high base health, high armor, high health regen. i get that she's melee but with the amount of gap close and opportunities to run away she doesn't need that many defensive stats. especially when adc's cant even get MR runes anymore. kat can come to lane with just liandries and MPen boots and do true damage in magic damage when I still have to build my crit items. do I have to build defensive items early now lol?
Terozu7 votesThe reason is because her burst requires her to STAY in range. I like to look at it as she's a hybrid Assassin (high mobility melee) / Battlemage (high aoe damage and burst couples with good defensive stats due to shorter range)
PhearBunny4 votesthat's a load of doodoo, champs doing all their damage via abilities have outrageous survivability right now, even with 0 defensive stats. that 15% healing from all abilities is waaaay over powered on things like Kat.
Terozu2 votesthat's a load of doodoo, champs doing all their damage via abilities have outrageous survivability right now, even with 0 defensive stats. that 15% healing from all abilities is waaaay over powered on things like Kat.
All of Kat's abilities with the exception of Shunpo are AOE, so she actually only gets 5% for that, 10% with it and hextech, and thats it for her. Other people like say Kayn, can get to like 40%
JavelinJoe2 votesBut her scalings are so high she does heal for what seems like more than the normal amount mind you.
Terozu1 votesTrue, and before this rune, she actually had to sacrfice some burst, now she doesn't. But of course this is true for everyone, not just her. Another reason for her high defenses is again, her lower range, in order to properly set up her burst, she has to get close, like, really close. Most midlaners have a higher ranged poke ability than her Q so she is by defalt at a higher risk, and she cannot get her burst off without ulting without a 1.5 second delay minimum, and her ult is damage over time focused. Other characters with delays like Ekko or Fizz are allowed to stay back while it goes off then they get protection in the form of some hard cc, Kat also has no cc. Most battle mages high damage and some way to defy death, Anivia, Vlad, Karthus. Kat is honestly less an assassin and more a battle mage who defies death via high mobility.
ModWulf Helhammer5 votesHave you ever played Kat? Trust me, she needs those
NodirjonSattarov4 votesshe really doesn't. would the argument be any different for fizz? what if fizz's defenses were inflated the same way? people would lose their minds and say that he has 2 abilities that can help him get in and out of combat on relatively low cd (maybe not in early game)
ModWulf Helhammer2 votesSo then Fizz doesn't have the same level of base stats as Kat, because Fizz has better ways to avoid damage... and he doesn't have the same amount of base stats.
Your comment says nothing
NodirjonSattarov1 voteskat has more blinks than fizz does at a more frequent rate
TruelyTrueTrueth4 votesyou dont even play kat you wouldn't understand theres no point in try to make you understand after seeing everything you've responded too but kat needs those stats for early its not even that big either
NodirjonSattarov1 votesmaybe before her rework she needed the stats but certainly not now especially when she hits level 3
Terozu4 votesUmm she needs them even more now, she has less damage early.
PhearBunny2 votesTheres a lot of things like this that Riot is just LAZY about. They have two classes programmed in, ranged and melee and they both get defaulted to a small list of preset stats, and its dumb. Kat is a good example.
Another way this is ridiculous, is say, Kayn kills Urgot or Gnar, it counts towards Shadow Assassin because they are technically ranged, but in reality they are tanks and should be going towards Rhaast.
Then theres champs that, if your preset stats are +0AD and +0AP, but you have AP scaling on ANYTHING even if its just .1 scaling on one thing, your adaptive damage defaults to AP because Riot is being lazy and not individually tweaking things.
Alex h87211 votesActually gnar in mega form feeds rhast if hit, because he is melee. Urgot thresh and rakan always will give blue because they are technically ranged, as will mini gnar. This is the same for jayce in hammer/cannon forms, and for nidalee and elise. thats actually pretty dang straight forward.
PhearBunny1 votesyes....its stupid. It shouldn't be decided by ranged or melee. It should be decided on if youre hitting a tank or a squishy.
Jayce should ALWAYS go towards blue. Gnar should ALWAYS go towards red. Nid should ALWAYS go towards blue. Thresh and other ranged tanks should all go towards red. etc etc etc.
I know that's not how it is, but that's the way it should be.
Nutsmacko2 votesRiot can't do that however because if they were to split it into squishy and tank it'd be indirectly enforcing meta builds. Plus it'd kind of hurt Kayn sometimes more than help him. For example, saying Gnar is ALWAYS a tank is bad for Kayn because getting Rhaast off Gnar when the Gnar is doing some kinda AP on-hit build is bad. Melee and ranged are not perfect, but it's the best option and easier to code.
FatedSaviour1 votesthey didnt say you get power based on class, it says in the description of kayn attacking melee champs powers rhaast attacking ranged champs powers kayn
they specificied it has to be range, not kit
MysticDreams122 votesWhat do you mean? They nerfed her health like two seasons ago- she's had pretty awful stats since like EVER.
NodirjonSattarov1 votesdid you read the 7.22 patch notes?
MysticDreams121 votesYup, they gave her some stats which she needed, but hers weren't that great to begin with. She still gets CC'd and pop! She's dead.
Those buffs didn't really do much of a difference. Stop complaining about it.
HarrowR1 votesShhhh,didnt you get the memo,adcs are op now,just pick aaaaaaaaaaany adc,lets say Sivir,and one shot that kat with your mega op burst per second aa dmg
GraćSięNieDa1 votesSigh.
Would that you have played Kat before coming here, not just played against her. Let me lay it all bare for ya (note: this will come from a long term Kat main):
There's a conglomerate of reasons for Kat's defensive stats, all boiling down to one: she's slow.
- "slow?! You don't know what slow mea--"
Yes, she's slow. While she has access to ~1 shunpo/second up to 3 shunpos per combo, it doesn't change the fact that setting up proper trading ground takes a while, leaving her absolutely exposed for the duration. It's over 1 second since shotting Q before you can pick up the dagger - it's more than enough time for the enemy to reposition or lay some AoE/trap where your dagger's gonna land. Compare that to 
, 
, and even to 
, who might not have access to instant burst that previous 2 champions mentioned do, but has a reliable way of repositioning. Kat is predictable as daggers are nothing more than bread scraps left behind, indicating where she will have to go.
Then there go shunpo nerfs; Kat has to get 3 ranks in E early just to be able to somewhat abuse her mobility. This leaves her with no reliable source of poke or waveclear (she has to abuse daggers to farm effectively, and that also leaves her exposed). Either that, or higher Q poke but no trading potential.
This, paired with her lack of innate sustain, hurts terribly. She's actually outscaled by many champions pre-6, and even after - unless she managed to get ahead already.
Gunblade + Ravenous Hunter rune fix the aforementioned issue somewhat, but both take time to activate. Defensive stats are meant to allow Kat to survive the laning phase in spite of her ridiculously risky farming sequence.
TL;DR Kat is much slower than most assassins in the game, second only maybe to 
and . Those have either safe, reliable trading tools or innate sustain, though. Kat makes up for the lack of those with higher base defensive stats.
If you want to talk about the mid/late game though, be my guest. I'll gladly share my insight into why people get wrecked by random Katas so easily.