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Kalista is not getting any gameplay. Why?

DeySickOfMe··2 votes·2,580 views

The purpose of this post is to discuss the reasons why Kalista is not being played at all. We all know Kalista was release a while ago and with all the hype that was going on Kalista's Q&A's i was expecting her to be having a good impact on the rift by now. Sadly it doesn't seem like she is having any impact since no one is playing her. Literally. I started to notice this when i tried to find some of the high level player matches (Challenger, Master, diamond tier) on the "Watch Now" game feature playing Kalista so that i can spectate and what some Kalista gameplay. After the realease i was able to find at least someone playing Kalista out of the 5 games that are showcased in the Watch Now feature, but now i check several times during my playing times to see if i can find anyone playing her and no one is. I found this quite shocking and so i went on to the Solo Q challenger ladder to check on all of the high level players that main adc and i found that out of all players i checked only 3 had played any games with Kalista. DoubleLift with only 1 game played and C9 Sneaky with like 12. Most of the players i checked all had 0 games with Kalista. Many people consider her to be extremely over powered but if that were the case shouldn't Kalista be getting banned a lot and first picked a lot? or is it that she sucks? she is quite difficult to play but with practice i can see her being a monster so how come no one is playing her?

26 Comments

Knight SoIaire 5 votes

kalista is kinda up because her passive is clunky big part of the player base cant keep up with the clicking and well its an accounted power, she does not poses any insane nukes or insane range so jumping around and being untouchable 100% of the game is core of her gameplay that barely anybody can acces

its the same thing that annoys me on yasuo, he relies on chaining his jumps but you just cant chain them and sometimes get stuck trying to click the same target again

when it comes to kalista she can be realy dominant but one failed jump= her death, and those jumps are just to easy to fail

conclusion- she sucks because her main power is mechanicaly clunky and thus unusable for most of the players resulting in easy fails

when it comes to teamplay (its a big part of her kit), her mechanical clunkiness destroys that too, your support goes in but yo need to be able to rely on your jumps to get in, score that w passive and juump out,

CalciferHowel1 votes

I don't know why people say her passive is clunky, just mess with her for like 20 minutes ina bot game and you can use it with ease.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

it seems like being a beast at using her passive is not the only thing you need to learn how to do to be effective playing her.

CalciferHowel1 votes

it seems like being a beast at using her passive is not the only thing you need to learn how to do to be effective playing her.

She's an ADC, they aren't super complicated. I mean really, what does she do? Attack a squishy, use passive to dance left and right. Communicate with your team about ult, use ult to save team mate occasionally. Know how her Q effects rend stacks, gt good at triggering it. Know how rend's damage is applied, try not to fuck it up. Know how her W is affected by walls. Tada, Kalista is effective.

Junkο1 votes

Her passive is clunky because of the bug that makes you automaticly jump towards everything you click even if you just wanted to see their stats, because auto AA option can be annoying and because it scales with AS

CalciferHowel1 votes

Her passive is clunky because of the bug that makes you automaticly jump towards everything you click even if you just wanted to see their stats, because auto AA option can be annoying and because it scales with AS

If you're checking stats in a teamfight you must be extremely confident in your ally's peel.

Junkο1 votes

Click on enemy Darius to AA them but didn't have their stat screen open? You jump TOWARDS HIM regardless of where you clicked after

You don't have to check the stats, as long as the stat screen opens you will jump towards the unit.

CalciferHowel1 votes

Just checked this, nope, as long as you click once you don't.

Soooooooooo...............

Junkο1 votes

Really because it happens every time i would be fucked if i screw up. Even while using attack move.

CalciferHowel1 votes

Try a repair? I can see how it would suck, I'm just not getting that particular one.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

Totally agree with you on her passive being clunky. the reason why i failed my first game with her was because i found it extremely difficult to move properly on a team fight when i was trying to concentrate on how to do the jump. the thing is i dont think she sucks at all but just difficult to master. however, to some people it seems to be child play. DoubleLift played her the first time and got a Penta and a Quadra ending up to 21 kills while C9Sneaky Complained that because of her passive he couldn't touch her with his Q. Her power of being able to dance around makes her OP and its different than yasuos in the way that you dont get locked out of jumps. Not all AdC's have insane nukes. Tristana doesnt nuke anyone until mid game. Do you think she should be buffed or nerfed? i feel like if she is nerfed on top of being difficult. its RIP

Envy Sin3 votes

She requires to much team play, even voice chat IMO, i think we will be seeing her in 5s teams more so then Solo que. Personally i'v been trying her top lane with a bound jungler Sadly in most cases they almost never come top. A issue that could be fixed with a friend playing jungle i suppose. All in All Kali is strong just requires to much teamwork to work well in solo games.

(all that said you don't have to listen to a lowly gold xD)

City of Toronto2 votes

Because 90% of players are sheep and are just waiting for pro players to pick her up, so they can copy their playstyle.

Same is true for all new champions, always.

and since it is the offseason, that means we won't see a lot of pro kaslita play.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

But Yasuo, Braum, Lucian, jinx and even Gnar (korean scene) weren't neglected at all when they were release. Top Pick and ban champs right away.

Junkο1 votes

Yasuo wasn't neglected by Koreans, in like a day we got a Korean Yasuo game where he stomped.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

weren't neglected is what i meant sorry.. all those champs where picked up immediately into the scene

Meep Man2 votes

Kalista is really hard to super carry with since she can't cancel her animation for her basic attack. If you can get another champion to carry on your team like an APC or Top Lane Carry, then you really do some work due to her ultimate but she doesn't have the super power of Tristana or Vayne to carry.

Leaf of the lake1 votes

You're right that she can't hyper carry the way a tristana or vayne can, but you've got the reason wrong. Her passive gives her a remarkable ability to stay alive during teamfights, which means she'll usually be able to dish out damage from start to end. However, the damage that she puts out is considerably lower than tristana or vayne due to the lack of steroids.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

Hopefully its just a matter of Patch 4.21 giving her what she needs.

RankedForFun1 votes

Hopefully its just a matter of Patch 4.21 giving her what she needs.

Buff ? Kalista? LOL plz XD would make my life. That and if lol was working and if it let me login with out saying "login error" -_-

ƒæµ1 votes

I think she will be really cool to see in pro play. I don't see her being a very strong pick in solo Q tho, requires communication with team to play to full potential which almost never happens in solo Q. Also her passive is kind of a pain IMO. I found myself trying so hard to get the best use of it that I wasn't playing well. I can kite well on other ADC's and I find it more reliable than the jump.

Underwhelming champ but I'm excited to see if it gets used in pro play.

Leaf of the lake1 votes

She's underplayed because 1) she's hard, 2) she's technically underpowered.

Most kalista players are very bad with her (not talking about pros, just in general). She has a lot of intricate mechanics and requires awareness not just of where you are in a teamfight, but also your support. What's more, it requires her support understand her play pattern - better than they need to understand other ADCs, at least. This makes her fairly ill suited for soloqueue, which is currently the only place you can see her be played. The W passive makes up a huge portion of her power in lane, so if her support isn't coordinating AA poke with you, you're going to have a rough lane. Not to mention the mess that is her ult; ulting well with kalista - and having the support correctly follow up on it instead of misclicking somewhere - can be quite difficult, since ulting with her means that your support cannot do things for about a second. When used correctly, it's amazing, but there's a larger learning curve there than with most ults in the game. On top of all this, her damage is low compared to other ADCs (the biggest problem, imo), and while she can kite a lot of melees, any targeted dash/CC/nuke/whatever largely negates her kiting ability. She's also destroyed by attack speed slows, more so than other ADCs, which makes a nasus or nunu a lot scarier for her than for most ADCs with escapes (both with targeted CC, too).

I think the buffs currently on PBE will do a lot to bring her win rate into line (currently hovering around 39-44%, depending on if you're looking at ranked or normals). Improved E damage at all ranks means she'll have a bit more reliable of an execute, which, when coupled with people slowly getting more familiar with her, should result in her win rate getting a lot closer to 50%. The mana return buff will also reward her for setting up double minion kills with her E, and give her the freedom to use her mana more.

edit: As a kalista player, I usually try to explain how her W passive and ult work to every support I play with. While I think most people have a vague idea of how her kit works by now, most people don't seem to know the specifics, which is important for good team play. You'd be amazed at how many supports didn't know that they could "last hit" a minion with my W passive and it would give me the gold, or that the dash on her ult bounces them back to their max attack range after hitting something. I feel mentioning the W in chat ahead of time also helps to get them in the mind of syncing AA poke, which is just so important for the kalista lane.

DeySickOfMe1 votes

Thanks for your comment man really helped me understand many things that i didn't even know about Kalista. Glad to know riot is looking to buff her damage and mana so that she will get more gameplay. i might or might not try to main her but i sure do want to see her being played competitively.

Sohleks1 votes

Kalista has utilities not really comparable to popular picks. Her ult can be used to pull her support from harms way or initiate. Her in combat kiting is fairly sick too.

Her weaknesses however are very significant. She is not being played in serious high elo matches because she lacks waveclear/poke which is very important for laning and tower defense. That and her damage output is pretty abysmal. With mediocre range? Against anything with burst and range Kalista is opting into dangerous combat... Infinite jumps be damned, doesn't matter if she can kite Olaf indefinitely if Zed/Syndra/Lissandra kills you instantly, which is what this meta is, high burst CC champions

If you think about it Kalista is not much more slippery than Vayne who does significantly more damage. She has a lot of the same weaknesses as Vayne. And more

Junkο1 votes

She can deal a lot of dmg with E early actually, but you need to stack it up with abyssal AS compared to ADCs that have the dmg instantly.

She is hardcountered by Frozen Heart and Omen though and building it against her makes her nonexistent

DeySickOfMe1 votes

Her E stacking early game when Frozen Heart and Omen are not built yet is still hard countered by an adc with long range and disengage and a support with cc. once they see you're hoping towards them looking to get 3-4 stacks to do more damage with rend than Q would and on top of that apply the slow im sure support would stop her. if i was playing Caitlyn against Kalista and she tried to do heavy damage with Rend i would just E away and she cant put any more stacks on me. Her stacks just fall off too quick at 4 seconds for me to be afraid to be close to minions while i have the stacks on me after i had disengaged. against a match up like that Kalista is forced to max Q because E is just not effective plus if you use it, it goes on like a 14 second cooldown while Q has an 8 second cd i think. so sadly you are forced to poke, and its pretty hard to do so since i find it her Q radius is incredibly small.. maybe you can be a beast at applying like 5 stacks on a cannon minion and using Q to kill it and transfer all those stacks to the opponent and then try and use it as a combo while dashing to them and applying a few more stacks before they stop you. if you can pull of that several times then you can own the lane.

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