League of Legends: Into the Fray! – Quick thoughts about the Kayle Rework!

Passive – Divine Ascent

Divine Ascent is a four-tiered passive ability that grows in power as Kayle levels up!

• Zealous (Level 1) – Kayle begins her ascent to divinity and as the game begins, her passive is a stacking attack-speed steroid that once max stacks are reached she becomes Exalted and gains a large boost to her movement speed towards enemies.
• Aflame (Level 6) – Once Kayle becomes Exalted, her basic attacks unleash flaming waves that deal bonus magic damage.
• Arisen (Level 11) – Kayle gives up her pitiful melee form and becomes a fully-ranged champion.
• Transcendent (Level 16) – Kayle reaches her final form, becoming permanently Exalted, and her flaming waves now deal true damage.

What this passive shows me is that Riot wants to keep to the power fantasy of a badass angel warrior fighting their way through hordes of enemies. This passive is a great indicator of that, allocating more power to Kayle’s auto attacks as the game progresses and keeps with the original identity of the champion as a hard-scaling AP marksman. All in all this passive gets a big seal of approval from me!

Q – Radiant Blast

• Kayle shoots forth a magical flaming sword in a straight line, which damages and slows the first enemy hit and explodes upon impact damaging all enemies in a small radius around the original target. Radiant Blast also shreds the affected enemies’ armor & magic resist.

This ability is similar to the last iteration of Kayle’s Q, as it shreds the enemy’s resistances but unlike the point-and-click ability of the past this gives her at least one skill-shot to hit – similar to that of Jinx’s W ability Zap!

W – Celestial Blessing

• Kayle heal herself and a target ally, also significantly boosting both of their movement speed.

This is basically the same ability it was last time around, keeping the off-meta Kayle support still semi-viable.

E – Starfire Spellblade

Starfire Spellblade has both a passive and an active component.

• Passive: All basic attacks deal bonus damage scaling with both Ability Power and Attack Damage.
• Active: Once cast, Kayle’s next basic attack is ranged and deals a portion of the targets missing health as bonus magic damage. After she ascends to Aflame, this attack also splashes and damages enemies next to the target too.

A revised version of Kayle’s live E ability. This version gives Kayle even greater scaling than she had before with both damage types being accounted for rather than just magic damage as it was before. It also trims off some of the oppressive lane power she had by just activating E and gaining a massive wave-clear advantage for 10 seconds with the always-on splash damage – whereas now it’s loaded into just one basic attack, giving Kayle’s opponents a clear window in which they can harass.

R – Divine Judgement

• Upon casting Divine Judgement Kayle grants either herself or a target ally the Invulnerable status, protecting them from all forms of damage. Whilst the target is invulnerable, purifying blades of holy light fall in a circle around them and deals damage to all enemies hit.

This iteration of Kayle’s ultimate is just a better version of its live counterpart, offering not only the juicy invulnerability but also a burst of damage to (hopefully) finish off any low health enemies attempting to slay the target.

Final thoughts

My overall reaction to this rework is extremely positive, Riot have kept the power fantasy of the original champion, managing to update the gameplay elements and weave it in more effectively with the theme of the champion – especially that passive – oh boy am I excited! You better believe as soon as Kayle’s VGU drops on the PBE I’ll be opening up my PBE client and giving this bad girl a whirl!

Are you excited for the Kayle/Morgana VGU to drop? What’s your favourite rework so far? And should Riot have made any more changes? Let us know in the comments below and whilst you’re there come join our friendly neighborhood discord by clicking here!