@RIOR, @MEDDLER Can we talk about Kayle?
in 4.2, She lost most of her initial burst, no mana ulti(why?), and a buff to W. In 4.11, we saw nerfs. Ulti cooldown, attack speed, and E damage ratio halved. In 4.13 we saw a slight lessening of these nerfs.in 4.14, you reverted the attack speed nerfs, sorta. There was a bug somewhere.
Well, when she lost so much off her damage over time, her early game became weak. So we took her jungle. Then you nerfed devour, which she really needs with all the attack speed she uses(did you really hate WW THAT MUCH?), then you nerfed all ranged jungle with monster resets. And now you're nerfing her go-to item, Nashor's tooth, we need the attack speed.
The only role Kayle can reasonable play that hasn't been nerfed as heavily is support, and....she's just not very good down there. She scales too hard with items to function with no gold, Her heal costs too much mana to sustain, she has no hard CC or counter engage, and none of her moves are the utility one point wonders a support wants (nami bubble, thresh's entire kit, morg shields, etc). With the exception of ulting your carry, Nami literally performs all of support Kayle's job better. Support kayle relies on early aggression to snowball the lane, because otherwise she becomes starved and useless.
However, I don't want this to be a straight buff. Most people consider kayle to be overbearing and unfair when powerful, so maybe you can avoid that by focusing on her supportive qualities.
Here's some dumb ideas to spark a discussion:
Step 1: change E to something small. Then make it her new passive.
Step 2: remove something big, like 50 or so % of the total damage from Q, then add an entanglement ability to it, making the enemy unable to use blinks or dashes while affected. Possibly make this a skill shot now.
Step 3. New E: Allows kayle to fly briefly, ignoring terrain and granting a large MS boost, but she is unable to use any other moves until she lands. If cast on an ally (very short range), she can pick up that ally and carry them with her for the duration. If she lands in terrain, she and her ally are shunted towards the closest normal ground.
's overall explosive power, since having both heavy burst and reliable total damage immunity on the same kit made her problematic to deal with when she was strong, but I agree that she's been left in an unpleasant spot. Personally, I feel like her AD build should be buffed to be her new DPS playstyle, and her AP build should be shifted around to make her a dedicated support when going there. Kayle is really cool in that she heavily mixes damage and utility to form a really aggressive playstyle, as well as for being a hybrid with interesting quirks to her builds, and I think going either full AD or full AP should emphasize the focus on either damage or utility.
is more oriented towards peeling and saving allies, and so doesn't offer those same offensive bonuses. Kayle's ultimate also offers hard protection (i.e. it becomes impossible to kill the target she's protecting for the next few seconds), which can often be far stronger than even Lulu's ult, which ultimately only offers soft protection (it can protect allies for longer, but can be overcome with extra damage).
No retreat.
oh. He just does it better at that point.
