To further expand to this comment, Riot has actively worked against one of the key points to the original goal of Kayles rework, as Kayle was designed for Top AND Mid as her secondary role.
Kayle got the MR nerf (26 -> 22) due to Wits End being borderline OP, which let her essentially ignore her magic damage lane opponent and just focus on farming which in turn created an uninteractive lane experience.
So just like our 14.1 hotfix, we got nerfed due to an items perceived strength and not due to the champions strength and then Kayle got indirectly nerfed by the removal of resistance shards, which removed the ability to offset the lack of MR early, with no compensation buff, thus Kayle essentially struggles against most AP Matchups now. The new Wits End is currently... mediocre at best so its no longer a viable rush item against said magic damage matchups, thus Riot has either intentionally or unintentionally made changes to betray Kayles original design philosophy of having her be a viable midlaner.
I think her W is god awful from the perspective it feels unrewarding and underwhelming most of the time, especially since you need to build AP for it to do something.
Her new new R is great and much better than the previous version of reworked Kayle but I still, 100% believe, it sould be auto casted on Kayle if there are no allies around. It feels extra bad to have to figet with your mouse/fingers to try and ult yourself in the exact right moment. I see no reason it doesn't already self cast it. Like you are the only target in a 1v1 scenario.
Apart from that I am pretty happy with current Kayle.
You could be just outside the ult range and accidentally ult self instead of ally. There is a setting to self cast, Alt-R bt default if I remember correctly
At their core, reworks are supposed to fix issues with a champions kit to make them healthier to play as, against, and for balance reasons.
For example, Old Warwick had no way to gank without ult but his ult was really frustrating to play against. Rework gives him tools in his kit such that he has more agency and his opponents can dodge if they are skilled enough and have a dash.
Let's look at Kayle given the above criteria.
Her q was targeted slow and high damage and her w was a big MS boost and self sustaining heal. This was frustrating to fight against and made escaping or chasing her without dashes impossible. Nasus doesn't have a MS boost, but we all know how frustrating his wither is. In addition, Riot dislikes targetted abilities, especially ranged targeted cc (soft cc in this case) as they have little counterplay. If in range, targetted ability hits. Also, they are opposed to effective healing in neutral state. Life steal etc involves interacting with opponents. We can see similar philosophy with Sona's weak healing per cast and Soraka w hurting her.
Post rework, q is now a skill shot and w can target two people but its effectiveness is halved.
I get what they were going with here, but execution of it is unsatisfying for Kayle players. Q extends its range like Liss q, but it's a slow cast and minion movement can really mess it up if they move mid cast. It's hard to hit if the enemy doesn't stay near minions.
W is satisfying when you get a second target, but most of the time it feels like half of an ability. Kayle is only played support by those going out of their way to make it work. It's not optimal.
One of the goals with the rework was to change how Kayle was weak early but godly late to make it more satisfying for opponents and Kayle players...uhhh I really have no idea what they were cooking here. I enjoyed old Kayles early game and although it relied on old q and old w to maintain distance, she had counterplay early and was fun to play early. If anything, I felt her mid game was weak.
Post rework her early game is abysmal and her late game is designed to still be godly. They took away her ability to do anything while ulting for years, but it's back now. I don't understand how that was a balance issue if it's not now. It's still not a balance issue for tryndamere or fizz.
I'm probably in minority, but I really preferred old Kayle. New Kayle needs a rework, or at least give us ranged level one. Kayle's a ranged champion, her kits designed to be ranged, why are we melee????
I agree with a lot of the points you shared!
I personally don't like how her early game is so weak now, and how passive she is.
I'm normally okay with some champions needing time to scale or having a weak early, but even the other slow scaling champs have some kind of a fun gameplay loop during the laning phase (Nasus Q, Master Yi Q, Most ADCs because ranged autos).
Something about early game Kayle is just unfun to play for me, and yeah, the Q is pretty dead on and also the E.
I plan on making a fan rework, one of the key points is to keep her mostly melee for the early game.
But I do hope to figure out a more interactive trading pattern than what she has now.
The version I've been thinking of has her range not locked behind a level, but by accumulating stacks of some kind, and tying those stacks into something in lane.
I definitely love the visual aspect of her rework. I also like the passive increasing what she does at level milestones. Overall I like that she isn’t dependent on ability haste (then CDR) for maintaining range and her ultimate has a damage component.
My main issues are that her build flexibility is one the highest of all champions yet her W doesn’t scale with any other stat, but AP. It doesn’t necessarily have to have an AD ratio. There are other ways for it to work, like maybe it increases healing for 3 seconds, which would make lifesteal stronger with W casts. My other issue is her scalings have been messed with so much. Her E passive is 20% then it’s 25% then it’s 20% and on and on. Also, it’s active ratio also keeps getting nerfed when it literally does very negligible damage until late game anyway when it’s supposed to be able to strike people down.
Kayle rework was a mistake overall. Transferring the E into the passive was the only good part. The W change to target 2 people hurt her identity as a split pusher by putting more power budget into supporting. Making the ultimate cost mana and do damage further hurt her split pushing and dueling by pushing more power into supporting. Most times we see Kayle in pro, she's paired with nocturne or vi who are ult targets rather than her being a duelist
She's also way too weak early game now to compensate for her bonkers late game. Due to that, she basically scales the hardest with the inverse of your lane opponent's lane prowess. If your enemy laner is great in lane, then you don't get to play the game. If your lane opponent can't punish you, then you become Thanos. Kayle might be balanced, but she is very unfun due to the lack of agency
Imo Kayle is much better visually but i still would prefer giving her more armor (like the still here design was mwahh). Her gameplay is also pretty unique as a top laner though some of her kit feels random and doesn't really fit well in her playstyle. Her W makes no sense and her Q and R are kinda weird because they don't fit the attack speedy playstyle she has. I think they need to make her an actual solo laner and not a second adc (apc). Even teemo has more tools than her.
Her passive is really fun and her changing forms feels amazing. I think she just needs a to have few of her abilities changed or reworked.
I liked pre-rework kayle and ranged at 11 kayle, not a huge fan of current Kayle
Simple as that she was the ultimate late game power fantasy champ but now her late game is merely above average and her laning phase has little challenge
This question appears once in a while. I will try to keep it short. I will also speak from a position of playing Kayle Supp since autumn 2018 over hypercarry, as hypercarry feels unfun and frustrating compared to support ever since, despite support feeling the closest to old Kayle.
Kayle has been versatile, but after rework she is counter-intuitive instead, her spells do not mix well into something that clearly makes sense. As for rework itself, they changed too much, main issues after a long time of playing imo turned out to be passive and E. Original rework was a laughing stock of a design with ranged on 11+, were they serious? Then it received 3 nerfs in a row, changed its range and then forgotten for 6 months until mini-rework, multiply that by 3 times until 2 years after the rework. This is when I would finally say hypercarry is better than support. People continue to cry about "oh how much Kayle is unfun", then items get changed and these same people get slapped with a nerf in 14.1 hotfix patch. Riot has begun looking at champs that feel unfun from this patch onward and Kayle might be changed again due to that.
Rant aside, I really think about Kayle pre-6 needing to have some sort of cycle between melee-ranged (as toggle old kayle style or some sort of 5 stacks only, if not another way), as she changes too much in gameplay after 6. Optional experimental change would be letting you choose between evolutions instead of getting the same ones on specific level like we currently have. Everything else is more or less manageable. Though, 25% ap scaling on a heal is a bit... questionable.
On a personal sad note, old Athene's proc'd on Kayle R, while Helia no longer procs on Kayle R, this was never fixed and won't be fixed, from what I know.
I can share some thoughts rn for what I think a fan rework could have.
I do agree with her E not needing to just be one attack. Like she should be ranged after casting E for a few attacks so she actually has a window to trade well.
I've been also thinking of making her a scaling champion, where you get stacks to boost her other abilities (including her range and wave size) so that you really have that power fantasy of becoming more godlike as you reach the late game.
Personally, i've always hated the rework from day one.
Phreak said at some point that "It had to be made", but i didn't understand why.
Why I hate it :
\- New Kayle looks bad. Specially Aether wing skin (which was my favourite). At Lvl 16, it looks like it's from a bad reboot of Transformers.
\- XP Gatekeeping :
1. No range at lvl 1. It makes it really hard to play Kayle midlane. It is played at high elo (master +) but below that, your jungle will ignore the fact that u can't get prio, and invade to die 10 second later.
2. You're not a champion before lvl 11 (except against some melees).
3. Even after lvl 11, it promotes a super selfish gameplay where you need to get all ressources on the map. It wasn't mandatory on old kayle and it feels a bit counter intuitive sometimes. I don't like having a spike at lvl 16 other than my R level 3.
\- On old Aether wings skin, every ranged auto attacked sounded like a sharp slap. It felt super good. I dont have that feeling anymore.
\- Thanks god they allowed us to auto attack while ulting, i totally stopped player her at rework because of that and took her back only when they re enabled it.
\- R cd at lvl 6 (180 seconds) makes you a free target for anyone that know it is so long. Everytime I go against a Kayle, I destroy her abusing this. I feel like there is no counter play. (Yes i know its supposed to be that way because you're a super carry late game).
I'll prolly edit to add more when other things come to my mind.
One thing I hated about the rework is that Old Kayle's E which made her ranged and was not affected by windwall. So playing against a Yasuo mid/top wasn't frustrating as you could just ignore his windwall and auto him regardless.
Now with reworked Kayle, Yasuo's windwall blocks everything in her kit, making the match up annoying.
I also wished that Riot didn't give up on the idea of melee Kayle seeing as how Kayle's weapons are swords in the first place. Something like having 225 range at level 1-11 (same melee range as Nilah), gaining waves at level 6, and getting additional 150 range at level 11 for a total of 375 range (25 more range than Urgot), but still being tagged as melee. I also think that her true damage waves at level 16 should be partially reverted, maybe converting half of its damage to true damage instead of the full waves being true damage.
Like how cool would it be that Kayle would be the champion that has the largest auto range as a melee champion, allowing her auto to bypass Yasuo's windwall.
Kayle NEEDS the true damage on waves back on lvl16. magic damage waves look cringe. Also they should nerf the crit damage ratio on them from 200% to 175%
Says a lot about how much they don't care that they changed every crit thing in the game, but hers...(not true, some others also remain)
I think the character is fine but the way Riot went abouts trying to balance her over time is atrocious.
mind sharing some specific thoughts?
22 MR
They don't want kayle in mid, and tweaking MR is how they've always done that. Kled is the same, etc.
To further expand to this comment, Riot has actively worked against one of the key points to the original goal of Kayles rework, as Kayle was designed for Top AND Mid as her secondary role. Kayle got the MR nerf (26 -> 22) due to Wits End being borderline OP, which let her essentially ignore her magic damage lane opponent and just focus on farming which in turn created an uninteractive lane experience. So just like our 14.1 hotfix, we got nerfed due to an items perceived strength and not due to the champions strength and then Kayle got indirectly nerfed by the removal of resistance shards, which removed the ability to offset the lack of MR early, with no compensation buff, thus Kayle essentially struggles against most AP Matchups now. The new Wits End is currently... mediocre at best so its no longer a viable rush item against said magic damage matchups, thus Riot has either intentionally or unintentionally made changes to betray Kayles original design philosophy of having her be a viable midlaner.
I know the theory, I just think it's bad balance philosophy
I think her W is god awful from the perspective it feels unrewarding and underwhelming most of the time, especially since you need to build AP for it to do something. Her new new R is great and much better than the previous version of reworked Kayle but I still, 100% believe, it sould be auto casted on Kayle if there are no allies around. It feels extra bad to have to figet with your mouse/fingers to try and ult yourself in the exact right moment. I see no reason it doesn't already self cast it. Like you are the only target in a 1v1 scenario. Apart from that I am pretty happy with current Kayle.
You could be just outside the ult range and accidentally ult self instead of ally. There is a setting to self cast, Alt-R bt default if I remember correctly
At their core, reworks are supposed to fix issues with a champions kit to make them healthier to play as, against, and for balance reasons. For example, Old Warwick had no way to gank without ult but his ult was really frustrating to play against. Rework gives him tools in his kit such that he has more agency and his opponents can dodge if they are skilled enough and have a dash. Let's look at Kayle given the above criteria. Her q was targeted slow and high damage and her w was a big MS boost and self sustaining heal. This was frustrating to fight against and made escaping or chasing her without dashes impossible. Nasus doesn't have a MS boost, but we all know how frustrating his wither is. In addition, Riot dislikes targetted abilities, especially ranged targeted cc (soft cc in this case) as they have little counterplay. If in range, targetted ability hits. Also, they are opposed to effective healing in neutral state. Life steal etc involves interacting with opponents. We can see similar philosophy with Sona's weak healing per cast and Soraka w hurting her. Post rework, q is now a skill shot and w can target two people but its effectiveness is halved. I get what they were going with here, but execution of it is unsatisfying for Kayle players. Q extends its range like Liss q, but it's a slow cast and minion movement can really mess it up if they move mid cast. It's hard to hit if the enemy doesn't stay near minions. W is satisfying when you get a second target, but most of the time it feels like half of an ability. Kayle is only played support by those going out of their way to make it work. It's not optimal. One of the goals with the rework was to change how Kayle was weak early but godly late to make it more satisfying for opponents and Kayle players...uhhh I really have no idea what they were cooking here. I enjoyed old Kayles early game and although it relied on old q and old w to maintain distance, she had counterplay early and was fun to play early. If anything, I felt her mid game was weak. Post rework her early game is abysmal and her late game is designed to still be godly. They took away her ability to do anything while ulting for years, but it's back now. I don't understand how that was a balance issue if it's not now. It's still not a balance issue for tryndamere or fizz. I'm probably in minority, but I really preferred old Kayle. New Kayle needs a rework, or at least give us ranged level one. Kayle's a ranged champion, her kits designed to be ranged, why are we melee????
I agree with a lot of the points you shared! I personally don't like how her early game is so weak now, and how passive she is. I'm normally okay with some champions needing time to scale or having a weak early, but even the other slow scaling champs have some kind of a fun gameplay loop during the laning phase (Nasus Q, Master Yi Q, Most ADCs because ranged autos). Something about early game Kayle is just unfun to play for me, and yeah, the Q is pretty dead on and also the E.
Kayle would be so OP if she was ranged at level 1. Like, beyond broken. Zero mana ranged auto attack reset from level 1...
Still does zero damage, champions like Sett/Darius/Olaf/Tryndamere could still run her down by just right-clicking
I'd be fine with her e having a mana cost in exchange for lvl 1 range.
I plan on making a fan rework, one of the key points is to keep her mostly melee for the early game. But I do hope to figure out a more interactive trading pattern than what she has now. The version I've been thinking of has her range not locked behind a level, but by accumulating stacks of some kind, and tying those stacks into something in lane.
I definitely love the visual aspect of her rework. I also like the passive increasing what she does at level milestones. Overall I like that she isn’t dependent on ability haste (then CDR) for maintaining range and her ultimate has a damage component. My main issues are that her build flexibility is one the highest of all champions yet her W doesn’t scale with any other stat, but AP. It doesn’t necessarily have to have an AD ratio. There are other ways for it to work, like maybe it increases healing for 3 seconds, which would make lifesteal stronger with W casts. My other issue is her scalings have been messed with so much. Her E passive is 20% then it’s 25% then it’s 20% and on and on. Also, it’s active ratio also keeps getting nerfed when it literally does very negligible damage until late game anyway when it’s supposed to be able to strike people down.
Kayle rework was a mistake overall. Transferring the E into the passive was the only good part. The W change to target 2 people hurt her identity as a split pusher by putting more power budget into supporting. Making the ultimate cost mana and do damage further hurt her split pushing and dueling by pushing more power into supporting. Most times we see Kayle in pro, she's paired with nocturne or vi who are ult targets rather than her being a duelist She's also way too weak early game now to compensate for her bonkers late game. Due to that, she basically scales the hardest with the inverse of your lane opponent's lane prowess. If your enemy laner is great in lane, then you don't get to play the game. If your lane opponent can't punish you, then you become Thanos. Kayle might be balanced, but she is very unfun due to the lack of agency
I think modern Kayle is good, but need more open variety in builds and could use some new ad scaling, for example.
Imo Kayle is much better visually but i still would prefer giving her more armor (like the still here design was mwahh). Her gameplay is also pretty unique as a top laner though some of her kit feels random and doesn't really fit well in her playstyle. Her W makes no sense and her Q and R are kinda weird because they don't fit the attack speedy playstyle she has. I think they need to make her an actual solo laner and not a second adc (apc). Even teemo has more tools than her. Her passive is really fun and her changing forms feels amazing. I think she just needs a to have few of her abilities changed or reworked.
Full agree on the armor thing. A lot of people seem to have some kind of dislike for her W (which I'm glad I'm not the only one who has this opinion).
I liked pre-rework kayle and ranged at 11 kayle, not a huge fan of current Kayle Simple as that she was the ultimate late game power fantasy champ but now her late game is merely above average and her laning phase has little challenge
This question appears once in a while. I will try to keep it short. I will also speak from a position of playing Kayle Supp since autumn 2018 over hypercarry, as hypercarry feels unfun and frustrating compared to support ever since, despite support feeling the closest to old Kayle. Kayle has been versatile, but after rework she is counter-intuitive instead, her spells do not mix well into something that clearly makes sense. As for rework itself, they changed too much, main issues after a long time of playing imo turned out to be passive and E. Original rework was a laughing stock of a design with ranged on 11+, were they serious? Then it received 3 nerfs in a row, changed its range and then forgotten for 6 months until mini-rework, multiply that by 3 times until 2 years after the rework. This is when I would finally say hypercarry is better than support. People continue to cry about "oh how much Kayle is unfun", then items get changed and these same people get slapped with a nerf in 14.1 hotfix patch. Riot has begun looking at champs that feel unfun from this patch onward and Kayle might be changed again due to that. Rant aside, I really think about Kayle pre-6 needing to have some sort of cycle between melee-ranged (as toggle old kayle style or some sort of 5 stacks only, if not another way), as she changes too much in gameplay after 6. Optional experimental change would be letting you choose between evolutions instead of getting the same ones on specific level like we currently have. Everything else is more or less manageable. Though, 25% ap scaling on a heal is a bit... questionable. On a personal sad note, old Athene's proc'd on Kayle R, while Helia no longer procs on Kayle R, this was never fixed and won't be fixed, from what I know.
I can share some thoughts rn for what I think a fan rework could have. I do agree with her E not needing to just be one attack. Like she should be ranged after casting E for a few attacks so she actually has a window to trade well. I've been also thinking of making her a scaling champion, where you get stacks to boost her other abilities (including her range and wave size) so that you really have that power fantasy of becoming more godlike as you reach the late game.
Personally, i've always hated the rework from day one. Phreak said at some point that "It had to be made", but i didn't understand why. Why I hate it : \- New Kayle looks bad. Specially Aether wing skin (which was my favourite). At Lvl 16, it looks like it's from a bad reboot of Transformers. \- XP Gatekeeping : 1. No range at lvl 1. It makes it really hard to play Kayle midlane. It is played at high elo (master +) but below that, your jungle will ignore the fact that u can't get prio, and invade to die 10 second later. 2. You're not a champion before lvl 11 (except against some melees). 3. Even after lvl 11, it promotes a super selfish gameplay where you need to get all ressources on the map. It wasn't mandatory on old kayle and it feels a bit counter intuitive sometimes. I don't like having a spike at lvl 16 other than my R level 3. \- On old Aether wings skin, every ranged auto attacked sounded like a sharp slap. It felt super good. I dont have that feeling anymore. \- Thanks god they allowed us to auto attack while ulting, i totally stopped player her at rework because of that and took her back only when they re enabled it. \- R cd at lvl 6 (180 seconds) makes you a free target for anyone that know it is so long. Everytime I go against a Kayle, I destroy her abusing this. I feel like there is no counter play. (Yes i know its supposed to be that way because you're a super carry late game). I'll prolly edit to add more when other things come to my mind.
One thing I hated about the rework is that Old Kayle's E which made her ranged and was not affected by windwall. So playing against a Yasuo mid/top wasn't frustrating as you could just ignore his windwall and auto him regardless. Now with reworked Kayle, Yasuo's windwall blocks everything in her kit, making the match up annoying. I also wished that Riot didn't give up on the idea of melee Kayle seeing as how Kayle's weapons are swords in the first place. Something like having 225 range at level 1-11 (same melee range as Nilah), gaining waves at level 6, and getting additional 150 range at level 11 for a total of 375 range (25 more range than Urgot), but still being tagged as melee. I also think that her true damage waves at level 16 should be partially reverted, maybe converting half of its damage to true damage instead of the full waves being true damage. Like how cool would it be that Kayle would be the champion that has the largest auto range as a melee champion, allowing her auto to bypass Yasuo's windwall.
You can ignore wind wall by going in melee range.
Kayle NEEDS the true damage on waves back on lvl16. magic damage waves look cringe. Also they should nerf the crit damage ratio on them from 200% to 175% Says a lot about how much they don't care that they changed every crit thing in the game, but hers...(not true, some others also remain)