Boards›Concepts & Creations

Katarina and the Twin Daggers

Stacona·3/24/2019, 12:24:40 AM·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

Gilgayu3/24/2019, 12:54:21 PM1 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...

Stacona3/24/2019, 10:16:36 PM1 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

Stacona3/25/2019, 3:42:52 AM1 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.)