The State of Katarina
Hi, I am Infinite Naught; a 3(?) year old Katarina main that has 473k Mastery Points. I am hear to talk about Katarina's current state and how I feel about it.
Current Katarina is currently holding a 43.9% ban rate across all ELOs; specifically 4th place (according to League of Graphs). There's a few reasons why, really. When Riot decided to rework Katarina, they essentially upped her overall damage by introducing daggers and lowered her instantaneous burst and speed by a lot by adding delays to her daggers and a cast time to her shunpo. Since she has more burst in the early game, she becomes extremely oppressive to almost anyone she lane’s against (except for Corki and Ryze). However, her burst doesn’t get any faster after Hextech Gunblade; it just stops right there making her fall off as the game goes on.
Speaking of how she does as the game goes along, League of Graphs shows that, Globally, her win rate is highest at 10 minutes, and gets worse as the game goes on; dropping below 50% after 25 minutes. I looked at other mid lane champions using the same parameter (Global), and the only champion that looks like Katarina is Leblanc; both fall off after early game. One of the prime factors that causes her to fall off is her Kill Time. Her Kill Time is directly tied to her daggers. Since her dagger speed is 1.25 seconds, she’s dead before she can actually use them. Why is that? One of the things I noticed in Blood Moon mode is the kill speed of Assassins and Camille. From what I can see, Katarina takes too long to burst somebody without the help of Hextech Gunblade, Luden’s Echo, or the Demon Buff. What’s worse is Edge of Night which cuts off her immediate burst from either Shunpo or Hextech Gunblade. Most assassins in that mode fuck her over before she can really use daggers unless they don’t see her coming. This is impossible versus people with less than a second kill times like Kha’zix, Rengar, Zed, or Diana. And even people that have some form of untargetability or damage ignore like Fizz, Ekko, or Zed.
Now, how does this transfer into normal Summoner’s Rift? One of the reasons why champions get killed in a literal instant is because of the overwhelming amount of damage in the game. Most of Katarina’s Damage is either tied to Daggers or Death Lotus; both of which are extremely delayed compared to Auto Attacks. Now why does she do so much damage in the early game? This is because at level 3, she has access to 6 instances of damage; Bouncing Blade, two Shunpos, Thunderlord’s, and two Daggers. This makes her extremely powerful despite the damage of Shunpo.
What can be done to fixed this? In my opinion, I believe Katarina should get faster, much weaker, and more daggers. I also personally believe Katarina should get a different/better ultimate. The problem with Death Lotus is that it’s antithetical to the design image of Katarina when they reworked her at the Assassin Update. I am NOT everywhere at once when I am channeling Death Lotus. I’m here stuck in place shooting daggers at 3 other people when I’m probably gonna get fucked over from the obscene burst in this patch. I’d rather have something that synergizes with her daggers like, “Quickly blink to all daggers nearby, even catching daggers that haven’t fell yet, getting to a dagger every .25 seconds.” It would probably make her much better as a champion and not the broken thing she is at the moment. I only felt like doing this because I was done being too slow of an assassin in game, and not being able to play her half the time in ranked.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
