Kayle's Rework: Trying To Fix What WASN'T Broken | League of Legends

in the early days of league most of the roster was designed around fulfilling traditional archetypes in a literal sense for example you had your generic minotaur frontline tank in the form of alistar you had your typical archer slash huntsman through ash you had your mage in the form of rice and assassin in the form of katarina an enchanter like gianna a berserker like tryndamere almost everyone in some way shape or form could be closely related to a video game trope from an rpg or something not a bad thing mind you there's a reason why trolls become tropes point being champion design early on placed a greater emphasis on checking things off a list compared to now where it's more about every release going after a certain theme a positive aspect of this approach was that it made characters more recognizable and therefore easier to pick up even by players who've never played a mopa in their lives and it was essential in establishing the various classes we know all too well today fighters mages tanks marksman slayers what have you however a negative outcome was that many of those champs lived and died by their archetypal strengths and weaknesses resulting in many of them needing visual gameplay updates in an attempt to introduce more nuance to their gameplay one that embodied a very black and white approach to league's design philosophy was kale whose current and previous iteration symbolized the idea of scaling on top of being your garden variety angel character she would start a game out noticeably weaker than any of her peers but would gradually evolve into a destructive force of destiny that could 1v9 carry harder than even adc's yet despite having such an appealing premise her experience was flawed enough to warrant a rework so let's dive into her history with chaos rework a retrospective before we continue though i have a quick shout out for today's sponsor the hex tech store it's a place where you can purchase hextech crafting related items like orbs chests or keys at a discounted price if you like to buy orbs and chests or just skins in general you can get more for your money by using their store after purchase they gift you the items in game you can use my code vars for an added discount on top of their already discounted prices it's a trustworthy site with fast delivery so feel free to check it out thanks again to hextech store for sponsoring the video but for now let's get back into it as mentioned already the idea behind kale was that you started out really weak but had many different scaling metrics that would significantly magnify her pressure as time went on there were other champions alongside her who were late game skills but out of all of them she had the most extreme transformation from borderline worthless to arguably the strongest hyper carry in the game at level 18 with six items and that statement might still hold true even now unlike other old champions with move sets so bad ryde had to go above and beyond to reimagine them kel was comparatively not too big of a problem all things considered it was very stat checky in nature but there was a win condition she wanted to reach and had the means to do so without necessarily relying on degenerate or cheesy strategies in the same way as our previous entry nunu that said designing a lake unscaling hyper carry was and still is a challenge in light of having to massively underpower them early game to make it honors to the player to get to that point but not too underpowered to where they fall so far behind that it renders the scaling null and void since they lost before they could even get to that point even more pressing of an issue was that kale was the only one of her kind to have supportive elements generally hyper carriers have selfish kits they often provide no utility for their team and what little they do carry is primarily meant to benefit them such is the case of the likes of master yi casted in fiora and kog'maw to name a few in doing so it was easy to gauge how well or poorly they were performing since there were no external factors influencing their stats kale was the exception to this with two of her abilities being able to affect allies one of which is a super ultimate and an infinite value ability additionally she had a lot of different elements that are very rare if not unique only to her meaning there was nothing riot could use as a reference to judge how effective it would be in practice the lack of a benchmark to evaluate her was largely responsible for why she had to receive not one but two major overhauls technically only the first was a visual gameplay update since the second didn't change her visuals in any way but the adjustments of the latter were significant enough to fundamentally alter many things within her kit and by extension or playstyle kale is one of very few ranged champions in league who altered between melee and range form the only others at the time were shape-shifters like nidalee only kale had this in the form of a buff righteous fury was a shining virtue passively dealing bonus magic damage with her basic attacks making her a hybrid scaler as well when activating the ability she would gain a long lasting buff that changed her into a ranged champion with an attack range in the same vein as the standard marksman and the magic damage on her basic attacks would double while splashing on enemies around the initial target much like ravenous hydra given his space duration of 10 seconds and a 14 second cooldown at rank 5 it was very possible for kale to have righteous series uptime last indefinitely as thirty percent cooldown reduction would be significant enough for the duration to exceed its cooldown and nashville still provided twenty percent back then not only did kale deal hyper damage not only was she a ranged attacker but she also did aoe damage with their attacks and it wasn't just a small bit either seeing as it did the full bonus damage on top of almost half her ad obviously with this ability revolving around her autos building attack speed would amplify its effectiveness in tandem with standard attack damage and ability power furthermore her passive holy fervor would shred both armor and match resist by 15 and it was already difficult to itemize against hybrid damage let alone dealing with this her q and w served to make it easier for her to kite out or chase down enemies reckoning was a point-and-click spell that applied a rather strong slow for a full 3 seconds if her opponent had no mobility then they were completely exposed with this divine blessing was a moderate heal and 3 second movement speed buff on her or an allied champion with just a few ap items she had the potential to out speed anyone else in tempo for a brief moment making her surprisingly hard to catch this is where we encounter a balance issue kale is a pseudo-range champion with a self-heal thus giving her sustain in the neutral granted it had a 15 second cooldown but that's a dangerous combination to have many hyper carriers do have some semblance of healing in their kit but it's balanced out by the fact that they're usually melee or can only pull the ceiling off while fighting enemy champions it's almost never a good idea to give a ranged champion out of combat sustain unless they sacrifice their own health in some way such as vladimir additionally being able to cast this on her allies gave her a decent teamfight utility and speaking of teamfight utility kayle's ultimate was intervention but the cast range of 900 and no mana cost she granted unconditional and vulnerability to either herself or any one of her teammates for up to three seconds no strings attached press the button and boom you become immune to all damage tryndamere has a similar ability in the form of undying rage but once again what kept it from being overpowered was that he was a melee champion therefore easy to kite without his dash and he could only use it on himself kale was able to attach this to anyone on her team or herself if used on herself you essentially ended up with a range hyper carry with splash damage who can free fire on you for up to 3 seconds and remember she can slow you down while speeding herself up in the early game this wasn't much of an issue considering she had no attack speed or damage yet but in the late game three seconds of invincibility is enough for her to get in six to eight autos if you have no way of stunning her alternatively she could use intervention on her adc or someone else granting them full freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted why this was such a problem was because the one weakness of hyper carries is that if they fall behind they are no use to the team since they're nothing but damage and usually no crowd control kale had enough utility to where she could provide for her team during the mid game even if she was behind while still slowly but surely scaling that's not to say she had no weaknesses her unrivaled late game prowess came at the cost of an almost non-existent early game but back then league of legends was a lot slower than it is now even after version 12.10 the pressure to score an early lead wasn't as paramount nor was it as punishing to fall behind she had time on her side and many people knew this too prior to rework she was consistently performing at well over a 50 win rate the issue surrounding this was how polarizing of a championship was again you're looking at a range hybrid area damage auto attacker with the ability to make herself invincible for 3 seconds and all point-and-click abilities the outcome was assured if you had the right composition to shut her down early and during team fights she lost if he didn't she won not exactly the most fun experience for either her or her opponents pragmatically though she was fine clear weaknesses clear strengths how to function and delivered on it pretty well the interactions were just a little bit one-dimensional in a way old kale suffered from the same problems as old pantheon both were usable and honestly if they never got reworked they would still be viable even now but some touching up was in order so that's the approach why i settled on for her vgu and the first iteration of her rework painfully illustrated a lack of understanding of the main concern around her design polarity kale's abilities retained their basic premises but were modernized to widen their range of effect version 9.5 oversaw her full relaunch alongside morgana now instead of her arranged properties being attached to a buff it was transferred to her passive divineness then featured three phases of evolution based on the rank of her ultimate initially basic attacks would grant her bonus attack speed stacking up to 5 times and at full stacks she became exalted gaining increased movement speed towards enemies she would then obtain an additional effect at level 6 11 and 16. at level 6 while exalted her auto attacks unleashed a wave of fire in a cone so rather than a ravenous hydropassive it became a titanic hydropassive this is where splash damage went to as well then at level 11 she became a permanent ranged champion and her attack speed per stack was increased then at level 16 she became permanently exalted and the fire waves dealt true damage without even looking at the rest of her abilities something was very wrong with this in a vacuum this is a very interesting way to add thresholds to a hyper carry scaling there's a tangible power spike with each evolution at rank 6 she got more wave clear at rank 11 she got more range in dps at rank 16 she goes full 1v9 but her biggest flaw was how pathetically weak her early game was even for the standards of a laking champion all kale was able to do at best was push waves and play neutral for a good 20 minutes while she had very little kill pressure to speak of giving herself ranged waveclear kept her from being collapsed on too early and divine blessing was just enough for her to avoid being an easy target to catch divine ascent took her poor laning face and made it even worse now she had no consistent form of waveclear until level 6 and 0 access to range attacks until level 11. all for a small 30 attack speed buff that meant nothing for her in lane at first it may seem like a necessary evil on account of her level 16 passage of granting aoe true damage and it is but kale didn't need a stronger lakeing her existing late game was already disgusting what she needed was more agency in the early game so she could be a legitimate champion instead of spending the first 20 minutes praying no pun intended that a team could survive 4v5 in riot's defense passive aside they more than succeeded in that department kale's active abilities were adjusted in a way that made them feel more skill expressive and less one-dimensional for starters radium blast is a skill shot that can damage and slow multiple enemies so they gave her the pantheon q treatment where it's no longer point and click but can now hit more than one target her old passive was added to radiant blast as well in order to capitalize on the armor and magic as a shred you had to land this ability first registery was changed to starfire spellblade retaining the same magic damage passive but now having a different active arranged empowered auto attack prior to becoming ranged herself and did bonus missing health damage essentially you can no longer remotely albeit temporarily access your ranged form her w could heal herself and a nearby ally champion reducing the individual scaling so you no longer had to choose between yourself and someone else you could split it amongst both don't know how much i agree with that change but at least they compensated with a lower heel and shorter speed boost the biggest change of course was to her ultimate now rename divine judgment while the duration remains the same it now has an ability cost at early levels and a much longer cooldown to boot additionally kale is locked out of using basic attacks for at least a second and a half preventing her from free firing on you during the entire duration in exchange divine judgment has a finishing attack that deals a pretty large amount of magic damage to all nearby enemies responses to the change were mixed on one hand there was more of an incentive to use it offensively now that it did damage but on the other it lowered how much of the duration she can actually attack for it enough to where she can barely attack at all while invincible regardless her new base kit was noticeably healthier by design than before there were more applications of them in team fights and laning phase but that said a lot of that was overshadowed by her passive having great taste but awful execution in terms of what she needed at level 16 she was indisputably the strongest champion in the game by every stretch of the imagination problem was she would only ever get that far in maybe 1 out of every 30 games considering how irrelevant she was until all the way to level 11 and even if she managed to survive to that point she would only be on the same playing field as every other champ at level 11 meaning you saw no return on your investment until level 16. at that point it begged the question why even bother and that was the main grievance everyone had with her right from the start it didn't matter how good her super saiyan god blew kyogen ultra instinct 1v999 form was it was too inaccessible most of the time and the few times you could access it it was long after it was too late to make use of it so she ended up getting another rework less than half a year after her vgu she received another major overhaul to most of her abilities in an effort to return more agency into her laning phase kale's bonus movement speed while exalted was half but now applies no matter what instead of having to wait until level 11 to become ranged chaos level 6 and 11 bonuses were swapped fire waves were moved to 11 and the range status was moved to 6. as to the level 16 bonus the true damage was replaced instead with the increased attack range which at first was a nerf since it was only 50 but then in version 11.10 the bonus was doubled to 100 giving her an attack range of 625 though it may appear to be a small adjustment that simple change was enough to completely reimagine how players could approach kale during each stage of the game at level 6 she regained her ability to play neutral and siesta less danger to her own life causing the remainder of laning face to be relatively more comfortable for the one playing her they had to siphon a huge amount of her late game strength to allow this change though and for good reason she didn't exactly get stronger early on only safer but a safer laning phase equals more consistency in reaching the power spikes that really drive her over the end unfortunately this adjustment only cemented how awkward kale's design philosophy is her old iteration was problematic in that it was too one-dimensional leading to scenarios where she was either hard 1v9 or hard feeding the difference came down to matchups and how smart the player was in knowing when to focus on waveclear and when to actually try and fight their opponent with her on-demand range being rested away from the player chao's experience in lane devolves into surrendering all lane priority to her opponent until level 6 only throwing single instance range attacks with starfire spellblade and not much else at level 6 is when playing laning phase reverted back to how old kale was only now you had slightly different tools at your disposal but she still wasn't quite able to contend against the majority of mid game threats until level 11. in essence kale's already poor early game agency was diminished even further and the only thing she got in return was a few more use cases for her basic abilities but that wasn't the focal point of her gameplay the focal point was her being a ranged diaper carry one that gradually messed power as time went on preston kale is a ranged typer carry but segmenting her power spikes into evolutions had the adverse effect of stunting her growth faces rather than a straight curve upwards and strength it was more like a set of stairs a huge power spike followed by flatlining before the next one kale was no longer about gaining each level getting more items she was more likely to survive until level 6 then survive until level 11 then survive until level 16. during this time engaging against her lane opponent has no benefit for her not exactly portraying the holy angel motif when much of the early game is spent hiding from your opponent a lot of what i'm saying might sound familiar to those of you who watch my karma retrospective but the reason it works so well for her is that from a gameplay standpoint karma's new kit is vastly more engaging than the old one even if it was at the cost of a duality kale's new mechanic is also more engaging than the old one but it was at the cost of her agency which is a far worse trade-off what kale needed was a pantheon ask rework keeper gameplay exactly the same and just retrofit her abilities to have more applications in skill expression rather than point and click stat checky stuff that was it they tried to fix what wasn't broken so what are your thoughts on chaos rework do you believe it was for better or worse let me know in the comments down below apart from that if you enjoyed the video i'd appreciate it if you could leave a like and subscribe don't forget to follow me on twitter join my discord server and check out my other retrospective episodes if you haven't yet but for now thanks so much for watching and i look forward to seeing you again soon take care [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Vars

Views: 263,957

Keywords: vars, varsverum, league of legends, lol, vars lol, league of legends gameplay, lol discussion, vars league of legends, why no one plays, lol why no one plays, kayle, kayle top, kayle mid, kayle rework, kayle rework retrospective, old kayle, lol rework retrospective, lol rework, kayle season 12, kayle abilities, lol kayle, lol broken champion, lol hypercarry, lol lategame, lol scaling

Id: kKhJOkh4mgo

Length: 15min 51sec (951 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 20 2022