So Kat was one of my most-played champions prior to the patch and I was testing her out a bit last night. I'm mostly glad about the changes they've made so far and I think her team fight presence is undeniably improved with the new W.

Unfortunately, they made Kat, who was already a weak early laner, even weaker that way. I can understand the rationale behind the BB changes. After a few levels of BB, Kat basically had free heavy harrass that was EXTREMELY difficult to avoid and she could stay out of range of counter harrass. She would quickly go from a weak laner to an almost unstoppable one post level 6 with HT revolver.

The necessary nerf, however, looks like it was mishandled. By removing the W modifier on BB, the harrass damage enemy champions take will be significantly diminished. Additionally, anyone who's played more than a few games with Kat should have a fairly easy time avoiding this harrass. Knowing that the BB's will hit nearby minions first, all an enemy champ has to do is stand a few steps away from their friendly minion wave to not have to worry about bounces. Even if the enemy champ is near enough to take a blade bounce, the damage is going to be extremely low unless you trigger the mark, which requires you to put yourself in range to eat a full combo from your opponent.

Personally I think the bounces need to be randomized again more to how it was like before. Without W to pump it up, the damage enemies will take is significantly reduced on the lucky bounces. The greatly lowered damage, along with the removal of the heal debuff already dramatically reduces the effectiveness of Kat's harrass. The fact that Kat now has to put herself at risk to get the full damage by triggering marks is balance by itself. Making the harrass easily avoidable altogether, however, is overkill.

Kat's laning phase has kind of just turned into a 'wait it out' sort of deal. Almost everyone counters her now so you have to play VERY passively. Once she has a little bit of MD she can start catching up in farm etc (new W makes her a beast that way), but I think that's a REALLY boring way to design her.

Agreed.

her laning phase is weak and her late game can be bad too if she isnt fed. I found that taking teleport can help with this by tping to other lanes and picking up kills and from there you can snowball your lane.

I also notice her skills don't correctly reset on champion kills, e.i. shunpo Zzz

Also, her animations are really wonky. I've really struggled to last hit with her since the changes because of that. I dunno if that's just me.

i like laning with her, sure the poke isn't as hard, but if you can suprise your opponent with a quick shunpo and a sinister steel then run back behind your wave that seems to work very well when I tried it..the speed buff on sinister steel helps you get away before they can unload a combo...i also suggest trying to throw in a dagger at the champion for the mark then shunpo>W...

i also found my skills dont refresh after kill sometimes, and the attack animation is bad too.

I thought the same thing, until I realized (by getting my ass-handed to me by a Kat), she is pretty much impossible to gank between Shunpo, Twisted Steel move speed, and flash. Try playing her like AP Sion it works (also max Shunpo last).

She used to be more difficult to gank than she is now. You can gank her if she uses shunpo agressively. If she doesn't, you almost auto-win lane.

@ OP: because the bounces aren't random anymore, a skilled player almost can't get hit by them as far as my experience goes. (Both with new Kat as facing her.)
But it's worse than that... Old Kat had a great harassing power at the moment the minions met, due to the minions walking in a straight line, which increased your range tramendously. She obviously lost that.
Once the minions are in lane, due to how they stand, you'll only ever get hit as 4th target if you're smart.

Old Kat used to farm and zone with the same ability. The problem with new Kat is that BB, her main damage spell, doesn't zone effectively. There are several highly offensive positions you can take when facing Kat, especially if you have a gap closer. Even as Akali (a melee champion), I can so far consistently outmanouver Kat's Q, outfarm her by zoning her off the minions if she Q's them (Q doesn't kill them anyway) and get a lead on her in kills. The non-randomness of the bounces gives the ennemy champion too many safe agressive choices. Kat has trouble winning trades as it is, but if you dodge her main damage ability on top of it all, she just loses hard.

The non-randomness on the bounces is why her laning phase currently cannot be balanced. It's one of the issues brought forward and ignored in PBE. Riot hates the word "random" I think o.O

I'd say add to that, that Bouncing blade does less damage per cooldown than sinister steel, and if BB hits champs on the 4th or 5th bounce, you might as well just leveled shunpo instead for it'll do the same damage, even with the mark. I've been goofing off in co-op games, and i'm thinking it might be better to focus on shunpo and sinister steel instead, and start with the ad parts of items, relying on the fact that if someone tries engaging your ally, you can do some instant burst which includes an autoattack.

I'd literally say that the damage of Bouncing blade is the problem. It does extremely pitiful damage for it's cooldown timer.