Boards›Gameplay

"Katarina is balanced and only good in low elo lol"

M Schumacher··17 votes·2,746 views

I mean her design isn't completely toxic at all.

Let's take a champion, and make her resourcless, which makes her gated by cooldowns. Then lets give her a passive that removes that gate LOL. Also giving her one of the safest laning phases in the game right up there with Leblanc and Zed (which have actual resource costs and use their escape tools to harass), and the ability to get a single kill at any point in the game (which with her kit is guaranteed) to snowball completely out of control and be the bane of focus for all remaining teamfights.

Typical Kat main argument responses: -"But she isn't seen in LC$ so she isn't op lol" Yeah, It's almost like those are professional teams that have the coordination to deal with her. She's still sitting at a healthy 51% win rate in Challenger and 56% win rate in Diamond, but I guess she's only good at pubstomping Bronzies right?

-"It's hard to know when to go in" This can be said for literally any Assassin champion, but this argument is only used by Katarina mains. It's also negating the fact that she doesn't even need her ultimate to kill the entire enemy team once ONE of them is low enough to reset her abilities.

Let's look at the facts: Katarina is a resourcless assassin that is low risk, high reward, coupled with a safe laning phase that demands constant focus at all points in the game regardless of whether she is fed or not. This is very poor design in my opinion, a champion that can be shut down in lane and just pick up two kills which is VERY EASY TO DO on Katarina and become a huge problem IS a problem.

She needs an entire rework to her kit, not base HP nerfs.

16 Comments

Kariu Rena6 votes

56% win rate 90% ban rate in asia nuff said

M Schumacher2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Camped by Dad,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=uEaEar91,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2015-03-23T21:27:09.344+0000)

56% win rate 90% ban rate in asia nuff said

Nah man shes balanced cuz she can't 1v5 vs hard cc

disregardable3 votes

Since when is a silence, fear, or an exhaust hard cc?

Troy2426213 votes

[{quoted}](name=The AFK Farmer,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=uEaEar91,comment-id=000000000000,timestamp=2015-03-23T22:11:12.985+0000)

Since when is a silence, fear, or an exhaust hard cc?

Since literally always. It has never been considered anything but hard CC. What are you on about?

LankPants1 votes

There are a few definitions for hard CC with no one universally accepted definition. One of them is just any CC that interrupts channels.

disregardable1 votes

I was told hard CC was only stuns and knockups- those that prevent any form of counter.

Minrog1 votes

It's taking away the ability to issue movement commands that makes it a hard CC. A snare and a fear are both hard CC because the character that's being CC'ed no longer controls their character.

Silence/Exhaust/Slow are all soft CC's because the affected target can still walk away.

Poptart Evelynn5 votes

Safest lane? Are you serious?

Narasimha4 votes

She's fine. Her entire kit's power is in her ultimate. Shut that down, and suddenly, she's no threat.

Katarina is a resourcless assassin that is low risk, high reward

I honestly recommend you change this atleast, because you're going to be laughed out of any credibility you have. Low risk? Her entire combo forces her to jump into melee range and STAY there to get her damage off. If that's safe to you, you clearly haven't played against very many champions

Sooko3 votes

I don't think there are many people that still say that tbh

DeloricVI2 votes

While there are a lot of champions out there that become much less of a problem when you have full team coordination (RIP Competitive Heimerdinger Mains) and Katarina is one of them. When you have a whole team vs team situation, a well-coordinated one will take Kat out of the equation, whether it's focusing her and not letting her do anything, or if it's pushing her away, or what have you.

Now, we all know why she's so hard to fight in soloqueue, especially at lower elo, but here comes the thorny issue: how to balance the game. Riot has to make a decision when they hand out the latest allotments of nerfs and buffs. They have a lot to consider, but the issue that is thorniest and has no real good answer is to balance for the low elo soloqueue thickies or for the high-level LCS pros. They can't always make both parties happy.

They want the LCS pros to use diverse champions in the game and have options with counterplay and creative use of champions. If you're at the professional level, and you are higher skill level than your opponents as Katarina, you're very likely to be successful, as you know what to look out for. You've probably had practice games with other teams that exploit the weaknesses of Katarina, so you hopefully know what to do under the circumstances, and with any luck you'll be able to pull out the win. Also, as a professional at League, that is your occupation, your income, your livelyhood. If you you do badly, to don't get paid quite as much. Sponsors can drop players if they want and if they screw up too much, so having a balanced and level playing field is really important. The LCS would not exist if the game wasn't balanced at the high level because no one would play.

That is for a professional player.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of lower elo players; roughly 90% of players in ranked are bronze, so I read. That means that if you don't nerf some champions that ruin games and friendships in soloqueue at low levels of play, you have a lot of people in the forums that are yelling at you from all angles demanding change, instead of trying to figure out how to get around these characters like Hiemer, Kat, and Fiora. If most of your fanbase is in an uproar, it's hard to ignore them, despite everyone else telling these people that they just need to get better at the game, which is usually the truth. I mean, think about it, if everyone on your team knew katarina's flaws and exploited them, would any chump with a computer, 3250 IP, and a dream be able to get very far? Probably not.

So, on some champions Riot is in a catch 22 with it. If they nerf Katarina, that's one less option that the pros have and it makes the game less varied and interesting. At the same time, the longer they leave her alone, the more the hate messages asking for a nerf or a rework just pile up. I wouldn't be surprised if threads asking for reworks of certain champions were filtered out of Rioter's version of the forums, to be honest.

Uiru2 votes

"We don't want the game to be decided at champ select" Katarina did you bring cc

Even then... ~Uiru

Lugg1 votes

Great post.

Juecreamator1 votes

I like to play kat as well and yes if snowballing your unstoppable but if playing against it is easy to get stuns, knockup/backs, silences. There are easy ways to counter her but still even though I love playing her. I think the only way they should nerf her is by her not scaling as much in her ap. Rework to her kit may ending up basically taking her out of the game and not making her Katarina anymore. Also like zed there are easy counters that don't have cc either.Zed Lux

Juecreamator4 votes

{quoted}

I like to play kat as well and yes if snowballing your unstoppable but if playing against it is easy to get stuns, knockup/backs, silences. There are easy ways to counter her but still even though I love playing her. I think the only way they should nerf her is by her not scaling as much in her ap. Rework to her kit may ending up basically taking her out of the game and not making her Katarina anymore. Also like zed there are easy counters that don't have cc either.Zed Lux

Forgot to say she has one of the most dangerous laning phases being a close range assassin. Engaging completely puts your life at risk, and with the right coordination she can be easily shut down when she attempts to engage.

Xhader1 votes

An ungated aoe assassin? What's the problem, I don't see it

More from Gameplay

3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay764 comments
7,167
votes
3 Refunds per season, upvote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay156 comments
3,510
votes
UPVOTE FOR URF
Gameplay606 comments
2,440
votes
Yes plz.
Gameplay456 comments
1,721
votes
3 Refunds per season, up vote if you want 3 refunds per season.
Gameplay114 comments
1,716
votes
When is ANYONE at riot going to address the awful new player experience?
Gameplay634 comments
1,383
votes

More by M Schumacher

"Vayne's early game is bad", Vayne players
Gameplay153 comments
96
votes
Its almost laughable that Vayne still has no nerfs pending
Gameplay100 comments
94
votes
41 Champions have been released since bans were increased to 3 per team (3 years and 8 months ago)
Gameplay50 comments
79
votes
Riot nerfing junglers AGAIN
Gameplay108 comments
77
votes
As a support main can we buff Sona
Gameplay153 comments
75
votes
Skarner got gutted.... again
Gameplay44 comments
66
votes