Talk:Katarina/@comment-25660105-20141215074307/@comment-9705522-20141221011527

I have rarely seen this many misconceptions at once, and trust me, ive read Lee Sin threads, so Ive seen a lot of em. So lets get them down. Katarina doesnt snowball easily. Wow, shocking, I know. The reason here is simple. Early on she simply doesnt have the power yet. Her early damage, as well as her single-target damage are not very good until she gets her ult. However ... her ult can be interrupted or escaped from, and even then is not a lot better than others. Compared to her, every assassin (except Kha) and most mages snowball better.

Then, hard to shut down. Nope. Using a single type of hard CC is not "hard to shut down". And yes, thats all you need. Stop her ult, and she is sub-par until she gets 4 resets, at which point the fight is lost eitherway, so it doesnt even make a difference. Now you might say "well, not EVERY team has CC". Well, yes. But common meta teams right now have anywhere between 4 and 6 CC abilities that can stop Kats ult accross the team. So, in order to have a team that CANT stop Kat, you have to pick very off-meta stuff. Intentionally crippling yourself.

Then, falling off. Also, wrong, she does fall off. The tankier the enemy get, the longer it takes for her to get them low enough to get a reset rolling. Meaning a longer period of vulnerability. And with how squishy she is, thats a death sentence. Additionally, unlike Riven, she is a LOT more vulnerable to just about everything, as she cant cc the enemy, is a lot squishier, has no way of regaining HP and dies a lot quicker.

Now the final part. "All she has to do is wait for her team to engage". Well, this isnt quite wrong, but not quite right either. Lets rephrase it. "All she has to do is wait for her team to CC the entire enemy team for at least a few seconds". Ok, now that we specified it, whats wrong with this sentence? Nothing actually. Its true. But here is the catch. Its also true for a lot of other champions. Assassins not so much, they are usually focused on single-target damage (hence why I dont classify Kat as an assassin).

But mages? Yup. They do the same thing. The difference is that they do it more safely. In exchange for that their maximum potential is lower. In other words, Kat is high risk high reward, they are low risk lower reward, but both can eviscerate an enemy team that got engaged on. Weve got Brand, Orianna, Ryze, Ziggs, Xerath (to some degree), Annie. If you want something more focused on sustained damage (they also are capable of dealing almost as much if not more damage than Kat, albeit not as fast), there are Cass, Anivia, Karthus and so on.

And a special mention who deserves his own paragraph. Wukong. Ah, wukong. Its quite funny how people keep going on and on about how "Katarina is totes op" "no-skill easy penta" and "too hard to shut down" ... and then keep forgetting about Wukong. So, why Wukong? Similiar reason as Kat. His ult. Except ... his ult is vastly superior. It deals more damage. If you count his level 18 base ad as additional base damage to his ult, it has a base damage of 1301. Thats 1.73 times, or 173% of Kats base damage. Or 550 extra base damage. And it has a 4.4 per bonus AD scaling, compared to Kats 2.5 per AP. Now, I could do a math section here, but its long and im getting tired, so ill skip. Basically, his ult will usually end up dealing more damage than hers. Especially since it doesnt have a target limit.

But wait, there is more. It also has a built-in knockup. No need to rely on initiation, you can be the initiation. But wait, there is more. With his stealth from W, you can even surprise the enemies. But wait, there is more. You can also move during it, getting extra movement speed too. And here is the icing on the cake. The one thing that makes Wukongs ult so much better ... but also so much more problematic. It cant be stopped. Yup. This ult, that already is superior in so many ways also lacks the one weakness that makes Katarinas ult fair. And yet, people complain about Kat, not Wukong. Why? Who knows. Its definitily not based on anything rational.