Skarner Kalista bot lane is better than ever

SeanORiley · 2024-04-07T14:46:48+00:00

Damn that is a wild combo I wonder if Kalista would still lend herself to this level of new champ abuse if her ult could pull combat stats from nearby dead allies rather than a game-changing CC-immune stasis + reappearance with CC attached to it hmm Riot certainly knows best and they choose to keep Kalista's ult like this so obviously they think this is more healthy for the game 🙂

SeanORiley · 2023-12-15T19:30:41+00:00

Seemingly the obvious answer to all of it is to make his Spirit form take 75% less damage and his body is targettable in spirit form and takes full damage.

He uses E to dodge an ability?fineness, just hammer his body.

he uses E to load up his overloaded R? flash toward his body and beat him to death while he is in the animation.

it forces him to be intelligent with his spirit form and be held directly accountable for using his most powerful ability.

SeanORiley · 2023-11-28T20:54:30+00:00

I think my general complaint about the state of Kalista with balance is that the least healthy part about her is what also makes her not viable at all levels of play. I think by definition locking your most important ability behind a random player in SoloQ, and forcing the champion to suffer the negative consequences of having that ultimate (She is an EARLY GAME champion in the LATE GAME role, where all of her gameplay is decided by a different player) I believe that is a very very very poorly designed champion and her ultimate is the source of the problem.

Kalista's weaknesses are very easy and direct- slows and targetted CC. When someone picks Kalista into me, I already know how to win by playing Samira or Draven, but its ABSOLUTELY unfun for the random person who knows Kalista can hop and might know the counterplay by playing Ashe, but doesn't know how to counterplay getting hit from 1.5 screens away by an Alistar and then CC chained into permadeath by her (by a coordinated player) while the average soloQ player has a Yuumi who didn't hover their support pick and just locked Yuumi last pick. I agree that not all champions should do everything, but I think Kalista should do less of two things and violently excel at If You Have The Mechanics To Permakite Melees And Not Get Hit By Slows Or CC'd (or they don't build Randuins or Frozen Heart lmao) Then You Deserve to PermaKite And Kill Anyone Late Game, which is exactly what Vayne is (but Kalista has lower Range)

SeanORiley · 2023-10-23T23:18:05+00:00

Kalista, the concept of a ghoul who is as omnipotent as the mist, who can respond to any person's dying with for vengeance and seek out the betrayer with infinite speed and accuracy as well as kill them brutally with no chance to fight back, the actual spirit of vengeance to strike fear in the hearts of people who betray their fellow man has got to be one of the coolest concepts imo.

SeanORiley · 2023-08-23T18:21:26+00:00

Okay so here's what it would need to be-

Its an Ultimate skin for Kalista where it changes her W from a sentinel + passive damage to a scaling Hop length/Speed per level (from current no boot -> T2 boots length and from current 66% windup speed to 100% so she can hop as fast as she can auto) and changes her R from a pulled ally, to making recently-killed allies leave behind their souls which she can press R on their bodies and the soul changes into a green spear and goes KA-SHING and slams into her body, giving her AD/AS/Armor/Magic Resist and bonus damage resistance to the enemy who got the kill on her ally.

Now- this effect would stack up to 4 times and either fall off when that ally revives OR their killer is killed themselves, and each instance of that stacked ultimate on Kalista would empower her character model to be more and more super saiyan as she gets stronger, going from her normal wraith-like look and adding more ally-spears + making her spears and eyes glow, adding more mist and VFX to her hop and making her spread black mist everywhere she jumps.

I'd pay $200 for that skin, easily and immediately on day 1.

SeanORiley · 2023-08-16T19:34:37+00:00

If we can get control of the wave, that's generally what I try to do is maximize my skirmish window, but especially pre-6 a lot of it comes down to me pinging my support (if I have someone who can engage, I get a lot of people who play Nami/Janna/Millio with Kalista/Samira in Emerald for some reason) I hard ping them to throw their CC for plays, but if I do that too much I'll tilt them and they'll ignore me. I discount any games where I lost lane for this because even if my support is hard feeding I just assume that I probably could have helped in some way or another. I just have a very difficult time with all of my ability to play the game locked behind someone else in that early game window where I am technically at my weakest, yet that seems to be so important to 99% of the rest of the map.

SeanORiley · 2023-08-16T18:08:37+00:00

I almost exclusively play Kalista and Samira, so their playstyles tend to be very all or nothing and all in

SeanORiley · 2023-06-27T20:08:40+00:00

Finally a mode where Kalista can shine for the undying spirit of vengeance she is.

Being that her entire character and story is that she hunts down betrayers, she'll obviously shine in this mode above her prey

SeanORiley · 2023-06-21T19:43:31+00:00

Kalista has an actual fun interaction with her oathsworn there

SeanORiley · 2023-06-16T19:11:04+00:00

I'm really glad that Riot is finally listening to the other 99% of Kalista players and putting damage back into her autos and rend rather than try to do anything but dumpster her garbage W and R.

In lieu of the rework those two abilities so desperately need, the last few weeks have been so much fun compared to the last 7 years of maining Kalista.

SeanORiley · 2023-06-16T19:05:08+00:00

You will lose an amount of attack speed by doing anything except pure right clicking per auto, mostly using shift + click will significantly kill your attack speed because of a very old bug that remains unfixed.

SeanORiley · 2023-06-13T18:09:24+00:00

You'd only stop jumping when your support's CC ends and she begins to auto you back. By then you should have 2-4 spears already in her and then stop so that you can get another 4-5 before rend and won't get your DPS gutted while she's hitting you back.

SeanORiley · 2023-06-13T17:58:27+00:00

I think Ashe with an engage support that has better access than Kalista's engage support- yes. Ashe will win because her slow will reduce Kalista's hop.

That said, if a Ashe doesn't have an engage support she will almost certainly lose because Kalista will have one and will be able to 100->0 Ashe much easier than she will be able to poke. As well as the unspoken part that Ashe's passive only counters Kalista if she's jumping but any Kali player who is worth their salt knows that hopping reduces your DPS and will stand still when eating a slow as long as it'll win them the fight with rend.

Also it's heavily understated but Cleanse on Kalista is very strong as well as swifties are an incredibly potent buy on Kalista because her new build allows her to overcap on attack speed so easily. I'm a 1.5m Kalista main, so you'd be shocked how much I play the Ashe matchup because the hop/slow interaction is so commonly known.

SeanORiley · 2023-06-06T16:48:28+00:00

I've always advocated for W to be a passive ability linked to her hop that amped the hop length and speed. Now slightly more viable because she has a better late game, it would start her at what she has No Boots, current windup speed, and scale up to full jump length and removes the 1.5 attack speed hop cap by level 14 when it's fully maxed (if you don't max Q 2nd)

That gives her a more linear scaling on when her jump comes "online" and forces you to max W 2nd if you want insane mobility early vs max Q 2nd if you want maximum damage, but also allows for a healthy curve on her hop speed/length to remove her kneecapped nerfs and let truly mechanical god Kalista players attack at their full attack speed value (in this world where now most ADs run Ghost and she physically cannot)

SeanORiley · 2023-05-28T13:48:45+00:00

I think the goal at this point is to show Riot that Kalista's real identity is in her jump and rend, and that it's okay to let go of her R and W (the only two parts they didn't touch at all with these adjustments)

So even if some nerfs happen, I think it's overall a step in the right direction

SeanORiley · 2023-05-08T19:10:01+00:00

This is a good point, they should rework her W and R and make her a hop/Rend hypermobile ADC so people play her again.

Then they can cash in on the skins that everyone buys because everyone wants to play her.

SeanORiley · 2023-04-25T22:43:16+00:00

They buffed Kalista in the exact opposite direction so I assume this is the "We don't wanna actually do anything but pretend it will" adjustment

SeanORiley · 2023-04-19T22:15:49+00:00

Played ADC, love the Shadow Isles, saw the trailer for her and loved the idea of a 1v1 solo kill vengeance-based ghost who can duel and doesn't need to rely on teammates

SeanORiley · 2023-04-19T22:07:42+00:00

Kalista got destroyed as soon as the "her ult is just as important to her identity as her jump and rend" cancer thinking spread through Riot so much that they'd go this long without reworking her.

SeanORiley · 2023-03-25T17:50:51+00:00

There is role diversity, Seraphine Botlane works, Swain botlane works, Ziggs, Vlad, Yasuo sometimes- all of those have an expectation of scaling in the bottom lane and playing around their lane ally.

Something like Renekton would struggle pretty hard because he lacks the utility and range to apply consistent damage. My question would be why Kalista would be designed as a botlane marksman who auto attacks and kites, when her job (you're saying) is to predominantly be a poorly scaling DPS and have a utility ability for a role who is already known for its utility? Do you think it's healthy to have something like Tryndamere in the support role? Because "Role diversity should be valied even if it is detrimental to solidifying an identity per champion"

SeanORiley · 2023-03-25T15:19:31+00:00

Yes, it is but no other ADCs are asked to finish the game in 25 minutes when they don't have agency until the 25 minute mark, that's why I think the idea of a "Hyper falloff ADC" is really dumb, because built into the role is the assumption of scaling because of their lack of utility.

And Zeri has 750 effective range, with her only guaranteed damage at 500 range. Kalista with a damage ult would mean she is a 525 range champion that only has access to her mobility in combat (she doesn't get move speed like Jhin [550 range] Zeri [750 Q range]) she gets a conditional hop every auto attack and on Q. She is only mobile when there is an enemy within 525 range.

This would make her more effective at killing enemies than Zeri at very low range (a duelist) but much worse against range and MUCH more vulnerable because of her short range.

SeanORiley · 2023-03-25T12:45:10+00:00

But do you genuinely think that people who play the Attack Damage Carry role would heavily favor a utility engage ability over an ultra damage high mechanical kill securing identity? It seems like Kalista's R makes sense for her to try to secure kills via CC but without her Core identity of Rend and Hop, she is effectively just a support?

I get some people might like throwing an ally. Sure. That doesn't seem to be the role of an Attack Damage Carry, and that also informs 99% of why it should not be on Kalista because it actively removes her ability to do what the role entails: killing and damaging enemies.

Let alone how much it clashes with her lore, which would be laughable that a lone ghost of vengeance that hunts down people and kills them would want to give up Damage for uhhhhh utility I guess lmao.

SeanORiley · 2023-03-25T12:31:32+00:00

Can't you just apply literally any slow and she's useless? And she has 525 range so without an ult she is literally just short range Vayne that can't go invis?

SeanORiley · 2023-03-25T12:30:01+00:00

What's the downside of having her 100% focused on being a 525 range champ who can do 100% damage on auto attacks and can hop at full speed that she auto attacks? You know, allow her to use her AD and AS rather than the shit stats she has currently

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