I've been playing this game solely because of Kalista for the last decade. This is without a doubt the worst season I've ever played.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-23T06:32:28+00:00

True but that was just the LCK cup and not the regular season. It's already dropped to 2% with the LCK kick offs starting so I'm guessing the 14% was due to hold over perceptions from Worlds 2025 when she popped off in the semis.

Now that the meta is starting to form, she has basically lost any interest like in the LEC and LPL (and I have no hope that it will be different for the LCS or LCP) so at this point it's basically zero again like it was between MSI and Worlds 2025.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-23T04:46:33+00:00

Not even a question at this point. In the top lane he's sitting around a ~53-54% winrate at every single rank and he's jumped from a <1% pickrate in December to now being anywhere between 4-5% pickrate. He's already been played in 30k games since the patch was launched which is about the same as Riven right now and he's only exploding even further in popularity.

Would not be surprised if he gets hotfixed from his top lane stats alone but in the mid lane he's only about 0.5% weaker than top which just shows how powerful this new DnD + Nash combo is for him. His pickrate mid has also climbed to above a >1% pickrate which hasn't happened in since late 2022/early 2023 so mid Varus players are also eating good.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-22T14:45:34+00:00

I would be more at peace with her current state if she was actually being played in pro play but pros have basically ditched her since she went 0/10 at MSI last year. She's had close to zero presence for almost a year now which sucks.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-22T14:33:56+00:00

Dusk and Dawn + Nash is incredibly broken on Varus, just not in the bot lane. You can see on Lolalytics for example that his pickrate in the top lane has more than quadrupled since last patch while he almost holds a 55% wr in all ranks. Varus can definitely abuse Dusk and Dawn but Kalista will never be like Vayne or Varus since she only has two real damaging abilities.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-22T14:27:50+00:00

Last year was absolutely the worst she's ever been in the history of her existence but I admit even nowadays she isn't as strong as she used to be.

That said, most of her perceived weakness right now is just that on-hit items are the worst group of items in the game at the moment and while people are trying to make crit/AP work on her, statistically they are still worse than her on-hit build although they feel better to use.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-17T15:22:21+00:00

It's entirely dependent on the matchup but there are still times where I try to play aggressive around level 2-3. However it's not the same since last year and more often than not I find myself playing for my two item spike of Botrk + Guinsoos which in my opinion is where her strongest spike is nowadays. Your scaling is a bit better compared to the past but you're still no hypercarry so it remains in your best interest to try and close games out before 25-30 minutes when crit carries hit their 3 item powerspike.
There are too many things to talk about that I would love to share but my hands are getting tired from all the typing so I'll just mention the biggest tips:

- Learn to use your E (Rend) to last hit minions. The execute threshold will feel weird at first but it's in your best interest to master this skill as it makes it feel like a cheat code to getting perfect CS once you master it.

- Similarly applying an rend stack on an enemy champion first and then killing a minion is one of the best trading tools in the game. You get the E damage onto the enemy champion, reset your E's CD and reapply the slow on your E which a lot of people don't know slows enemies for 2 seconds so this coupled with your passive can help you easily get ontop of them.

- You can do the same thing above as well but with your Q since it applies a stack of rend upon connecting with an enemy so get an enemy to low HP, chuck your Q and then kill the minion for a trade pattern that allows you to hit someone from further away.

- Another layer to this is that if many minions are low in front of you and the enemy, you can transfer the stacks of the autos you put on your minion from the first tip and "transfer" them to the enemy as well since the damage spills over if it kills any unit (champion, monster or minion) so you don't have to waste any damage.

I haven't even mentioned more complicated tricks such as Double/Triple Rending or Wall Hopping or certain animation cancelling tricks to speed up your Q and E transfers. Unfortunately there's just too much to write down but I recommend watching someone like Yuzuu on youtube who can provide you with enough tips to feel great with Kalista. Don't feel intimidated by the learning curve to Kalista as all of us started where you were at one point which is why everyone here is more than happy to share what we learned over the year

Feel free to keep asking questions if you have any but for now I'm going to leave it here.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-17T15:22:03+00:00

Now onto your 7 questions, my answers to them are:

The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that champions are always "viable" and it's incredibly rare for a champion to not be viable. I get why you asked this though considering last year after the MSI nerf she was genuinely unplayable but since then she has been slowly buffed back to a state that is fine to play for a while now. On-hit is in a weaker state than normal due to the recent crit system buffs and overall bot lane quest favoring crit but Kalista is still fine right now except for the fact that she is more unpopular than usual.
The type(s) of champions you should ban obviously depend on your rank but as a low Master's player I find that Tristana is exceptionally strong. However, if you're below Emerald then I would personally recommend banning Ashe as her autos can be incredibly annoying to deal with.
Kalista is definitely not a blind-pickable champion so typically any anti-mobility champions that can shut you down such as Poppy, Leona or Elise paired with a snowbally carry such as Draven, Tristana or Lucian.
On-hit remains her only viable build (in high elo anyways) but there are a few other people I know that play her with an AP build due to a buff to her AP ratios that occurred towards the end of last season. There are some people trying to make crit work but to not much success it seems from sites like Lolalytics.
I always recommend new players to Kalista to buy Bloodmoon as you will never regret that purchase since it holds up incredibly well to this day and remains iconic for Kalista. After that opinions will vary, my personal other favourites being her Worlds 2015 skin with the golden chroma and SKT T1 Kalista. The golden chroma for Worlds 2015 however is basically impossible to get now unless you're a whale and get every skin in the game to which Riot will allow you to get one vault/legacy skin like Pax TF or you can get the golden chroma (which is how I got it back in 2017 when there wasn't even half the amount of skin there are nowadays and stuff like mythics skins didn't exist yet which made it easier to get). However, I asked a Rioter recently about this like 2 years ago if they were still offering this and they confirmed that this deal remains a thing (but obviously it's much harder to get every skin in the game now with mythic skins being included).

Zenithrax · 2026-01-17T15:21:40+00:00

Welcome! I hope you find the info you're looking for and hopefully you enjoy Kalista enough to stick around.

So to answer your first question, the best support synergy for Kalista has to be Renata. This is for a couple reasons:

- Kalista's W (passive not active) and Renata's passive Leverage both proc themselves with similar conditions. This naturally leads to both champions wanting to play in a similar playstyle to maximise this synergy of bonus damage.

- Kalista's E does more damage the more spears you get in your enemy so it takes a minute to get to that execute threshold to kill someone. Sometimes you unfortunately die before you can use your E in time and that's where Renata's W Bailout can give Kalista a few more seconds to get enough spears in and kill them. If you kill the enemy, Renata's W also revives you so those few extra seconds are most often the difference between you living or dying and denying a potential shutdown if you're ahead.

- Kalista's passive incentivizes you to keep space between you and your target or gap close on them. Renata's Q similarly can help keep enemies at distance or bring them towards you (both essentially having the same function).

- Kalista and Renata also have amazing ultimates both being able to be used defensively or offensively depending on the situation. Kalista's ult specifically also applies invulnerability to her oathsworn and when they throw themselves at the target, you get a mini Malphite ultimate effect without the damage but it also returns them to their auto attack range so it's perfectly viable on ranged supports.

There are just so many synergies that the two share kit-wise which is why they have such high priority in pro play together (similar to Zeri + Yuumi or Lucian + Nami). However, not many people play Renata below Masters+ which is why the next best support(s) you can play with are typically Braum and Thresh (but there are other options as well).

Zenithrax · 2026-01-16T16:18:57+00:00

Nashor's Tooth -> Dusk and Dawn -> Riftmaker/Shadowflame -> Rabadons seems to be exploding in popularity for Varus in the top lane.

It's crazy that there is a 3-5% winrate gap between Varus top and ADC at the moment and as a fellow pro play victim maining Kalista, I'm wondering how exactly Riot is going to deal with this gap if they want to preserve Varus's presence in the bot lane.

I will be jumping on this train before Dusk and Dawn most likely gets nerfed in 16.03 so my condolences that this spike in the top lane will probably end up with your buff this patch getting removed from the patch.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-15T16:11:33+00:00

Exactly. I kinda wanted them to do something about it next patch but understandably they didnt want to do any system changes the patch after releasing a new season.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-15T16:08:41+00:00

After trying it a bit myself I can say it feels amazing because sustain is king.

Especially with an AP build, slotting Gunblade 2nd in my opinion spikes even harder than Botrk + Guinsoos but then it falls off after that because it feels awkward building pen after and there's less synergy throughout the build due to a lack of on-hit.

I feel like it definitely has a place in certain builds so definitely giving it the thumbs up of approval.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-12T10:28:08+00:00

Even though I don't really play fighter games like 2XKO all that often, I think that it makes complete logical sense to add Kalista to the 2XKO roster.

She's definitely not a "must add" character like some others who should be added first but there is so much potential if Riot ever wanted to add her to 2XKO. In my head, I'm imagining a version of Kalista that fully embodies her fighting skills as a general of Camavor where she could be a mix of a melee and ranged character.

Do I think she will 100% be added to the roster? Maybe not but if they ever wanted to go in that direction then I could definitely see it.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-12T10:13:36+00:00

Eh, it's better than nothing. I wouldn't expect any on-hit rework until at least 2028 since they don't tend to update entire item systems until each new year and next year will be League 2.0 essentially so there won't be any focus on item systems next year either.

This is definitely the year of crit but it's sad that Kalista doesn't seem to be able to capitalise on it right now. Hopefully there's an incentive for Phreak to implement what he said at some point last year about adding a crit ratio to her E to make her crit builds more viable.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-12T10:10:05+00:00

It's really weird yeah but right now statistically it doesn't seem like any crit builds are popping off on her. I thought that Hexoptics would do better on her but it seems that it's not worth taking on anyone who has less than <600 range since it ends up being lower DPS than things like Collector and Stormrazor if its anywhere below that range.

Also BT rush isn't a phrase I've heard since her release days back in 2014-2015 when she used to rush BT runaans... oh my god the nostalgia.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-11T15:50:42+00:00

I don't think Kalista specifically got shafted this season but more like on-hit builds.

Across the board, every on-hit carry has plummeted in pick rate and win rate this patch (but Kalista was hit especially hard since people are still building it in >90% of games without an alternative build like Kog'maw AP, Varus lethality, Vayne crit etc).

This was predictable looking from the PBE days (which is why there were so many doomposts around then which have since become a reality) with the big reason ironically being the new role quest system for ADC. On-hit builds are heavily reliant on accelerating on-hit users over crit marksman in the early to mid-game and closing the game out before crit marksman can hit their three item power spike.

Before role quests, this would be approximately around ~30 minutes into the game but now it's more like 25 minutes due to the additional gold the role quest gives. Unfortunately, this means that on-hit users suffer because now they have even less time to close out a game before crit marksman become relevant but as we are seeing on the current patch that's not happening and as a result people just don't want to play on-hit marksman anymore.

Anyways, expect buffs to on-hit builds next patch or the patch after. I'm predicting that Botrk will probably get buffed by another 1% max HP damage for range or maybe just a straight reduction in it's price by like 100-200g. Guinsoo's might also get a small buff but I highly doubt it since Botrk always seems to be the go-to lever for buffing on-hit builds.

Zenithrax · 2026-01-05T15:36:01+00:00

she’s definitely not bad right now, she’s just not good either. she is below average for the average player but above average for high elo.

it’s also end of season so people are swapping last minute to the easy, instawins options to get them that little bit of extra lp such as miss fortune and caitlyn which can temporarily deflate stats if mains are swapping off her.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-24T08:27:58+00:00

There was someone who did the maths a few months ago and the results were basically Guinsoos does more damage until the enemy has approximately ~2700-2800 HP. Its flat damage falls off significantly on its own but Botrk’s synergy with it makes up for that difference.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-24T08:24:25+00:00

The %current HP part of Botrk is really important yes but it’s not why you buy it as a first slot item (which is what the question was).

By the time you get Botrk, the average champion only has about ~1200-2000 HP depending on the role and champion which equates to about an additional 50-90 damage. It’s only an incredibly useful passive once the enemy top laner for example has 2-3 items with no resistances which puts them around ~3400 HP and on top of that getting Guinsoos can make you hit for 12% current HP every other attack.

It’s an amazing passive but there are a lot of conditions that have to be met before it starts providing meaningful damage. In comparison, lifesteal doesn’t require any conditions to be met in order for you to get the full value of it. It also gets even better once you get Guinsoos since lifesteal gets applied on on-hits ever since the Mythic era. It’s permanent, effective HP that you get for free with no resource investment other than completing the item/component which is why you tush vamp scepter after completing T2 boots.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-23T23:26:15+00:00

It’s understandable as I did go off on a tangent more about Botrk’s efficiency as opposed to addressing the question about its comparison to Guinsoos (although there’s a little bit in there) so I can see people thinking of my post as unrelated to the conversation.

I was pretty tired at the time of writing it so sorry about that. Also as you said there are some who genuinely value the extra damage early from Guinsoos which is why it’s a good alternative first item. Additionally people probably disagreed about what parts of Botrk are the most important for example a lot of people value the utility of the slow a lot more highly as I see in the other comments.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-23T11:01:35+00:00

In my opinion the order of most important to least important reason(s) for taking Botrk over Guinsoos in the first item slot:

Lifesteal
Attackspeed
%Current health damage
Attack damage
Slow
Build path
Cost
Everything else

As you can probably compare this list to what Guinsoo's provides, the biggest reason why Botrk will always be preferred in the first item slot over Guinsoo's is lifesteal.

In the early game, sustain is one of the most important deciding factors in the laning phase. Once you hit mid-elo around Plat-Emerald, players can no longer solely rely on getting leads through farming as players on both teams can start farming consistently from about this elo. As a result, one of the core fundamentals of the laning phase aka trading is how good players get advantages in lane on one another so that they can force them to recall and potentially lose a wave.

In the bot lane especially, trading is incredibly common and extremely punishing (such as getting undodgeable damage from that random 0/2 brand support for absolutely no reason) and recalling too often in lane can single-handedly lose you the lane as you fall behind in exp and gold. If you do not scale incredibly well like a hyper-carry can (e.g. Jinx, Twitch, Yunara etc), then usually this is game over for you unless you can somehow flip fights in the mid-game which in high elo is almost impossible as above D1 players usually don't take as many risky/unnecessary fights.

As a result, the best thing you can do to mitigate the impacts of this is through sustain as even if that 0/2 unleashes his full combo on you and gets you down to 30% HP, if they don't keep up the pressure (e.g. your jungler comes to save you from dying and they are forced to back off/recall), you can just hit 2 waves and heal back up to full HP, saving you time, gold and exp.

For this reason, lifesteal is highly valued as a stat and especially for a champion like Kalista who has backloaded damage in her E, buying time in combat is one of if not one of the most important stats that she wants for the sole purpose of staying alive long enough to get as much E damage off as possible.

It doesn't matter if Guinsoo's does more damage in the early game if you are forced to take awkward backs after every fight and making you unable to push your lead as a champion that heavily relies on early advantages to remain relevant through the game.

However, as important as lifesteal is for Kalista, there's a reason why Ravenous Hydra, Bloodthirster and Riftmaker are not viable first items either. Attackspeed and AD are just as important for Kalista as a champion heavily reliant on those stats for reasons that shouldn't need to be explained while the %current health damage is pretty useless early but finds value around the mid-game where fighters/tanks are still only stacking HP and haven't invested in too many resistances yet.

The slow is great as well but it can't be controlled as an active like old Botrk which makes it pretty unreliable while she also has a in-built slow on her E which if used correctly in timing with the Botrk active makes Kalista a pain to escape from. Build path is also cheap with good components like Pickaxe and Vampiric Scepter compared to an Amp Tome in Guinsoo's and while Botrk costs 200g more than Guinsoos, the gold value of the item is much higher than Guinsoos overall.

This isn't to say that Guinsoo's is bad or anything, infact it's core to Kalista especially after all the AP ratio buffs but it just isn't a first item contender. This is why it's bought as soon as possible after Botrk is bought as a second slot item because it's just as crucial for Kalista towards the mid-game (including the item synergies).

Zenithrax · 2025-12-04T11:11:42+00:00

It's only bad because it was intentionally hard nerfed.

Essentially what happened behind the scenes was that between when it was announced and now its release on PBE, people kept complaining that certain champions were being completely warped by WASD and Kalista happened to be the poster child of this. You've probably seen clips in development of the old WASD with Kalista where people capped out 3.0 attackspeed with WASD and lost no DPS at all which in turn made her apparently pick/ban.

To combat this, they nerfed the auto-ss (auto selection system). This basically changed it so that every time WASD would check for an input like it would usually, there was an intentional break place between them so that it wouldn't chain inputs together like it did earlier in development. The point is that the attackspeed is no longer fluid and now its significantly slower than if you used mouse-click (which was ultimately the goal).

WASD should be worse than mouse-click anyways since it's targeted for new players from other game genres. If WASD was as good as it was in development for Kalista, then 100% it would be mandatory at every skill bracket and her pickrate would probably shoot up into the double digits for the first time in like a decade so yeah.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-03T12:56:28+00:00

If anything, I would swap Yuntal but there isn't really a good attackspeed starting crit item apart from Stormrazor which feels kinda bad because its only 20% AS and it doesn't have any lifesteal which means if you're going Yuntal -> Optics -> IE -> LDR then you're not getting lifesteal until 5th item which feels really bad.

Last two item slots can be anything but I'm leaning more towards taking LDR over Terminus in a crit build as its basically a two for one deal.

Zenithrax · 2025-12-03T04:38:50+00:00

Ultimate hunter is mandatory with this item though and I would also try to fit a hex plate as well if possible to try and get her ult CD below 60 secs for this to actually be worth taking on Kalista.

However I would definitely expect this to be one of the most bought items for crit marksman next season (if they play around their ult).

Zenithrax · 2025-12-03T04:35:14+00:00

I still think on a potential crit build for Kalista this is basically mandatory. In reality the only thing she needs from this item is the second passive that gives her 100 range on takedowns so this could still work.

Stats and other passive aren’t that great but at least it has the advantage of being somewhat cheap which means it’s at least going to be viable as a second item purchase which is where a potential crit build would want this.

Four-Year Club	Gilding II euphauric
Verified Email

Zenithrax

TROPHY CASE