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Katarina and the Twin Daggers

Stacona··1 votes·1,825 views

This is half-way between an original champion concept and a Katarina rework. This is a warning so you all know that the Katarina you all know now is not being preserved here, except for a few broad similarities. On the rework side of things, I will still give some broad points to address:

  • Katarina is a very uninteresting champion with nothing special about her. Her thing right now is a super mobile champion that is frustrating to play against, is super feast or famine, and only does damage. Does this sound familiar? Yea, it sounds like every single assassin in the game, and they too need to be addressed as well.

  • This is offering something fun for Katarina and offer something for the player to master, give her a fallback pattern to rely on, grant skill expression for more interesting abilities, not have her frustrating to go against, and give her a real reason to why pick her over another champion that is not about being oppressive toward others. Again, emphasis on fun to play as and not having her frustrating to go against.

Attack Range: 700 units Attack Speed: 0.875 +3.5% per level Movement: 350 units per second Attack Damage: High Other Stats: Melee type of champion, including item and other effects for her attacks.

Twin Daggers (Passive):

Katarina throws a dagger whenever she attacks, remaining there for up to 10 seconds or until she picks it up. Katarina holds up to two daggers, one in each hand, and cannot attack with no daggers in hand and her abilities are reliant on both having and not having a dagger, indicating whether she can cast it or not.

Direct executes by either a basic attack or Dagger Toss will cause the dagger to bounce into the air and back to Katarina at increased speed and refund the cooldown of Dagger Toss.

Daggers must be stationary for a minimum of 0.75 second before Katarina can pick it up again.

(Katarina's attacks gain access to melee effects on items and such.)

Dagger Toss (Q):

Cooldown: 0.75 second; Requirement: 1 Dagger in Hand; Range: 1000 units

Katarina throws one dagger to the target location, dealing 32/44/56/68/80(+30%AP) magic damage to all enemies in its path, remaining in play to where it lands.

The first enemy struck is dealt up to 30/45/60/75/90(+50%AP) bonus magic damage based on the target's missing health, reaching max damage when the target is below 40% health.

Passive: Daggers remain at their location for up to 9/8/7/6/5 seconds.

Twirling Daggers (W):

Cooldown: 15/14/13/12/11 seconds; Requirement: 2 Daggers in Hand; Radius: 225 units

Katarina twirls around incredibly fast with her daggers extended outward, dealing 50/75/100/125/150(+45%bAD)(+45%AP) magic damage to struck enemies while knocking them up for 1 second. Katarina then rises up like a helicopter and slowly twirls downward like a spinning flower over 1 second, being untargetable in this state, but she moves 60% slower.

Dash / Slash (E):

Cooldown: 20 seconds; Range: 700 / 225 units

Dash: Katarina gains a burst of speed that rapidly decays over 2 seconds, gaining 60/70/80/90/100%(+10% per 100AP) total movement speed and tripling to 180/210/240/270/300%(+30% per 100AP) total movement speed when moving toward a dagger.

Slash: While airborne from Twirling Daggers, Katarina dive bombs to the target location, dealing 60/90/120/150/180(+100%AP) magic damage to nearby enemies when she lands.

Passive: Katarina refunds 10/20/30/40/50% of the cooldown of Dash / Slash whenever she picks up a dagger.

Death Lotus (R):

Cooldown: 60/33/6 seconds; Requirement: No Daggers in Hand

Katarina calls in both her daggers to her location, causing them to deal 75/100/125(+30%AP) true damage each to enemies they pass through.

If both daggers strike the same target, then they apply grievous wounds for 4 seconds and deal 200% increased damage against shields.

Passive: Champion kills or assists refund 30/65/100% of the cooldown of Death Lotus.

UPDATE NOTES:

Twin Daggers: Added that Dagger Toss' cooldown refunds if the dagger executes a target. Stated the bounce is at increased speed for its return.

(This will not have significant impact, but just a quality of life function to this concept so that you get the dagger back and then can choose to immediately throw it out again if you want the area damage.)

Dagger Toss: Damage lowered to 32/44/56/68/80 +30%AP from 30/45/60/75/90 +55%AP magic damage Damage is now 100% to all enemies struck

Added in up to 30/45/60/75/90 +50%AP bonus magic damage to the first enemy struck based on its missing health, max damage at 40% or less health.

(As an assassin, this will help with executing your victim and focus the power more to have less wave clear strength and poke potential. She is to have some poke damage, but still mostly reliant on her team as Katarina still has a ton of power in her all-ins for the clean up, just toned back a bit to make room for more useful utility and make her less of a feast or famine champion.)

7 Comments

Gilgayu1 votes

Overall pretty cool concept.

Katarina has been overlooked since the later parts of season 8. As an assassin, she fails to provide any utility whatsoever for her team (unless she goes Rylai's...)

I like how you gave her some decent cc on her w and a noticeable zoning power on her ultimate (not sure if it can be called zoning, but it works like Xayah's feathers: it tells the massage of "don't stand between her and her daggers/feathers")

A few questions:

What do you mean by "(Katarina's attacks count as melee attacks.) " Does it mean she can buy the hydra items but not rapid fire? or is there something else that I missed?

I think the current kat actually requires some quick decision making, and playing against her can certainly be frustrating (e w q e and you are dead...). You mentioned that you want her to be more fun to play as well as give the player a reason to pick her over some other assassin for reasons other than her pure damage... In what way do you want to achieve that? Over my two years of playing league, I know how good it feels to play a strong champion, and how bad it feels to play against one. It is very hard to find the middle ground (Riot took a year to balance Irelia, and now she's finally fun to play against). So here comes my suggestions _________-- To be frank, I'm not a fan of having only 2 autoes, especially with this mechanism. For champions like graves, it's okay because it's aoe and he's jungle. For Jhin, it's fine because he has abilities to help him last hit when he is reloading.

For Katarina, or Twin Blade, it will be much harder to do just because she is a mid-laner. There are a lot of oppressive mid-laners recently, and I believe you noticed that, and gave her 700 aa range (caitlyn only has 625). But how will she farm? The fact that she has to get in melee range to farm smoothly feels a bit tedious to me.

I think just making her melee and let her ability cost "daggers" will just be easier to both play and to play against the champion.

I like her q, she can choose to either q q for that quick damage or w for some cc.

It would be nice to state its speed though (no need for specifics, just give an example). Personally, I compare my concept's abilities' projectile speed to existing champions (like anivia or ez). I think it just helps to visualize the concept.

When champions become untargetable, they usually become faster. I think the logic behind that is "if you don't move out of range, I'll just wait until you become targetable."

Is there a specific matchup where you thought of when making this ability? Would be nice to know (or if you just want to give her some neat utility, you've done a good job). ___________- e is fantastic.

For me, a big problem with playing against Katarina is her insane dash speed (might as well call it blink...). This new e solves that, and still keeps the refreshing mechanism which is a core part of Katarina.

There is a loophole in this though. Remember what I said about having only 2 autoes not good for last hitting? If she stays in melee range, which can be easily done with her burst of ms, she can refresh her e every 1.5 second (her base AS and its scaling are insane). This is another reason why I suggested to just make her a normal melee champ. _________________________- R is great, but it probably will need some change if you decide to change her aa mechanism according to my suggestions.

Overall a great rework. Kat is one of those champions that we just forget about...

Stacona1 votes

The ultimate works more like Ahri Q, just a decision between using either Q or AA, they return rather than sit at their location and then follow you back.

I kind of like the idea of having them quick return only more and does it only once, ranks reduces cooldown further down to a low value, with one either being shield destruction and grievous or bonus true damage and striking a target with both daggers provides the second effect, both probably would be bonus true damage.

The reason to why she has a ranged melee attack is because she is very restrictive at ranged, but when in melee range you just keep on picking up the dagger. So you are encouraged to be melee range, but not forced. This also adds in more decision making and a new resource with thinking about how to use your daggers - for your Q or AAs - making your high damage reliant on picking up the daggers and how quickly you can retrieve them (or wait out the long auto-retrieval timer).

So if you are already melee range, then you just attack really fast, the ammo system on attacks is to restrict the ranged attack. This aspect makes her ranged spells and attacks have consequence for improper use and offers her some poke damage as an assassin. This poke harass is utility in of itself, if she is only a high damage all-in champion then her feast and famine is so extreme that she either dominates the games or feeds her ass off and is completely useless. This allows for her to get off damage when behind, still make her scary in her all-ins, but not so oppressively scary in those all-ins as well.

The Q speed would probably be similar to Xayah Q speed, maybe slightly slower since there is a lot less of a wind up time before throwing the dagger out.

The balance is that her Q, W, and Autos all share the same resource pool. I also want the damage to feel like you are throwing two daggers in quick succession no matter what and have a longer downtime between those two attack strikes, that is why attack speed is high and Q cooldown is low, and then have her run up and collect her daggers.

E can be adjusted a bit, but it is a decaying movement speed as well, so most of the short duration is a reasonable speed. Movement speed buff, even for a split second is massive, is a lot easier to track than a blink which then in return can offer more power elsewhere for Katarina.

Fastest form of movement is still her dash combo'd from her W.

Gilgayu1 votes

Fair enough, I really liked the concept.

(Now that you put the update notes out there, I realized I actually visited quite a few of your concepts. I haven't seen your concepts in a while... Sigh, the stupid "hot" section).

Stacona1 votes

UPDATE NOTES (1):

Other: Per level bonus attack speed increased to 3.5% from 2.5%

Twin Daggers: New restriction added that causes the dagger to have to be on the ground for a minimum of 0.75 second before it can be picked up again to help reduce how much damage she can pump out in a short period of time in extreme cases. This restriction would be to the equivalent of 1.5 attacks per second for the best case scenario.

New quality of life function added that when a dagger executes a target from a basic attack or Dagger Toss then Katariana's dagger will bounce into the air and back to Katarina to help her last hit in the early game. If Dagger Toss executed a target, then it bounces back and does not continue along its path.

(The restriction also helps tone back her mobility with E resets and still allow the player to chain E after E together for the super fast, dagger throwing, assassin fantasy.)

Dagger Toss: Cooldown increased to 0.75 from 0.5 second (This is not a static cooldown by the way.)

Dash / Slash: Clarified that the movement speed bonus rapidly decays from decays, wording changing, but no actual change

(Roughly this means she gets about 0.5 second or less of the extreme movement speed and the other 1.5 seconds is more-less just a good movement speed bonus, but nothing insane.)

Death Lotus: Cooldown lowered to 60/33/6 from 100 seconds Requirement added to No Daggers in Hand from not having a requirement

Active changed to only calling in both daggers to Katarina's location, dealing true damage to enemies they pass through, both can damage the same target. If both strike the same target, then they deal a bunch of bonus damage to shields and apply grievous wounds for a few seconds. This is also easier to balance as well.

Old active was 2/3/4 Dagger Tosses or basic attacks thrown out will return at the end of their range, apply the same damage again and bonus true damage on the return, and the way out applied grievous wounds and dealt bonus damage to shields.

Passive cooldown refund increased to 30/65/100% from 25/50/75% per champion kill/assist

Gilgayu1 votes

Overall the changes are pretty neat.

Just one suggestion. For:

New quality of life function added that when a dagger executes a target from a basic attack or Dagger Toss then Katariana's dagger will bounce into the air and back to Katarina to help her last hit in the early game. If Dagger Toss executed a target, then it bounces back and does not continue along its path.

I think changing " If Dagger Toss executed a target, then it bounces back and does not continue along its path" to " If Dagger Toss executed a minion or non-epic monster, then it bounces back and does not continue along its path." There are probably times where players want to let the daggers pass through and deal the damage to all enemies in line rather than having it bounce back and q again (which takes like 0.75 second more, a big difference for an assassin).

Thoughts?

Stacona1 votes

If you have a dagger in hand you can just use it again since the cooldown is non-existent otherwise, the restrictive fashion is not in the cooldown, but either needing to wait out the timer or go and collect it in melee range.

Cooldown is not static so can be lower with CDR and begins on cast, so not a ton of wait time since the dagger needs to travel still. Maybe the bounce back could reset the cooldown and be significantly faster on its return than the way out.

Something I am trying to be wary off - and this goes for something that needs to be addressed for every champion, especially mobile ones - is not so much how much damage they do, but how fast they can do it. I am trying to avoid insta-kill and no counter play Katarina as much as possible, reduce her power in low elo (movement speed from blink helps with this since low elo is worse with this type of spell, adding more decision making to her kit, drawbacks to using spells either with meaningful cooldowns or the resource management of having only two daggers, and generally more skillful to use to some degree) and raise it in high elo, like less famine which also means less feast, having that fallback helps her always be somewhat relevant and not useless and not extreme game takeover when ahead means the snowbally and low elo blood baths games has her not running wild.

Basically, raising her time to kill means she can safely have other utility to make her useful - like some chip poke damage, area knock-up, and anti-shield/heal strength (her ultimate already has grievous wounds, I just extended its power to deal with more defensive tools).

I will add in direct executes reset the cooldown of Dagger Toss. Though small, will help her with the resetting pattern of kill a target, get dagger back, and then find your next target.

I may also focus her power better where the dagger toss does full area damage, but less damage, and add in bonus magic damage to the first target that is based on its missing health. So up to flat damage, where full health is 0% of the value and near dead is where you get closer to 100%, or it maxes out at 30% or lower target health so 100% to 30% target health is the 0% to 100% of the max bonus damage range.

Stacona1 votes

UPDATE NOTES (2):

Twin Daggers: Added that Dagger Toss' cooldown refunds if the dagger executes a target. Stated the bounce is at increased speed for its return.

(This will not have significant impact, but just a quality of life function to this concept so that you get the dagger back and then can choose to immediately throw it out again if you want the area damage.)

Dagger Toss: Damage lowered to 32/44/56/68/80 +30%AP from 30/45/60/75/90 +55%AP magic damage Damage is now 100% to all enemies struck

Added in up to 30/45/60/75/90 +50%AP bonus magic damage to the first enemy struck based on its missing health, max damage at 40% or less health.

(As an assassin, this will help with executing your victim and focus the power more to have less wave clear strength and poke potential. She is to have some poke damage, but still mostly reliant on her team as Katarina still has a ton of power in her all-ins for the clean up, just toned back a bit to make room for more useful utility and make her less of a feast or famine champion.)

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