Talk:Kalista/@comment-24496127-20170220153649/@comment-31533507-20170316180952

hey double slap, ive been reading this thread and i think you have hit the nail on the head as far as the dirrection they should be taking with kalista. and i actually had a question for you about what you think of some additions i think would be appropriate as well.

in my mind, one of the best things riot has at least attempted to maintain throughout their reworks and balance changes is that they constantly stress that a healthy champion is one with a unique, clear, and consise identinty, eg champions like old graves nd lucian had too similar an identity so they changed graves to both differentiate him and define his "theme".

i think a major issue with kalista is actually that she has too many identities, as in, she has so many unique mechanics, the kiting potential of her hops, the delayed damage and resets on creeps from her rend that allow her to be sudo-burst as well as dps and a lane pusher, and her objective controll capabilities, and that not even mentionng tthat she has a utility ult to rival sh and jhin (albeit horter range) that also works as disengage/save tool for your ally.

now, none of this means she is broken, clearly she is not overwhelmingly strong, but the problem is that if any one of these facets of her unique abilities becomes just strong enough for her to see play, then she instantly becomes top tier because she brings a pretty goood ability to do X and is also the only one who does X and also does A B C D E F and G.

i absolutely love your changes as the do what i have been saying for a long times needs to be done for her, which is to focus on one aspect of her identity, shift most of her power into that, and then either phase out the others or buff aspects of other champions so that she competes for that identity (example: she has unmatched objective taking ability so maybe lessen it but allso buff 1- 2 other champions in a way that allows them to reasonably compete. outclass her in it). and i think the best place to define kalistas identity is pretty clearly in her rend ability, and the idea to make spears only stack with crits unless she has a teamates help is a great one.

all that being said, i think this can be taken one step further to define her playstyle as a gradually bulding burst  attacker. what if in addition to crits storing spears the base damage of the spear also "stored" the extra damage fom critial strikes, and then it was applied when rend was activated, and the critical damage modifyer for each "stored" spears damage scaled with the number of spears? as in,

kalistas autos have a .9 ratio (or lower or hgher depending on balance concerns)

her autos cant critically strike the traditional way (ala old ashe)

when she does critically strike it applies a spear stack

rend removes all spears to deal  10 / 14 / 19 / 25 / 32  (+ 20 / 22.5 / 25 / 27.5 / 30% AD)  per spear, each spear will deal additional damage scaling with crit modifier somthing like base 95% dmg (keeping in mind that while the normal modifyer is 200% the damage that crits is the rend damage starting lower to account for the fact that there will almost always be more spears, think shako backstab) 90/110/130/150/170% + 5%per spear.

early game when she has no critical strike, she can still stack spears with her allys help,and they can still technically crit, but she will need to build crit in order to be self sufficent later in game.

obviously, these numbers are not great but with some tuning, i think it would really set kalista apart from other marksman in a healthy way, and would allow her to be a niche pick without having to be domminat in the meta or relegated to obscurity.

so let me know what your thoughts are.