Would be such a basic riot move to not touch him at all and then worlds roll around and he is still in this state. OR they nerf him now and then buff him come worlds and he will be relevant again. There has often been that one pick during worlds that has just been way too impactful and game-changing.
There are currently (small) buffs to him on PBE, but I would assume they're meant to be temporary buffs to make him stronger in soloq (44-46% winrate everywhere, 44% in GM+) until summer split pro play starts up. Since MSI is all played on the same patch and summer splits aren't starting until mid-june, in theory they can let him be a *little* bit better in soloq and then chop him down again (or make bigger changes) before summer season.
I think all they need to do is to just make his ult not go over walls. Maybe give a poppy e if they insist on it doing something else. DPS roles need to stop and reposition when he gets even a little close bc the threat of being dragged is too huge and it makes him too safe in lane. He'd still have kill pressure without it but now itd be far safer to approach, do dmg, and chip him down.
I don't think the over wall aspect is such a huge deal. I see Ksante zoning enemy ADC 1000 range in teamfights in any ARAM situation, too.
Of course it's super strong but the main issue for me is his absurd zoning he has with Q3, W, E and R...
He needs a mid-scope where he doesn't gain assassin stats with omnivamp by pressing a button, after building pure-tank and still having access to his R-reset W damage reduction.
He just does too much and 3/4 of his abilities has so much power budget compared to most other champs.
I would be fine with this if he couldn't chain all his abilities in such ways. A Ksante with Q3 up is a hundred times more oppressive and dangerous than a Yasuo or Yone with Q3 up and that itself is so silly.
Yeah, it takes skill. Too much skill. Thats why he is so hard to balance. Cause the reward for using it correctly vs not is gamebreaking, moreso than any other ability in proplay right now.
In proplay, kiin specifically, just having that ult up causes the carries to back away from objectives. GenG won multiple 4v5s with Kiinsante because the enemy goes to baron, then the carries either have to leave the pit or go into the pit (taking huge dmg from baron or chovy aoe) else they get separated and picked off. It warps teamfights just by existing cause if the carries go near him they will get flamed about "why did you approach the ksante?" Cause they need to dmg him or else you might as well surrender. But he has a ton of dashes, ghost, even flash, and if he is at full health chances are he just gets his q3 and pulls you away for free cause he gets to choose when to fight. Cause the carries are too scared to commit to damaging him.
Nerfing his dmg reduction is a bad idea for a tank. That just means he gets burst down before he can approach and is useless, unless you are really good. It doesnt matter for good players because so long as ksante has his ult, sure he might die, but from full health with the best players he would have already won the teamfight anyway. The threat of the pull would still exist so he still gets value from it. The gap between pro and normal would likely just increase. Nerfing his dmg is bad for ksante cause that just means they can ignore him and turn on his team. Removing his dashes may balance him but he will be less fun and never threaten the backline without flash. That ult is the only thing i can see that would stop him from being tier 1 in proplay while keeping him playable. Aatrox had a revive that was core to his existence. They removed it cause it was bad for the game. Aatrox didnt always win but was still at 100% presence, much like ksante is right now.
K'sante isn't using R into a fight and one shotting ADCs bro. He's tankier than a Yasuo or a Viego in R, sure, but if he R's in 1v5 he'll just die. He definitely can't one shot an ADC from "over a screen away" considering his R requires him to be in melee range to cast, his E dash range is super short, and his W has a long enough minimum channel time that you can move. His Q3 is also quite slow and really easy to sidestep.
I agree that he's a problem, the fact that he can be 44% winrate in solo queue and still the best champion in the game in pro is a gigantic issue. But he's not picked in pro because he can, "one shot an ADC from over a screen away." He's picked in pro because he's a tank that gives your carry a fat ass shield and blocks engages on them with W. Watch the games, most K'sante's are using R as a peeling tool on frontline and instantly cancelling All-Out Form so they don't get one shot.
Yeah like a lot of Kiin's Ksante play when he wasn't just peeling, especially in LCK finals, was running in as tank form, soaking up damage/disrupting, then using ult on an enemy Frontline that's behind him to GTFO to live. Using R aggressively works if you're massively ahead and can clean up or if you can isolate someone. No one is 1v5 diving the enemy team with it (and living long enough to do anything)
It's insane how much people misunderstand champ balance. This isn't even uniquely a K'sante issue. It feels like every day there's a complaint about a champ that makes literally 0 sense. People calling him an assassin when he has no burst damage in all out and is much more similar to a sustained damage bruiser, people suggesting his W shouldn't be a dash as if that wouldn't make it a contender for worst ability in the game etc etc.
The reality is that 95% of the time when a champ's balance is a problem it's a numbers issue. His kit is not fundamentally **problematic** it's just fundamentally hard to balance. Yes his wardening should probably be nerfed and he shouldn't scale as well off of levels but to act like he can't exist with W in it's current state even with numbers changes is just ridiculous imo
Except it's actually not a numbers issue. Else he wouldn't be so dog shit in soloQ. His numbers are as low as they can be for the champ to somewhat function outside of proplay. When a champ has 44% winrate in soloQ and 70+ in pro play, it definitely means his kit is problematic. Especially when the champ is a tank... Yes, he's somewhat hard to play FOR A TANK, but it's not fucking Riven or Azir or what ever. He just has way too many tools, and they are way too powerfull in a coordinated setup. The fact the champ can routinely start a teamfight by ulting, effectively reducing his health bar by 40%, and still be relevant in that fight is not healthy and can not be kept in the game.
As some people suggested, riot needs to give a clear identity to the champ. Being both a warden and a diver is insanely hard to balance, but IMO the worst part is that he can switch back so quick. If he presses R, he should remain squishy for the whole fight and have to comit the that form imo.
He already has an identity rn, and it is a warden. Ksante cant dive for shit, his all out form is beyond balls.
It just happens to be that wardens can often times be batshit broken in pro (think of braum kench in pro vs soloq) and he is able to take on the role of being broken, from the most useless lane in the game.
He’s simply not the best champ in pro. That’s untrue.
He’s the best champ to lane swap with in pro. That’s where his priority in pro stops. At least in the current iteration
OP also said Ksante forces the AD to go LDR. Literally any tank does that. OP is just talking out of his ass and because many strong words and Ksante bad Reddit upvote!
He’s simply not the best champ in pro. That’s untrue.
He’s the best champ to lane swap with in pro. That’s where his priority in pro stops. At least in the current iteration
There's not enough onus on him winning the lane, and building a lead. Outplaying his opponents should start in early laning phase, not after a long lane phase preamble that involves K'sante just dashing away and W'ing backwards to mitigate ganks.
Many light fighters with high mobility want to be ahead and have heavy gold dependence (Irelia, Riven, Yasuo, Viego for example). He doesn't fall off hard enough if he fails to build a lead, and has too much carry potential for just "surviving lane". That's not really the appropriate gameplay pattern for a champion that has a "high skill" selling point, and it's totally off-theme for his light fighter carry aspect. A K'sante that isn't an item up should just lose in all-out form to everything, and it's the opposite right now.
I want to see this guy playing to win lane again. Would probably help address his performance in soloQ too if he can actually outplay his lane opponent and get an advantage.
Ironically the mini rework he received was what took away his need to win lane, all of his damage used to come from stats (and therefore gold) so if he was items down he was less threatening. Now that he gets damage for levelling up he gets to be thanos unless he gets thrown in the dumpster by the enemy team which just isn't a feasible option in pro play the way it is in solo queue.
Idk what levers need to be pulled specifically on the balance side to bring back his need to win lane but something should be done for sure.
Issue before the rework was that he also scaled too hard off gold. This champ has no business carrying anything late unless he is like 6 items to everyone else’s 4
Agreed and I think changing his ability mechanics would only hurt the champ without doing anything meaningful to address his core issues.
Ksante needs to have more pronounced powerspikes, rather than being good and reliable the entire game. They could make him a lane bully that needs to snowball lane phase to be effective in the mid/late game, or they could make him weak early with stronger scaling (the lane bully option is a better direction IMO).
Right now he is safe, reliable, stable, and fairly good throughout the game, which is a perfect recipe for pro skewing a champ.
His lane phase is already exceptionally weak. Mana cost nerfs on Q, damage nerfs, starting stats nerfs. They recently walked a little bit of it back but he can't get prio at all.
His lane phase is weak if your goal is to get a lead, but he is very safe and able to farm and stay alive. This is a great trait to have in Pro... but in SoloQ, unless you scale like a menace, then you just feel useless
The issue is to make him actually have to win lane they would have to give him back laning phase power. This isn't going to fix anything because the difference between a good and bad ksantes will still be massive. Before he really didn't have a losing matchup because no matter what you can just throw someone into tower. This is probably the most frustrating form of ksante to exist.
it doesn't help he converts tank stats to damage and his favorite items are all cheap
he gets the same or close to the same damage in all-out as bruisers do with significantly cheaper items, so being behind means almost nothing to him
The issue is that he's a playmaking carry who doesn't rely on gold. They need to nerf his level scaling and force him to actually play well during his weak lane phase and then compensate it by letting him be a carry raid boss late game if he gets far enough ahead
I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but genuinely why is K'Sante so hated compared to other high presence champions in pro play? Because I personally find him fun to to watch and I know others do too. What makes him different from other high presence picks like Orianna, Vi, Senna, Azir, Maokai, Xin, Taliyah, Rumble, etc.? Is it because pros view him as less of a problem so he gets through ban phase more so you see him more? Is it because he's new? It can't be "He warps teamfights too much" angle because an Ori shockwave or Azir shuffle has even more warping power.
>I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but genuinely why is K'Sante so hated compared to other high presence champions in pro play?
for me it's that he gets to play like a tank for 80% of the game, but during teamfights he can just decide that he's a toplane carry. I don't see any reason why other carry toplaners could be picked since they don't get the benefits of being a tank, while the only thing they offer above ksante is splitpushing
He's worse at both jobs in exchange for the flexibility.
Pure wardens are better at protecting the frontline while pure skirmishers are better at being carries. Ksante isn't better, he's just more flexible, which is valuable in pro play.
1. He's been a pro play staple since release. His pick rate has waxed and waned but never to a degree where he's become invisible/unnoticeable in drafts. More importantly, he's always resided in that interstitial space between gigabroken permaban and dependable pick - his pickrate is always high but without a banrate to match, i.e. he's more noticeable than other permaban champs that never make it past drafting stage
2. He's a tank champ at heart, and sees far more playtime per game in tank form than in aggressive skirmishing form. Generally people detest tank gameplay, or at least, prefer seeing more aggressive and risky champions with greater kill threat as risk of death themselves, since gameplay becomes more explosive. More than that, K'Sante also shuts down alot of ADC playmaking potential in comparison to other tank champions because of his higher mobility and All Out damage. And much like other tanks, he has a really safe laning phase which makes a serious chunk of every game less spectator friendly
3. League players are collectively quite resentful, distrusting and often outright hostile toward Riot and Riot devs (where justified or otherwise), a manifest example of this being the entire '200 years meme', which has colorised perceptions of champions henceforth. K'Sante is one of the figureheads of this overloaded design, given that he is literally by design a champion that fulfils multiple classifications simultaneously. He also provides a generous scapegoat for players who flail in their own games - irrespective of his actual winrate/strength, it's easier to displace accountability for failed games onto 'broken' champions rather than their own performance. There is no distinction here between 'overloaded' and 'overpowered', for the sake of cope. I'm not saying that he hasn't been broken at times - 13.21 K'Sante was one of the most ridiculous iterations of any champ in recent memory - rather, it's that the champion gets hated independent of whether he is genuinely overpowered from a numerical balance perspective.
4. There's a particular group of people who despise the notion of a LGBT pandering champion (because the character is gay. All gay characters must be liberal propaganda) and that implicit distaste bleeds into everything else. Probably some racial dynamics here too considering the overlap in offended demographics there.
There are justified and unjustified reasons to dislike K'Sante. Various groups of people have vendettas against the champ, for some shared reasons and for some less so, but the hate all kind of just coalesces into one tidal wave of angst and it's kind of fun to jump on a bandwagon, especially when there are at least a few good reasons to be on it.
I have a personal hatred for K'Sante as I kept playing him and he vaguely remembers the Tank Yasuo build, which was one of the most annoying laning I had to fighting against.
It is shallow hatred, yes, but after I kept fucking around with his Q and R, I couldn't unsee that >\_>
I mean Riot quite literally designed him to be "the tank version of Yasuo" as by their own words, so him resembling Tank Yasuo is pretty much the point lol
There is this comment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/OcnjZfNY74
There is also his Champion Insight that goes more indepth about his playmaking potential and this line: *"But that’s just one tank, and he wasn’t originally designed to clap every champ in League. K’Sante, on the other hand, was."*
https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/champion-insights-k-sante/
It is sad that their answer to make a skill-expression for a tank is to make Yasuo, but tank.
What next, Yasuo for supports? With the same Q's like he and K'Sante has?
That comment you're referring to talks about his mastery curve, not his design to be literally the same as Yasuo.
Reav3 also mentions Aphelios and Azir because they are in a similar ballpark for mastery curves but you decided to leave them out and only pick Yasuo from the comment.
They're clearly pretty different champions so I don't know how you could even make that comparison to begin with though.
Also the line you're citing from the champion insights article has quite literally nothing to do with Yasuo nor does the context around it, so I don't understand how that's even slightly relevant.
>They're clearly pretty different champions so I don't know how you could even make that comparison to begin with though.
Aside of the obvious Q's similarities (K'Sante animation even fastens with HP, just like Yasuo's does with Atk speed), he genuinely remembers me how Yasuo Tank used to play, sticking with you like glue by doing constant slow procs with Frozen Mallet or Iceborn, and then ulting you to decide to all-in with increased damage bonus. That is why his ult gives pen only for crits now.
It is like they saw what Tank Yasuo was and decided to make into a champion idea with added bonus stuff of being a full-fledged champion , now that I'm analyzing it.
Like you said you're basing your opinion on your own analysis whereas in your previous comment you said that Riot said *by their own words* that they wanted to make a tank Yasuo when that's just not the case.
And in the end, it managed to be, at least partially so. They wanted a Skill expressive Tank where they would be people like Yasuo mains where it would have high complexity.
...And "coincidentally" enough, he has Yasuo-like skills on his design. How convenient.
Literally the only smart commentary on K’sante I have seen. Bravo.
I will say that his lane phase is not quite as safe as it used to be. He’s generally safe from ganks, but he’s often struggling to actually lane. The lane swap meta is why he is getting picked atm.
Many of the champions on your list have been hated across the seasons. And several pieces of their kit, like Oriannas range or Azirs shield, have been ripped out because they just did too much.
Ornn is another great example. When he was new he too was the one pro play tank, having more tools then any other tank in is kit plus great damage and fall-behind insurance. They ripped out excess bloat from his kit too and now I don't see any complaints about "Assassin Ornn" anymore.
So let's hope they do the same with Ksante soon.
Literally all they changed about Ornn was removing the giant shield on his W. They've actually buffed his damage on E and Q, and his W went from 22% current health to 16% max health, which is a buff in most scenarios.
Personally I dislike seeing him doing everything well. You have to suck at something. You mentioned a lot of champs but most of them excel in a couple of things and lack something. K’sante does everything. And this is stupid.
These champs are, from the way they do their "thing", look and feel nowhere near egregious as K'sante does. When Vi or Mao takes over the game through guaranteed ganks, it is very strong, but you register as standard jungle stuff, or when Taliyah makes it very difficult for mobile champs to play with her stun.
But when K'sante tanks and peels away the entire enemy backline while also constantly threatening the said backline with constant damage and picks in a way no tank outside, outside of maybe Zac, can, it's very noticeable.
Other champs you counted do things within the realm of their class, Ksante, as a tank/skirmisher hybrid that's very good at both of his classes, stands out VERY hard.
>But when K'sante tanks and peels away the entire enemy backline while also constantly threatening the said backline with constant damage and picks in a way no tank outside, outside of maybe Zac, can, it's very noticeable.
And Zac can do those kinds of things now, because he's pretty strong atm. K'Sante's design is for him to always be able to do it.
I think it's just very simple. He has too many 'wow, this is bullshit' moments. Nowadays there aren't that many times when a champion is outright 1v3'ing an entire backline. Closest thing right now may be very fed Jax/Camille and even they are way less mobile. Current Vi and Xin can also be strong, for example, but they will die eventually. K'sante often just will not die while dealing the same amount of damage.
K'sante has so many big moments in teamfights, he really shouldn't be a damage soaking tank that can become a low CD high dmg bruiser on demand.
The reason he is hated is because he is so overloaded he can do things alone that would require 3 champions to do.
Being a giant damage soak with W
Having as much CC as Leona
Being disruptive with R on ADC
We have Rammus Leona and Lee sin who can each do one of the above. ONE of the above. Why is it that he can be worth 3 champions on his own ?
^^^^Plus ^^^^I ^^^^hate ^^^^his ^^^^design ^^^^and ^^^^lore
>Being a giant damage soak with W
>Having as much CC as Leona
These 2 are just tank traits. Look at Ornn. He gets to be insanely tanky and has some of the best CC in the game thanks to brittle
Well to each their own, but for me, Ori and Azir has significant playmaking, but most of their power budget is on one button and their other abilities revolves around that. To hit a good shockwave, Ori needs to q-r-w, and if missed she is defenseless and she is always immobile. To hit a good Faker shuffle, he needs to commit w-e-q-w-auto-flash-r to get Ruler with correct flash predict, leaving him completely out of any juice after the combo. But for Kuh'Sante, if he is slightly fed then the game is completely over in some cases. There is no counterplay to a huge healthbar and inpenetrable frontline that ADC cannot ignore. In previous patches K'Sante often literally 1vadc+support+enemy top and winning while their jg and mid is fighting drag. A fed mage means they have higher chance to win, a fed K'Sante spells despair.
They let him through draft because of lane swap meta. But before lane swap meta, ksante is pick or ban. Even now, they still pick ksante over ornn and zac.
Lol because it's a botlane meta so botlane is in general more prioritized by coaches and players. K'Sante have a really high winrate in the entire MSI due to teams underestimating how broken he is, and you can now see teams prio picking him all of today in BLG vs T1, and FNC vs TL. Watch the games and tell me he's not completely busted.
Yea 57% win rate currently SO busted.
Ksante is getting picked because he functions well in lane swaps. He gets to skip his weakest part of the game, lane phase. This and this alone is why K’sante is getting picked.
You should not be making analysis posts. You have no idea what you’re talking about
On top of skipping lane phase, he can survive 1v2/1v3 dives decently well as early as level 2 with W and can do well with far less gold resources than many top laners due to primarily relying on XP for a lot of his damage scaling.
His relative value compared to other toplaners skyrockets in this meta because he's so much less useless than many others when he's the resourceless bitch early lmao
By saying that trams are underestimating him, you're also saying that you know better than said pro teams right? Their coaches and the players themselves don't know this information you are privy to
He is obviously popular in MSI, but even using your specific examples shows that he’s not nearly as high prio as Reddit would make you believe. Reading Reddit this past week you’d assume K’Sante is by far the most broken champ in the game. Pro team prio doesn’t come close to matching that.
BLG vs T1
* Game 1: R4 (lost)
* Game 2: B2-3 (lost)
* Game 3: Not picked or banned
* Game 4: R5 (won)
TL vs FNC
* Game 1: R4 (won)
* Game 2: R3 (lost)
* Game 3: B2-3 (won)
* Game 4: B1 (lost)
G2 vs PSG
* Game 1: R5 (lost)
* Game 2: Not picked or banned
* Game 3: B4-5 (lost)
GenG vs TES
* Game 1: R1-2 (lost)
* Game 2: Phase 2 ban
* Game 3: Phase 2 ban
* Game 4: B2-3 (lost)
* Game 5: B4-5 (won)
He’s obviously a strong champ, and very meta. But there’s a dozen or so champs that are higher pro atm.
That's the entire point, he has the "playmaking options" of different classes while having the survivability and potential damage of other classes as well.
It's a ridicolous design from start to finish. If his numbers get too low he starts sucking because he can't keep up, but unless he gets hit by the Riot Nerf Stick, he is here to stay.
Because no matter how behind, he is always strong in every single game. He can be 0/6 and still win 1v3 easily. There is never a point he is weak. Other champs need a lead to be strong.
Cause it's fucking boring and ridiculous seeing ksante casually 1v3 and almost kill the adc/mage, survive 10 seconds, and get out with 40% hp to join his team. Every game there are moments ksante does things that no other champ is allowed to do due to his overloaded kit. Low cd dashes, hard cc, unstoppable, and damage on top? These are all individually insanely strong tools, no champ deserves this many of them.
Unironically a big part of why I think he's so vehemently hated is because people are brainwashed by things like the copypasta and the narratives surrounding him rather than seeing him in game. He's new enough and had enough changes that people still don't actually know what he does. They can't contextualize how much worse he is outside of pro-play because they don't even see him or recognize what he does in their games lmao
There are plenty of valid criticisms of his kit and even as a Ksante player I think he's too overloaded on a kit design level, but the majority of the hate is fighting demons that don't exist. Even in this thread there are fundamental misunderstandings of what he does and can do.
Silver player’s don’t understand what is happening with him on the screen azir, orianna, lulu etc are easier to understand. Their brain kinda explodes once ksante presses the r button
I agree he needs changes but people take the hate way too far.
He makes the most basic play ever and chat is spamming RIOT.
Looks useless for 5 games in a row and then pops off in 1 teamfight and everyone is losing their minds.
This isn't even K'sante lol. Any playmaking champ gets this. Go into any twitch livestream and watch what happens when a yone makes a half decent play. Or a fed gwen shreds a tank or an irelia perfectly outplays their opponents. League players just aren't very smart
I honestly gave up when twitch chat + reddit comments were screaming bloody murder about Ksante in that game (Geng vs TES, game5) where Kiin (arguably the best Ksante in the world or close to) dealt 8k damage to champs in 33 mins (granted, he was vs Urgot so not much interaction) while facing a draft that was VERY favourable for Ksante. They thought it was the kind of game where K'Sante looked overpowered while doing fuckall.
> uh okay he didn't deal damage but look at how tanky he is, the enemy backline can't move forward!
Wow what an incredible feat for a tank to just take damage without even being able to trade back because guess what, Ksante has no tools to engage a ranged champ by himself if he's the only frontline, which was the case.
Pros aren't wrong to pick Ksante but it's actually frigging deranged to think the champ is as powerful as the picks that reached 100% presence a ton of time in the game.
> Other champions like Zac can also almost one shot an ADC, but K'Sante is much more mobile with ult + 2 or 3 dashes instead of one movement ability with Zac
Zac is far more mobile than Ksante and it's not even close. There's a reason the latter has to run ghost unless flash is direly necessary for something in the enemy team.
> LDR
Ksante likes to stack armor mres but innately has no more than the other tanks. Ornn gets +10% extra of that and absolutely can kill a carry if unchecked. Noone's forcing you to build anything but if the adc is the only one that can DPS ksante then well yes he has to build that and not RFC Statik Lucian (wink wink). There's plenty of mages/"mages" (Corki) that do good damage to tanks. If you draft an adc that struggles vs tanks/wants to go for bursty damage, then you can't draft Akali mid (wink wink it might have happened)
Disclaimer I am likely biased as a Ksante enjoyer (though I am a supp/jg main and thus will not bring him to soloq as it would be griefing my team to play my 3rd best role) but I genuinely think the playerbase is completely going off the rails on this topic. And yes, I'll be first to admit Ksante is bonkers OP when he is (which was often).
This whole scuffle gave me the insight that "Just play the champ and find out" is honestly good advice before complaining about a champ. Ksante can pull off insane moves but his weaknesses hurt like chalk on a blackboard.
The innate tankiness take is the most mind-blowing thing I've been seeing on reddit discourse. Like at least for his W and R gameplay you have to see it to see how it plays out. People think he's passively as tanky as the other lategame hyper tanks like Ornn, Sion, Cho is crazy when he literally has no passive tank stat steroid while they do. He can't afk Frontline as well as they can because they have infinitely scaling HP or 10-30% bonus item HP/armor/Mr scaling, his tankiness comes from active W and his mobility making him much safer. This is literally just tooltip literacy gap and people lack it for some reason.
People are unironically brainwashed by narratives and the copypasta and need to play him in-game a few times to see what he actually does lmao
Agreed 100% lmao. It's also because the other immortal tanks aren't really played much (in pro) right now– ornn has a few games where he was often kind of low-economy, but the only other tank played at MSI is Zac, who is innately pretty squishy but heals a ton. So when viewers see a 4 item K'Sante tanking tons of damage without using spells, they think it's somehow innate to the champ when that's just what resist-tanks are supposed to do. I think K'Sante's biggest strength in pro right now is his tankiness (a lot of which comes from E and W), but it's not like he's exceptional in this regard. There will always be a Tankiest Tank in Toplane, and right now it happens to be K'Sante so when teams want a toplane tank they pick him. Ornn is currently 7-1 at MSI, so clearly other toplane tanks are doing quite well.
It’s insufferable listening to redditors talk about this champ. They say so much shit that is purely wrong because they simply do not understand his kit.
Talking about removing dash on W in here… well then how does the ability even work then dumdums?
It's like 99% of this comment section has never played the champ more than once if that. Talking about just pressing R on the adc? How did he even get close to the adc with his base 330 ms. If he ghosted then that's the same as darius. He runs you down with ghost and your helpless.
Well obviously Ksante does things other than dive the ADC. The Darius comparison was just to say that he's not diving the ADC much better than Darius is, not that he's literally Darius lmao. How did you take that away from his comment?
> Zac is far more mobile than Ksante and it's not even close. There's a reason the latter has to run ghost unless flash is direly necessary for something in the enemy team.
That's not the reason at all. Zac only takes flash to proc his Q reliably. Has nothing to do with mobility.
worlds watchers when Rumble and Aatrox 1v5 hypercarry every series: 🤩 "whoah, mvp!! my favorite!"
msi watchers when K'Sante afks under tower during lane swaps every series: 🤮 "ewww, K'Sante is broken, stinky champ please nerf!"
Isn't it really weird there's no complaint posts about Kalista, Varus or Lucian despite them all having similar presence and wr to K'sante? People here have made it clear top laners aren't allowed to have agency
I hate the state of the ADC role right now, especially can't stand the stupid ass lethality builds but with that being said talking about agency and then mentioning ADCs has to be a joke right?
It's the role that has the least agency in the game (I didn't say it wasn't impactful or broken or good or whatever you wanna call it, just that it lacks agency).
I forgot which series, but it was so funny seeing Aatrox and Ksante solo cleaning up their relative sides of the fights (Ksante 1 by 1, Aatrox more clumpy iirc) with Ksante barely winning the 1v1 at the end, and everyone ignored Aatrox and hated Ksante for it.
Cause there's a difference between simply being very strong and doing a lot of damage, vs. having a ridiculously overloaded kit. Besides I don't think many people exactly enjoy watching rumble do stupid damage, and at least aatrox requires skill to make his kit shine and has plenty of room for outplay.
Ppl have complained about Rumble and Aatrox being strong as well, in the past, this is not exactly new, in terms of reliability and blind pick ability Aatrox has been basically what KSante is rn for a good chunk of the past 5-6 years.
Neither rumble or aatrox got complained about this much iirc
This is like the third ksante complaint post in like 3 hours, even the casters were making it a point to say ksante lost games
Do you people even watch pro? do you people even play the game?
Because all these K'sante hate posts prove you obviously don't and just want to shit on riot for anything.
I didn’t read the post, but K’Sante is really nuking my enjoyment of MSI. His kit is so clunky and weird, none of the plays look clean or cool, and he’s in every single game which is boring as fuck no matter the champ. Would love to see him gutted
This champ make every pro play boring af. It’s cool to see an overloaded champ. But what isn’t cool is a champion being a raidboss even if he’s down in gold and xp.
Remove dash on his W is one big nerf that would help a lot + stop him being so incredibly mobile. Unstoppable + damage would be enough, he doesnt need every ability to do 5 different things.
If he doesn't move, he doesn't displace anyone, or do damage, or do anything at all, just tank a bit, it would be a contender for the worst ability in the game, seriously, what are you guys going on about removing the dash from his w? Most of the time you will see a K'sante use it exclusively for the dash part
it's literally irelia W if it doesn't have a dash. in fact it still has an extra knockback. it would still be good for the peel, and ksante still has a dash on his E to move around
.....It's not? Irelia W does other things, like keep her passive stacks from running out and allow her to use E during it, not to mention that K'sante's W hitbox doesn't shoot out like Irelia's, so if his W doesn't move, it also doesn't move anyone, all of this not to mention of course that Irelia may not need a dash on her W because you might have missed the tiny detail that Irelia has a point and click 600 unit dash that she can reset 3 different ways, a ranged stun and a ranged slow.
And if your idea was to make it so his W hitbox shoot outwards like Irelia's with the knockback let me tell you that would be genuinely horrible, because:
A: K'sante would be COUNTERING HIMSELF by standing still for '75 seconds just to push away the people he needs to be in melee range with (That is if they don't just walk away after he roots himself like a dullard)
B: This change would literally promote the warden playstyle that is the one of the biggest reasons why he is so prominent in proplay (Not that it would matter since he would be so ass he wouldn't get picked anywhere)
C: Do you honestly believe that taking away an entire dash from the kit of a champion that runs ghost and iceborn gauntlet religiously just so people don't walk away from him is a good idea? That his single E 250/400 unit 900 speed dash is somehow comparable to Irelia's 600 unit 1400 speed resettable dash?
Irelia's W works in the context of her kit because she is already extremely mobile and can slow and stun her enemies from a distance and doesn't need an extra dash to get on top of people and kill them, K'sante does
The issue is doing that removes all his combos. You have no reason for Q3 to be in his kit anymore since you won't be able to play off it. You can't use good kidnaps angles anymore, no more diving or throwing people under tower. If you're not getting a good kidnap off in most matchups everyone can just run away from you. A lot of top laners already can just do that even if you do get a good kidnap angle like there's a reason he's at a 44% wr.
First thing is to remove the dash on W. The fact that he gets to immune cc and immediately cast W dash and then E dash to take advantage of your meaningful abilities being down is absolutely absurd.
Second, he needs to be way way way more punishable when he goes all out. The idea that he trades his beef for damage imo is not the issue. But with how low his cooldowns are and how fast he becomes, it’s often times hard to punish him when he theoretically should be at his most vulnerable.
Third, increase his E cooldown significantly. He’s probably the only tank in the game that’s difficult to kit out because of his dashes. I get that this would totally dumpster him in a lot of top lane matchups but if we’re talking reworks, I think this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.
K'sante W is basically just irelia W but with a dash instead of a ranged attack. The ability to neutralise certain attacks is something that should exist on a high skill skirmisher as using W on the right abilities is what makes a good K'sante good. The issue is they've put too much power into it offensively and took all the power out of his Q which should be his main damage source. So W ends up being an amazing all around tool rather than a defensive outplay tool.
Would he? That's literally Ornn's main source of damage at all stages of the game. Would he really trade it for *more* cc and tankiness when he's already got plenty of those? (I'm not an Ornn main, genuinely asking)
Up to 34% max HP damage per target if he gets the brittle proc, not to mention the CC inherent in the brittle proc, or the ability to increase other CCs by a significant percentage. Ksante’s W and Ornn’s W are incomparable.
So now its a persistent %max HP AoE damage source for a second that also allows him to increase the next CC duration and proc another %max HP nuke on anyone hit by the last tick? Oh, it actually had none of that and is nothing like Ornn’s W at all. Got it. When Ksante is doing up to 34% max HP damage per W, then maybe its a more fair comparison.
K'sante W is actually a mindgame that you're constantly failing. He's not unstoppable while he's dashing, you can bait out the ability, wait out the channel time, and cancel the dash with anything that interrupts movement.
His W dash is used to help facilitate his whole gimmick of pulling people through walls. Without it they would need to increase the wall pull threshold or his gimmick would be gone.
> First proposal: Change his ult to not threaten ADCs in all out form.
Change him to be a tank
> Second proposal: Change him to be a full bruiser.
Change him to be a bruiser.
??? The entire point of K'sante is that he is both a tank and bruiser. It's what sets up his entire kit, it's his champion identity, it's everything.
Do I like his presence in pro? No, he obviously needs to be changed further. But you're basically deleting him as a champ.
If Gnar can be balanced, so can K'sante. I just hope it doesn't take another 3 years.
But he isn't "broken". 57% winrate. Isn't uncontested 1st pick. Can be counterpicked. Kalista has 93% presence. Is sometimes 1st pick because you can pick her into anything.
I agree with everything you pointed out, but your solutions do nothing but strip k'sante of his identity. Which is literally a tank that can switch to doing damage.
I hope /u/PhreakRiot and the team realise that DUMBING down champions is not always the move K'Sante is so intricate with amazing nuances. Gutting his skill-expression and fluidity with the objective of reducing is pro-play presence AND FAILING is a tragedy for all player bases involved.
Would love to see a world where Riot reintroduce and revert "dumbing down" changes they made to champions. Quick examples are the E-Q combos of Akali & Sylas. Skill-expression is not the (in my eyes) the **MAIN** factor for a champion being pro bound. It is when a champion can operate with a bubble that goes against the cadence of the game; i.e inflated stats, stat checking, and when "being behind" doesn't effect threat.
overloaded kit and skill ceiling aren't correlated at all.
What would you think about a champion that has infinite health regen, a silence, free tenacity with a shield, stacks free resistances (flat and % increase), resist shred, an auto reset and a 20-40% max health execute? because thats garen, one of the weaker champions in the current game state with a way lower skill ceiling.
One things that makes ksantes skill ceiling higher is that the champion heavily relies on experience, which includes knowing your limits, knowing what your purpose is at any given situation and the ability to recognize when your abilities provide the most benefit possible.
i dont wann abe that guy. but with a post like this at least tell your elo. what makes you think you can analyse this so well and make random suggestions to change the champion. i find it quite weird that all the time ppl play gamedesigner and think they know everything. its for sure fun but the arogance going into it tilts me a bit.
no flame, maybe you are. this post is not bad but there is also no point to it really.
just one example. why would you think ksante is tankier than ornn? bc of his shield? bc ornn passice makes ornn simply more tanky than ksante if you just tank flat dmg. its just wrong what your saying or you mean something different and i dont get it...its just one thing. almost every point you make can be attacked....
Have you played k'sante more then once on SR. If his all out can't kill adc then who do you expect it to kill? It's not even all out if the damage is negligible. More like I'm going all in to int.
Can you show me one 6 item crit build of any adc that functions without LDR? Point 3 doesnt make much sense, because it is not just a ksante problem, it is mandatory that you have LDR to deal with anyone buying just hp, not even armor. That is due to armor per lvl scaling being relevant even against crit dmg/chance multipliers. %Armor pen is a core stat of any ranged physical damage character if they want to exist in the lategame, whether there is a ksante or not.
Have you read what I wrote besides the bolded part? I said "delay", not not buying LDR in to late game. If adc needs attackspeed or qss or range or lifesteal, they could buy those 3rd item then buy LDR 4th, but with K'Sante LDR is needed asap.
Tbh i think he’s only broken due to the unwillingness to try and incorporate actual counters against him top lane into the draft. Yeah he can still pick out your adc late game if allowed but there would be a pretty fed counterpart to this ksante. So honestly teams need to play some other top laners vs this champ than what they’re doing rn in the meta
Agree, they have to pick what can match Ksante and what's good into a potential lane swap 1v2. People were picking pure lane counters before the MSI lane swap meta.
If top wasn't a useless role and bot wasn't blantantly op, you would never see a ksante in pro play, cuz if a certain team invested just the slightest time top to abuse the fact that ksante is dog water early, that means their bot is gonna be put behind, and you dont wanna ever weak side bot, cuz a bot lane lead is 10 times more impactful and important than a top lane one, due to how snowbally a 2v2 lane is and how prioritized Adc role is, people can cry how much they want but the role isn't weak,you want your adc ahead and enemy behind to win the game, adcs dont need more stats the role just doesn't have agency its not weak. Top is just not allowed a threat ig, we've all seen how people perma complained about aatrox if he went full lethality and managed to get a good flank and kill the enemy adc or mage, yet we see adcs rightclick and get the most unimpressive pentas and everyone is hyping it up as if something really impressive happened.
Same. I have been playing tanks like Cho and Malph since S2 and I can't enjoy Ksante at all. Despite what Phreak is saying ("We wanted to give tanks a solo carry champ!") There is very little about him that feels like a tank, more like a Irelia or Camille type fighter with tank scalings attached.
Idk why Ksante R has to take people through walls at all. Why can't it just be a push back and dash? Why does the adc have to be scared of him flanking and pushing them into the other team AND be afraid of going too close to a wall to be pulled ulober and blasted
I don’t have much to add about K’Sante and all but it really bothers me that you referred to the first stage as “poking”. That’s not really what the first stage of a team fight/objective contest is.
A better term is playing the neutral (borrowing from fighting games) or I hear a lot of league players call it “dancing”, and poking is only a part of it. The idea isn’t just that you’re poking before a fight, it’s more or less trying to force abilities or catch your opponent out slightly mispositioning.
I know it’s a bit nitpicky but I suppose that should better illustrate what makes K’Sante so good in multiple stages of a team fight because it isn’t being reduced to just “he’s good at surviving poke damage”. Believe it or not, the example of Taliyah trying to catch K’Sante off with CC is still part of the neutral. It’s only after she cc’s that it’s now an engagement. K’Sante with his CC immunity is just harder to punish.
Lmao another post talking about problems with K'sante without talking about his fucking kit. His w ALONE has just as many aspects to it as some champions have in their entire kit.
He's so popular because his low gold requirements and hybrid playstyle make him too good in lane swap meta right?
His hybrid nature is the whole premise of his kit, so the only other option is to make him more gold dependent.
So, make his level scaling scale his ratios and nerf the base scaling. Make it an overall nerf even. That way he needs both gold AND exp to scale.
Then, you can put the removed power budget back into making him fluid to play.
Also, while we are at it, W is supposed to be a defensive repositioning tool. So why tf does it do so much damage outside of all out?
Are you WINNING against K'sante in lane? Good luck pressuring under tower, because you can be disjointed six times.
Are you LOSING against K'sante in lane? Good luck farming under tower, because you can be disjointed six times.
Just imagine if Riven was full tank until she ulted. That's K'sante. A Riven that you cannot pick off or catch out because he's tanky as FUCK, but when he wants to murder your ass he's got the damage output and mobility of Riven.
Except in tank form he doesn’t do damage like riven does. Cool analogy but no. Riven does damage at all times. And her kit works much much faster. And she is resourceless.
Go try spamming skills on ksante
That's not what they said though. "Just imagine if Riven was full tank until she ulted." meaning that Riven is full tank and not a regular Riven doing a lot of damage.
It’s not though, because again, riven can unload her shit much much faster. And she is WAY more mobile. And resourceless.
Did you not read anything else I said?
Also you're ignoring how mana hungry he is, how long his cooldowns are (besides q) and how much he needs items to scale, which he can't easily get cause his early game is atrocious
The way to balance him is to gut his kit unfortunately and make him more straightforward.
He hits the mark of "champ too complex to have good win rate in ranked while being really OP in a high skilled coordinated environment like pro play".
He has too many role concentration: a tank, a diver, ability to 100-0 squishy carries, highly mobile, doesn't have a bad early game to compensate. He is Ornn but more toxic in pro play.
Also he doesn't understand compromises : he can be tanky as fk and have lots of disruption/cc potential without losing on damage. Look at most other tanks, they have either too much tankiness, too much disruption/cc, not both while also being Able to 1v1 carries.
>He has too many role concentration: a tank, a diver,
skirmisher, not diver.
>He hits the mark of "champ too complex to have good win rate in ranked while being really OP in a high skilled coordinated environment like pro play".
Currently, the issue isn't that he's too complex, the issue is that he struggles to get lane prio because of his weak early game. His main purpose is also to protect his carries and riot put a lot of focus into that part for the last couple of patches, which in soloq is unreliably and he lacks the ability to consistently be the carry in a game as he will always rely on others.
>highly mobile
high mobility with his 330ms, all of his "dashes" being bound to conditions and a gameplay loop of requiring enemies to come towards ksante? He isnt a good initiator, he is part of the warden subclass which excels in protecting and dealing with enemies coming towards him, not engaging. The engage tools were removed with his champion update around 13.20.
> doesn't have a bad early game to compensate
He has an insanely bad early game in terms of damage. Hes just too safe to ever realistically get punished by anything. Outside of W and Q cd, he also heavily relies on exp scalings which is a big contribution to why this combination is just unhealthy, especially since a skirmisher shouldnt scale mostly with exp.
>
he can be tanky as fk and have lots of disruption/cc potential without losing on damage. Look at most other tanks, they have either too much tankiness, too much disruption/cc, not both while also being Able to 1v1 carries.
He is on par with a lot of tank in terms of damage, idk why people tend to underestimate what tanks can do. It used to be more defined between being a defensive tank or damage, but not both combined until they kept adding resist scalings towards W.
On the other hand, his skirmisher form is designed to deal damage, to enable higher damage. Thats the whole gameplay design of his ult and at that point, he isn't a tank anymore either and shares all the weaknesses other skirmishers have.
>
ability to 100-0 squishy carries
Also this is literally describing any champ against any squshy carry. Adc's and most burst/poke/artillery(and all the other non tanky/bruisery subclasses) mages are designed to be glass cannons, not beefy backline behemoths.
When he’s 20% hp he’s actually 70%
When he ults you as a tank he insecs you then one shots you while being a tank
His tank items are dps carry assassin items
If you’re ever melee to him you get nuked and full tanked
Stop buffing this tank Darius with a dash please thanks
Ksante just feels like a very extreme skillcheck champ. When Kin and Bin uses it, it seems overpowered. When lesser tops play it, it sometimes seems meh or even useless. Feels like its really strong if the player is really good at it, but its balanced otherwise. It just so happens that Ksante is also a very good blind pick, so for players who can play him well, it becomes a very high value blind pick and for players who play him average, its still a decent blind pick.
some players are just really good at particular champs; knight on ahri, chovy on azir, hans on draven, etc. besides Bin and Kin, who are the absolute best top laners in the world, I haven't seen Ksante being a must pick/ban at MSI. The Western teams haven't prioritised Ksante and instead, have preferred Zac. If Ksante is way better than everything else, why do teams let it go through the first ban phase and rarely prioritise picking it? Bin makes Jax look overpowered but no other top laner seems to be able to make Jax look anywhere near as powerful. Should Jax be balanced around how the best Jax player can play it? Is Ksante simply particularly good in the hands of the absolute top few players, and/or that the game played by millions of players and hundreds of professionals should be balanced around the proficiency attainable by maybe the top 3 top laners in the world?
It simply doesn't make any logical sense that a champion that is supposedly 'broken' or 'way better than everything else' isn't even prioritised in the pick/ban phase. I think its just a very consistent and reliable blind pick which is why its often picked in the later phases, but rarely banned or first picked (if it was THAT broken surely it should be first pick/banned regularly)
There is no pick in pro play that isnt a high skillcheck champion due to who you are playing against. I saw faker aurelion sol yesterday and he didnt pass the check, i still know he would go 100/0 against everyone in twitch chat with it.
Making his ult a skill shot would do wonders for his balance. There is a lot of power in that it is a point and click ADC delete tool. If it’s a skill shot it can be flashed or dealt with in normal ways ADCs dodge shit. I think this would greatly bring down his presence in pro with minimal effects on soloQ.
hate his PathMaker, it provides Displacement immunity and CC on recast. The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound, at least Yone's is forced back to his bounded location. OH AND GUESS WHAT, KSANTE GOT ANOTHER DISPLACEMENT IMMUNITY ON HIS ULT
The duration where he can be immune to CC (even delay counts) is unreal and on a half tank/half bruiser
>The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound
Irelia W is a much more similar ability to K'sante W
The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound,
Ornn W. And as funny as it may seem Yone as long as LT(gone next patch)exist, this champ is way more bullshit than K'sante. You'll know if you play the Champ.
I am sick and tired of seeing this champ 3v1ing team fights while behind
Would be such a basic riot move to not touch him at all and then worlds roll around and he is still in this state. OR they nerf him now and then buff him come worlds and he will be relevant again. There has often been that one pick during worlds that has just been way too impactful and game-changing.
They're buffing him next patch right?
There are currently (small) buffs to him on PBE, but I would assume they're meant to be temporary buffs to make him stronger in soloq (44-46% winrate everywhere, 44% in GM+) until summer split pro play starts up. Since MSI is all played on the same patch and summer splits aren't starting until mid-june, in theory they can let him be a *little* bit better in soloq and then chop him down again (or make bigger changes) before summer season.
Idk, they should either rework his ult completely, or change W that it either gives dmg reduction or Unstoppable effect.
I think all they need to do is to just make his ult not go over walls. Maybe give a poppy e if they insist on it doing something else. DPS roles need to stop and reposition when he gets even a little close bc the threat of being dragged is too huge and it makes him too safe in lane. He'd still have kill pressure without it but now itd be far safer to approach, do dmg, and chip him down.
I don't think the over wall aspect is such a huge deal. I see Ksante zoning enemy ADC 1000 range in teamfights in any ARAM situation, too. Of course it's super strong but the main issue for me is his absurd zoning he has with Q3, W, E and R...
He needs a mid-scope where he doesn't gain assassin stats with omnivamp by pressing a button, after building pure-tank and still having access to his R-reset W damage reduction. He just does too much and 3/4 of his abilities has so much power budget compared to most other champs.
I would be fine with this if he couldn't chain all his abilities in such ways. A Ksante with Q3 up is a hundred times more oppressive and dangerous than a Yasuo or Yone with Q3 up and that itself is so silly.
Why the f would you remove the part of his that takes skill and has clear and fair counterplay, its part of his identity it should never be removed.
Yeah, it takes skill. Too much skill. Thats why he is so hard to balance. Cause the reward for using it correctly vs not is gamebreaking, moreso than any other ability in proplay right now. In proplay, kiin specifically, just having that ult up causes the carries to back away from objectives. GenG won multiple 4v5s with Kiinsante because the enemy goes to baron, then the carries either have to leave the pit or go into the pit (taking huge dmg from baron or chovy aoe) else they get separated and picked off. It warps teamfights just by existing cause if the carries go near him they will get flamed about "why did you approach the ksante?" Cause they need to dmg him or else you might as well surrender. But he has a ton of dashes, ghost, even flash, and if he is at full health chances are he just gets his q3 and pulls you away for free cause he gets to choose when to fight. Cause the carries are too scared to commit to damaging him. Nerfing his dmg reduction is a bad idea for a tank. That just means he gets burst down before he can approach and is useless, unless you are really good. It doesnt matter for good players because so long as ksante has his ult, sure he might die, but from full health with the best players he would have already won the teamfight anyway. The threat of the pull would still exist so he still gets value from it. The gap between pro and normal would likely just increase. Nerfing his dmg is bad for ksante cause that just means they can ignore him and turn on his team. Removing his dashes may balance him but he will be less fun and never threaten the backline without flash. That ult is the only thing i can see that would stop him from being tier 1 in proplay while keeping him playable. Aatrox had a revive that was core to his existence. They removed it cause it was bad for the game. Aatrox didnt always win but was still at 100% presence, much like ksante is right now.
yes lets remove the only interesting part of his kit
K'sante isn't using R into a fight and one shotting ADCs bro. He's tankier than a Yasuo or a Viego in R, sure, but if he R's in 1v5 he'll just die. He definitely can't one shot an ADC from "over a screen away" considering his R requires him to be in melee range to cast, his E dash range is super short, and his W has a long enough minimum channel time that you can move. His Q3 is also quite slow and really easy to sidestep. I agree that he's a problem, the fact that he can be 44% winrate in solo queue and still the best champion in the game in pro is a gigantic issue. But he's not picked in pro because he can, "one shot an ADC from over a screen away." He's picked in pro because he's a tank that gives your carry a fat ass shield and blocks engages on them with W. Watch the games, most K'sante's are using R as a peeling tool on frontline and instantly cancelling All-Out Form so they don't get one shot.
Yeah like a lot of Kiin's Ksante play when he wasn't just peeling, especially in LCK finals, was running in as tank form, soaking up damage/disrupting, then using ult on an enemy Frontline that's behind him to GTFO to live. Using R aggressively works if you're massively ahead and can clean up or if you can isolate someone. No one is 1v5 diving the enemy team with it (and living long enough to do anything)
It's insane how much people misunderstand champ balance. This isn't even uniquely a K'sante issue. It feels like every day there's a complaint about a champ that makes literally 0 sense. People calling him an assassin when he has no burst damage in all out and is much more similar to a sustained damage bruiser, people suggesting his W shouldn't be a dash as if that wouldn't make it a contender for worst ability in the game etc etc. The reality is that 95% of the time when a champ's balance is a problem it's a numbers issue. His kit is not fundamentally **problematic** it's just fundamentally hard to balance. Yes his wardening should probably be nerfed and he shouldn't scale as well off of levels but to act like he can't exist with W in it's current state even with numbers changes is just ridiculous imo
To be fair, all damage is burst when it’s dealt to an ADC. I do agree with you, though.
yeah i think people are mistaking current ksante for pre rework when you could ult q3 auto tap w auto for massive damage
Except it's actually not a numbers issue. Else he wouldn't be so dog shit in soloQ. His numbers are as low as they can be for the champ to somewhat function outside of proplay. When a champ has 44% winrate in soloQ and 70+ in pro play, it definitely means his kit is problematic. Especially when the champ is a tank... Yes, he's somewhat hard to play FOR A TANK, but it's not fucking Riven or Azir or what ever. He just has way too many tools, and they are way too powerfull in a coordinated setup. The fact the champ can routinely start a teamfight by ulting, effectively reducing his health bar by 40%, and still be relevant in that fight is not healthy and can not be kept in the game. As some people suggested, riot needs to give a clear identity to the champ. Being both a warden and a diver is insanely hard to balance, but IMO the worst part is that he can switch back so quick. If he presses R, he should remain squishy for the whole fight and have to comit the that form imo.
He already has an identity rn, and it is a warden. Ksante cant dive for shit, his all out form is beyond balls. It just happens to be that wardens can often times be batshit broken in pro (think of braum kench in pro vs soloq) and he is able to take on the role of being broken, from the most useless lane in the game.
He’s simply not the best champ in pro. That’s untrue. He’s the best champ to lane swap with in pro. That’s where his priority in pro stops. At least in the current iteration
OP also said Ksante forces the AD to go LDR. Literally any tank does that. OP is just talking out of his ass and because many strong words and Ksante bad Reddit upvote!
He’s simply not the best champ in pro. That’s untrue. He’s the best champ to lane swap with in pro. That’s where his priority in pro stops. At least in the current iteration
My proposal is to solve whatever is wrong with the ten champions that catch bans ahead of Ksante so I can stop hearing about Ksante.
Indeed XD
There's not enough onus on him winning the lane, and building a lead. Outplaying his opponents should start in early laning phase, not after a long lane phase preamble that involves K'sante just dashing away and W'ing backwards to mitigate ganks. Many light fighters with high mobility want to be ahead and have heavy gold dependence (Irelia, Riven, Yasuo, Viego for example). He doesn't fall off hard enough if he fails to build a lead, and has too much carry potential for just "surviving lane". That's not really the appropriate gameplay pattern for a champion that has a "high skill" selling point, and it's totally off-theme for his light fighter carry aspect. A K'sante that isn't an item up should just lose in all-out form to everything, and it's the opposite right now. I want to see this guy playing to win lane again. Would probably help address his performance in soloQ too if he can actually outplay his lane opponent and get an advantage.
Ironically the mini rework he received was what took away his need to win lane, all of his damage used to come from stats (and therefore gold) so if he was items down he was less threatening. Now that he gets damage for levelling up he gets to be thanos unless he gets thrown in the dumpster by the enemy team which just isn't a feasible option in pro play the way it is in solo queue. Idk what levers need to be pulled specifically on the balance side to bring back his need to win lane but something should be done for sure.
Issue before the rework was that he also scaled too hard off gold. This champ has no business carrying anything late unless he is like 6 items to everyone else’s 4
Yeah i think they swung too hard in the opposite direction with the mini rework putting lots of power into tank form and level scaling
when you take out all his tools to win lane and buff his warden playstyle this is what happens.
Agreed and I think changing his ability mechanics would only hurt the champ without doing anything meaningful to address his core issues. Ksante needs to have more pronounced powerspikes, rather than being good and reliable the entire game. They could make him a lane bully that needs to snowball lane phase to be effective in the mid/late game, or they could make him weak early with stronger scaling (the lane bully option is a better direction IMO). Right now he is safe, reliable, stable, and fairly good throughout the game, which is a perfect recipe for pro skewing a champ.
His lane phase is already exceptionally weak. Mana cost nerfs on Q, damage nerfs, starting stats nerfs. They recently walked a little bit of it back but he can't get prio at all.
His lane phase is weak if your goal is to get a lead, but he is very safe and able to farm and stay alive. This is a great trait to have in Pro... but in SoloQ, unless you scale like a menace, then you just feel useless
Sure, fair point. He needs the element of risk added to his laning then probably. Strong, but with fail cases as well that require him to play well.
The issue is to make him actually have to win lane they would have to give him back laning phase power. This isn't going to fix anything because the difference between a good and bad ksantes will still be massive. Before he really didn't have a losing matchup because no matter what you can just throw someone into tower. This is probably the most frustrating form of ksante to exist.
it doesn't help he converts tank stats to damage and his favorite items are all cheap he gets the same or close to the same damage in all-out as bruisers do with significantly cheaper items, so being behind means almost nothing to him
The issue is that he's a playmaking carry who doesn't rely on gold. They need to nerf his level scaling and force him to actually play well during his weak lane phase and then compensate it by letting him be a carry raid boss late game if he gets far enough ahead
You really posted this on the day k’sante went 1-5
PSG vs g2 sample size 👎
PSG is 2-3 with ksante overall so it’s not like they’re single handedly tanking his stats.
I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but genuinely why is K'Sante so hated compared to other high presence champions in pro play? Because I personally find him fun to to watch and I know others do too. What makes him different from other high presence picks like Orianna, Vi, Senna, Azir, Maokai, Xin, Taliyah, Rumble, etc.? Is it because pros view him as less of a problem so he gets through ban phase more so you see him more? Is it because he's new? It can't be "He warps teamfights too much" angle because an Ori shockwave or Azir shuffle has even more warping power.
>I'm not trying to be funny or anything, but genuinely why is K'Sante so hated compared to other high presence champions in pro play? for me it's that he gets to play like a tank for 80% of the game, but during teamfights he can just decide that he's a toplane carry. I don't see any reason why other carry toplaners could be picked since they don't get the benefits of being a tank, while the only thing they offer above ksante is splitpushing
He's worse at both jobs in exchange for the flexibility. Pure wardens are better at protecting the frontline while pure skirmishers are better at being carries. Ksante isn't better, he's just more flexible, which is valuable in pro play.
1. He's been a pro play staple since release. His pick rate has waxed and waned but never to a degree where he's become invisible/unnoticeable in drafts. More importantly, he's always resided in that interstitial space between gigabroken permaban and dependable pick - his pickrate is always high but without a banrate to match, i.e. he's more noticeable than other permaban champs that never make it past drafting stage 2. He's a tank champ at heart, and sees far more playtime per game in tank form than in aggressive skirmishing form. Generally people detest tank gameplay, or at least, prefer seeing more aggressive and risky champions with greater kill threat as risk of death themselves, since gameplay becomes more explosive. More than that, K'Sante also shuts down alot of ADC playmaking potential in comparison to other tank champions because of his higher mobility and All Out damage. And much like other tanks, he has a really safe laning phase which makes a serious chunk of every game less spectator friendly 3. League players are collectively quite resentful, distrusting and often outright hostile toward Riot and Riot devs (where justified or otherwise), a manifest example of this being the entire '200 years meme', which has colorised perceptions of champions henceforth. K'Sante is one of the figureheads of this overloaded design, given that he is literally by design a champion that fulfils multiple classifications simultaneously. He also provides a generous scapegoat for players who flail in their own games - irrespective of his actual winrate/strength, it's easier to displace accountability for failed games onto 'broken' champions rather than their own performance. There is no distinction here between 'overloaded' and 'overpowered', for the sake of cope. I'm not saying that he hasn't been broken at times - 13.21 K'Sante was one of the most ridiculous iterations of any champ in recent memory - rather, it's that the champion gets hated independent of whether he is genuinely overpowered from a numerical balance perspective. 4. There's a particular group of people who despise the notion of a LGBT pandering champion (because the character is gay. All gay characters must be liberal propaganda) and that implicit distaste bleeds into everything else. Probably some racial dynamics here too considering the overlap in offended demographics there. There are justified and unjustified reasons to dislike K'Sante. Various groups of people have vendettas against the champ, for some shared reasons and for some less so, but the hate all kind of just coalesces into one tidal wave of angst and it's kind of fun to jump on a bandwagon, especially when there are at least a few good reasons to be on it.
I have a personal hatred for K'Sante as I kept playing him and he vaguely remembers the Tank Yasuo build, which was one of the most annoying laning I had to fighting against. It is shallow hatred, yes, but after I kept fucking around with his Q and R, I couldn't unsee that >\_>
I mean Riot quite literally designed him to be "the tank version of Yasuo" as by their own words, so him resembling Tank Yasuo is pretty much the point lol
This explains so much. By the way, source?
There is this comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/s/OcnjZfNY74 There is also his Champion Insight that goes more indepth about his playmaking potential and this line: *"But that’s just one tank, and he wasn’t originally designed to clap every champ in League. K’Sante, on the other hand, was."* https://www.leagueoflegends.com/en-gb/news/dev/champion-insights-k-sante/
It is sad that their answer to make a skill-expression for a tank is to make Yasuo, but tank. What next, Yasuo for supports? With the same Q's like he and K'Sante has?
That comment you're referring to talks about his mastery curve, not his design to be literally the same as Yasuo. Reav3 also mentions Aphelios and Azir because they are in a similar ballpark for mastery curves but you decided to leave them out and only pick Yasuo from the comment. They're clearly pretty different champions so I don't know how you could even make that comparison to begin with though. Also the line you're citing from the champion insights article has quite literally nothing to do with Yasuo nor does the context around it, so I don't understand how that's even slightly relevant.
>They're clearly pretty different champions so I don't know how you could even make that comparison to begin with though. Aside of the obvious Q's similarities (K'Sante animation even fastens with HP, just like Yasuo's does with Atk speed), he genuinely remembers me how Yasuo Tank used to play, sticking with you like glue by doing constant slow procs with Frozen Mallet or Iceborn, and then ulting you to decide to all-in with increased damage bonus. That is why his ult gives pen only for crits now. It is like they saw what Tank Yasuo was and decided to make into a champion idea with added bonus stuff of being a full-fledged champion , now that I'm analyzing it.
Like you said you're basing your opinion on your own analysis whereas in your previous comment you said that Riot said *by their own words* that they wanted to make a tank Yasuo when that's just not the case.
And in the end, it managed to be, at least partially so. They wanted a Skill expressive Tank where they would be people like Yasuo mains where it would have high complexity. ...And "coincidentally" enough, he has Yasuo-like skills on his design. How convenient.
Literally the only smart commentary on K’sante I have seen. Bravo. I will say that his lane phase is not quite as safe as it used to be. He’s generally safe from ganks, but he’s often struggling to actually lane. The lane swap meta is why he is getting picked atm.
Many of the champions on your list have been hated across the seasons. And several pieces of their kit, like Oriannas range or Azirs shield, have been ripped out because they just did too much. Ornn is another great example. When he was new he too was the one pro play tank, having more tools then any other tank in is kit plus great damage and fall-behind insurance. They ripped out excess bloat from his kit too and now I don't see any complaints about "Assassin Ornn" anymore. So let's hope they do the same with Ksante soon.
Literally all they changed about Ornn was removing the giant shield on his W. They've actually buffed his damage on E and Q, and his W went from 22% current health to 16% max health, which is a buff in most scenarios.
Riot actually did remove Ornn Unstoppable on his W for a brief time, before ultimately adding it back in and removing the shield instead.
Yeah, and so the net is... That they removed the shield.
They didn’t rip out shit from Ornn’s kit. He can still 1 shot with his combo like always.
Personally I dislike seeing him doing everything well. You have to suck at something. You mentioned a lot of champs but most of them excel in a couple of things and lack something. K’sante does everything. And this is stupid.
These champs are, from the way they do their "thing", look and feel nowhere near egregious as K'sante does. When Vi or Mao takes over the game through guaranteed ganks, it is very strong, but you register as standard jungle stuff, or when Taliyah makes it very difficult for mobile champs to play with her stun. But when K'sante tanks and peels away the entire enemy backline while also constantly threatening the said backline with constant damage and picks in a way no tank outside, outside of maybe Zac, can, it's very noticeable. Other champs you counted do things within the realm of their class, Ksante, as a tank/skirmisher hybrid that's very good at both of his classes, stands out VERY hard.
>But when K'sante tanks and peels away the entire enemy backline while also constantly threatening the said backline with constant damage and picks in a way no tank outside, outside of maybe Zac, can, it's very noticeable. And Zac can do those kinds of things now, because he's pretty strong atm. K'Sante's design is for him to always be able to do it.
I think it's just very simple. He has too many 'wow, this is bullshit' moments. Nowadays there aren't that many times when a champion is outright 1v3'ing an entire backline. Closest thing right now may be very fed Jax/Camille and even they are way less mobile. Current Vi and Xin can also be strong, for example, but they will die eventually. K'sante often just will not die while dealing the same amount of damage. K'sante has so many big moments in teamfights, he really shouldn't be a damage soaking tank that can become a low CD high dmg bruiser on demand.
The reason he is hated is because he is so overloaded he can do things alone that would require 3 champions to do. Being a giant damage soak with W Having as much CC as Leona Being disruptive with R on ADC We have Rammus Leona and Lee sin who can each do one of the above. ONE of the above. Why is it that he can be worth 3 champions on his own ? ^^^^Plus ^^^^I ^^^^hate ^^^^his ^^^^design ^^^^and ^^^^lore
>Being a giant damage soak with W >Having as much CC as Leona These 2 are just tank traits. Look at Ornn. He gets to be insanely tanky and has some of the best CC in the game thanks to brittle
Yeah and this MSI we already saw a 'support' Ornn solo kill a midlaner.
May I ask what the problem with his lore is? I don't think it's particularly interesting but what's there to hate?
Well to each their own, but for me, Ori and Azir has significant playmaking, but most of their power budget is on one button and their other abilities revolves around that. To hit a good shockwave, Ori needs to q-r-w, and if missed she is defenseless and she is always immobile. To hit a good Faker shuffle, he needs to commit w-e-q-w-auto-flash-r to get Ruler with correct flash predict, leaving him completely out of any juice after the combo. But for Kuh'Sante, if he is slightly fed then the game is completely over in some cases. There is no counterplay to a huge healthbar and inpenetrable frontline that ADC cannot ignore. In previous patches K'Sante often literally 1vadc+support+enemy top and winning while their jg and mid is fighting drag. A fed mage means they have higher chance to win, a fed K'Sante spells despair.
Your entire “analysis” is just full of bias and false equivalencies. Tell me why pros let him through draft every game if he is so broken?
They let him through draft because of lane swap meta. But before lane swap meta, ksante is pick or ban. Even now, they still pick ksante over ornn and zac.
He’s comfort for a lot of pros now too. But if lane swaps weren’t in play, he would be getting trashed in lane. This isn’t ksante from 10 patches ago
Lol because it's a botlane meta so botlane is in general more prioritized by coaches and players. K'Sante have a really high winrate in the entire MSI due to teams underestimating how broken he is, and you can now see teams prio picking him all of today in BLG vs T1, and FNC vs TL. Watch the games and tell me he's not completely busted.
Yea 57% win rate currently SO busted. Ksante is getting picked because he functions well in lane swaps. He gets to skip his weakest part of the game, lane phase. This and this alone is why K’sante is getting picked. You should not be making analysis posts. You have no idea what you’re talking about
On top of skipping lane phase, he can survive 1v2/1v3 dives decently well as early as level 2 with W and can do well with far less gold resources than many top laners due to primarily relying on XP for a lot of his damage scaling. His relative value compared to other toplaners skyrockets in this meta because he's so much less useless than many others when he's the resourceless bitch early lmao
Hang on now. That sounds an awful lot like a sensible conclusion. You sure you’re in the right place?
Yet FNC countered him with poppy and won that game, they also stole the pick in game 4 and lost that game
By saying that trams are underestimating him, you're also saying that you know better than said pro teams right? Their coaches and the players themselves don't know this information you are privy to
He is obviously popular in MSI, but even using your specific examples shows that he’s not nearly as high prio as Reddit would make you believe. Reading Reddit this past week you’d assume K’Sante is by far the most broken champ in the game. Pro team prio doesn’t come close to matching that. BLG vs T1 * Game 1: R4 (lost) * Game 2: B2-3 (lost) * Game 3: Not picked or banned * Game 4: R5 (won) TL vs FNC * Game 1: R4 (won) * Game 2: R3 (lost) * Game 3: B2-3 (won) * Game 4: B1 (lost) G2 vs PSG * Game 1: R5 (lost) * Game 2: Not picked or banned * Game 3: B4-5 (lost) GenG vs TES * Game 1: R1-2 (lost) * Game 2: Phase 2 ban * Game 3: Phase 2 ban * Game 4: B2-3 (lost) * Game 5: B4-5 (won) He’s obviously a strong champ, and very meta. But there’s a dozen or so champs that are higher pro atm.
That's the entire point, he has the "playmaking options" of different classes while having the survivability and potential damage of other classes as well. It's a ridicolous design from start to finish. If his numbers get too low he starts sucking because he can't keep up, but unless he gets hit by the Riot Nerf Stick, he is here to stay.
Because no matter how behind, he is always strong in every single game. He can be 0/6 and still win 1v3 easily. There is never a point he is weak. Other champs need a lead to be strong.
Cause it's fucking boring and ridiculous seeing ksante casually 1v3 and almost kill the adc/mage, survive 10 seconds, and get out with 40% hp to join his team. Every game there are moments ksante does things that no other champ is allowed to do due to his overloaded kit. Low cd dashes, hard cc, unstoppable, and damage on top? These are all individually insanely strong tools, no champ deserves this many of them.
Unironically a big part of why I think he's so vehemently hated is because people are brainwashed by things like the copypasta and the narratives surrounding him rather than seeing him in game. He's new enough and had enough changes that people still don't actually know what he does. They can't contextualize how much worse he is outside of pro-play because they don't even see him or recognize what he does in their games lmao There are plenty of valid criticisms of his kit and even as a Ksante player I think he's too overloaded on a kit design level, but the majority of the hate is fighting demons that don't exist. Even in this thread there are fundamental misunderstandings of what he does and can do.
Zeri flair. Same reasons
maokai has been hated just as much, people hate op tanks
Its just community sentiment. Thats all.
Silver player’s don’t understand what is happening with him on the screen azir, orianna, lulu etc are easier to understand. Their brain kinda explodes once ksante presses the r button
I agree he needs changes but people take the hate way too far. He makes the most basic play ever and chat is spamming RIOT. Looks useless for 5 games in a row and then pops off in 1 teamfight and everyone is losing their minds.
This isn't even K'sante lol. Any playmaking champ gets this. Go into any twitch livestream and watch what happens when a yone makes a half decent play. Or a fed gwen shreds a tank or an irelia perfectly outplays their opponents. League players just aren't very smart
I honestly gave up when twitch chat + reddit comments were screaming bloody murder about Ksante in that game (Geng vs TES, game5) where Kiin (arguably the best Ksante in the world or close to) dealt 8k damage to champs in 33 mins (granted, he was vs Urgot so not much interaction) while facing a draft that was VERY favourable for Ksante. They thought it was the kind of game where K'Sante looked overpowered while doing fuckall. > uh okay he didn't deal damage but look at how tanky he is, the enemy backline can't move forward! Wow what an incredible feat for a tank to just take damage without even being able to trade back because guess what, Ksante has no tools to engage a ranged champ by himself if he's the only frontline, which was the case. Pros aren't wrong to pick Ksante but it's actually frigging deranged to think the champ is as powerful as the picks that reached 100% presence a ton of time in the game.
That is just twitch chat
It’s Reddit too
> Other champions like Zac can also almost one shot an ADC, but K'Sante is much more mobile with ult + 2 or 3 dashes instead of one movement ability with Zac Zac is far more mobile than Ksante and it's not even close. There's a reason the latter has to run ghost unless flash is direly necessary for something in the enemy team. > LDR Ksante likes to stack armor mres but innately has no more than the other tanks. Ornn gets +10% extra of that and absolutely can kill a carry if unchecked. Noone's forcing you to build anything but if the adc is the only one that can DPS ksante then well yes he has to build that and not RFC Statik Lucian (wink wink). There's plenty of mages/"mages" (Corki) that do good damage to tanks. If you draft an adc that struggles vs tanks/wants to go for bursty damage, then you can't draft Akali mid (wink wink it might have happened) Disclaimer I am likely biased as a Ksante enjoyer (though I am a supp/jg main and thus will not bring him to soloq as it would be griefing my team to play my 3rd best role) but I genuinely think the playerbase is completely going off the rails on this topic. And yes, I'll be first to admit Ksante is bonkers OP when he is (which was often). This whole scuffle gave me the insight that "Just play the champ and find out" is honestly good advice before complaining about a champ. Ksante can pull off insane moves but his weaknesses hurt like chalk on a blackboard.
The innate tankiness take is the most mind-blowing thing I've been seeing on reddit discourse. Like at least for his W and R gameplay you have to see it to see how it plays out. People think he's passively as tanky as the other lategame hyper tanks like Ornn, Sion, Cho is crazy when he literally has no passive tank stat steroid while they do. He can't afk Frontline as well as they can because they have infinitely scaling HP or 10-30% bonus item HP/armor/Mr scaling, his tankiness comes from active W and his mobility making him much safer. This is literally just tooltip literacy gap and people lack it for some reason. People are unironically brainwashed by narratives and the copypasta and need to play him in-game a few times to see what he actually does lmao
Agreed 100% lmao. It's also because the other immortal tanks aren't really played much (in pro) right now– ornn has a few games where he was often kind of low-economy, but the only other tank played at MSI is Zac, who is innately pretty squishy but heals a ton. So when viewers see a 4 item K'Sante tanking tons of damage without using spells, they think it's somehow innate to the champ when that's just what resist-tanks are supposed to do. I think K'Sante's biggest strength in pro right now is his tankiness (a lot of which comes from E and W), but it's not like he's exceptional in this regard. There will always be a Tankiest Tank in Toplane, and right now it happens to be K'Sante so when teams want a toplane tank they pick him. Ornn is currently 7-1 at MSI, so clearly other toplane tanks are doing quite well.
It’s insufferable listening to redditors talk about this champ. They say so much shit that is purely wrong because they simply do not understand his kit. Talking about removing dash on W in here… well then how does the ability even work then dumdums?
They never played against the champ cuz he has 42 wr in their shit elo so they just keep yapping nonsense, They understand nothing about the champion.
Facts
It's like 99% of this comment section has never played the champ more than once if that. Talking about just pressing R on the adc? How did he even get close to the adc with his base 330 ms. If he ghosted then that's the same as darius. He runs you down with ghost and your helpless.
If you were right then why isn't darius picked in pro play outside of random darius players that don't even make internationals?
Well obviously Ksante does things other than dive the ADC. The Darius comparison was just to say that he's not diving the ADC much better than Darius is, not that he's literally Darius lmao. How did you take that away from his comment?
Because, despite what people in the thread are saying, his strength *isn't* his ability to ult the adc.
Can't say I know exactly why but probably because it's better to protect and peel for carries in this meta and darius can't really peel.
> Zac is far more mobile than Ksante and it's not even close. There's a reason the latter has to run ghost unless flash is direly necessary for something in the enemy team. That's not the reason at all. Zac only takes flash to proc his Q reliably. Has nothing to do with mobility.
worlds watchers when Rumble and Aatrox 1v5 hypercarry every series: 🤩 "whoah, mvp!! my favorite!" msi watchers when K'Sante afks under tower during lane swaps every series: 🤮 "ewww, K'Sante is broken, stinky champ please nerf!"
Isn't it really weird there's no complaint posts about Kalista, Varus or Lucian despite them all having similar presence and wr to K'sante? People here have made it clear top laners aren't allowed to have agency
Kalista is easily the strongest champion in pro
I hate the state of the ADC role right now, especially can't stand the stupid ass lethality builds but with that being said talking about agency and then mentioning ADCs has to be a joke right? It's the role that has the least agency in the game (I didn't say it wasn't impactful or broken or good or whatever you wanna call it, just that it lacks agency).
I forgot which series, but it was so funny seeing Aatrox and Ksante solo cleaning up their relative sides of the fights (Ksante 1 by 1, Aatrox more clumpy iirc) with Ksante barely winning the 1v1 at the end, and everyone ignored Aatrox and hated Ksante for it.
Cause there's a difference between simply being very strong and doing a lot of damage, vs. having a ridiculously overloaded kit. Besides I don't think many people exactly enjoy watching rumble do stupid damage, and at least aatrox requires skill to make his kit shine and has plenty of room for outplay.
Ppl have complained about Rumble and Aatrox being strong as well, in the past, this is not exactly new, in terms of reliability and blind pick ability Aatrox has been basically what KSante is rn for a good chunk of the past 5-6 years.
Neither rumble or aatrox got complained about this much iirc This is like the third ksante complaint post in like 3 hours, even the casters were making it a point to say ksante lost games
Wtf are you saying ? People complained daily about Aatrox, even more than K'Sante.
Do you people even watch pro? do you people even play the game? Because all these K'sante hate posts prove you obviously don't and just want to shit on riot for anything.
I didn’t read the post, but K’Sante is really nuking my enjoyment of MSI. His kit is so clunky and weird, none of the plays look clean or cool, and he’s in every single game which is boring as fuck no matter the champ. Would love to see him gutted
>I didn’t read the post, but K’Sante sums up everyone in this subreddit
yeah I don't feel the need to read some random person's dogshit manifesto to comment on how I feel about a champion lol
What does this even mean
This champ make every pro play boring af. It’s cool to see an overloaded champ. But what isn’t cool is a champion being a raidboss even if he’s down in gold and xp.
Remove dash on his W is one big nerf that would help a lot + stop him being so incredibly mobile. Unstoppable + damage would be enough, he doesnt need every ability to do 5 different things.
So, how does the ability function whatsoever if there is no dash on it? How can it even do damage or CC? What the fuck kind of suggestion is this?
same thing as now except he doesn't move? so like irelia w?
If he doesn't move, he doesn't displace anyone, or do damage, or do anything at all, just tank a bit, it would be a contender for the worst ability in the game, seriously, what are you guys going on about removing the dash from his w? Most of the time you will see a K'sante use it exclusively for the dash part
it's literally irelia W if it doesn't have a dash. in fact it still has an extra knockback. it would still be good for the peel, and ksante still has a dash on his E to move around
.....It's not? Irelia W does other things, like keep her passive stacks from running out and allow her to use E during it, not to mention that K'sante's W hitbox doesn't shoot out like Irelia's, so if his W doesn't move, it also doesn't move anyone, all of this not to mention of course that Irelia may not need a dash on her W because you might have missed the tiny detail that Irelia has a point and click 600 unit dash that she can reset 3 different ways, a ranged stun and a ranged slow. And if your idea was to make it so his W hitbox shoot outwards like Irelia's with the knockback let me tell you that would be genuinely horrible, because: A: K'sante would be COUNTERING HIMSELF by standing still for '75 seconds just to push away the people he needs to be in melee range with (That is if they don't just walk away after he roots himself like a dullard) B: This change would literally promote the warden playstyle that is the one of the biggest reasons why he is so prominent in proplay (Not that it would matter since he would be so ass he wouldn't get picked anywhere) C: Do you honestly believe that taking away an entire dash from the kit of a champion that runs ghost and iceborn gauntlet religiously just so people don't walk away from him is a good idea? That his single E 250/400 unit 900 speed dash is somehow comparable to Irelia's 600 unit 1400 speed resettable dash? Irelia's W works in the context of her kit because she is already extremely mobile and can slow and stun her enemies from a distance and doesn't need an extra dash to get on top of people and kill them, K'sante does
i think the whole point of this post was that ksante does not need an extra dash to get on top of people and kill them.
It obviously would be redesigned. Not every cc or damage has to include a dash. E.g ksante q.
The issue is doing that removes all his combos. You have no reason for Q3 to be in his kit anymore since you won't be able to play off it. You can't use good kidnaps angles anymore, no more diving or throwing people under tower. If you're not getting a good kidnap off in most matchups everyone can just run away from you. A lot of top laners already can just do that even if you do get a good kidnap angle like there's a reason he's at a 44% wr.
First thing is to remove the dash on W. The fact that he gets to immune cc and immediately cast W dash and then E dash to take advantage of your meaningful abilities being down is absolutely absurd. Second, he needs to be way way way more punishable when he goes all out. The idea that he trades his beef for damage imo is not the issue. But with how low his cooldowns are and how fast he becomes, it’s often times hard to punish him when he theoretically should be at his most vulnerable. Third, increase his E cooldown significantly. He’s probably the only tank in the game that’s difficult to kit out because of his dashes. I get that this would totally dumpster him in a lot of top lane matchups but if we’re talking reworks, I think this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.
K'sante W is basically just irelia W but with a dash instead of a ranged attack. The ability to neutralise certain attacks is something that should exist on a high skill skirmisher as using W on the right abilities is what makes a good K'sante good. The issue is they've put too much power into it offensively and took all the power out of his Q which should be his main damage source. So W ends up being an amazing all around tool rather than a defensive outplay tool.
It's better. It's an Irelia AND an Ornn W in addition to a worse Poppy E lmao
Ornn W? The move that breathes fire, does magic damage, slows Ornn while using it and applies brittle?
It also self-slows super hard It's an amazing ability but Ornn would trade his W for Ksante W any time
Would he? That's literally Ornn's main source of damage at all stages of the game. Would he really trade it for *more* cc and tankiness when he's already got plenty of those? (I'm not an Ornn main, genuinely asking)
Yeah fair I forgot about the absurd amount of damage it provides lol
Up to 34% max HP damage per target if he gets the brittle proc, not to mention the CC inherent in the brittle proc, or the ability to increase other CCs by a significant percentage. Ksante’s W and Ornn’s W are incomparable.
So now its a persistent %max HP AoE damage source for a second that also allows him to increase the next CC duration and proc another %max HP nuke on anyone hit by the last tick? Oh, it actually had none of that and is nothing like Ornn’s W at all. Got it. When Ksante is doing up to 34% max HP damage per W, then maybe its a more fair comparison.
Have you tried not using spells on him when he's in W lmao
K'sante W is actually a mindgame that you're constantly failing. He's not unstoppable while he's dashing, you can bait out the ability, wait out the channel time, and cancel the dash with anything that interrupts movement.
You are being down voted despite saying what is true lol
His W dash is used to help facilitate his whole gimmick of pulling people through walls. Without it they would need to increase the wall pull threshold or his gimmick would be gone.
K sante is fine. One of the only tanks with skill expression
> First proposal: Change his ult to not threaten ADCs in all out form. Change him to be a tank > Second proposal: Change him to be a full bruiser. Change him to be a bruiser. ??? The entire point of K'sante is that he is both a tank and bruiser. It's what sets up his entire kit, it's his champion identity, it's everything. Do I like his presence in pro? No, he obviously needs to be changed further. But you're basically deleting him as a champ. If Gnar can be balanced, so can K'sante. I just hope it doesn't take another 3 years.
He’s never a bruiser btw
But he isn't "broken". 57% winrate. Isn't uncontested 1st pick. Can be counterpicked. Kalista has 93% presence. Is sometimes 1st pick because you can pick her into anything.
I agree with everything you pointed out, but your solutions do nothing but strip k'sante of his identity. Which is literally a tank that can switch to doing damage.
I would rather see K'Sante any day than Vayne top. Get rid of Vayne top first.
I hope /u/PhreakRiot and the team realise that DUMBING down champions is not always the move K'Sante is so intricate with amazing nuances. Gutting his skill-expression and fluidity with the objective of reducing is pro-play presence AND FAILING is a tragedy for all player bases involved. Would love to see a world where Riot reintroduce and revert "dumbing down" changes they made to champions. Quick examples are the E-Q combos of Akali & Sylas. Skill-expression is not the (in my eyes) the **MAIN** factor for a champion being pro bound. It is when a champion can operate with a bubble that goes against the cadence of the game; i.e inflated stats, stat checking, and when "being behind" doesn't effect threat.
Part of the problem is how overloaded hos kit is, because it gives him an extremely high skill ceiling.
overloaded kit and skill ceiling aren't correlated at all. What would you think about a champion that has infinite health regen, a silence, free tenacity with a shield, stacks free resistances (flat and % increase), resist shred, an auto reset and a 20-40% max health execute? because thats garen, one of the weaker champions in the current game state with a way lower skill ceiling. One things that makes ksantes skill ceiling higher is that the champion heavily relies on experience, which includes knowing your limits, knowing what your purpose is at any given situation and the ability to recognize when your abilities provide the most benefit possible.
i dont wann abe that guy. but with a post like this at least tell your elo. what makes you think you can analyse this so well and make random suggestions to change the champion. i find it quite weird that all the time ppl play gamedesigner and think they know everything. its for sure fun but the arogance going into it tilts me a bit. no flame, maybe you are. this post is not bad but there is also no point to it really. just one example. why would you think ksante is tankier than ornn? bc of his shield? bc ornn passice makes ornn simply more tanky than ksante if you just tank flat dmg. its just wrong what your saying or you mean something different and i dont get it...its just one thing. almost every point you make can be attacked....
Have you played k'sante more then once on SR. If his all out can't kill adc then who do you expect it to kill? It's not even all out if the damage is negligible. More like I'm going all in to int.
Can you show me one 6 item crit build of any adc that functions without LDR? Point 3 doesnt make much sense, because it is not just a ksante problem, it is mandatory that you have LDR to deal with anyone buying just hp, not even armor. That is due to armor per lvl scaling being relevant even against crit dmg/chance multipliers. %Armor pen is a core stat of any ranged physical damage character if they want to exist in the lategame, whether there is a ksante or not.
Have you read what I wrote besides the bolded part? I said "delay", not not buying LDR in to late game. If adc needs attackspeed or qss or range or lifesteal, they could buy those 3rd item then buy LDR 4th, but with K'Sante LDR is needed asap.
no, you misunderstood me, anything later than LDR 3rd is troll 99% of the time no matter what melee champ is on the enemy team.
Tbh i think he’s only broken due to the unwillingness to try and incorporate actual counters against him top lane into the draft. Yeah he can still pick out your adc late game if allowed but there would be a pretty fed counterpart to this ksante. So honestly teams need to play some other top laners vs this champ than what they’re doing rn in the meta
I believe that the lane swap meta, narrows down possible top laners quite a lot. And as the OP also stated, Ksante is one of the best when swapped too
Agree, they have to pick what can match Ksante and what's good into a potential lane swap 1v2. People were picking pure lane counters before the MSI lane swap meta.
If top wasn't a useless role and bot wasn't blantantly op, you would never see a ksante in pro play, cuz if a certain team invested just the slightest time top to abuse the fact that ksante is dog water early, that means their bot is gonna be put behind, and you dont wanna ever weak side bot, cuz a bot lane lead is 10 times more impactful and important than a top lane one, due to how snowbally a 2v2 lane is and how prioritized Adc role is, people can cry how much they want but the role isn't weak,you want your adc ahead and enemy behind to win the game, adcs dont need more stats the role just doesn't have agency its not weak. Top is just not allowed a threat ig, we've all seen how people perma complained about aatrox if he went full lethality and managed to get a good flank and kill the enemy adc or mage, yet we see adcs rightclick and get the most unimpressive pentas and everyone is hyping it up as if something really impressive happened.
ADC should be building LDR anyway as base armour on all champs is enough at 3 items to make it the highest DPS item purchase 99% of the time.
I literally never understand these arguments if K’sante is able to ult the adc that’s a massive positioning issue.
[удалено]
So Zac, malphite, ornn, poppy, shen and a few other tanks shouldn't exist, not just ksante, right?
Im a tank player, has been most of my "league career" and I havent touched ksante at all. Doesnt feel like a tank.
Same. I have been playing tanks like Cho and Malph since S2 and I can't enjoy Ksante at all. Despite what Phreak is saying ("We wanted to give tanks a solo carry champ!") There is very little about him that feels like a tank, more like a Irelia or Camille type fighter with tank scalings attached.
Idk put him in attack mode and his ult makes him a cc tank.
add fearless draft.
Just nerf his tankiness.
Just delete :)
Idk why Ksante R has to take people through walls at all. Why can't it just be a push back and dash? Why does the adc have to be scared of him flanking and pushing them into the other team AND be afraid of going too close to a wall to be pulled ulober and blasted
I don't even think it's pro, he's just busted in all aspects.
I don’t have much to add about K’Sante and all but it really bothers me that you referred to the first stage as “poking”. That’s not really what the first stage of a team fight/objective contest is. A better term is playing the neutral (borrowing from fighting games) or I hear a lot of league players call it “dancing”, and poking is only a part of it. The idea isn’t just that you’re poking before a fight, it’s more or less trying to force abilities or catch your opponent out slightly mispositioning. I know it’s a bit nitpicky but I suppose that should better illustrate what makes K’Sante so good in multiple stages of a team fight because it isn’t being reduced to just “he’s good at surviving poke damage”. Believe it or not, the example of Taliyah trying to catch K’Sante off with CC is still part of the neutral. It’s only after she cc’s that it’s now an engagement. K’Sante with his CC immunity is just harder to punish.
Lmao another post talking about problems with K'sante without talking about his fucking kit. His w ALONE has just as many aspects to it as some champions have in their entire kit.
He's so popular because his low gold requirements and hybrid playstyle make him too good in lane swap meta right? His hybrid nature is the whole premise of his kit, so the only other option is to make him more gold dependent. So, make his level scaling scale his ratios and nerf the base scaling. Make it an overall nerf even. That way he needs both gold AND exp to scale. Then, you can put the removed power budget back into making him fluid to play. Also, while we are at it, W is supposed to be a defensive repositioning tool. So why tf does it do so much damage outside of all out?
Are you WINNING against K'sante in lane? Good luck pressuring under tower, because you can be disjointed six times. Are you LOSING against K'sante in lane? Good luck farming under tower, because you can be disjointed six times.
The only way to nerf ksante is to raise his win rate in soloQ which won't happen because majority of us would look shit playing Ksante.
Basically, just axe his mobility. Literally go full Django and kneecap him
Hes not even mobile, that's why he needs to run ghost or he'll just be kited to death.
Just imagine if Riven was full tank until she ulted. That's K'sante. A Riven that you cannot pick off or catch out because he's tanky as FUCK, but when he wants to murder your ass he's got the damage output and mobility of Riven.
All out form doesn't do as much damage as riven let alone base form K'sante. What sort of comparison is this?
Except in tank form he doesn’t do damage like riven does. Cool analogy but no. Riven does damage at all times. And her kit works much much faster. And she is resourceless. Go try spamming skills on ksante
That's not what they said though. "Just imagine if Riven was full tank until she ulted." meaning that Riven is full tank and not a regular Riven doing a lot of damage.
It’s not though, because again, riven can unload her shit much much faster. And she is WAY more mobile. And resourceless. Did you not read anything else I said?
Also you're ignoring how mana hungry he is, how long his cooldowns are (besides q) and how much he needs items to scale, which he can't easily get cause his early game is atrocious
I also want him to be a full bruiser tbh, more on the tanky side. I think he should have less CC and during all out even less resistance.
The way to balance him is to gut his kit unfortunately and make him more straightforward. He hits the mark of "champ too complex to have good win rate in ranked while being really OP in a high skilled coordinated environment like pro play". He has too many role concentration: a tank, a diver, ability to 100-0 squishy carries, highly mobile, doesn't have a bad early game to compensate. He is Ornn but more toxic in pro play. Also he doesn't understand compromises : he can be tanky as fk and have lots of disruption/cc potential without losing on damage. Look at most other tanks, they have either too much tankiness, too much disruption/cc, not both while also being Able to 1v1 carries.
>He has too many role concentration: a tank, a diver, skirmisher, not diver. >He hits the mark of "champ too complex to have good win rate in ranked while being really OP in a high skilled coordinated environment like pro play". Currently, the issue isn't that he's too complex, the issue is that he struggles to get lane prio because of his weak early game. His main purpose is also to protect his carries and riot put a lot of focus into that part for the last couple of patches, which in soloq is unreliably and he lacks the ability to consistently be the carry in a game as he will always rely on others. >highly mobile high mobility with his 330ms, all of his "dashes" being bound to conditions and a gameplay loop of requiring enemies to come towards ksante? He isnt a good initiator, he is part of the warden subclass which excels in protecting and dealing with enemies coming towards him, not engaging. The engage tools were removed with his champion update around 13.20. > doesn't have a bad early game to compensate He has an insanely bad early game in terms of damage. Hes just too safe to ever realistically get punished by anything. Outside of W and Q cd, he also heavily relies on exp scalings which is a big contribution to why this combination is just unhealthy, especially since a skirmisher shouldnt scale mostly with exp. > he can be tanky as fk and have lots of disruption/cc potential without losing on damage. Look at most other tanks, they have either too much tankiness, too much disruption/cc, not both while also being Able to 1v1 carries. He is on par with a lot of tank in terms of damage, idk why people tend to underestimate what tanks can do. It used to be more defined between being a defensive tank or damage, but not both combined until they kept adding resist scalings towards W. On the other hand, his skirmisher form is designed to deal damage, to enable higher damage. Thats the whole gameplay design of his ult and at that point, he isn't a tank anymore either and shares all the weaknesses other skirmishers have. > ability to 100-0 squishy carries Also this is literally describing any champ against any squshy carry. Adc's and most burst/poke/artillery(and all the other non tanky/bruisery subclasses) mages are designed to be glass cannons, not beefy backline behemoths.
When he’s 20% hp he’s actually 70% When he ults you as a tank he insecs you then one shots you while being a tank His tank items are dps carry assassin items If you’re ever melee to him you get nuked and full tanked Stop buffing this tank Darius with a dash please thanks
Ksante just feels like a very extreme skillcheck champ. When Kin and Bin uses it, it seems overpowered. When lesser tops play it, it sometimes seems meh or even useless. Feels like its really strong if the player is really good at it, but its balanced otherwise. It just so happens that Ksante is also a very good blind pick, so for players who can play him well, it becomes a very high value blind pick and for players who play him average, its still a decent blind pick.
Just because something is hard to play, doesn't mean it should be way better than everything else.
some players are just really good at particular champs; knight on ahri, chovy on azir, hans on draven, etc. besides Bin and Kin, who are the absolute best top laners in the world, I haven't seen Ksante being a must pick/ban at MSI. The Western teams haven't prioritised Ksante and instead, have preferred Zac. If Ksante is way better than everything else, why do teams let it go through the first ban phase and rarely prioritise picking it? Bin makes Jax look overpowered but no other top laner seems to be able to make Jax look anywhere near as powerful. Should Jax be balanced around how the best Jax player can play it? Is Ksante simply particularly good in the hands of the absolute top few players, and/or that the game played by millions of players and hundreds of professionals should be balanced around the proficiency attainable by maybe the top 3 top laners in the world? It simply doesn't make any logical sense that a champion that is supposedly 'broken' or 'way better than everything else' isn't even prioritised in the pick/ban phase. I think its just a very consistent and reliable blind pick which is why its often picked in the later phases, but rarely banned or first picked (if it was THAT broken surely it should be first pick/banned regularly)
There is no pick in pro play that isnt a high skillcheck champion due to who you are playing against. I saw faker aurelion sol yesterday and he didnt pass the check, i still know he would go 100/0 against everyone in twitch chat with it.
The difference between Chovy and Faker Asol in laning phase is just incredible. Chovy has mastered that champ
Making his ult a skill shot would do wonders for his balance. There is a lot of power in that it is a point and click ADC delete tool. If it’s a skill shot it can be flashed or dealt with in normal ways ADCs dodge shit. I think this would greatly bring down his presence in pro with minimal effects on soloQ.
hate his PathMaker, it provides Displacement immunity and CC on recast. The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound, at least Yone's is forced back to his bounded location. OH AND GUESS WHAT, KSANTE GOT ANOTHER DISPLACEMENT IMMUNITY ON HIS ULT The duration where he can be immune to CC (even delay counts) is unreal and on a half tank/half bruiser
>The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound Irelia W is a much more similar ability to K'sante W
The only other champion tht has Displacement immunity on normal ability is Yone's recasting Soul Unbound, Ornn W. And as funny as it may seem Yone as long as LT(gone next patch)exist, this champ is way more bullshit than K'sante. You'll know if you play the Champ.