Katarina will get the last major assassin update

Katarina will receive one of the larger updates in the upcoming assassin update.

We knew that four champions would get large updates in the upcoming assassin update, and we finally know all the champions that were luckily chosen.

The first was Rengar, followed by Talon, then LeBlanc and now Katarina. Two AD assassins and two AP assassins. Nice!

In the announcement for Katarina, Beluga Whale (Game Designer) opened with: “We believe that at her core, Katarina wants to be a hyper agile, high lethality champion that rides on the razor edge of adrenaline and thrives in the middle of the action. She was our fourth choice here because we wanted to create a more fleshed out and richer version of this – one that is even more exciting to play, but with fewer game health issues then her current kit incurs.”

Riot will address a few issues in order to make their vision of Katarina happen.

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The first thing that needs to be looked at is her burst window. Like the other three assassins getting big updates, Katarina isn’t too healthy for the game as she is built around mashing a few buttons together to instantly blow people up. Unless you perfectly predict when and how Katarina is about to go in, she is pretty impossible to play against. That isn’t fun for anyone. More gameplay possibilities is always the best option.

Beluga Whale explained, “Like the other Assassins in the other updates, we are adding windows in her kill pattern that opponents will be able to meaningfully interact with. Expect her live combo of Shunpo + Sinister Steel to be altered to not be as instantaneous. In return, Katarina players can expect to gain significantly higher mobility and the ability to dance in and out of encounters and set up her own success.”

Katarina has one of the worst laning phases in the entire game, and that is another thing Riot will improve for her. Spicing up her laning phase will make for a better experience for both her and whoever she is playing against. It will be interesting to see just how Riot makes that happen, though.

Next: LeBlanc's upcoming update

Surprisingly, Riot also wants to make Katarina a more skillful champion. Champions like Katarina and Master Yi have poor reputations of being easy champions that can quickly snowball a game with little skill involved, but it looks like Katarina mains will be able to remove that ugly stereotype after the update. “There should also be more obvious moments where Katarina has out played her opponents built into her own kit, whether through clever juking or flashy prediction plays,” said Beluga Whale.

Getting resets is a huge part of Katarina’s kit, and while many would like to see Riot remove that from Katarina’s kit, they are actually doing the opposite. The Rioter explained: “To resolve the aforementioned Feast or Famine, we are actually doubling down here. Expect that Katarina will not only get to keep her live passive and also gain access to some other form of partial resetting on part of her kit – most likely Shunpo.”

Well, that sounds terrifying — doesn’t it?

Next: Rengar's upcoming update

Lastly, one of the biggest surprises from the announcement was that ward jumping will likely be removed from Katarina. Some people might scratch their heads at that after hearing that Riot wants to add more skill to her kit, but there’s sound reasoning behind it. Beluga Whale said, “Ward jumping allows Kat to be anywhere she wants regardless of how poorly she set up, which limits our ability to make this multi-jumping playstyle reasonable. Without Shunpo’s ability to ward jump, we would be able to push more power into Shunpo resetting, while also allowing us to give Katarina even more kill pressure in lane where the reliable escape limits her power budget.”

That makes a lot of sense, and it seems that the loss of ward jumping would be worth the gain of other benefits.

Just like the other three updates we know about, this one sounds extremely promising. All these updates have one thing in common — making assassins healthier for the game. That’s all anyone has ever wanted.

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