I think Rito will completely overhall Kalista's Oathsworn Mechanic

[tl;dr]: Kalista W/R/Oathsworn passive are excess/bad mechanics for game. Kalista should be more utility imo, she should be able to carry still if fed like any other carry and yeah.

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#Nerfed(W&R)

When Kalista was insanely 'overpowered' I didn't notice it or felt it at all, maybe it was because I was low elo (gold/plat which I still am at right now) but I just never noticed it. They went on to nerf her and started with her ultimate and bonus damage from W, reason being they believed the theme/playstyle of the champion created by the community should be more prevalent. This theme was in her passive kiting and her rend so they left these abilities alone and saw the W and ULT as excess power to her theme.

Now that Riot is looking at reworking her I think it makes sense to change her W and her Ultimate entirely. Mechanically the passive portion of her W was just extra damage and not very interesting. It pushed lane phase trades in her favor with little though as supports and carries often focus down the same target, I imagine people rarely said "nice we got off the Oathsworn damage!" when playing with Kalista. The active part of her W was very interesting and it made sense to nerf this too, although the thought of spooky ghosts swarming ally jungle and river is cool it's excess power to the kite/rend Kalista. A large part of her strong lane phase is tied to her W, constant 'wards' to stay safe and %health damage for trading so they had to nerf this.

#Sentinel

The active portion of Kalista's W is unique but the passive portion is not, if they were to rework her I think they should remove the passive portion entirely. If they want to add a different active to Kalista's W they should tie it to something new.

#Oathsworn/Fate's Call

Her ultimate thematically made no sense, in order to become Oathsworn you would have to give your life to Kalista and commit sudoku or be dead, you're only dead so often in league (unless you're me and dead all the time). Also bringing your ally into the ghost zone and then launching themselves at someone is just weird and I don't think Kalista actually has that power. Gameplay wise sure it was cool to have but really didn't fit in the game and is one of the things that made Kalista hard to balance. Reason being she gave her support a get out of jail free card, had hard CC engage, and enabled a lot of unique ability combinations which are nice (insanely interesting) but combined with the rest of her kit is too much power.

#Theme

Before thinking about changes to her ultimate we have to think about what Kalista's theme is. On paper she is a revenge ghost so this means she gets her revenge and is spooky, also in her past life she was a high ranking knight so she knows kung fu and stuff. Looking more into gameplay she was a utility carry that quickly became a hard carry due to her mechanics. However on gameplay paper she seems like she should still be a utility carry similar to Ashe or Sivir. She has unique utility with her W, has no damage steroids and her presence as a carry is only in kiting + increasing threat level due to how many times she auto attacks.

Thematically in game martial poise demonstrates her knightlyness along with her Q. W and E represents her spookyness being able to have spooky ghosts everywhere and stab you with a bunch of spears. Actual 'revenge' type mechanics, like Garen's villain mechanic, tend to be uninteresting and just frustrating to play against.

#Priority So instead we should look at other ways 'revenge' can be turned into team focused gameplay as a utility based carry. In general I believe these changes should, in no particular order:

1. Remove Oathsworn/Buddy System Mechanic entirely
2. Remove some damage from rend (as a utility carry you rely more on helping your team)
3. Add more ways to improve teamplay
4. Make fighting Kalista less frustrating to play against
5. Remove some strength from lane phase fights, add strengths to utility
6. Sharpen out her vengeance theme w/o "enemy team is ahead" mechanics

[For now I'm hella tired so I think any ideas I come up with will be trash. I apologize if I rambled a lot, too tired to look over, more or maybe less changes and the order is in no priority at all. I will think of ideas** tomorrow** after researching a bit more on Revenge/Spooky Ghosts/ Kalista Lore/ Shadow Isles/ Utility/ Teamfights. Yes, I have a lot of spare time]

I don't even know why I typed up so much, I rarely play Kalista compared to how often I play other champions but I love her and her story so.

Edit before sleeping; I think that Kalista should be a utility carry but maybe I'm immensely off, feel free to talk about what playstyle Kalista should orient herself with if utility isn't the option