A History of Katarina, presented by ‘Kindra Returns V’ (Katarina Discussion 1/4)
Introduction
Greetings Boards visitors, I am Kindra Returns V, a Katarina one-trick with one of the highest number of Katarina games played this season. This is my first post, so apologies in advance for formatting errors.
With the Mage roster update on the way, the Assassin update is one that could be coming soon. Since Katarina (along with Talon and Akali) have been mentioned as possible candidates for major changes™, we as a community can discuss what we feel Katarina’s role in League should be before any designers decide on potentially strange directions that might change her identity in ways that will alienate current Katarina players.
This will be the first of four posts this week, each on a different topic. Part 1 will be a discussion on Katarina’s previous states and historical issues, Part 2 will be a discussion on Katarina’s “fantasy” is and how that translates to gameplay, Part 3 will be a discussion about how Katarina does (and doesn’t) meet this fantasy currently, and finally Part 4 will be a discussion of possible changes for Katarina that will allow her to reach this fantasy better while improving game health.
While I certainly do not claim to be the best Katarina player, I have played enough Katarina games to feel comfortable starting a discussion on her. Even though we may not be representative of the League community as a whole, it’s a step in the right direction, and Rioters who frequent this Board can pass on anything they find interesting to the right people. Now, without further ado…
A History of Katarina
The Release
Katarina was one of the first champions released, and started with this kit:
- Passive: Voracity, but had a much longer window of reset, reduced cooldowns by more, and gave Kat gold whenever it activated
- Q: Bouncing Blades, but blade did not leave a mark, did less damage on subsequent bounces, had completely random targeting, had 2-6 bounces depending on rank, and had a shorter initial range
- W: Very different than current W (Sinister Steel). It was called Killer Instincts, and had a passive and active component. Passively, it gave Katarina stacking attack speed when attacking the same target consecutively. On activation, her next basic ability would have an additional effect. Either her Q would do the same damage on every bounce and leave Grievous Wounds, or her E would give her dodge chance
- E: Identical in function to current Shunpo.
- R: Similar to current, but instead of damaging 3 champions at every rank, would damage as many champions as the rank of the ability.
Katarina received a number of numbers changes and bugfixes, like every champion in the early days of LoL: Clash of Fates. Among these changes was Killer Instincts being changed to do additional damage (rather than attack speed) on attacks and spell hits, not lost when switching targets, and Death Lotus hitting three targets at every rank.
By the end of these changes, Katarina was best played as a mobile manaless assassin who reset cooldowns. “Q: Bouncing Blades” had a high bonus AD scaling and low AP scaling, while her “E: Shunpo” had a high AP scaling. Both had fairly good base damage, balanced by the fact her third basic ability was used for utility. Q was targeted, medium-ranged, manaless poke, while E was a powerful single-target nuke.
Killer Instincts allowed for flexible decision making. Either use it on Q for poke which would be hard for the enemy to heal off due to GW, or E for some damage reduction (dodge was removed by this point). Passively, it synergized with R: Death Lotus. The rapid-fire Death Lotus daggers would each stack Killer Instincts, rewarding longer ults and helping Katarina do damage to finish people off after Death Lotus ended. This was especially important, since Death Lotus was the majority of Katarina’s damage at the time- she was ult-dependant for damage in a teamfight, or in fact damage in general.
Katarina’s optimal playstyle involved building Gunblade and deciding whether to build AD for better poke or AP for better all-ins. While her early game was extremely weak, she had snowball potential, and once she got Death Lotus “she would win every skirmish IF her opponent would blow all his escapes and cc AND would overextend.”
The Transition
On August 14, 2012, a little under 3 years after release, Katarina’s time of reckoning finally came. This was not a surprise to many. For one thing, Katarina’s numbers on her abilities had been constantly fiddled back and forth, and even their functionality had been changed back and forth a few times. In addition, Katarina was considered “trash tier,” with an around 40% winrate in all tiers.
Riot didn’t like this at all. Not only was she generally considered trash, she wasn’t competitively viable, and stomped too hard in games where she did manage to get played well (e.g. noobstomper). Katarina lost almost every matchup, won more often than she should simply because people didn’t know what to do against her (read: current Urgot), and no amount of number and functionality adjustments ever helped this state.
Before moving on to explain the rework: one thing stated above, while factually true, isn’t completely honest. Katarina may have had a 40% winrate across the board, but not all Katarina players had a 40% winrate. Katarina mains cough Scarra cough, (also famously TiensiNoAkuma and JudyMonica), had about 60% winrates. In high ELO.
How did they accomplish this with a “trash” champion? Simple. They played her the right way, e.g. Gunblade assassin. Most other people invested into tanky stats and CDR, bought Rylai’s to keep people in ult. They built her and played her like Swain or Vladimir, tanky, supporting, and dependent on her base damages. This build, as you may expect, was awful, resulting in complaints that she was a walking ult and useless otherwise.
A more modern example of this mistake would be how Kalista initially was poorly received because (besides bugs) people built her like other ADCs, rushing IE and crit instead of attack speed items. Another example would be Gnar when people didn’t know building tank was better than trying to turn him into a manaless Vayne with free tank stats. In other words, playing a champion wrong usually results in poor reception.
The Rework
Now, the proposed rework had a few goals:
- Remove the Gunblade focus, and allow for build diversity
- Improve early game
- Make her more reliable, less snowbally
- Reduce ult-dependance, which would then make her more reliable
- Increase utility options for when the ult is interrupted
The changes that were made were as follows:
- Passive: Voracity no longer grants gold, and was adjusted in number so that it was harder to ult twice in a teamfight
- Q: Bouncing blades’ AD ratio was removed, was fixed at 5 bounces, and left a mark that would do additional damage when hit by Katarina’s attack or spell
- W: Killer Instincts was removed, and changed to W: Sinister Steel, a “spammable, area-of-effect attack that grants Katarina a brief speed boost when it lands”
- E: Shunpo’s damage was hit hard to account for the new damage spell in Katarina’s kit, and the cooldown increased
- R: Death Lotus now applied Grievous Wounds, and did much less damage per second, as well as being shorter
- Bouncing Blades and Death Lotus were no longer considered single-target for spellvamp
This discouraged the use of Gunblade heavily, with a removed AD ratio and worse spellvamp. While farming was easier due to free waveclear, laning was actually even harder, since no longer could a Killer Instinct Q be used to harass the enemy from range. Despite having another skill to trade with, the Shunpo CD increase made aggressive harass risky unless guaranteed a stronger trade and no coming gank.
In addition, since R did less damage and had power shifted to W, a fully channeled ult was no longer as important to damage potential as it previously was. This made baiting out CC less important, even in 1v1s, since the damage lost from interrupted channels wasn’t as impairing. This, along with the removal of KI decision making and other subtleties, reduced skillfloor for Katarina in general, boosting her winrate for the general population (though Katarina mains’ winrate dropped).
So while many of the goals for the rework were accomplished, they were done so in a way that made it unclear whether the rework was a godsend or a genie wish that grants everything in a twisted way. TiensiNoAkuma explained these failings of the rework to Riot, who adjusted numbers to improve BB poke and Shunpo CD accordingly. Winrate rose even further, to the point where certain item combinations and playstyle could allow anyone to win with relative ease, regardless of skill (read: current tank Ekko).
This coincided with what I am going to call the “Oh Fuck Moment of Realization” (OFMR). While it definitely was not as instantaneous or sudden as that name implies, I think the realization was sufficiently Oh-Fuck-y that I can take a little artistic license. Basically, at the OFMR, people had the following set of realizations:
- Katarina’s damage got shifted from Death Lotus into basic abilities
- Basic abilities reset instantly when she gets a kill
- 2/3 basic abilities are now AoE
- If Katarina can now kill someone, she will end up doing collateral damage to everyone else, so they will then be easier to kill with the new reset
- This will repeat. If Katarina can kill anyone, she can kill the whole team
- Oh Fuck.
Before, when Katarina was more single-target and ult-dependent, she could have spells with more damage without bringing down everyone around her first victim naturally. But now with AoE? Freelo ensued. Katarina got her scalings nerfed to fix the problem, to the point where they were worthless, and she was no longer a terror.
Then comes VoyBoy. Turns out nerfing scaling on the AoE spells doesn’t change the fundamental problem with instant AoE resets, and also doesn’t affect base damage. Enter Tankarina (before S6 made it cool). Build Sunfire. Rely on base damages. Get resets. Do comparable damage to AP Katarina while being unkillable. Get more resets. Get freelo. Riot sees this. Riot nerfs base damage a ton, raises scalings from “really low” to “some”. Finishes by improving ult damage and lengthening channel duration.
Until Today
Katarina was quiet for a short time after the last ult change. Then her “gatekeeper counters” got nerfed in Season 4, which combined with itemization changes and a tendency for players to give up on winning mid entirely and just go bot at 6 for a free double kill, led to harsh ult nerfs early game. Damage was hit, and cooldown was 150% of the previous, at 90 seconds. Even with a pentakill, Katarina’s ult could still be on cooldown before and after a fight, never having been used.
Katarina’s passive then got nerfed, changing from resetting on kills and assists to resetting within a shorter timeframe of 3 seconds since damage, to avoid Katarina winning a skirmish because someone she damaged early on happened to die in a different portion of the fight. The goal was to encourage Katarina players to “contribute more” to fights, rather than sit back.
Then Katarina’s laning base health and health regen were nerfed, to avoid Katarina players sitting back in lane, throwing out blades, and just sustaining through the enemy’s harass until they went out of mana. This, hopefully, would encourage those stubborn Katarina players to interact in lane.
Then Shunpo damage got nerfed, both in base and ratio, because while it is “essential to get around and chain multi-kills” it did too much damage contributing to “midgame burst than what’s intended from a flexible mobility spell.” Katarina now has to be more careful about when she’s entering a fight.
Most recently, she has received a buff. Bouncing blades’ ratio for proccing mark was increased, and no longer loses damage per bounce. While Katarina buffs “make everyone worried,” her weakness in lane has encouraged a way to improve waveclear, giving her power to control the lane to either gank other lanes or kill her opponent. Neat.
Personal Reaction
While I did not play Katarina pre-rework, I still can read about the goals of the rework, as well as changes since, and assess them.
The decision to remove her focus on Gunblade was strange from the start, and the way it was implemented seems even stranger (remove synergy with spellvamp and AD). This is likely a product of Riot’s old design philosophies, as I cannot possibly see this being used as a goal for rework now. “Current Taric uses Iceborn Gauntlet in almost all his games, and we would like to see this changed. His rework will make his cooldowns only reducible through his passive, and he will no longer have AP ratios.” It is literally inconceivable to me that Riot would ever use that as a serious design philosophy now.
Another goal was to increase utility to use for when she’s not ulting. They removed the decision making utility from her kit (Killer Instincts) and gave her movement speed burst instead when damaging people with an ability she would be using either way, which seems to have not only reduced utility, but made it more braindead.
The rework was also intended to make her less ult-dependent. They shifted damage from the ult, making it feel less useful, and eventually had to shift power back to it to avoid unhealthy instant AoE burst reset-dependency. Again, this is very different from their current design philosophy, and I think Riot has realized the problem with this since. Making a champion’s main source of strength weaker- especially when it has clear counterplay, is a distinct ability of the champion, and is arguably the healthiest part of a kit filled with instant burst and reset- is likely a bad call.
Likewise, reducing champion’s weakness (adding spammable sustained waveclear) is not something that seems like it would be supported in the current League of Legends. Finally, much of the outplay potential of Katarina in the form of Death Lotus timing and Shunpo plays, was removed when Death Lotus became weaker and Shunpo CD rose.
Honestly I would say, and I think the current Riot champion designers would agree with me that, if that Katarina rework was proposed today, it would be shot down. The outplay potential of an assassin is reduced, strengths and weaknesses of the champion become more blurred, and the AoE instant burst of Sinister Steel is just asking for trouble when balancing Katarina’s reset passive.
This brings me closer to the modern day. While I will leave the discussion of current-patch, and indeed current-season, Katarina to Part 3, I will make a few comments on the changes since the rework.
First is the Death Lotus nerf that made it harder to snowball off bot lane after losing mid lane. I would say that indicated a problem right there, that it can be assumed that midlane will be lost and the only way to snowball is by helping kill botlane. While the discussion of whether a champion is intended to lose lane and “win by roaming” is healthy can be left for another time, I just would note that this specific nerf hit both laning and roam ability. Now, not only was it less rewarding to somehow get a full ult on your lane opponent that you had trouble killing before, now it was even more punishing to fail. I would argue that this encouraged Kat players to actually be even more passive in lane and/or encourage roaming, since it is now just smarter to sit back and save ult for the next dragon fight rather than waste it trading in lane and not have it later.
Next, the Voracity nerf. While the reasoning for this is fair, and I agree that Katarina should not be able to get resets and escape just by flinging lucky daggers and never engaging. However, once again I feel like this highlights an ongoing issue with Katarina. Her combined rotation, including a full ult, has grown so unrewarding that it is less and less likely that diving to start a Death Lotus in the middle of the fight will be worth the risk. Thus, Katarinas will skirt around the edge throwing daggers until someone gets low and they can reset.
The survivability nerfs in lane were even more frustrating. Yes, it is true that Katarina can be uninteractive in lane simply by spamming daggers to trade until the opponent is oom. Yes, that lack of interactivity in lane creates a boring and potentially unfair lane of attrition. Yes, other champions like Zed who can spam ranged poke and lifesteal off minions has other weaknesses like skillshots and high shadow cooldown. But the fact that Katarina often had to depend on attrition was sad in that it was the only way to not even necessarily win, but survive lane.
It is fine that Katarina has a weakness, and that happens to be emphasized in the laning phase. Once again, reducing survivability had the opposite of the intended effect. Now, without tankiness or even decent health regen, Katarina cannot afford to aggressively trade in lane. As Thalies said in a post from a few months ago, she is “unplayable in higher elo unless you have a jungle camp for you. Almost every champion counters Katarina. That’s her weakness and so is her laning phase. But when riot made the health changes it became almost impossible to lane as the champion. We basically are forced to now roam and hopefully get fed.” Taking Shunpo damage down only did more to encourage defensive use, and passive play, rather than aggressive trades that were now even more likely to be a loss for the Katarina.
There is a difference between a Vlad-style difficult laning phase because opponents can bully you early, and a difficult lane because you are never strong enough to fight and the opponent can never reach you. The former results in interesting back-and-forth zoning and early aggression. The latter results in an uninteractive farm lane. Scarra hit the nail on the head when he said “At the moment it's not fun to play a champion that loses 98% of lanes and has low impact unless spoonfed kills by the jungler or attempting to turn overzealous sidelane play through the use of tp. The repeated nerfs to her make it so that there's not really even outplay potential on her kit anymore, it's really just up to the enemy to mess up and you to pray you can capitalize on it.”
This is the main reason I dislike the recent changes to Katarina, as they are hitting her in the wrong places and only encourage the passive playstyle that Riot rightly considers to be bad for the game as a whole. Even the recent buff that is meant to “promote waveclear” and help out Katarina’s laning through poke didn’t really address the fundamental problems that have been extant since the rework.
TLDR; Healthy gameplay from Katarina has been hard to encourage since her rework, and the current balancing team cannot really be blamed for failing to fix Katarina’s main issues, since they were given a rotten champion and can only do so much without another rework.
Please discuss which of these points and conclusions you agree or disagree with in the comments, so that we can help Riot **make Katarina great again™. **
