Talk:Katarina/@comment-26266817-20150410044402

I really hate the new nerfs. Her early laning was already trash - what purpose is served by making it even worse? These nerfs don't address the things that make Kat unfun to play against, but they do make it less fun to play as her.

Kat is one of the most bipolar champs in the game, but that doesn't make her unbalanced. She relies entirely on getting fed early so she can make plays and snowball her team's advantage in the mid game. Even so, she can't carry games on her own the way a champ like Fizz or Tryndamere can, because she needs to go in to do damage and she doesn't have any frames of invulnerability while doing so. What's more, she's COMPLETELY USELESS unless she has relevant damage because of her kit's absence of utility and her poor pushing power. She needs to at least go even during laning phase, because playing with a Kat that's behind is like playing 4v5.

But not only do these nerfs make it harder for Kat to hit her necessary power spikes, but they don't really make sense given her kit. She has no sustain in lane unless you rush a hextech revolver, and even then she spellvamps poorly because her abilities are AOE. You could argue that her lack of a secondary resource gives her sustain in a sense, but she's still a melee champion with fairly short range abilities. Her Q can help her get last hits, but relying on it exclusively pushes the lane and guarantees she'll miss even more last hits. Her succeptibility to poke makes her balanced, but now she can't even play conservatively and sacrifice farm for a few waves to heal back up. Going B is her only option if she gets low, which in turn makes her an even more bipolar champ. She either all-ins her opponent when she's at or near full health, or she misses out on farm and xp and consequently becomes useless. Her laning phase has been transformed from a tactical exercise ("Do I accept the loss of some health and temporary lane pressure to get that cannon minion?") to a zero-sum game between her and her lane opponent.

It really feels like Riot just looked at her winrate and decided she needed a nerf without giving much thought to context. Kat's winrate will fluctuate with the meta - like all assassins, she finds success against squishy targets and struggles against tanks and bruisers. She's probably going to be "unviable" for the next few months, and then when the meta shifts again she'll become viable again. But regardless, these changes do not address the underlying problems with her kit and gameplay style, and instead actually exacerbate the problem.