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Thoughts on a Katarina Rebalance

Dranday·2/26/2015, 3:04:07 AM·2 votes·411 views

As we know, Katarina Katarina has become notorious for her ability to jump into a team and dish out what can only really be described as crazy damage. Some friends and myself were discussing some ideas for a way to keep Katarina's damage (and resets) from getting a bit out of hand, and this post will be discussing those very changes. I will be including some numbers on the matter that are taking the assumption that the average Katarina has roughly 500 AP (about the mean for most Katarina's I've seen.)

As far as her passive goes, the change I propose is simple but impactful.

VORACITY BEFORE:

Whenever an enemy champion dies within 3 seconds of Katarina dealing damage to them, her cooldowns will be reduced by 15 seconds.

AFTER:

Whenever Katarina gains a kill, her cooldowns are reduced by 15 seconds (10 second cooldown reduction on assists), the effect applying first to Bouncing Blades, then applying the remaining time to Sinister Steel, the remainder of that to Shunpo, and any remaining cooldown time to Death Lotus.

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Now, before anyone thinks this change is a death sentence to Katarina and her reset assassin capability, consider the following numbers.

If Katarina has perfect 40% cooldown reduction, her cooldowns are as following: Q: 4.8s W: 2.4s E: 3.6s R: 27s

She is already a low-cooldown assassin, meaning this change will not be as impactful as some might initially think.

The cooldowns will be reset in the following manner (assuming her Q, W, E, and R are all immediately on full cooldown.)

On a kill... Q: RESET (10.2s remaining CDR) W: RESET (7.8s remaining CDR) E: RESET (4.2s remaining CDR) R: 22.8s CD Remaining (4.2s CDR Applied)

On an assist... Q: RESET (5.2s remaining CDR) W: RESET (2.8s remaining CDR) E: .8s CD Remaining (2.8s CDR Applied) R: UNAFFECTED

Bear in mind, all the values in a real teamfight will be higher than the given values, meaning that there might only be 2s left on her Q to reset, meaning 12.2s of CDR will be applicable to the rest of her kit, as so on.

This change will effectively only give Katarina a full 15s CDR on her ultimate if her entire kit is off cooldown, which is arguably more likely considering the following proposed changes to her ultimate, making the change impactful for instantaneous assassination resets, but not sustained damage resets (where Katarina's teamfighting will be headed with this rebalance.)

DEATH LOTUS BEFORE:

Katarina rapidly spins in place and channels for 2.5 seconds, throwing a barrage of up to 30 daggers at the closest 3 enemy champions within range. Each dagger deals 35 / 55 / 75 (+ 25% AP) (+ 37.5% bonus AD) magic damage and applies Grievous Wounds for 3 seconds, reducing regeneration and incoming healing by 50%.

Death Lotus can hit a single enemy champion no more than 10 times.

AFTER:

Katarina rapidly spins in place and channels for 2.5 seconds, throwing a barrage of up to 30 daggers at the closest 3 enemy champions within range. Each dagger deals 35 / 55 / 75 (+ 25% AP) (+ 37.5% bonus AD) magic damage, the damage per dagger reduced for each additional champion the ultimate is targeting (down to 80% damage, 28 / 44 / 60 (+20% AP) (+30% bonus AD) ).

Each dagger applies a stacking debuff to the champion hit, applying Grievous Wounds at 4 stacks, each additional dagger refreshing this debuff. These stacks last for .75 seconds.

Death Lotus can hit a single enemy champion no more than 10 times.

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This change would preserve Katarina's great power in skirmishes up to a 2v2 (give or take), but also require more fine positioning in a teamfight, lest Katarina's damage be lessened by the grouping of the champions. By diving into the enemy team, Katarina minimizes her damage output, forcing a more assassin-like playstyle if players are looking to preserve her insane damage. This change would make Katarina more of a close-range AP Mage than an AP Assassin.

Here's a side-by-side comparison of the damage Katarina will do depending on how many champions she is damaging at one time.

1 Champion: 350 / 550 / 750 (+250% AP) (+375% bonus AD) with 500 AP... 1600 / 1800 / 2000 magic damage to champion.

2 Champions: 315 / 495 / 675 (+225% AP) (+337.5% bonus AD) with 500 AP... 1440 / 1620 / 1800 magic damage to each champion.

3 Champions: 280 / 440 / 600 (+200% AP) (+300% bonus AD) with 500 AP... 1280 / 1440 / 1600 magic damage to each champion.

This rebalance should be able to push down Katarina's insane teamfight presence while still keeping her presence as an assassin in 1v1 and 2v2 scenarios. It will require Katarina players to make the decision between moderate AOE damage and high single/double target damage.

From an analytical standpoint, one might notice that at max rank, death lotus does damage equal to a rank 1 death lotus to each champion. Simply put, each additional champion causes death lotus to deal damage equal to one rank less than it currently is.

The change to her grievous wounds debuff will better reward good positioning, and the upscaling of her damage as people reposition (and others are left behind) will still punish those who fail to react fast enough.

Overall, these changes should turn Katarina's teamfighting into something more akin to a close-range AP Mage than a resetting AP Assassin.

Personally, I like my rebalance idea, but I developed it, so that is to be expected.

What do you all think of it? I'm more than happy to take critique to this. Have at it!

2 Comments

ModThe Djinn2/26/2015, 3:20:10 AM2 votes

Interesting suggestions. I'm actually okay with the Ultimate adjustment conceptually (damage values are always adjustable, so I typically just look at mechanics unless the damage seems very out of line), although I think the stacking mechanic is unnecessarily complex for the extra .25-.5 seconds without Grievous Wounds that occurs. Then again, I'm also of the opinion that Grievous Wounds is, at best, an awkward mechanic and, at worst, a mechanic that severely messes with the balance of healing abilities across the game. I'd prefer to see it cut from Katarina's kit entirely...but that's another story.

I can't say I like your passive change though. I do see what you were trying to do with it, but I think it's both overly complicated (especially for the poor Katarina player, who previously relied on knowing that all her abilities refreshed in order to keep up her ability chaining, and now may lose time trying to figure out which abilities actually are off cooldown, and may press a few wrong buttons along the way) and designed taking an inaccurate situation into account.

See, champions with automatic cooldown refreshing abilities typically don't build cooldown. When their automatic refreshes trigger, they automatically get their abilities back, so the cooldown doesn't matter. Add to this the fact that, with the removal of DFG, cooldown options for manaless AP characters approach 0 (CDR boots, runes, masteries, Will of the Ancients [and Katarina has better options]), and you've just put Kat in a really awkward place, since you calculated this passive reduction value assuming her cooldowns at 40% CDR.

I also think this detracts heavily from what makes Katarina unique -- her agile, high-ability use teamfight presence. I'm okay with a weaker ult (or even one that doesn't reset, honestly), but I think removing her ability to refresh Shunpo reliably during a fight really eats into what makes Katarina into Katarina.