[REWORK IDEA] Katarina - the Sinister Blade

Hey guys!

Lately I’ve seen Riot showing some Katarina changes, and I liked the direction they seemed to go with her, but they were a bit underwhelming and that’s possibly the reason they got scrapped. I took some of those changes and looked into them. First of all, don’t get me wrong, I love everything about Katarina. Her theme, her appearance and lore – but one thing. I think there should be more fun while playing her, and I will explain this below. Here’s my idea on how to slightly rework Katarina.

Base stat changes: Base health reduced. Health per level reduced. (to make her squishier) Movement speed reduced. (Due to her W)

**Voracity (Passive): ** Katarina deals more damage to targets below 50% life. Upon a kill or an assist, Katarina’s cooldowns are reduced by 15 seconds, as long as she killed or assisted to the killing of the target affected by her Bouncing Blades by her Q in the last 2 seconds.

Bouncing Blades (Q): Katarina throws a hail of dagger in a radius (skillshot) marking the hit target, which deals significantly less damage at impact, but higher one when triggering with an ability or basic attack.

Sinister Steel (W): Katarina swirls around in a radius around her, dealing damage and granting her movement speed when she hits an enemy champion. Stacks up to four times, only once per chamipn.

**Shunpo (E): ** Katarina blinks to an enemy or allied target, dealing no damage but reducing the incoming damage on her by 15% for 2 seconds (in synergy with her passive). Once she damaged the enemy she blinked to, who was affected by her Q, her Shunpo cooldown is reduced by 80%. However, Katarina can’t use Shunpo again if she is slowed, rooted, or CC’d in any else way. This works also with friendly units or champions, if they are “affected” by the Q.

**Death Lotus (R): ** No changes, maybe some number tweaks to favour her passive.

Overall there should be number tweaks to favour her passive, but also to make her squishier. Why do I do this? Well, when I started playing League of Legends, I saw Katarina and said: “Cool, a deadly assassin who’s bloodthirst make her bestial and looks quite hard to play. She swirls daggers and jukes around, how cool can a thing be?” When I played her, I was disappointed. She is too easy to play for an assassin, especially for the power she has, and requires almost no real skill to be played, but a little bit of game knowledge. She is an assassin, who actually should be the role with the highest skill cap required – high risk and high rewarding. Katarina is no exception. She should require a lot of hard decisions (which can cost her life) and an assassin should kill the carry fast, and risk everything by doing this. Because if an assassin can’t kill its target, they are pretty much dead. But assassins should be really hard to play, but that is exactly what makes them fun. Hard decisions, game knowledge and waiting for the perfect moment. Exactly, the perfect moment to eliminate and focus the most important targets – a.k.a the carries. She, at the moment, also destroys tanks, which shouldn’t be the case for an assassin, a.k.a kill the high priority target out of the fight, fast, but with fair counterplay. That’s what I focused on while thinking on how to rework her. With this rework she WILL have to wait for the perfect moment to kill the carry with the element of surprise. That’s what an assassin is about, fast bursting the high priority and low health target.

That’s why I implemented some counterplay, her Q being a skillshot you can actually dodge, while the other ones are targeted, so you can focus the carry. If she doesn’t hit her Q, she can’t do a thing, because her passive and E wouldn’t trigger, so a lot of perfect calculations and game knowledge is required to paly her. And that is the fun in playing an assassin, isn’t it? If she misplays, she will be punished – with the death. That’s again what an assassin should have as a weakness. You come in and kill everyone without counterplay and without any risks. No – that’s not what an assassin should look like. I’d like Katarina to be: “I want YOU to die. (Insert Uncle Sam meme here) And I will do anything to kill you. But I will wait and kill you in the perfect moment, while the others are surprised. But if I do even a little mistake, I am punished with the death. I have to think good about it and to anything to juke them around before they can hit me.” And it is really hard for her to escape a wrongly and poorly engaged fight, since her blink will be on cooldown and she has to throw her q to allies, which would make her waste time. Her new W should help her reach the high priority target first, so the movement speed helps her doing this, but she has to go in range to the other team mates, so she has to juke around if she doesn’t want to die.

Her high skill cap and required knowledge and thinking will make her decide and judge twice if she dives in wrongly. Overall this and her squishiness should be her highest weakness. But don’t forget the CC. Crowd control is the assassin’s worst enemy. That’s why her E has a new mechanic. And Kata should be: All in, or die. I didn’t make drastic changes, so I would call this a soft rework, increasing her skill cap, fun, jukeyness (is that even a word?), but also her counterplay, which should be an assassin’s weakness once they want to burst you. Overall, a lot of people don’t want her kit to change so drastically and retain her identity, especially with the resets from her passive and the bursting. But with those changes, it would require some work to do before you can have those extraordinary powerful resets, which are actually harder to obtain now.

I am NOT a professional Katarina player, nor am I a professional balance worker thingy thing, I might not have the perfect idea about how to balance things, but I know what I am – a person, who loves Kata and wants her to be even more awesome. I love assassins and especially this wonderfully themed, created and sinister champion, hence why I want her to be more fun, more rewarding, but easy to outplay, due to her enormous power. I really liked thinking about this concept, and it’s way not finished, I hope you can give me some feedback, how you like it, what you would change and especially what you think about!

Thanks for reading folks!