@CertinalyT: Kalista must have too much reliability to make up for her lack of autonomy.
I'm going to do two things in this thread.
- I will show that kalista has been given reliability to make her feel autonomous.
- I will demonstrate that this reliability is in conflict with the counterplay in her kit, and causes her to demonstrate the same patterns that led to the rework of olaf and tristana.
Most people say "crowd control and burst damage" are the effective way to interact against Kalista, but that goes for every champion in the game except Alistar, and its not really interaction is it?
- For example, I can spook vayne from hitting that third silver bolt on my ally by threatening to leap on her. I don't even have to actually do it, just the threat of it is enough to make her switch targets.
- I can interrupt miss fortunes ultimate and block the bounce shot for an ally by standing closer to the original target.
- Kog'maw has to be extremely careful with where he puts himself because he has no way to get out of jail free and his range steroid is short lived.
- Half of quinn is melee so she has to put herself in danger to access her highest damage steroid.
- Most of sivirs damage is tied to an easy to dodge skill shot and she has no really significant damage steroid.
- Tristana has had little counterplay outside of laning phase and she's been nerfed and is up for a rework because of that.
- Vayne can be handled quite easily with an upgraded red trinket.
- Lucian has limited tools to avoid damage and his range is short enough that he has to put himself in imminent danger to do anything useful.
- Draven can be zoned off of his axes.
- Ezreal's skill shots can be avoided.
- Graves buckshot is best when he is in someone's face, which means graves is best when he is putting himself within range of enemy abilities, which means he has to use smokescreen carefully and since it is a small skillshot zone of effect that means he has counterplay.
- Corki's ultimate is even more narrow than ezreal mystic shot, so it isn't difficult to dodge, and his armor shred only points towards the target if he is facing them, which means he can't do damage with it while running away.
- Caitlyn's abilities take forever to wind up and are not difficult to dodge or block, and she has no significant sustained damage steroids.
- Ashe has no damage steroids, her only hard cc is on a tremendous cooldown that doesn't stun for very long if used point blank, and she has no way to create distance instantly.
- Jinx is balanced in a similar way to caityln; she has enormous wind up time on her abilities and they can be dodged.
In every single one of these instances,roughly half of the champion's power is tied to a form of interaction that gives the opponent options to counterplay against it.
Now lets examine kalista.
- Kalista's spears can be dodged if she breaks sight of you while they are in the air.
- If you receive an auto attack from both kalista and her support you will receive bonus damage.
- Her long ranged spear skill shot is dodgeable.
So how much power these aspects of her kit consume? Not very much, and here is why:
- The first one is hardly a primary form of counterplay-- you can't rely on having the ability to break vision because you won't always be 2 feet away from a brush throughout your entire interaction with kalista over the course of the game.
- The second one isn't significant because she doesn't need an oathsworn to lane without difficulty in a solo lane. In other words, Kalista can go top or mid and not just do fine, she can excel. If Oathsworn has any power in lane, it is in addition to what would otherwise already be a powerful champion, or else the oathsworn mechanic was chosen to discourage her from doing a solo lane because there is something fundamentally broken about her solo lane experience that allows her to succeed with only half a kit.
- Her spear skill shot is supposed to be a way for her to stack up spears on a minion, kill it, and then apply it those stacks to the champion standing behind the minions. In theory that would be great if she had to do that to harass you, but she doesnt. She can just hit you with auto attacks and leap away knowing full well that you can't retaliate. You don't have to dash after you auto attack with kalista. You can just hold it by not issuing a movement command after attacking, and that way you don't have to wait to land before being able to dash on command.
In the case for kalista, basically none of her power is tied to anything that the opponent has any counterplay options against.
Her winrate may be low at the moment but to me that is irrelevant. Winrate is roughly an indicator of how much power a champion has, not how much counterplay or interaction that champion provides. Kalista is not that powerful because a lot of her power is tied to things that the kalista player doesn't generally want to make use of. Kalista is poor design because she can function (albeit barely) without using those mentioned aspects of her kit.
In other words any other ADC can and must interact in a way that has counterplay because they have no other option; their kit limits and defines the way they can interact. Its not that they can barely manage to get by without putting themselves at risk of being counterplayed, its that they cannot manage at all without submitting themselves to that risk.
Kalista doesn't necessarily interact in a way that has counterplay because taking that risk is not her only option; her counterplay is limited and defined by what her ally does, whether she gets to proc her % magic damage, and where they decide to use her ult. So that means that they only way Kalista can feel autonomous as a champion is to give her reliability in other places on her kit, but we have already seen what happens when you give a champion reliability with no tangible form of counterplay-- they get reworked or remain underpowered. Two examples are Tristana and Olaf
TLDR
Kalista has to be reworked not because of martial poise, but because CertainlyT gave her enough reliability to feel autonomous to make up for the lack of autonomy granted by the fact that so much of her power is out of her control; it is up to her ally to decide where to use her ult and to proc her % magic damage. This reliability is in direct conflict with the intended counterplay in her kit.