Will my Kayle playstyle be preserved in her rework?

Hemulen Magi··3 votes·867 views

I enjoy playing Kayle as a moderately tanky enchanter support with item 3401 item 3107 item 3504 as my core items and Guardian as my keystone. She fits a gameplay fantasy as a guardian angel with clutch ults, strong heals, and decent resistance debuffing with her passive and sometimes item 3091 to soften up opponents. Building tanky lets her risk sticking around in fights without reserving her heals and ult for herself.

My previous experience with reworks makes me worried that the off-role flexibility will not be preserved. With Yorick's rework, I lost my beefy bodyguard enchanter playstyle since he lost his ultimate's synergy supporting a carry (pseudo-revive/carry-doppleganger) and his W cage is only on par for supporting with his old W ghoul's ability to block hooks/grabs at will, and he lost the ability to reliably summon ghoul's for lane harass without CSing with his Q, so he just doesn't work well as a support anymore unless he eventually gets some support specific compensation for the off-role.

Can a Rioter on the champion rework team respond and let me know if Kayle's support role (especially as a decently tanky support) is planned to stay? I think a moderately tanky fighter/enchanter Kayle is the best fit for Kayle's fantasy and melee-ranged hybrid kit. Since she visually wears a full set of armor, being at least somewhat tanky is also better for gameplay clarity.

4 Comments

Frosted Tips3 votes

All they said was she was going to start melee and turn into a ranged beast like she does now. So I doubt her supportive style will stay.

Hemulen Magi2 votes

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, I think her current solo lane melee into squishy ranged hypercarry playstyle is very unhealthy, since her lategame scaling into a marksman encourages her to build glass cannon, which means she can't ever thrive in melee range, so she tends to try to avoid interacting as much as possible and just use her early E uptimes to waveclear if her opponent is capable of fighting back against her. Then after she reaches enough CDR, her E is never on cooldown so she's just a marksman at that point. She never lives up to the potential of a hybrid melee + ranged kit with that gameplay pattern of scaling into a fully ranged carry champion lategame. I think her tankier support identity is a lot healthier, so I hope Riot takes that into consideration with the rework. Her unsatisfying solo lane playstyle, mostly from her very uninteractive lane phase, is probably the major reason that Kayle often has a statistically high winrate and low play rate, since people tend not to enjoy playing her as-is and therefore popularity only goes up when she's statistically overpowered.

I think that she can have a healthy role split between two viable roles: a solo lane hybrid fighter like Jayce Irelia but building AP on-hit and having better utility, and an enchanter support between Janna and Taric but with a focus on shredding targets to boost her carry's damage.

Frosted Tips1 votes

I agree it is not healthy right now but who knows maybe she will be less safe early and less insanely strong late. That's all we can hope for.

Justifier1 votes

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