Actually I disagree with that.
I’m by no means “elite” but Katarina was my very first champion that I ever bought and played her consistently for a few months until I switched over to Irelia permanently. The new Kat in my opinion has a better kit, however the big flaws to her game play right now is her Bouncing Blade, Shunpo and Ultimate.
BB has terrible damage, in fact I tested it and a measly single auto-attack does more damage then BB at the start of the game which is completely absurd. Also the bounce is weird now from what I remember, because going through minions to the opponents champion w/ Vanilla Kat was more effective but many times now I see it simply running through minions completely whiffing champs unless they are super close.
Her Shunpo doing significantly less damage, but worst yet having the stupid 14 second cooldown reduction was uncalled for. I’m still trying to figure out why it got a damage nerf + CD nerf on it, making it annoying, yeah, it gets more cd as you lvl it up, however it’s effectiveness is severely limited because lvling this skill now in contrast to either BB or Sinister Steel would be foolish.
Personally I can tolerate the damage nerf on the ultimate, which is fine, but the nerf to BB and Shunpo? Sinister Blade does not compensate for those three skill nerfs, and I believe that BB and Shunpo need another beef up again, by having BB having more damage output so it can keep champions wary and honest and giving Shunpo back its CD reduction from Vanilla but keep the current lowered damage.
If you did that, I believe Katarina would be strong and could without a doubt see more competitive play in my opinion. I’m not like all the haters at LoL who say she’s terrible to her Vanilla version. I actually believe she can be much better then her Vanilla Kat just simply because Riot can actually patch and fix this Kat effectively where as the old Kat just simply got CCed to death and relied way too much upon her Ulti, which again, any smart opponent will always, always save a CC for her whenever she enters the fight. New Kat is better, but just needs a slight buff to make her great.
I’ve only gotten back to this game recently about a few months ago with a few months of lay-off and I’ve been picking and playing Leona (the only tank I’ll ever play period) hard lately. She seriously needs some upgrade for her lack of DoT, but with a good combo I’ve been very successful with her at bot. My friends and I have been coming up with some really interesting Leona + (Insert Champion) combos that’s been quite effective and has actually brought up my wins even more.
Still, nothing replaces my love for Irelia, I’m really pissed that they nerfed her sustain (Riot is many times imo 10x worst then Fighting Game companies with their patches), but then the added re-buff helped her a bit in my opinion and has made her viable again. I enjoy this game, I just don’t play it as much, maybe next time I’ll add my name on here so you peeps at srk.com can play with me, I would like that, however I don’t want to deal with ragers if I’m not “Super Pro” or whatever.
