Another thing that annoys me - The animations, sound effects, and sprites were better in every way on the old Kat. It feels like the current dagger bounces "too fast" if you will. The sound files "stack".

The only bad thing visuals-wise on old kat was loltentaclehair.

After reading the majority of the post, I feel the TL;DR does not reflect your comments made in the post itself.

I think you're unhappy with kat's sinister steel being a major source of play now, and it's interaction with movement and bouncing blades. Whereas in the past your ult was the focus, and shunpo was higher.

She was moved from a hybrid ad/ap caster that needed a hextec to a pure ap caster. Her play now allows faster APM to benefit, and with the 20+ top champs released since her rework I feel relying on her ult for damage was a weakness that more answers were available for from team composition standpoints.

I think they made her more viable in champ select, and itemization. I think her damage nerfs or buffs are intended to fall inline with itemization and champ interaction, and I believe they are working as intended.

I totally forgot about the old kat tentacles.
good times

The majority of my post was the assessment of her skills pre-rework compared to those post-rework. Her kit post-rework eliminates a majority of her weaknesses in lane, as well as those in teamfights. However because of Voracity, her teamfight will almost always be strong (too strong) because of her two repeatable AoE skills, which can only be balanced by numbers.

interesting

Das bump.

I liked the old Kat a bunch. Like the OP noted, there was a lot of choices to be made right on the spot, and to succeed on her, you needed to know how and when to make these choice.

The only choice I have on the new Kat these days is, should I cancel my ult mid-cast now that all of my abilities got a reset? Sometimes I want to if I want to get straight to chasing, other times, I'll let is finish.

The new Kat isn't too problematic, though imo.
Sure she hits hard, and she's an extreme pubstomp, but against any CC, she struggles. She has to time her abilities perfectly and if just one enemy saves just one stun for her, she's rendered borderline useless.
If she's pressured too much in lane by an Anivia or something, she can't run around and she can't manage to snowball.

If anything, the new Kat might be easier to shut down than the old one, but the new one also gains greater advantages from not being shut down. She's still a hit or miss character, I think.

1. I don't think so. I used to find myself using her E for damage much more than my R. R was only good if you could time it properly, which is similar to now, and her E served as backup damage while making her slippery as ****

2. Her old harass is inferior by a great margin. She depended on leveling up Q and W to get good use out of it, but E was her most important non-ult spell. So it was a choice between poking or having a strong presence in a fight, and the latter usually won it out. She could E onto minions and throw a Q, but only against an enemy who was scared of her from the start. Otherwise, they could just turn around and slap her

3. I don't think it's so much the AoEs that cause the problem, but the burst attached to them. I'm honestly almost willing to bet that the mark from Q is the most problematic. Q currently hits fairly hard right now, and causes her W to burst hard too. But without the mark, her W would just be melee range poke. I'm actually now wondering what would happen if the mark had an internal 10 sec CD or something that couldn't be reset through her passive

Ugh, I miss old kat so much (Got a few pentas with her as well), it just felt like you have to be much more attuned and higher skilled to play her compared to now.

let the thread keep on

I really did enjoy Old Kat a lot more. New Kat is FINE, but Old Kat just felt so much..well, better. It felt like a challenge more.