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[MEGATHREAD] Let's Discuss: Katarina & Evelynn

Shacophobia·9/27/2018, 9:22:14 PM·56 votes·18,414 views

It’s been a long while, but after all these years the issue hasn’t really disappeared: it’s been a while since the Assassin Update launched, but we’re still feeling the mixed consequences today. While Rengar and LeBlanc have received full or partial reverts, there continues to be mixed opinions on the state of Katarina, an issue that has split her community, and earned criticism from pro players such as Scarra. On top of that, while her rework was much later, Evelynn has also created a similar split, and had mixed reception on her gameplay since she got relaunched. Her patch history has been equally rough since, with her going very often from weak to overbearing and back. Because of this, it might be time to open discussion on both champs via a megathread. We’re at a point where most players and Riot are aware that the Assassin Update, and the changes in design that followed, weren’t entirely successful. Assassins like Eve and Kat continue to have problems, and we need to talk about what can be done. Because of this, let’s try giving feedback that answers these questions: • What is your criticism of the current state of Evelynn/Katarina? • What do you want Evelynn/Katarina’s gameplay fantasy to be? • What changes would you suggest to Evelynn/Katarina? Your feedback could be about Eve, Kat, or both. As more replies get made, this post will fill out with a summary of the most commonly cited feedback. Come back often!

126 Comments

Katastrophical9/27/2018, 9:49:19 PM35 votes

Katarina very desperately needs some quality of life changes. Hextech Gunblade is extremely unreliable when trying to queue lots of spells at the same time and makes it hard to get clean, fast-paced plays. Her Shunpo delay also causes some weird bugs, for example dodging any knock-up spell with her E, but getting hit during the cast time, will cause Kat to be stunned on target location for the duration of the knock-up, during which time she can be ulted by Yasuo, despite visually clearly not being knocked up.

Lots of people push for a Kat revert, but honestly i think she will be fine after receiving some bugfix/QoL love

0 Hogapu9/27/2018, 9:51:12 PM28 votes

I'll talk about Katarina only :

• What is your criticism of the current state of Evelynn/Katarina?

Overall, a champion that seems fair to play as and against, and pretty bad to play with.

Playing as : -Shunpo doesn't feel smooth ( instant ) and we lost part of Kat's previous identity there. -Feels rewarded when ennemies do mistakes (= stepping on daggers around midlife), and even more when they don't and you still kill them. However this is much harder to pull off, and you feel like you can't really outplay players that know how katarina works. -Her laning phase is quite bad atm, and the power you get when getting gunblade is just to immense compared to how bad her laning phase actually is. On the other hand, her early 2v2 potential is good, given that she can reset.

Playing against : -Somewhat clear strengths, that can be played around. Pretty easy to deny with shields/heals. However, a little bit too strong when really ahead (but rarely happens in lane only) -Laning against is stressful, but not too hard. Things get out of control when she gets Gunblade

Playing with : -Allies DO NOT SEE daggers properly. Meaning they don't know what katarina is able to do, and where she can dash/reset/deal damage. And this is actually a big issue. -Feel confident when you have a Katarina in your team, as your job mostly relies on "dealing as much damage as possible so that Kat can clean this up"

• What do you want Evelynn/Katarina’s gameplay fantasy to be?

I think it's quite good atm : an assassin that can reset off the whole ennemy team when played properly. The most important part in Katarina's kit definitely is her passive, Voracity. I'm really happy about the general idea of Katarina's gameplay.

• What changes would you suggest to Evelynn/Katarina?

-Removing shunpo's cast time. I am NOT talking about the way dagger fall on the ground, but the 0.075 s = 75 ms cast time she has on shunpo that makes it clunky to use her, while not adding counterplay to ennemies whatsoever. Her counterplay resolves in the time dagger take to fall on the ground, and it is really fine the way it is.

-Buffing her laning phase by giving her base stats buffs, while nefing her synergy with Gunblade (lowering AD ratios seems to be an effective way to hurt her Gunblade powerspike while not hitting her mid/late game)

-Making allies see daggers exactly as Katarina and ennemies do. I mean the full red circle thingy, not only the little dagger that gets lost by the flood of the teamfight.

-Make Shunpo instant again :((

Thanks for reading, good idea to make a Megathread like this (:

Pokemonred2009/27/2018, 9:28:33 PM26 votes

I actually like Evelynn's current play patterns a lot, tbh. I just wish her builds weren't exclusively AP. I did enjoy some AD Evelynn back in the day, and that playstyle was completely removed.

mirAcIe9/27/2018, 9:53:35 PM11 votes

1] What is your criticism of your character, currently?

My current problem with new Evelynn is that rework was supposed to fix things, yet it spawned a shadow of a champion with enough problems of its own. The switch from a jack of all trades stealth fighter to a burst assassin mage was done without having the actual gameplay in mind. This left Evelynn with formulated gameplay making every game low variance and almost completely removed skill expression. And the only change to her kit that actually addressed the unhealthiness of her former self was moving stealth to level 6 which doesn’t count as a major change.

2] What do you want this character's gameplay fantasy to be?

  1. I want Evelynn to have a meaningful early game. Right now her early game has devolved into playing scared and picking whatever you can get or what can your teammates can help you get while you wait until you start winning the stat check.
  2. I want Evelynn to have different build paths, opening up to different playstyles that aren’t revolving around dealing as much upfront damage as possible.
  3. I want Evelynn to have real combat gameplay. Currently the dynamic that exists between her and her opponent comes down to 2 scenarios: 1. When enemy sees the W debuff, they have to disengage. When Evelynn doesn’t use W on the enemy, she better not show her face around them unless she wins the stat check (which is what she’s working towards every single game). There are no ifs or planning ahead. The way I want it to be fixed is through giving her mobility so she could hold her own against other champions outside of statchecks. Stalking prey is fun and fits her thematically, but right now most of the time she does nothing but stalking and it limits her gameplay quite a bit.

3] What changes would you suggest?

It's up to Riot, but I would prefer that she had more playmaking tools and could stay in combat longer, similar to Akali. All this in exchange for the raw unfront damage she has right now. Someone from Evelynn mains discord suggested letting you choose the dash direciton after ulting, I like that idea. It's a good start but she needs more.

VoraciousX9/28/2018, 7:12:07 AM8 votes

I think Kat's problem is that while other assassins got reverts on their delayed abilities, Kat still has that delay on her daggers. Early game it's fine, but late game that delay can mean a huge difference. A lot of the time late game you have to make them chase you at low health and hope they step near your dagger to get the jump on them and kill them, otherwise you die. Another problem is that her E makes you walk to the last target you had to auto attack them after it. This should be changed to the last damaged champion(so that you always auto the target of your E), because this causes big problems as well. So for changes to Kat, I would say 25 seconds less on dagger drop on ranks 2 and 3 of her ultimate, and the bug fix on E that I mentioned.

As for Evelynn, I quit playing her after her rework pretty much. She's still kinda fun, but losing the dual scaling, and the huge delay on her W made her really unfun to play as compared to before. The only way you can have fun with Evelynn's kit is if you're fed, and there's a lot of barriers stopping you from getting fed. A lot of assassins lost their delays on their abilities that were intentionally delayed. Leblanc didn't even have to be in melee range, and Rengar can get in melee range easily. Evelynn on the other hand has to walk up to someone basically in melee range to proc her W or get any form of real damage. For her I would suggest lowering her W prep time per rank in W. Possibly going from 2.5/2.25/2/1.75/1.5. I wouldn't wanna go overboard but an E range increase also wouldn't be terribly disappointing. I'd be afraid that she might become overpowered if that's the case though, so I dunno. Damage isn't something I wanna play with for either of them, as they have plenty of damage, it's just their reliability to get that damage off compared to other assassins(Caitlyn has more range than Eve's stealth indicator for example) is much less. I think I much preferred AD Evelynn over AP Evelynn. Duskblade was really fun on old Eve. Maybe if she only is allowed to be one or the other, AD would be better. She'd have access to Edge of Night and Ghostblade to get in range, and Duskblade would synergize much better with her E.

Support Evelynn9/28/2018, 6:02:40 AM5 votes

Posted this on the Eve discord:

What is your criticism of the current state of this champion?

I have played a lot, a lot of new eve in an attempt to learn it. So I feel like I have a good basis between new and old eve.

The biggest problem with new Eve is her charm. Because of it she is way too slow and telegraphed for anything she wants to do. To the point where her main goal is to get to a place where she doesn't even want to use her charm past laning phase. We saw this with the Rengar and Leblanc changes, and to a lesser extent the Fizz changes where delays on damage just make assassins ineffective and unfun when numbers are actually balanced. The only reason Eve is remotely successful at the moment is because her numbers are so high that she can kill people with half her kit and next to no items. Put her in a place where her charm is necesarry and she will drop to 45% winrate instantly and never see play again.

Another criticism I have is the Q. This ability is only the way it is because of how charm works. It is only designed to be a ranged activator and that's it, which makes me wonder why they attached such a huge amount of burst damage onto it. To put it bluntly this ability feels absolutely horrible. It is the difference between doing damage and doing negative damage. If your enemy happens to dodge it or you miss it you are very likely never going to kill your target unless you're hyper fed, and the worst part is that the cooldown is sooo fucking looooooooooooooooooooooong. When Q is down it feels like your character just became limp and can't do anything and needs to live in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives.

Riot, Skillshots and long CDs do not make abilities more fun. Also please for the love of all that is good and holy, do something about Q AI. I have had it go backwards to hit a minion when there's a 2 HP champion in front of me. This isn't a skillful change to Eve, it is an incredibly frustrating problem. When my initial Q can miss a target entirely, not hit anything and not even have the AI from old Q, this is a problem.

A more minor gripe I have is with her E. Not a big fan that if I'm snared with empowered E that it's basically a stun and there's nothing I can do about it. Please make it like Warwick's Q where a short press is regular non dash and a hold is a dash so she can have more options here.

And finally, continuity from old eve. This to me is just weird. Eve before this rework was always a fast, hybrid, cleanup crew type champion. Right now eve feels slow, delibrate, and dare I say completely unexciting for most of the game. Not only do you have to wait 6 to 9 mins to get your iconic stealth (where she even becomes remotely fun) you don't have any proactive movement speed, you don't have any super quick flashy combos, you just press W and hope you can position right to land q or E on them. Old eve had a lot of outs, a lot of playstyles and a lot of builds. For people who played her she was an incredibly exciting and versatile champion and your rework does not capture this.

I wonder why champions like Warwick and eventually champions like Fizz/Leblanc and Rengar got so much attention to make them actually feel like their original style of gameplay with some modernization while Evelynn got a completely new outlook.

You didn't expand Evelynn's player pool, you only changed it.

What do you want this champion’s gameplay fantasy to be?

To me Evelynn's gameplay fantasy has always been a quick, stealthy, and resourceful champion that can beat you to death with any items she has. This had been her identity for years and it's what I fell in love with. Her speed being her mobility and her hybrid scalings are things I'd love to see come back. I also wouldn't be averse to some stealth tweaks, like the opportunity to get it back earlier.

What changes would you suggest to this champion?

I am not a game designer, and I'm incredibly bias. But there's a few changes I wouldn't mind seeing happen with her kit.

Let's move out of order and start with what I consider to be the "offending ability", her charm.

This ability puts Evelynn in a spot where she can never truly be balanced. And you should know this because of champions like original Eve and Rengar. Hard CC from stealth is always a problem, and it always feels like bullshit to the person on the recieving end. I think if there was an ability that just needs to be scrapped it's this one.

What I'd like to see here is an ability that gives her movement speed to get on top of targets, and perhaps as a throwback to the orginal Evelynn proc a slow on the first target she hits when jumping out of stealth.

Now for the passive:

Thing I hate about passive is that since it's the truly defining gameplay feature of evelynn, it's incredibly frustrating that I can not access it until at minimum 6 and a half mins into the game, usually more like 8. This means for a good chunk of the game I am not playing the champion I want to play. If charm is handled I honestly think you could remove the gate on this passive.

Q:

For Q I think the whole skillshot thing is a bit silly, but if it needs to exist for some reason I'd say that you need to make the AI priroritize champions regardless of what you hit with it.The hatespike damage itself is so low that it makes no sense that you can't hit champions with it when you want to. It's incredibly frustrating and does not add a layer of skill, it just makes things inconsistent.

I'd say what should happen is Q cooldown should go lower, damage should be lower on the damage amp and the Q AI should be significantly more intelligent if straight up removing the skillshot is not an option. E:

I mentioned this before. But please when E is empowered make it so I can short press for a non dash E so I have something to do when I'm snared instead of watching myself die.

R: I like this ability as a whole. I think it's actually pretty fun. But when mixed with charm it's complete bullshit. If charm is removed however I hope you guys move to the old idea of restealthing immediately after ult is casted to create more gameplay opportunities.

Jeff da Buffalo9/28/2018, 12:42:13 AM5 votes

To make this short, Evelynn needs to have multiple build paths and rely less on lucky mid game snowballing while Katarina needs her instant shunpo back and better visuals on her daggers.

I am 129/28/2018, 10:43:46 AM4 votes

RIP AD Eve item 3070

StarGuardianWeeb9/28/2018, 9:28:15 PM3 votes

Honestly I like new Kat idk why im in the minority but playing her is fun. Old kat was just ez mode.

New Evelyn to I agree. I like everything but her E, its stupid that it brings you, a squishy assassin meant to rely on stealth and sneak attacks, right into the face of anyone. Like oh yeah I SO wanna be face to face with the darius im trying to kill. I dont wanna go back to the old but even tho shes recent they need to rewrok thatE into something more usefull. Hell even a static Magic Pen bonus would be more useful than "i sure hope this kills them so they dont punch my face in!"

B449/28/2018, 1:33:16 PM2 votes

kat is fine yall just bad

Chillee9/28/2018, 11:44:54 PM2 votes

Eh, both Kats are annoying. I prefer the new one, because it's slightly less faceroll-y.

Terozu9/28/2018, 1:27:54 AM1 votes

As someone who plays both of them a lot I'll just say I love both of them, Evelynn's level 6 powerspike is massive even compared to other champions and it fits her theme as a lustful stalker really well.

She has clear counterplay and can duel when used properly, she is hard to balance but she has always been hard to balance.

Katarina is fluid to me, the cast time can be semi circumvented if you cast shunpo while the dagger is falling since its actually still targetable durkng this time. I wil say her not auto targeting her shunpo target is annoying but that's really it.