User blog comment:GutsyTick/CR: Kalista, the Arch Sentinel/@comment-24511547-20150303192111/@comment-26044269-20150305061858

Believe it or not I'd originally intended for Regard to be an active ability (W). However, after having actually previewed the outcome, I thought this would make Kalista to similar to Azir in terms of general gameplay and feel, hence why I changed it to the passive.

But yeah I'll consider shifting around Kalista's kit and see if I can make things more coherent and visually pleasing.

However I must say that a part of me strongly disagrees about what you've said about the conversion of Martial Poise into an active ability. I do agree on the aspects of how making it cost no mana and more spammable could be better in terms of thematic representation, but since Jaunt as an active ability does not actually require anything to use other than mana and charges (with a mitigable cd of 2 seconds at max rank), I think making it cost no mana would be going overboard on Kalista's mobility. Think of it as like an offset to the incredible amounts of power Regard offers as an innate passive.