Kayle Rework Idea

**So as I've stated before, Kayle's kit is problematic. I love playing her, she was basically my first main while I was learning the game, and I don't want to see her gutted or nerfed into oblivion. Unfortunately, the mechanical problems in her kit make constant nerfs inevitable. If she's satisfying to play, she shreds down the enemy tank in seconds. So, given that, I thought I'd take a crack at redesigning her kit, for a lark. This is just a concept, and I avoided using any numbers because those are finicky and also not my strong suit as a designer.

Goals:

• Stay true to Kayle's lore identity and power fantasy as a zealous angelic warrior.
• Rework problematic parts of Kayle's kit, most especially the way she melts squishy and tanky targets alike regardless of itemization.
• Give Kayle a play pattern with noticeable moments of weakness that don't necessitate nerfing her numbers down constantly and give her a more even play experience.

Reworked Kit:

Passive - Holy Fervor (Totally Reworked) Kayle gains a stack of holy fervor each time a nearby ally takes damage. If a nearby ally is slain by an enemy champion, Kayle immediately gains full stacks of holy fervor. Holy fervor stacks decay slowly over time if they are not being generated. Kayle gains bonus armor, magic resistance and health regeneration for each stack of holy fervor she has. In addition, Kayle's other spells become more powerful based on how many stacks of holy fervor she has.

Comments: Kayle's stacking shred, along with her mixed damage, is the core of her undesirable gameplay pattern. It makes her scale absurdly well with attack speed and allows her to ruin tanky targets way too easily, so I decided to replace it. I wanted Kayle's new passive to make her able to confidently mix it up in big fights, and capture some of her vengeful flavor. She grows bolder as she sees her team mates get hurt, and resolves to avenge the wrong that's been done.

Q - Reckoning

• No longer scales with AD
• Now gains bonus magic penetration that scales with Kayle's stacks of holy fervor

Comments: I feel like Reckoning didn't need a lot of changes. I wanted to eliminate some of her hybrid power, so the dual scaling had to go (this would probably necessitate turning the AP ratio back up, but again, no numbers.) I felt like she should still have some ability to pierce through resistance, as it fits very flavorfully with the spell, but I thought it should scale with her passive stacks; her Reckoning grows more powerful when she's avenging a wrong. (Also, I think it would be really cool if the visuals on this spell changed to a bolt of divine lightning that strikes from the sky, but I'm sure that would be a ton of work for no real gain.)

W - Divine Blessing

• No longer heals
• Movement speed no longer scales with AP
• Now grants the target a burst of AD, AP, attack speed and movement speed, all of which have a strong baseline effect but also scale slightly with stacks of holy fervor
• The move speed bonus increases slightly when allies are moving toward Kayle; Kayle cannot gain this bonus herself

Comments: I wanted this spell to retain its peel and initiate power, but in a bit of a different way. I removed the heal because I frankly feel like it doesn't do much, and shouldn't. Big heals on champions that aren't designed solely around them get obnoxious, and small ones barely affect the outcome of the game at all. Instead, I thought a flavorful effect would be filling Kayle or one of her allies with holy zeal for a short duration, obviously scaling with her holy fervor. The obvious problem is that Kayle is almost always going to want to target herself with this instead of her allies, since she benefits from every piece of it like few others will, but the peel/chase effect alone is probably good enough that she'll have incentive to use it on others. I inserted the bonus move speed toward Kayle because I wanted her to be able to lead her allies into danger or toward safety.

E - Righteous Fury

• Passive: Kayle's attacks on enemy champions now generate a small amount of holy fervor
• Cooldown lengthened so that even with 40% CDR she has a ~5 second window of downtime

Comments: This is the simplest change but, I feel, the most important. Making Kayle choose when she can attack from relative safety and leaving her vulnerable for a few seconds would be a much healthier play pattern. She would have to think twice before using her E to wave clear, and she might be forced to use her ult at otherwise inopportune times to save herself while her E is on cooldown. A clear moment of weakness would do a lot to rein in Kayle's most abusive patterns.

R - Intervention

• Long cooldown (120?) that doesn't decrease with rank

Comments: Kayle's ultimate is iconic and fun, but it's also very powerful when used correctly. I don't think it's unreasonable for it to have a decently long cooldown, even with CDR. Again, I don't want to get into specific numbers, but two minutes seemed pretty reasonable to me.

Final Thoughts First of all, if these changes were made, I would like to imagine that some of the nerfs to her ratios and base stats could be reverted. I think that with healthier play patterns, Kayle's ratios wouldn't need to be rock bottom all the time, and she would be much less of a late-game monster. I also think she would be more satisfying to play and more fun to play against with clearly defined weaknesses. I welcome all commentary and criticism.