On the forums we've been noticing an odd delay when casting abilities after Shunpo; is that intentional or a bug? It's seriously been giving us some problems timing her abilities, and worst of all it means we sometimes Shunpo into the enemies and her ult doesn't go off.

I understand where you guys are coming from, but as a Kat main and playing her now on PBE I can say with certainty that she has lost of serious chunk of her burst potential. Personally, I think she's going to get completely wrecked in mid-lane once this goes live, but I think she might have a place in top lane if she's against a melee opponent.

The main problem is that she really doesn't feel much like an assassin anymore, but I'll trust what you can Morello are saying about keeping a close eye on her and that you'll buff her numbers if her performance really is lacking after relaunch.

P.S. Thanks for taking the time to answer these, a lot of Kat players have been up in arms about this so sorry for the extra stress we've been giving you

It is now much harder to shove Katarina as she farms much better under tower with the addition of W. More risk has been added to her early engagements by shifting some Q damage to the mark, which will make certain champions harder to harass - but her mobility and sustained damage increase from W improves other matchups.

Giving Katarina a dominant early game is dangerous considering her snowball potential - so balance has to be very tight here.

Drevarius, do you know if anything can be done to quicken the ending animation of Katarina's shunpo? Because of the lengthy ending animation if I press E and immediately R to activate death lotus, katarina will often not begin her ultimate when she lands at the conclusion of shunpo. I have to press R again when i realize I am not ulting. I have had this problem on old katarina as well, but with new katarina it happens MUCH more frequently, and it often causes my death or allows a kill to get away. I use smartcasting, which should mean that if i press E and then R, that death lotus would activate immediately following shunpo if an enemy champion is in range.

On my test setup I can activate death lotus very quickly after shunpo with no noticeable delay.
In a team fight this is a bit harder to judge - if you are slightly outside maximum shunpo range, the delay added by having to move slightly can mess up your timing and I often see that as the culprit. Try it in a controlled setting vs. custom bots and see what kinds of results you get - I'd be interested in seeing if there are other confounding variables.

Did they ever fix the issue where you can activate Death Lotus on targets out of range of it?

I agree with:
~Kat now farms better.
~Kat has a weaker early game.
~Giving Kat a comparatively strong early game is a bad idea.

How is it considered "Risky" to proc your Dagger's mark with a Shunpo while of course activating your SS for extra damage?

It is, in fact, downright stupid. Every other mid has a higher burst than you do, and in order to get in to range to hit the mark, you absolutely open yourself to jungler ganks.

Therein lies the key to her terrible early game. You guys took out the damage on her Q, which was he only form of harass pre-10. Now she has to put herself in a highly dangerous position to do damage sub-par compared to any other AP mid.

Not only this, are you forcing Katarina to farm under the tower and take abuse from long-range mids? Her Q will auto-push the lane, because of its damage to creeps, and because using SS on another champion will inevitably burst the mark on the minions.

Lastly, why was the ratio on Shunpo nerfed to all hell? One of the reasons harassing with Q->E on pre-nerf Kat was remotely acceptable is because it had a great ratio. Now the only reason is proc-hitting. Mentioning the cooldown seems redundant, but it has hurt her terribly.

The main points from my argument:
~Kat auto-pushes lane.
~Kat has lost her reliable harass in terms of being effective.
~Kat's mobility was halved.

Please note that I do appreciate your responses and I don't take them for granted. What I like specifically about Morello is that he tells us players how he wants us to think. So now I'm asking you, Drevarius, to tell me what I am missing in my considerations and what was going through the heads of Rioters with these changes (not to be taken negative connotative-wise).

Your responses are honestly just making this worse, Drevarius.

Countless people have told you they, explicitly, do not like how you changed Katarina's early game. They have told you that these changes are overall nerfs to her. And in the patch notes, the only changes from the PBE that were added was a .1 ratio addition to her Shunpo.

Numerous suggestions were given. Two of the most prolific Katarina players have spoken out against her current state and even added their own two cents. Morello posted in one of the threads saying they would be thinking about making changes to Katarina.

Unfortunately you have chosen to ship her out in her deplorable state. This does not reflect well after what you did to Evelynn and Twitch despite numerous PBE protests to their PBE states as well, and neither Twitch nor Evelynn have been well-received despite their recent buffs.

So understandably I am incredibly disappointed with Riot right now. Katarina is one of my most favorite champions. I was excited with the Relaunch. I thought it would be great. Then I get on the PBE and tried it. I tried it building AD and maxing W first, I tried it foregoing Gunblade and rushing Deathcap, I tried it with different runes/masteries, I tried it duo-lane and solo-lane. The changes are undoubtedly an extreme nerf to her early game in every case except the enemy being perma-stunned and letting you spam W on them. I told myself "oh, this is fine. It's just PBE, not final." I saw TiensiNoAkuma's thread and Morello's responses, I saw Scarra on Reddit saying he didn't like the changes. "Great!" I said, "Now Riot will probably give her some good changes in the patch!" Then patch notes go up. Only change is .1 ratio buff to Shunpo. Ignored every suggestion we gave, every thread that told you not to go through with the change, crushed my hopes. Seems like, once again, instead of holding back the rework to go through better balance changes, you're just going to shove her out in a sub-par state and very, very, very slowly buff her until you give up on her. Again.

might as well push back the Katarina changes, admit it, shes not ready. no one in any tournament is going to pick her anyway because either 1. there is not enough time to practice with the "new" katarina, or 2. she isn't a viable pick as the "old" katarina.

so don't even bother releasing the rework till you got it right.

I have played around 40 + games on the PBE about half VS bots half vs players, and this how I see things have changed. this new ability has made kat Even harder to balance, since kats late game is well Overwhelming and if you dont agree, build a lich bane, you've got the extra ability to spam that proc. She also has an issue where if the game goes for more then 20 minutes she can catch up on farm due to her ablity to OBLITERATE a minion wave with just Q and W with about a second. though her early laning phase is terrible due to the fact that all her hurrass is AOE and just pushes the minion wave and doesn't do any sort of reasonable damage to the enemy, unless you take there damage back. my best suggestion would be make BB prioritize champions so she has atleast some sort of chance of poking back because right now all her BB is going to push the lane if the opponent just stands far enough away.

'People who were masters of how someone played prior to a major rework don't like that a character's different, better change it!'

*Maybe* (and just maybe, because I feel like she's in a pretty good place now) she could use a slight buff, but the restructuring of her skills as a whole was for the better. Do you remember who was "allowed" to play Kat before the rework? Extremely high-tier people who were already known for having a wicked Katarina. This opens her to the actual community being able to play her.

Countless people, MoeBeam? You mean the people you looked to for Katarina opinions didn't quite know how to play her right off the bat of a rework. Just because they're highly-ranked doesn't mean they're going to understand a character from the beginning after major change.

P.S. This goes for Eve and Twitch as well, as their changes are for the best, even if the numbers aren't there yet. That leaves Live Design to do it rather than other teams, which might be for the best.