isn't complicated, but it still requires a lot of cooperation between her and partner and many kalista's from what i've seen have just about given up using it offensively in exchange for using it exclusively to save their spirit bound partner. Also, after becoming familiar with being used as ult ammo, I'm starting to wonder if it might be bugged to where hitting the enemy doesn't get knocked back sometimes .__.

My Waifu VanillaJul 4, 20162 votes

She just isn't stronger than most other ADCs at any point in the game. Her early game is now almost Kog levels of mediocre with the Base AS nerf and doing little to no damage with the W passive (they straight up halved it). She doesn't scale as hard as other ADCs due to the lack of crit AND the Base AS nerf makes her scale less with AS. Yes, she still snowballs kind of hard and can win midgame if no one on the enemy team has targeted cc or a gapcloser but why would I pick her over Lucian who has a similar amount of mobility (less mobile BUT he doesn't require a target) but actually scales rather well and can also punish the enemy midgame if he pulls a lead.

CoolKnightSTJul 4, 20162 votes

I think the main issue with her right now is her build. With the increased cd on her ult you kinda want to build cdr on her. The problem is that she's way better off with an duelist build that doesn't really contains cdr. Secondly she doesn't seems to scale well with the armor penetration items and I think that's the main problem right now. She always scaled better with attackspeed what.

Her second problem is her identity, she has amazing utility but she also has amazing dueling potentional. So if both these elements are strong she needs a weakness somewhere. Riot decide her to nerf her in all alrea's without nerfing her on one specific spot. She's still viable tho.