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Kayn feels like a modern champion cause his gimmick and playstyle are complicated and unique enough to be in par with more modern champions, meanwhile rakan and xayah (for me at least) feel like they were in 2012 but got visual updated along the way
Before any debate on her mechanics and gameplay on how she is not a champion until 6, i will say that her base skin its the most hideous downgrade of all reworks.
THANKS OH MY GOD she had a gorgeous fully detailed armour and now she has this spandex that shows her thighs and a turquoise sword??? i liked Kayle being alittle androgynous and monochromatic.
They must really hate making properly armoured women between Kayle’s rework making her this gangly mess and the bizarre look of Rell’s armoured up form where for some reason, her crotch and inside legs needs to be exposed like what?!?
@@skyco5395 AND imposing. Even if it looked a bit bulky, it made her look like she commanded respect with her presence on anyone looking at her. The fantasy of this Zealous silent being from a higher sphere looking for justice and retribution. Now? She is demanding your respect like a Karen, in fact when she evolves in 11 she is a literal blue haired Karen (her voice lines dont help her one bit either). Sure she looks more nimble and better for flyght now but those spandex pants make her looks like a wannabe Power Ranger... Sadly the fucking purple was a good choice of color, not because it looked good (it looks terrible) but because with her current Karen personality screams "im better than you in anyway, workship ME" And whats with those shoulder guards!? The old bulky ones look way more usefull than... whatever those are for.
@@vinnythewebsurfer Rell its another mess. Her 80s Heavy Metal inspired style sounds awesome in paper. But practice, Riot its too much of a pussy now days to purely embrace that art style and opted to cover her too much on her mounted form. Granted, she looks a bit like a biker so we can give her a pass there... but that dismounted form... It litterally looks like she just shitted her pants for the weight she is carrying with her (maybe that is why she is not using crotch protection lol). And she looks unbalanced with only one arme covered in armor. And worse of all is that she looks like those cheap transformer figures that have this eternal leg spread to keep them on 2 feet.
@@vinnythewebsurfer The new design of the armour is worse, but she really looks angelic now, and when you level her up and gets 3 pairs of wings she looks even more like a goddess.
@@Master00Ra old kayle at least has an appeal and a very cohesive design. a design can be of a very cliché concept but if it's done well it can still be amazing. new Kayle just looks like it has too much going on and doesn't commit to a concept
@@skyco5395 I very much like what they did with Aether Wing Kayle at least and since that's the only skin I ever play I don't have any complaints :) EDIT: Though I do miss the joke spam with old Aether Wing Kayle
Character design wise, I think it'd really go well that instead of looking more "human" as she evolves, she turns more "inhuman". From a lady in spandex with minimal armor to a floating piece of armor with no traces of flesh left, symbolizing her abandoning humanity in favor of transcendance.
keep dreaming riot hates monsters and all that. they want human sexy teenage girls so that they can sell on skins. for example they last monster champion they made is bel vet and she literally is an human, and a profile picture and the loading picture as an human with her skins being shown as human. they hide her being a monster. they are so fucking scared and out of touch with the comunity i swear
I remember the old Kayle, me and my friends used to say that it didn't matter what you build on her or where you played her, she was just a monster, she was great as tank, as damage dealer or support
You my friend get it! I loved old kalye simply due to the fact I could play her top, support, mid or adc(her lanes working best for me in that order). She could be played different ways successfully and most of all I didn't have to hide under tower till lvl 11 or even lvl6
@@vindifference I only saw one single kayle jungle in my life and it was ridiculous how well they did. So, from all I know, old kayle jgl: 100% winrate.
Her gaining wings as she levels up is fine, but she shouldn't look more "human", lvl 16 kayle should be a warrior in full armor with no way to tell what's inside
or a "be not afraid" type existence that has no traces of humanity left. Just armor attached to a vague humanoid form of light that no longer speaks understandable words, just ominously humming and whistling at you
remember Kayle is an arrogant and egotistical asshole that "think" that she's above humanity. while in reality she isnt. thats why she doesnt look more inhuman as she evolve, because she's not actually superior than human, and thats why she remove her helmet, because the dumb bitch think thats she's now a perfect unstopable being that can 1v9 and doesnt need protection.
Honestly for a champ who is all a out not feeling petty enotions she sounds like a fury idealist I'd picture someone like vadasi who is calm and judges coldy
What killed Kayle for me is that 1.5 seconds of "execution" for her ult, making her useless for the time... ON A HYPER CARRY WHOSE MAIN DAMAGE TOOL IS AUTO ATTACKS!!! It would be if Vayne could not attack for 1 second after every time uses her roll during ult.
For real, I just got a kayle ult in the current game mode and I feel useless as f everytime I use it since I wasn’t able to lifesteal the missing health and just continue to die anyways.
i love the scaling champs and i love the idea of kayle a champ that evolves throughout a match startng out god awful but turning into a super powerful late game threat if you survive long enough but i just never really liked kayles game play it never felt engaging at any point in the game to play as since she just feel stat checky.
@kosmosrebell Nasus is actually quite a good pick against kayle. He can make good use of her weak early to stack up, at lvl6 he should win and mid to late game the Nasus slow (which also lowers attack speed) really fucks kayle over. Nasus is a solid ban if you're a kayle main.
I always hated scaling champions because it rewards bad players for just surviving for a few minutes and then they can turn off their brains and beat players much better than them
I despise the new rework of Kayle mostly of her design but also her some of her kit are still there and the new rework was supposed to be a late game terror which contrast of her old playstyle being a fighter/support
Hey it works pretty well if you build battle song, healing movement speed steroid and an ultimate that is an amazing support ability. She has the same role as yumi you follow your most fed person around and make them a nightmare. What's worse then an 8 kill fiora one with 75% more movement speed and 2.5 seconds of invincibility.
@@nimric3348 I've tried making support kayle work, but if the enemy knows better they will just fight you constantly cause her early game is so bad. You can't even sit on tower because you're defenseless against dives pre-6
@@Chizypuff I play it all the time in ranked the big things i say is. Get a tear of the godess and max heal, play with the passive support item where you last hit minions, going for damage isn't your friend. Focus mainly on positioning so that the enemy is dividing there poke between both of you to get max effect and sustain from your heal. Kayle support isn't trying to win lane pre 6, you play super passive and capitalize on oprritunity for an easy kill if it presents itself. Main item is battle song and the movement speed from that at your heal can get you and your teamate out of most situations. Ult is normally saved to let your most fed player make risky plays and extend there lead.
@@Chizypuff also just save mana for heals to be ready to back if needed. Your level doesn't really matter as much after level 6 because by then you got everything you need. 11 and 16 are good for ult but where your not a damage dealer after you max heal nothing else really matters.
Haven't played in four or five years, but used to main old kayle. I did alright early laning especially since yasuo was everywhere and she countered him pretty hard.
Ok Kayle is easily my least favorite VGU, because despite making her less stat-checky she somehow became more uninteractive. Like you said, her laning phase is just her hiding from you, which leads to a boring 10 minutes for both her and her opponent. Furthermore, because of how hard she scales it's almost mandatory that her laner has to babysit her to keep her behind once the laning phase starts to end. Her team has to 4v5 until she scales which is miserable for them. Once she hits 16 though, if she's competent she just wins by auto-attacking, to the point where her team now has to just sit around and watch her carry while the enemy team has to work twice as hard to shut her down. She's just not fun to play against, not fun to play with, and in my opinion, not fun to play. Not to mention that even though her model isn't as clunky anymore she just looks so much worse. Old Kayle was scary looking, new Kayle is hot and that's it.
I will never forgive Riot for reworking Kayle when all she really needed was a visual update. Literally one of the first champions I picked when I started playing along with Jax and Mundo and my first true main, fell in love with her generic arch-angel aesthetic, her kit and overall design making her a mix between Garen and Tryndamere. With that said Im still going to keep maining her until the day I stop playing league out of boredom or death caused by poisoning from all the toxic waste you can find in this game. Great video as always Vars, appreciate you!
i remember when she came to wildrift and the absolute terror the old unerfed kayle was, since you can level up faster in wr she reached her power spike incredibly fast kayle would just dominate in every game she had to be nerfed to the ground before she could be balanced
Did not play league before kayle rework but I love the current kayle gameplay because when I lose lane I can blame weak early and 1v9ing games after losing lane gives me a strange sense of satisfaction
Yet another champ that I dropped after the rework. Like you said it really is a case of trying to fix what wasn't broken. The visual downgrade really wasn't doing Kayle any favors.
I went from a Kayle one trick to never playing this champ again. It's similar but all the parts that I liked. Like ulting right before the dunk and then bursting full health Darius down to dead in three seconds that made it feel so good before are gone. I agree she is healthier for the game now but her weirdness that made her so fun and unique are gone now. Before then you would clear minion waves it felt like beating on them with a divine hammer. Now it's waves of fire and bleh. Also yasui windwall stops your e empowered autos. Super extra lame
It depends what you consider healthy for the game. I actually think she became much less healthy by becoming very one dimentional and thus limiting her champion viability within different teamcomps and lanes within the game. The more limited and one dimentional champions become the worse the game health is imo.
Something i didn't saw you comment on is how her ranged attacks weren't projectiles, meaning you could be of the few champions that got go to keep hitting Yasuo through that stupid windwall he has. That is probably what i miss the most
I feel like Riot nailed the Morgana rework and with how most of the community views Kayle, it seems like she didn't quite hit the mark and that's totally reasonable. It's almost like they tried a little too hard for her and they really didn't need to. I felt like she just need some adjustments and a visual refresh. I like new Kayle but I also liked old Kayle.
I have to somewhat disagree. Old Kayle was essentially a ranged champion when she had mana for e, and if she didn't, then she didn't get to play. She was highly one dimensional. The rework took the best parts of her old kit (scaling ap carry), and modernized her for current league. There was no skill expression in her kit before.
I prefer Old Kayle in terms of a lot of things. While she was a simplistic champion from a design choice, character wise, she was a good character. Only her Aether Wing skin being a what if she got corrupted line. However, Riot decided to make the corruption part of her basic lore, effectively reversing the roles she and Morgana had. Morgana was meant to be the "evil fallen angel" and Kayle the "good virtuous angel". By making Kayle fixate on the zealot/crusading side of Justice, It effectively turned her into what I despise, the religious zealot devoted to her fanaticism, also known as the Lawful Stupid Paladin in Dungeons and Dragons (the type of paladin player who refuses to let anything evil go unpunished and refuses to be remotely helpful to society). All her skins since her rework, save her Pentakill skins, paint her as a zealot crusader who can't be turned away from her "righteous cause". I get what Riot was trying to do with the sisters, but in doing so, they effective turned Morgana, who was meant to be the evil one, into the more sympathetic one (she got a DAWNbringer skin to show this). Sadly, all the rework did for me as a Kayle player was abandon her for other champions. She had a nice little curve that went from 0-60 upon hitting her 2 item spike before the rework. Now, pray you can reach 16 without being too far behind and hope your team doesn't FF by then.
I think at this point in time, the "good virtuous angel" is really rare in popular fiction. It is so easy to portray not fallen angels as zealots and assholes. I think it is in trope in itself. Old Kayle had maybe not much lore, but it was more nuanced than the new backstory.
The biggest flaw of this rework for me is the Aether Wings skin. It used to be my absolute favorite : smooth and elegant, a true cyber-angel. Now there are those ugly drone things in the level 11 form and that horrible dark blue color in the final form.
Used to love her because of that swimming-in-the-air animation of the skin, and then found out it was moved out as a general animation of her attaining a great amount of speed via W and homeguard. I'm so disappointed even up to this day haha ☹️
I loved old Kayle. Cant really figure out what new Kayle was supposed to be. Passive and E screaming Ap-On-Hit, R and Q look like AP Burst, W seems to be meant for Bot lane and most skills also scaled of AD
I would separate the effects on the passive for every level so it is more gradual. give her all the benefits from lv 6 at level 1 but in a reduced effect (give her 0 range on lv1, 100 range on level 2, 200 range on level 3, etc. Make it so that at level 6, she is the same as current level 6 kayle). Do the same with the next levels
I mained old kayle, she was so cool, and I just loved playing her in general, I was still relatively new to the game so I wasnt that good at her or in general but playing her was just so fun. I cant play new kayle tho
The pre-rework kayle design is also cool as heel , she looks like a goddess of war/justice put Riot put her in a pandex suit like some cheap mobile game , lol
Armor, pair of wings and a sword. She. Was. Just. It. You woulden't dare to say she as god neither a powerful one. Looked like a RPG generic enemy, you can easily fit 20 Old Kayles side by side and would look normal
@@CelVini Yeah, but Kayle was meant to be a character from Targon, not a character from the X-Men. Old Kayle was generic? Yes, but she looked like the Spirit of Justice, New Kayle looks like a generic My Hero Academia character, a woman with angry face and a spandex.
I mained Kayle when she originally released in 2009, then subsequently quit her (and the game) soon after her rework. The feeling of slowly amassing power as the game went forward was lost, and no other champion ever made me feel like that again.
It was fine at the time, when LoL was much slower. Remember how much she was picked in professional tournaments when the team needed to have a scaling champion to round out what was otherwise an early game team? That's because it was common for games to go past the 25 minute mark in those good old days. Now, with gold income higher, the ability for supports to actually contribute damage to fights (thanks to that higher gold income), newer champions being more aggressive, and the game just generally moving faster, she doesn't have a good place. There isn't enough time to scale up and early game advantages mean a lot more.
Kayle was my favorite champ when I first got in League. She's 1 of the only champs that can go through all the roles(top,mid, jungle, adc, support) I really love her flexibility. Though her only problem is if she gets behind, it's hard to scale again since she's so item reliant. The new Kayle may seem like an improvement but the passive limits her heavily, only becoming a true champion on lvl 16. It's more punishing especially on faster games where you can't reach that level spike.
Kayle was reworked because she was left in a nerfed state after terrorizing pro-play by literally 1-shotting a full hp Karthus with a single auto after building lichbane and deathcap... Her Q back then gave a 10% damage boost onto the target, which also affected ignite's true damage.
I viewed Kayle as a hyperchampion. She could be played in every role and in addition to dealing hybrid damage, could itemize for any type of damage depending on the teams comps.. A unique champion to OTP.
The removal of Kayle's true damage in exchange for making post-6 comfortable was a terrible mistake. The redditors refused to accept that Kayle just has to pay a heavy price in the early game in order to get massive gains as the game stalls and progresses. Now she's just half-assed. You're still just half a champion at level 6 while your level 16 is just a shadow of what it used to be.
Yeah dealing magic damage instead of true damage at lvl 16 really makes her powerspikes underwhelming. Even when she had fire-waves at lvl 6, it was an amazing waveclear tool that equalized with many scaling champs who also excel at waveclearing like Viktor and Anivia. Sure being able to comfortably farm at lvl 6 feels a lot more relaxing, but it trades off a lot of Kayle's skirmishing potential.
@@inplane9970 The problem with that is that today's game is much faster paced, most of the time if you fall behind (which you inevitably will with kayle), even if you play evereything properly, you usually have no more chance to come back, your enemy has 1500 gold more worth of items, and you can be a hyperscaler, you won't beat him before you hit your max potential, which takes like 25 minutes to reach. In the modern league you have to have some kind of presence even when you are in your weakest phase, otherwise it's just 5v4 and by the point you get your powerspike, you lose the game to neutral objectives and such. It would need perfect laner/jg coordination to counterweight this, and Riot probably didnt want a pro-only champ, bcs it would be a balance nightmare and simply a stupid decision.
Kayle went from my favorite champ to one that actively makes me angry to play. They also ruined the best skin in the game of Aether Wing. The glorious smacking of her autos was replaced with the same generic effects the rest of her skins has, with the added downgrade of changing all the voice lines to that of a psychopath
I just dislike how one sided lane phase is because she's just so dogshit. If it was up to me I'd honestly rather see her reworked into a bot lane carry with a focus on the AOE autos and AP dmg.
I write this comment before the release of your video, just so I won't have any influence of it. I think I have something to add since I am an OTP Kayle with millions of mastery points on her (and I am hard stuck Plat, RIP). I agree with the title mostly, she needed a minor rework. Let's look at the positive sides, her old passive (the 3% Armor/MR shred stack of 5 total) moved to her Q and her Q became a skill shot that upon impact has the splash damage of a cross. Killing two birds with one stone, I loved this idea. This was good champ design. Another thing I like is that she gained movement speed on her passive if she became exhalted which is also good. This was a problem with old Kayle. Catching up to your enemies sometimes. 3rd is her E execute and AA reset, the old E felt clunky when you got range and had to click it every 10 sec. The bad ones: Her level dependence, this goes without saying. Old Kayle could have prio in lane with her wave clear, she almost has none until level 11 now. This makes your side for your jungler extremely weak. Her new W., this double heal is useless, this is more of a support idea and she feels like a glorified support. Revert it back to the old AP ratios and make it a single target spell only. Currently, it's rather useless other than for the speed boost you get for the amount of mana you spend. Lastly her R, my god this is where the extremly bad design kicks in, who in their mind thinks its a good champion design to have an AA champion not be able to AA for 1.5 seconds during her Ult? I get it that this was implemented because when she was released and her waves did true damage, it would be OP to have her AA for 3 seconds. However when she became ranged at level 6 and her true damage on waves was removed, the AA silence was kept. The ult feels more than support Ult than a godly Ult. The rational of the ult is that I need to get near my enemy which does tons of damage (especially if they are melee) to be able to deal the damage from the ult, then try to kite away from the enemy once the ults damage is deal?!?!?!?! it's actually better for me to ult my ADC or a diving tank since they can atleast do damage for 3 seconds and take advantage of the damage of the ult than to ult myself. This is horrible champion design and what is currently wrong with this champion. Mixed feelings: the extra range at 16. As much as I hate the level dependence on the champion, I have a hate/love relations with this level evolement. The extra range is godly good and makes her more safer late game than old Kayle. Visuals: The currenty Kayle feels a bit clunky to AA with, its not like the old Aether Wing Kayle (which was a pay-to-win skin) where the AA were so smooooooth and that godly AA sound. However the visuals on the base current Kayle skin is beautiful. As we are talking about Aether Wing Kayle, they totally destroyed that skin. It was one of the best skins pre-rework. Now it's horrible. The voice lines are tilting and stupid, she feels like a murderous psycopath and I refused to play that skin, it's more like Project Skin now. Old Aether Wing Kayle voice lines were absolute fantastic. They were firm, regal and poetic, with a hint of authoritarian. It was the perfect combination. My suggestions: Remove AA silence on ult and remove the damage of the ult, revert her old W and make her ranged from level 1 with waves with AA range of 550 (a compromise). Fix AP/AD ratios on her passive/E passive (if they need a nerf). I dont know what her passive should be, but maybe increase her Attack speed with level and give a movement speed to enemy champions bonus.
Personally I think rework Kayle is a mess I don't play much League myself anymore but I still watch Pro a lot and people always hype up level 16 Kayle like it's only a matter of time before she 1v9's the game. Then she get's level 16 and instantly dies every fight because no Kayle player actually wants to Ult because it makes them literally useless for 1.5 seconds. So you wait 25 minutes for your Champion to finally become a Champion and once you get there you almost never actually get to use it because you're either 10k gold behind from playing 4v5 all game, or you're relegated to being an Ult-bot for your engager and then get one shot because you get targeted while you're stuck in your animation.
For me my biggest disapointment with kayle was 2 things 1- her redesign, the large majority of the fans would agree her old armour looked way cooler while her new one is just way to fan servicy. Part of the coolness of kayle was the fact her armor was very andro, and she had a sammus like twist for new comers when we find out she was actually a girl. Taking this away from her felt like a take away from her character. Old kayle didn't care what gender you saw her, as she was a warrior first and a woman second. 2- I loved her whole angel flame swordsman aesthetic, and I was sincerely hoping that in her rework they would play with her holy fire type game play and take a turn away from her other parts. But instead they chose to go full nazi angel (literally) and focus completely on her "im so holy that im basically a nazi" type stereotype. Which just felt cringe, I didn't wanna play as some zealous priest who would throw away everyone including her own sister. I wanted to play a genuine holy and kind angel, which leads to 2.5 2.5- They made her character unlikeable, for the reasons I mentioned above.
Ehh... Sorry to burst your bubble but kayle's personality didn't change during the rework. If anything they toned her craziness DOWN in the rework(She outright shattered Morgana's soul in the old lore for stopping her indiscriminate slaughter). Morgana was always the good one and Kayle was always the bad one. As the inversion of the angel tropes was there from the start. That being said, I completely agree that her old visual design was a lot better.
after watching this, I feel like Kayle needs something a long the lines of tristana, slowly gaining more attack range and power/traits as she levels and gradually amassing power that way as she grows into a hyper carry.
I love the new kayle, mostly because her carry pentional is god like. Shes heavily based on the paladins from dnd and they too have very similar weakness but they are still loved. Shes not for everyone and that's okay.
I wouldn't compare her to DnD paladins. First, her design couldn't be further than it already is. Second, concept of paladin's smites being temporary would be better with her old Q. I can agree with healing and protecting aspect tho. But I don't think that's where the inspiration came from. It's more like "good" goddess 101
I never played old Kayle, so I don't have anything to compare current Kayle with. That said, I don't think Kayle has any problems today, she's great, and I disagree with some of your critiques of her. I don't think her kit "lacks identity" or isn't cohesive. She is iconic as THE lategame hyper scaling champion.. other champions are known for that too, but that's her whole schtick. Her basic abilities are her tools to survive the early game, and she becomes much more auto-attack focused in the late game, which to me is more or less a unique take on a marksman-style champion despite people never referring to her as such. Her E allows you to have a ranged attack before you're a ranged champion so that you can get a last hit in without taking a bunch of damage, and both her Q and W are both useful combat spells on offence or defence. Her ultimate synergizes with her lategame play style very well imo, and the fact that both her W and ult can be used on allies is great for those early/mid game ganks/skirmishes/team fights where Kayle isn't yet the most powerful champion and adds an interesting element to her kit. Kayle is just fine. Perhaps old Kayle was better, I don't know. But at this point, the idea of going backwards - giving her an even worse early game, and a less skill-expressive kit - in order to give her a better late game, sounds nonsensical. I know that's not what's being suggested, but I think it illuminates the fact that they actually did land Kayle in a pretty good spot even if it took a few tries.
I vastly prefer old Kayle. I used to play her a ton in 3v3 and it was so fun. Her ult was critical in every fight and she could actually do things during it. I will say I would prefer her current ult to her old one but that's basically all I would change.
I hate the new ulti, being unable to attack while it's up and you're incentivized to stay close to the enemy so the swords hit- but you're never using it for damage, more likely avoiding it, so you don't even want to be in range for the swords to hit
I really liked the old Kayle. I used to play her as support, with full support items and poke the hell out of enemy team so my team could just go for the kills :D
Right with swain, this was one of my least favorite reworks they’ve done. Visually; her default look is crap and ruined the Samus idea of Kayle because L O R E. gameplay wise, sure they didn’t force her into another lane like swain but what the fuck was the point of the changes other than to force a “We S-Kayle-ing” meme gameplay style that’s worse than every other late game champions unless you catch the occasional Riot devs patch brain fart that decides to make her or an item (that isn’t gun blade since they deleted it) broken for a couple weeks.
I still feel the same way since the first rework, but I still haven't managed to put it into clear ideas. It's... Weird. I liked old Kayle, I kinda like new Kayle. But the old one felt more... Kayle. I get that not much has changed with her kit, and all her abilities do roughly the same. But it doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like her old self. I can't really pinpoint why it feels that way, but it does. There's 2 things about new Kayle that really bother me, and it's both her e and her inability to attack during ult. Her e is, for all purposes, your best ability in the early game. It's the main way you survive lane, but it has too long of a cooldown for a single autoattack worth of range. I wouldn't love if it have 3 autoattacks, or 3 seconds, or something better than a single autoattack. My problem with Kayle's e comes that once you get enough attack speed, the ability is just an autoattack reset with an ok-ish passive. The ability you max first gets progresivelly more useless after you max it, because of how her kit works. You NEED it early, but it's literally just one extra autoattack late game. Old Kayle e was overall worse, but it was useful all game. And the ult thing is obvious. You need to ult to avoid death, but if you ult you lose damage because you lock yourself with no way out, especially mid to late game where those 1.5 seconds can easily be 500 to over 1000 damage in autoattacks. Maybe it's also the fact that Kayle got reworked to be way worse early and better late during a time League was rapidly turning into a 15 minute ff speedrun fest, and getting lane pressure and having early game impact is vital for consistent success, and she works exactly the opposite way.
I had just started to play LoL when they first reworked and didn’t play her until season 10/11 but I really love her and her late game carry style because that is just my playstyle
i am someone who played the original kayle as my first champ way back in league when i started, i used to main her, the original sion, and amumu before any of their changes. i like how you brought up the idea of how they stunted her growth. to me an old school league player a change this drastic made me drop the champ i started with completely. and i think i agree about how they should have just adjustsed some of her abilities without completely over hauling her. her new ultimate was a good direction to go in, however the passive change is a direction i cant understand and i dont even know if riot understands? they continue to try and make her a ranged champ while cutting off her power. yet, that doesnt fit her fantasy. the old kayle was great because she was literally the angelic judgement type fantasy. you could protect and sustain teammates, chase down your foes, then smite them with holy fire. now she is like a just wait it out champ. its not fun to just get bullied in lane, have no response in lane to your opponent and rely on your team to carry you. i feel if i had the opportunity to update kayles old style into a more modern style i would take a different approach. i would make her passive have some sort of scaling to it but more along the lines of stacking, however, i would have made it so she can only get so many stacks depending on level thresh holds. to me this would solve her passive issue while keeping it kind of where she is at now. i think her slow ability should be a skill shot, and her new ultimate is fine. as for the other abilities, i would like her heal to remain where its at as well where it can heal 2 people splitting the heal, however, if used on herself she could get a bigger heal. her final ability should be an update of her original that turned her into a range champ, i would have it give her burn damage and range based on the passive stacks i mentioned earlier. however, there would be a range increased based on certain numbers on the passive stacks. add the aoe to it and the passive that lets her get more attack speed. and of course range increase after so many stacks i feel would be a bit easier to approach understanding her than from where she is at now. to clarify he ability that gives her range and burn would scale but the passive is what would grant her attack speed not the ability, this way you would need to ramp up passive stacks before hitting the ability to make the most out of it. you can also gain the passive stacks in combat by being in combat and attacking, thus making it easy to scale more passives after using the ability. i feel thats how i would address kayle between her old and new versions. i do think some things were good with her new version, however, it doesnt really fit her fantasy and its hard to learn... and not fun to play. hyper carries should be powerful scaling picks, not sitting ducks throughout the first 20 to 25 minutes.
im surprised you didnt mention the funny kleptomancy interaction she had where if she got the klepto item that gave you one level on an ability you got powerspikes faster
I loved the old kayle, i used to take her sup, i builded one or two sup items and then some dmg to help, i actually won the majority of those games and was super fun
I loved playing old Kayle. She had rough early, but endgame was godlike. But after each rework I couldn't "connect" with her. Imho, they should give her old E back and make new passive. Rest of the rework is fine, but tip-toeing around until 11 is still just unfun. Also, holy hell, her design went to shit.
Old Kayle was also one of the few champons that could work in all 5 positions. And her build options were very broad: Full AD, Full AP, Hybrid... she could use almost every single item in the game and have a good performance. For visuals, I'm very sure Riot could have done a Traditional Kayle skin... but we can't have nice things i guess.
You explained everything correct to how I would explain to a person with they ask “why you hate new Kayle so much?” This right here, I just wish they didn’t changed her kit completely, making it not how they describe…
8:11 Wrong, it's attached to the amount of skill points spent, rather than ultimate rank. It coincides with the ultimate rank level-ups, but isn't impacted by them. Tested this in both normal game and practice tool, level 16 kayle with all 3 ranks of her ult and one point in e, has no evolutions.
I do like the new W and I think the new Q is fine. I really miss the rest of her kit though and the old visuals. It was really unique and one of a kind.
as old kayle, when all my teamates were dead and all 5 enemies were attacking our base, I destroyed all of their turrets and base, faster than the entire enemy team
Old Kayle was a nice comfort pick for me when I started playing League of Legends. I'd go mid, rush a Nashor's Tooth and usually build Ardent Censer as a second item. It was back then that I didn't know how to play against Zed, Talon or Yasuo, but Kayle's E and R were a big middle finger to them, cause I could farm safely, then deal decent damage against them, and follow around my ADC friend that knew the game better than me, and just pocket them. It was great!
another thing to note was the rageblade changes/hybrid item changes. When Kayle was announced to be reworked, her core items were getting changed and nerfed which led to a patch of unviability that literally prevented kayle from being useful or optimal in all stages of the game. I believe part of the reason for the changes was to provide Kayle damage while updating the items as they planned to turn rageblade to a crit based item while also preventing Varus and kogmaw then from wrecking havoc with their hybrid power spikes which was a big thing then. This new rework also provided Kayle direct base damage that scaled with stats which is what she was lacking in the old rendition. Old kayle NEEDED nashors, rageblade, and runaans to get her actual powerspike and nashors alone wasnt enough as building mr easily lowered her damage output and due to rageblade changes and item reworks, her consistent ap on hit dps was gutted too since she needed rageblade then to double her magic on hit dmg and actually be considered a late game monster. New kayle offers more skill expression while also updating her e to be less restrictive as old kayle also needed to build cdr to get her perma ranged state. The new kayle also offered an execute which is on theme with the champion while offering some semblance of outplay and early game prowess. My one critique is the ultimate and heal as stated in your argument in the video. a hypercarry that offers supportive utility is pretty insane. In my opinion I think kayle is better off having shorter heals but higher scaling movespeed sort of like teemo's speedup which allows more skill expression and utility. Lastly, her ultimate rework was a strange buff nerf It was a buff in the sense you can give it to an ally and do dmg around the target while making them invulnerable. It is a buff to those who would choose to ult Kayle vs cc to prevent her from doing free hit then burst her after the ultimmate ends.However this nerfed her freehit opportunity potential by a lot. If new kayle had her old ult, she would be a carry and a support at the same time which is truly insane. It's hard to say which ultimate rendition is truly broken.
The problem I find with Kayle is that even when you DO get to level 16 godmode, you don't get to actually live out the power fantasy because the enemy just surrenders when they see you're strong enough to participate.
I think Kayles design is decent but the biggest problem I had with her was not so much her but the whole surrender at 15 or 20 meta that has improved some since the durability patch, basically when 75% of games didn't make it past 25 minutes, there was no real point maining Kayle.
I first time played kayle recently and did pretty well in terms of farm midlane without any deaths and need to gank and was still being flamed for not being more active
I feel like people look too much at damage when it comes to late game. Kayle is strong late game sure but even now or back then if she got hit by something dangerous like a Morgana Q, Renekton Flash W, Ahri charm etc she would just pop because she has 0 defense. Im 95% sure she can't use ult if cced so.
It's kind of funny how despite Riot changing Kayle from an angel (servant of a higher power) to a goddess (the higher power) I find her far less interesting across the board. I can't even tell if they succeeded in their intended goals; I don't play her, I still don't usually see her, and when I do her contribution to the game is the same as before.
As a Kayle main, this one definitely looks and play a lot cooler than the original. Thematically, maybe this "survive until X" playstyle indeed doesn't fit the holy angel theme (although from a lore standpoint, she is pursuing ascension to become truly separate from mortal feelings, so she is getting closer to becoming an actual godlike aspect of justice with time). With that being said, I do like the "looming dread" sense that the opponent gets, or the "hope is the last one to die" sense your team gets when there's a kayle in the game and it's dragging for too long. This true "if she gets to late game we lose/win" is really unmatched by any other hypercarry in my opinion, which is why I play her in the first place. The only other champ I feel like brings the same sense of late game doom is Bel'veth. You know the game will be under your control once you get 100+ stacks and that's cool.
The ult is kinda lame compared to the old ult as she can now die even if you use it as there is a .5 second delay. Plus the 1.5 second thing where shes useless during it. The q takes a little more skill as mentioned than the old point and click. W seems the similar E makes more sense now so I like that but its not a buff. I think the natural progression is better (16 literal God mode) Overall I i like it but I dont think its an upgrade.
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The weirdest part is Kayn and old Kayle being around at the same time. He feels so much more recent than that
Kayn feels like a modern champion cause his gimmick and playstyle are complicated and unique enough to be in par with more modern champions, meanwhile rakan and xayah (for me at least) feel like they were in 2012 but got visual updated along the way
The fact that Kayn can just walk through walls seems like such a modern Riot move to me. I think that's why he feels recent.
What?
Kayn was in game for almost 2 years while old Kayle was around.
it's the opposite for me tbh
Before any debate on her mechanics and gameplay on how she is not a champion until 6, i will say that her base skin its the most hideous downgrade of all reworks.
THANKS OH MY GOD
she had a gorgeous fully detailed armour and now she has this spandex that shows her thighs and a turquoise sword??? i liked Kayle being alittle androgynous and monochromatic.
They must really hate making properly armoured women between Kayle’s rework making her this gangly mess and the bizarre look of Rell’s armoured up form where for some reason, her crotch and inside legs needs to be exposed like what?!?
@@skyco5395 AND imposing. Even if it looked a bit bulky, it made her look like she commanded respect with her presence on anyone looking at her. The fantasy of this Zealous silent being from a higher sphere looking for justice and retribution.
Now? She is demanding your respect like a Karen, in fact when she evolves in 11 she is a literal blue haired Karen (her voice lines dont help her one bit either). Sure she looks more nimble and better for flyght now but those spandex pants make her looks like a wannabe Power Ranger... Sadly the fucking purple was a good choice of color, not because it looked good (it looks terrible) but because with her current Karen personality screams "im better than you in anyway, workship ME"
And whats with those shoulder guards!? The old bulky ones look way more usefull than... whatever those are for.
@@vinnythewebsurfer Rell its another mess. Her 80s Heavy Metal inspired style sounds awesome in paper. But practice, Riot its too much of a pussy now days to purely embrace that art style and opted to cover her too much on her mounted form. Granted, she looks a bit like a biker so we can give her a pass there... but that dismounted form... It litterally looks like she just shitted her pants for the weight she is carrying with her (maybe that is why she is not using crotch protection lol). And she looks unbalanced with only one arme covered in armor. And worse of all is that she looks like those cheap transformer figures that have this eternal leg spread to keep them on 2 feet.
@@vinnythewebsurfer The new design of the armour is worse, but she really looks angelic now, and when you level her up and gets 3 pairs of wings she looks even more like a goddess.
Old Kayle just looks godly. Literally. Like a valkyrie culling the dead from hel. But now she looks like one of those Mobile Legends characters.
The same can be said for the old Kayle. A generic design.
@@Master00Ra old kayle at least has an appeal and a very cohesive design. a design can be of a very cliché concept but if it's done well it can still be amazing. new Kayle just looks like it has too much going on and doesn't commit to a concept
@@skyco5395 I very much like what they did with Aether Wing Kayle at least and since that's the only skin I ever play I don't have any complaints :)
EDIT: Though I do miss the joke spam with old Aether Wing Kayle
no1 cares for classic kayle when we got the best epic skin in the game sun eater..she doesnt look like god there, she looks like god of all gods
Her old model looks more like she's from mobile legend lol
Character design wise, I think it'd really go well that instead of looking more "human" as she evolves, she turns more "inhuman".
From a lady in spandex with minimal armor to a floating piece of armor with no traces of flesh left, symbolizing her abandoning humanity in favor of transcendance.
This doesn't work because she takes off her helmet giving her more humanity, that's one thing that I always disliked
@@catmuch4569 he said he would like if she became more inhuman as time went on, not that she does
@@arandomperson6293 fair, I'm like half asleep so I read that wrong, apologies guys
@@catmuch4569 That is the symbol of her arrogance, she doesn't need a helmet if she is divine
keep dreaming riot hates monsters and all that. they want human sexy teenage girls so that they can sell on skins. for example they last monster champion they made is bel vet and she literally is an human, and a profile picture and the loading picture as an human with her skins being shown as human. they hide her being a monster. they are so fucking scared and out of touch with the comunity i swear
You should have mentioned that Kale's w was balanced with its mana cost. Using it 4 times got you to 20% mana
Mana? Cooldowns? What are those pre-200year mechanics.
I remember the old Kayle, me and my friends used to say that it didn't matter what you build on her or where you played her, she was just a monster, she was great as tank, as damage dealer or support
Oh yeah that was my fave thing about her. I could literally take her anywhere. Jungle was the most difficult, but it could still pull thru.
You my friend get it! I loved old kalye simply due to the fact I could play her top, support, mid or adc(her lanes working best for me in that order). She could be played different ways successfully and most of all I didn't have to hide under tower till lvl 11 or even lvl6
@@vindifference I only saw one single kayle jungle in my life and it was ridiculous how well they did. So, from all I know, old kayle jgl: 100% winrate.
Her gaining wings as she levels up is fine, but she shouldn't look more "human", lvl 16 kayle should be a warrior in full armor with no way to tell what's inside
or a "be not afraid" type existence that has no traces of humanity left. Just armor attached to a vague humanoid form of light that no longer speaks understandable words, just ominously humming and whistling at you
A person with a helmet looks way more human than a person with fire hair and no eyes.
remember Kayle is an arrogant and egotistical asshole that "think" that she's above humanity. while in reality she isnt.
thats why she doesnt look more inhuman as she evolve, because she's not actually superior than human, and thats why she remove her helmet, because the dumb bitch think thats she's now a perfect unstopable being that can 1v9 and doesnt need protection.
"those who wears armor are afraid of death, and that is a lot of armor garen"
- kayle to garen
something like that more or less
Honestly for a champ who is all a out not feeling petty enotions she sounds like a fury idealist
I'd picture someone like vadasi who is calm and judges coldy
I liked her old design better, the armor and splash just looked way cooler
What killed Kayle for me is that 1.5 seconds of "execution" for her ult, making her useless for the time... ON A HYPER CARRY WHOSE MAIN DAMAGE TOOL IS AUTO ATTACKS!!!
It would be if Vayne could not attack for 1 second after every time uses her roll during ult.
And Tryndamere is always able to attack after Ulting XD
THIS
For real, I just got a kayle ult in the current game mode and I feel useless as f everytime I use it since I wasn’t able to lifesteal the missing health and just continue to die anyways.
But you can still hit vayne with skillshots while shes invis
That is only at ult lvl 1. At lvl 3 she has half a second of invulnerability where she can blast people with auto attacks.
i love the scaling champs and i love the idea of kayle a champ that evolves throughout a match startng out god awful but turning into a super powerful late game threat if you survive long enough but i just never really liked kayles game play it never felt engaging at any point in the game to play as since she just feel stat checky.
stat check is a retarded buzzword every single champ is stat checky
@kosmosrebell Nasus is actually quite a good pick against kayle. He can make good use of her weak early to stack up, at lvl6 he should win and mid to late game the Nasus slow (which also lowers attack speed) really fucks kayle over. Nasus is a solid ban if you're a kayle main.
I always hated scaling champions because it rewards bad players for just surviving for a few minutes and then they can turn off their brains and beat players much better than them
I despise the new rework of Kayle mostly of her design but also her some of her kit are still there and the new rework was supposed to be a late game terror which contrast of her old playstyle being a fighter/support
Tbh the visual update was needed, she looks definitely better now
@@Aenvy_ big disagree.
Went from faceless angel knight to CLASH OF MOBILE HERO CLICK HERE FOR HOT BABES
@@Aenvy_ Agree, the old one looked like an MMO trash mob.
@@OmenLamb Now she looks like a generic League of Angels character.
@@namishusband818 True but I'd rather have that than her looking like a trash mob npc.
Miss playing her as an half-off-meta support.
Hey it works pretty well if you build battle song, healing movement speed steroid and an ultimate that is an amazing support ability.
She has the same role as yumi you follow your most fed person around and make them a nightmare.
What's worse then an 8 kill fiora one with 75% more movement speed and 2.5 seconds of invincibility.
@@nimric3348 I've tried making support kayle work, but if the enemy knows better they will just fight you constantly cause her early game is so bad. You can't even sit on tower because you're defenseless against dives pre-6
@@Chizypuff I play it all the time in ranked the big things i say is.
Get a tear of the godess and max heal, play with the passive support item where you last hit minions, going for damage isn't your friend.
Focus mainly on positioning so that the enemy is dividing there poke between both of you to get max effect and sustain from your heal.
Kayle support isn't trying to win lane pre 6, you play super passive and capitalize on oprritunity for an easy kill if it presents itself.
Main item is battle song and the movement speed from that at your heal can get you and your teamate out of most situations.
Ult is normally saved to let your most fed player make risky plays and extend there lead.
@@Chizypuff also just save mana for heals to be ready to back if needed. Your level doesn't really matter as much after level 6 because by then you got everything you need.
11 and 16 are good for ult but where your not a damage dealer after you max heal nothing else really matters.
I love the new colors on her design, but visually I think most of what old Kayle had was vastly superior.
Haven't played in four or five years, but used to main old kayle. I did alright early laning especially since yasuo was everywhere and she countered him pretty hard.
Ok Kayle is easily my least favorite VGU, because despite making her less stat-checky she somehow became more uninteractive. Like you said, her laning phase is just her hiding from you, which leads to a boring 10 minutes for both her and her opponent. Furthermore, because of how hard she scales it's almost mandatory that her laner has to babysit her to keep her behind once the laning phase starts to end. Her team has to 4v5 until she scales which is miserable for them. Once she hits 16 though, if she's competent she just wins by auto-attacking, to the point where her team now has to just sit around and watch her carry while the enemy team has to work twice as hard to shut her down.
She's just not fun to play against, not fun to play with, and in my opinion, not fun to play. Not to mention that even though her model isn't as clunky anymore she just looks so much worse. Old Kayle was scary looking, new Kayle is hot and that's it.
I will never forgive Riot for reworking Kayle when all she really needed was a visual update.
Literally one of the first champions I picked when I started playing along with Jax and Mundo and my first true main, fell in love with her generic arch-angel aesthetic, her kit and overall design making her a mix between Garen and Tryndamere.
With that said Im still going to keep maining her until the day I stop playing league out of boredom or death caused by poisoning from all the toxic waste you can find in this game.
Great video as always Vars, appreciate you!
i remember when she came to wildrift and the absolute terror the old unerfed kayle was, since you can level up faster in wr she reached her power spike incredibly fast kayle would just dominate in every game she had to be nerfed to the ground before she could be balanced
Did not play league before kayle rework but I love the current kayle gameplay because when I lose lane I can blame weak early and 1v9ing games after losing lane gives me a strange sense of satisfaction
She is feeling kind of bad because of her E nerfs early but she can still kill champs like yone.
Yet another champ that I dropped after the rework. Like you said it really is a case of trying to fix what wasn't broken. The visual downgrade really wasn't doing Kayle any favors.
I went from a Kayle one trick to never playing this champ again. It's similar but all the parts that I liked. Like ulting right before the dunk and then bursting full health Darius down to dead in three seconds that made it feel so good before are gone. I agree she is healthier for the game now but her weirdness that made her so fun and unique are gone now. Before then you would clear minion waves it felt like beating on them with a divine hammer. Now it's waves of fire and bleh. Also yasui windwall stops your e empowered autos. Super extra lame
It depends what you consider healthy for the game. I actually think she became much less healthy by becoming very one dimentional and thus limiting her champion viability within different teamcomps and lanes within the game. The more limited and one dimentional champions become the worse the game health is imo.
my biggest problem with the new kayle is the fact that she removes the helmet
I'm personally fine with it ,as it shows how her insanity and megolomonia slowly turns her into something inhumane
By removing her helmet and growing wings she shows that she is above humans.
Something i didn't saw you comment on is how her ranged attacks weren't projectiles, meaning you could be of the few champions that got go to keep hitting Yasuo through that stupid windwall he has. That is probably what i miss the most
I feel like Riot nailed the Morgana rework and with how most of the community views Kayle, it seems like she didn't quite hit the mark and that's totally reasonable. It's almost like they tried a little too hard for her and they really didn't need to. I felt like she just need some adjustments and a visual refresh. I like new Kayle but I also liked old Kayle.
Still wish I could go back and play old kayle one more time
I have to somewhat disagree. Old Kayle was essentially a ranged champion when she had mana for e, and if she didn't, then she didn't get to play. She was highly one dimensional. The rework took the best parts of her old kit (scaling ap carry), and modernized her for current league. There was no skill expression in her kit before.
Kayle doesn't scale. She's just playing mafia city where she starts off as a level 1 mafia crook then hits level 100 kingpin by the end of the game
This was my favorite champion for all of the reasons you listed and I'm so glad that someone is saying something about how not ok this rework was.
I prefer Old Kayle in terms of a lot of things. While she was a simplistic champion from a design choice, character wise, she was a good character. Only her Aether Wing skin being a what if she got corrupted line. However, Riot decided to make the corruption part of her basic lore, effectively reversing the roles she and Morgana had. Morgana was meant to be the "evil fallen angel" and Kayle the "good virtuous angel".
By making Kayle fixate on the zealot/crusading side of Justice, It effectively turned her into what I despise, the religious zealot devoted to her fanaticism, also known as the Lawful Stupid Paladin in Dungeons and Dragons (the type of paladin player who refuses to let anything evil go unpunished and refuses to be remotely helpful to society). All her skins since her rework, save her Pentakill skins, paint her as a zealot crusader who can't be turned away from her "righteous cause".
I get what Riot was trying to do with the sisters, but in doing so, they effective turned Morgana, who was meant to be the evil one, into the more sympathetic one (she got a DAWNbringer skin to show this). Sadly, all the rework did for me as a Kayle player was abandon her for other champions. She had a nice little curve that went from 0-60 upon hitting her 2 item spike before the rework. Now, pray you can reach 16 without being too far behind and hope your team doesn't FF by then.
I think at this point in time, the "good virtuous angel" is really rare in popular fiction. It is so easy to portray not fallen angels as zealots and assholes. I think it is in trope in itself. Old Kayle had maybe not much lore, but it was more nuanced than the new backstory.
The biggest flaw of this rework for me is the Aether Wings skin. It used to be my absolute favorite : smooth and elegant, a true cyber-angel.
Now there are those ugly drone things in the level 11 form and that horrible dark blue color in the final form.
Used to love her because of that swimming-in-the-air animation of the skin, and then found out it was moved out as a general animation of her attaining a great amount of speed via W and homeguard. I'm so disappointed even up to this day haha ☹️
I dont have problems with visual aether wings, but the animations were hit so much(((
I loved old Kayle. Cant really figure out what new Kayle was supposed to be. Passive and E screaming Ap-On-Hit, R and Q look like AP Burst, W seems to be meant for Bot lane and most skills also scaled of AD
I would separate the effects on the passive for every level so it is more gradual.
give her all the benefits from lv 6 at level 1 but in a reduced effect (give her 0 range on lv1, 100 range on level 2, 200 range on level 3, etc. Make it so that at level 6, she is the same as current level 6 kayle).
Do the same with the next levels
I mained old kayle, she was so cool, and I just loved playing her in general, I was still relatively new to the game so I wasnt that good at her or in general but playing her was just so fun. I cant play new kayle tho
The pre-rework kayle design is also cool as heel , she looks like a goddess of war/justice put Riot put her in a pandex suit like some cheap mobile game , lol
Armor, pair of wings and a sword.
She. Was. Just. It.
You woulden't dare to say she as god neither a powerful one. Looked like a RPG generic enemy, you can easily fit 20 Old Kayles side by side and would look normal
@@CelVini Yeah, but Kayle was meant to be a character from Targon, not a character from the X-Men. Old Kayle was generic? Yes, but she looked like the Spirit of Justice, New Kayle looks like a generic My Hero Academia character, a woman with angry face and a spandex.
I mained Kayle when she originally released in 2009, then subsequently quit her (and the game) soon after her rework. The feeling of slowly amassing power as the game went forward was lost, and no other champion ever made me feel like that again.
It was fine at the time, when LoL was much slower. Remember how much she was picked in professional tournaments when the team needed to have a scaling champion to round out what was otherwise an early game team? That's because it was common for games to go past the 25 minute mark in those good old days.
Now, with gold income higher, the ability for supports to actually contribute damage to fights (thanks to that higher gold income), newer champions being more aggressive, and the game just generally moving faster, she doesn't have a good place. There isn't enough time to scale up and early game advantages mean a lot more.
Kayle was my favorite champ when I first got in League. She's 1 of the only champs that can go through all the roles(top,mid, jungle, adc, support) I really love her flexibility. Though her only problem is if she gets behind, it's hard to scale again since she's so item reliant.
The new Kayle may seem like an improvement but the passive limits her heavily, only becoming a true champion on lvl 16. It's more punishing especially on faster games where you can't reach that level spike.
I love the pre rework splash art, it looks so much better than the current. That shield looks so cool.
Kayle was reworked because she was left in a nerfed state after terrorizing pro-play by literally 1-shotting a full hp Karthus with a single auto after building lichbane and deathcap...
Her Q back then gave a 10% damage boost onto the target, which also affected ignite's true damage.
I viewed Kayle as a hyperchampion. She could be played in every role and in addition to dealing hybrid damage, could itemize for any type of damage depending on the teams comps..
A unique champion to OTP.
The removal of Kayle's true damage in exchange for making post-6 comfortable was a terrible mistake. The redditors refused to accept that Kayle just has to pay a heavy price in the early game in order to get massive gains as the game stalls and progresses. Now she's just half-assed. You're still just half a champion at level 6 while your level 16 is just a shadow of what it used to be.
Yeah dealing magic damage instead of true damage at lvl 16 really makes her powerspikes underwhelming.
Even when she had fire-waves at lvl 6, it was an amazing waveclear tool that equalized with many scaling champs who also excel at waveclearing like Viktor and Anivia. Sure being able to comfortably farm at lvl 6 feels a lot more relaxing, but it trades off a lot of Kayle's skirmishing potential.
@@inplane9970 The problem with that is that today's game is much faster paced, most of the time if you fall behind (which you inevitably will with kayle), even if you play evereything properly, you usually have no more chance to come back, your enemy has 1500 gold more worth of items, and you can be a hyperscaler, you won't beat him before you hit your max potential, which takes like 25 minutes to reach. In the modern league you have to have some kind of presence even when you are in your weakest phase, otherwise it's just 5v4 and by the point you get your powerspike, you lose the game to neutral objectives and such. It would need perfect laner/jg coordination to counterweight this, and Riot probably didnt want a pro-only champ, bcs it would be a balance nightmare and simply a stupid decision.
Kayle went from my favorite champ to one that actively makes me angry to play. They also ruined the best skin in the game of Aether Wing. The glorious smacking of her autos was replaced with the same generic effects the rest of her skins has, with the added downgrade of changing all the voice lines to that of a psychopath
New animation sucks, yeah. Tho i liked the cyborg filter pshyco angle - and they even half assed that as well
“Tryndamere was easy to kite without a dash” excuse me?
I just dislike how one sided lane phase is because she's just so dogshit. If it was up to me I'd honestly rather see her reworked into a bot lane carry with a focus on the AOE autos and AP dmg.
I write this comment before the release of your video, just so I won't have any influence of it. I think I have something to add since I am an OTP Kayle with millions of mastery points on her (and I am hard stuck Plat, RIP).
I agree with the title mostly, she needed a minor rework. Let's look at the positive sides, her old passive (the 3% Armor/MR shred stack of 5 total) moved to her Q and her Q became a skill shot that upon impact has the splash damage of a cross. Killing two birds with one stone, I loved this idea. This was good champ design. Another thing I like is that she gained movement speed on her passive if she became exhalted which is also good. This was a problem with old Kayle. Catching up to your enemies sometimes. 3rd is her E execute and AA reset, the old E felt clunky when you got range and had to click it every 10 sec.
The bad ones: Her level dependence, this goes without saying. Old Kayle could have prio in lane with her wave clear, she almost has none until level 11 now. This makes your side for your jungler extremely weak. Her new W., this double heal is useless, this is more of a support idea and she feels like a glorified support. Revert it back to the old AP ratios and make it a single target spell only. Currently, it's rather useless other than for the speed boost you get for the amount of mana you spend. Lastly her R, my god this is where the extremly bad design kicks in, who in their mind thinks its a good champion design to have an AA champion not be able to AA for 1.5 seconds during her Ult? I get it that this was implemented because when she was released and her waves did true damage, it would be OP to have her AA for 3 seconds. However when she became ranged at level 6 and her true damage on waves was removed, the AA silence was kept. The ult feels more than support Ult than a godly Ult. The rational of the ult is that I need to get near my enemy which does tons of damage (especially if they are melee) to be able to deal the damage from the ult, then try to kite away from the enemy once the ults damage is deal?!?!?!?! it's actually better for me to ult my ADC or a diving tank since they can atleast do damage for 3 seconds and take advantage of the damage of the ult than to ult myself. This is horrible champion design and what is currently wrong with this champion.
Mixed feelings: the extra range at 16. As much as I hate the level dependence on the champion, I have a hate/love relations with this level evolement. The extra range is godly good and makes her more safer late game than old Kayle.
Visuals: The currenty Kayle feels a bit clunky to AA with, its not like the old Aether Wing Kayle (which was a pay-to-win skin) where the AA were so smooooooth and that godly AA sound. However the visuals on the base current Kayle skin is beautiful. As we are talking about Aether Wing Kayle, they totally destroyed that skin. It was one of the best skins pre-rework. Now it's horrible. The voice lines are tilting and stupid, she feels like a murderous psycopath and I refused to play that skin, it's more like Project Skin now. Old Aether Wing Kayle voice lines were absolute fantastic. They were firm, regal and poetic, with a hint of authoritarian. It was the perfect combination.
My suggestions: Remove AA silence on ult and remove the damage of the ult, revert her old W and make her ranged from level 1 with waves with AA range of 550 (a compromise). Fix AP/AD ratios on her passive/E passive (if they need a nerf). I dont know what her passive should be, but maybe increase her Attack speed with level and give a movement speed to enemy champions bonus.
Its a shame they didn't kept her old E, she was my first champ and got to Gold on my first ranked season with her
My first main ever was old kayle sup, since I was playing with a mate it felt ok
Still dont understand why her old e needs to be targeted on self instead of just a click ability.
Personally I think rework Kayle is a mess
I don't play much League myself anymore but I still watch Pro a lot and people always hype up level 16 Kayle like it's only a matter of time before she 1v9's the game. Then she get's level 16 and instantly dies every fight because no Kayle player actually wants to Ult because it makes them literally useless for 1.5 seconds.
So you wait 25 minutes for your Champion to finally become a Champion and once you get there you almost never actually get to use it because you're either 10k gold behind from playing 4v5 all game, or you're relegated to being an Ult-bot for your engager and then get one shot because you get targeted while you're stuck in your animation.
Only riot could take a champ that was one update away from being perfect and turn her into a more passive player than yuumi.
For me my biggest disapointment with kayle was 2 things
1- her redesign, the large majority of the fans would agree her old armour looked way cooler while her new one is just way to fan servicy. Part of the coolness of kayle was the fact her armor was very andro, and she had a sammus like twist for new comers when we find out she was actually a girl. Taking this away from her felt like a take away from her character. Old kayle didn't care what gender you saw her, as she was a warrior first and a woman second.
2- I loved her whole angel flame swordsman aesthetic, and I was sincerely hoping that in her rework they would play with her holy fire type game play and take a turn away from her other parts. But instead they chose to go full nazi angel (literally) and focus completely on her "im so holy that im basically a nazi" type stereotype. Which just felt cringe, I didn't wanna play as some zealous priest who would throw away everyone including her own sister. I wanted to play a genuine holy and kind angel, which leads to 2.5
2.5- They made her character unlikeable, for the reasons I mentioned above.
Ehh... Sorry to burst your bubble but kayle's personality didn't change during the rework. If anything they toned her craziness DOWN in the rework(She outright shattered Morgana's soul in the old lore for stopping her indiscriminate slaughter).
Morgana was always the good one and Kayle was always the bad one. As the inversion of the angel tropes was there from the start.
That being said, I completely agree that her old visual design was a lot better.
@@Warcrafter4 i was gonna mention this too but yea that. She was always the bad guy (though the intro cinematic may lead you to believe otherwise)
11:56 didn't expect the dbs reference... At all..
And I love you for that :D
after watching this, I feel like Kayle needs something a long the lines of tristana, slowly gaining more attack range and power/traits as she levels and gradually amassing power that way as she grows into a hyper carry.
Miss old Kayle
I love the new kayle, mostly because her carry pentional is god like. Shes heavily based on the paladins from dnd and they too have very similar weakness but they are still loved. Shes not for everyone and that's okay.
I wouldn't compare her to DnD paladins. First, her design couldn't be further than it already is. Second, concept of paladin's smites being temporary would be better with her old Q. I can agree with healing and protecting aspect tho. But I don't think that's where the inspiration came from. It's more like "good" goddess 101
I just have to take a moment to appreciate the straight faced delivery of the "Guardian variety angel" joke.
I never played old Kayle, so I don't have anything to compare current Kayle with. That said, I don't think Kayle has any problems today, she's great, and I disagree with some of your critiques of her.
I don't think her kit "lacks identity" or isn't cohesive. She is iconic as THE lategame hyper scaling champion.. other champions are known for that too, but that's her whole schtick. Her basic abilities are her tools to survive the early game, and she becomes much more auto-attack focused in the late game, which to me is more or less a unique take on a marksman-style champion despite people never referring to her as such.
Her E allows you to have a ranged attack before you're a ranged champion so that you can get a last hit in without taking a bunch of damage, and both her Q and W are both useful combat spells on offence or defence. Her ultimate synergizes with her lategame play style very well imo, and the fact that both her W and ult can be used on allies is great for those early/mid game ganks/skirmishes/team fights where Kayle isn't yet the most powerful champion and adds an interesting element to her kit. Kayle is just fine.
Perhaps old Kayle was better, I don't know. But at this point, the idea of going backwards - giving her an even worse early game, and a less skill-expressive kit - in order to give her a better late game, sounds nonsensical. I know that's not what's being suggested, but I think it illuminates the fact that they actually did land Kayle in a pretty good spot even if it took a few tries.
I vastly prefer old Kayle. I used to play her a ton in 3v3 and it was so fun. Her ult was critical in every fight and she could actually do things during it. I will say I would prefer her current ult to her old one but that's basically all I would change.
They should change her Q and R but everything Else should be Reverted..
I hate the new ulti, being unable to attack while it's up and you're incentivized to stay close to the enemy so the swords hit- but you're never using it for damage, more likely avoiding it, so you don't even want to be in range for the swords to hit
I really liked the old Kayle. I used to play her as support, with full support items and poke the hell out of enemy team so my team could just go for the kills :D
My man really just said Undying Rage is balanced and old Kayle R wasn't.
Right with swain, this was one of my least favorite reworks they’ve done. Visually; her default look is crap and ruined the Samus idea of Kayle because L O R E. gameplay wise, sure they didn’t force her into another lane like swain but what the fuck was the point of the changes other than to force a “We S-Kayle-ing” meme gameplay style that’s worse than every other late game champions unless you catch the occasional Riot devs patch brain fart that decides to make her or an item (that isn’t gun blade since they deleted it) broken for a couple weeks.
With Swain, I just wanted him to keep Beatrice, the cane, the mask, and the Giant Demon Bird form ult. They took everything away, lol.
I still feel the same way since the first rework, but I still haven't managed to put it into clear ideas. It's... Weird. I liked old Kayle, I kinda like new Kayle. But the old one felt more... Kayle. I get that not much has changed with her kit, and all her abilities do roughly the same. But it doesn't feel right, doesn't feel like her old self. I can't really pinpoint why it feels that way, but it does.
There's 2 things about new Kayle that really bother me, and it's both her e and her inability to attack during ult. Her e is, for all purposes, your best ability in the early game. It's the main way you survive lane, but it has too long of a cooldown for a single autoattack worth of range. I wouldn't love if it have 3 autoattacks, or 3 seconds, or something better than a single autoattack. My problem with Kayle's e comes that once you get enough attack speed, the ability is just an autoattack reset with an ok-ish passive. The ability you max first gets progresivelly more useless after you max it, because of how her kit works. You NEED it early, but it's literally just one extra autoattack late game. Old Kayle e was overall worse, but it was useful all game.
And the ult thing is obvious. You need to ult to avoid death, but if you ult you lose damage because you lock yourself with no way out, especially mid to late game where those 1.5 seconds can easily be 500 to over 1000 damage in autoattacks.
Maybe it's also the fact that Kayle got reworked to be way worse early and better late during a time League was rapidly turning into a 15 minute ff speedrun fest, and getting lane pressure and having early game impact is vital for consistent success, and she works exactly the opposite way.
I had just started to play LoL when they first reworked and didn’t play her until season 10/11 but I really love her and her late game carry style because that is just my playstyle
Man, watching this makes me miss Old Kayle a whole lot
Nice video Vars, love ur content.❣
i am someone who played the original kayle as my first champ way back in league when i started, i used to main her, the original sion, and amumu before any of their changes. i like how you brought up the idea of how they stunted her growth. to me an old school league player a change this drastic made me drop the champ i started with completely. and i think i agree about how they should have just adjustsed some of her abilities without completely over hauling her. her new ultimate was a good direction to go in, however the passive change is a direction i cant understand and i dont even know if riot understands? they continue to try and make her a ranged champ while cutting off her power. yet, that doesnt fit her fantasy. the old kayle was great because she was literally the angelic judgement type fantasy. you could protect and sustain teammates, chase down your foes, then smite them with holy fire. now she is like a just wait it out champ. its not fun to just get bullied in lane, have no response in lane to your opponent and rely on your team to carry you. i feel if i had the opportunity to update kayles old style into a more modern style i would take a different approach. i would make her passive have some sort of scaling to it but more along the lines of stacking, however, i would have made it so she can only get so many stacks depending on level thresh holds. to me this would solve her passive issue while keeping it kind of where she is at now. i think her slow ability should be a skill shot, and her new ultimate is fine. as for the other abilities, i would like her heal to remain where its at as well where it can heal 2 people splitting the heal, however, if used on herself she could get a bigger heal. her final ability should be an update of her original that turned her into a range champ, i would have it give her burn damage and range based on the passive stacks i mentioned earlier. however, there would be a range increased based on certain numbers on the passive stacks. add the aoe to it and the passive that lets her get more attack speed. and of course range increase after so many stacks i feel would be a bit easier to approach understanding her than from where she is at now. to clarify he ability that gives her range and burn would scale but the passive is what would grant her attack speed not the ability, this way you would need to ramp up passive stacks before hitting the ability to make the most out of it. you can also gain the passive stacks in combat by being in combat and attacking, thus making it easy to scale more passives after using the ability. i feel thats how i would address kayle between her old and new versions. i do think some things were good with her new version, however, it doesnt really fit her fantasy and its hard to learn... and not fun to play. hyper carries should be powerful scaling picks, not sitting ducks throughout the first 20 to 25 minutes.
im surprised you didnt mention the funny kleptomancy interaction she had where if she got the klepto item that gave you one level on an ability you got powerspikes faster
I loved the old kayle, i used to take her sup, i builded one or two sup items and then some dmg to help, i actually won the majority of those games and was super fun
I loved playing old Kayle. She had rough early, but endgame was godlike. But after each rework I couldn't "connect" with her. Imho, they should give her old E back and make new passive. Rest of the rework is fine, but tip-toeing around until 11 is still just unfun. Also, holy hell, her design went to shit.
Old Kayle was also one of the few champons that could work in all 5 positions.
And her build options were very broad: Full AD, Full AP, Hybrid... she could use almost every single item in the game and have a good performance.
For visuals, I'm very sure Riot could have done a Traditional Kayle skin... but we can't have nice things i guess.
You explained everything correct to how I would explain to a person with they ask “why you hate new Kayle so much?” This right here, I just wish they didn’t changed her kit completely, making it not how they describe…
wow, its been so long since that i didnt relize that they changed the rune system before her rework
8:11 Wrong, it's attached to the amount of skill points spent, rather than ultimate rank. It coincides with the ultimate rank level-ups, but isn't impacted by them.
Tested this in both normal game and practice tool, level 16 kayle with all 3 ranks of her ult and one point in e, has no evolutions.
Slight correction, technically she doesn't scale via points put in ultimate, just points put in abilities in general.
I liked both old and new. It took a really long time for me to start using the new one though.
i remember there was a time kayle had a passive that gave her AP based os her AD, and AD based on her AP. Do you remember?
Daaamn that Fire emblem Radiant Dawn Soundtrack still hits
3:10 what’s “infinite value ability”? I can guess but is it something where it’s value is not static?
I do like the new W and I think the new Q is fine. I really miss the rest of her kit though and the old visuals. It was really unique and one of a kind.
as old kayle, when all my teamates were dead and all 5 enemies were attacking our base, I destroyed all of their turrets and base, faster than the entire enemy team
Old Kayle was a nice comfort pick for me when I started playing League of Legends. I'd go mid, rush a Nashor's Tooth and usually build Ardent Censer as a second item. It was back then that I didn't know how to play against Zed, Talon or Yasuo, but Kayle's E and R were a big middle finger to them, cause I could farm safely, then deal decent damage against them, and follow around my ADC friend that knew the game better than me, and just pocket them. It was great!
another thing to note was the rageblade changes/hybrid item changes. When Kayle was announced to be reworked, her core items were getting changed and nerfed which led to a patch of unviability that literally prevented kayle from being useful or optimal in all stages of the game. I believe part of the reason for the changes was to provide Kayle damage while updating the items as they planned to turn rageblade to a crit based item while also preventing Varus and kogmaw then from wrecking havoc with their hybrid power spikes which was a big thing then. This new rework also provided Kayle direct base damage that scaled with stats which is what she was lacking in the old rendition. Old kayle NEEDED nashors, rageblade, and runaans to get her actual powerspike and nashors alone wasnt enough as building mr easily lowered her damage output and due to rageblade changes and item reworks, her consistent ap on hit dps was gutted too since she needed rageblade then to double her magic on hit dmg and actually be considered a late game monster. New kayle offers more skill expression while also updating her e to be less restrictive as old kayle also needed to build cdr to get her perma ranged state.
The new kayle also offered an execute which is on theme with the champion while offering some semblance of outplay and early game prowess. My one critique is the ultimate and heal as stated in your argument in the video. a hypercarry that offers supportive utility is pretty insane. In my opinion I think kayle is better off having shorter heals but higher scaling movespeed sort of like teemo's speedup which allows more skill expression and utility. Lastly, her ultimate rework was a strange buff nerf
It was a buff in the sense you can give it to an ally and do dmg around the target while making them invulnerable. It is a buff to those who would choose to ult Kayle vs cc to prevent her from doing free hit then burst her after the ultimmate ends.However this nerfed her freehit opportunity potential by a lot. If new kayle had her old ult, she would be a carry and a support at the same time which is truly insane. It's hard to say which ultimate rendition is truly broken.
You are a living god among n, a legend worthy of praise. What you've uploaded here, will echo into eternity!
The problem I find with Kayle is that even when you DO get to level 16 godmode, you don't get to actually live out the power fantasy because the enemy just surrenders when they see you're strong enough to participate.
Kayles old animations were so funny lol, kind of miss her old sound effects because they sounded poweful yet gentle
new kayle is trach
11:25 caught me off guard, what was that cosmic voice filter lol
I enjoyed playing old Kayle, but can't for the life of me enjoy the rework
I think Kayles design is decent but the biggest problem I had with her was not so much her but the whole surrender at 15 or 20 meta that has improved some since the durability patch, basically when 75% of games didn't make it past 25 minutes, there was no real point maining Kayle.
I first time played kayle recently and did pretty well in terms of farm midlane without any deaths and need to gank and was still being flamed for not being more active
I feel like people look too much at damage when it comes to late game. Kayle is strong late game sure but even now or back then if she got hit by something dangerous like a Morgana Q, Renekton Flash W, Ahri charm etc she would just pop because she has 0 defense. Im 95% sure she can't use ult if cced so.
6:47 holy shit im dying laughing at the fuckin gif of the explosion on corki's death animation 🤣🤣
It's kind of funny how despite Riot changing Kayle from an angel (servant of a higher power) to a goddess (the higher power) I find her far less interesting across the board. I can't even tell if they succeeded in their intended goals; I don't play her, I still don't usually see her, and when I do her contribution to the game is the same as before.
As a Kayle main, this one definitely looks and play a lot cooler than the original. Thematically, maybe this "survive until X" playstyle indeed doesn't fit the holy angel theme (although from a lore standpoint, she is pursuing ascension to become truly separate from mortal feelings, so she is getting closer to becoming an actual godlike aspect of justice with time).
With that being said, I do like the "looming dread" sense that the opponent gets, or the "hope is the last one to die" sense your team gets when there's a kayle in the game and it's dragging for too long. This true "if she gets to late game we lose/win" is really unmatched by any other hypercarry in my opinion, which is why I play her in the first place.
The only other champ I feel like brings the same sense of late game doom is Bel'veth. You know the game will be under your control once you get 100+ stacks and that's cool.
The ult is kinda lame compared to the old ult as she can now die even if you use it as there is a .5 second delay. Plus the 1.5 second thing where shes useless during it.
The q takes a little more skill as mentioned than the old point and click.
W seems the similar
E makes more sense now so I like that but its not a buff.
I think the natural progression is better (16 literal God mode)
Overall I i like it but I dont think its an upgrade.
As a main kayle ( both old and new ) i REALLY Think some riot dev team members should follow your videos ...
Cam you do one on Samira next? Talking about why people play or not play her?
Hey Vars, any ideas on Shaco? why riot refuses to give him any meaningful lore and possible rework?
I know that you are doing the best kit video and I think kayle's passive is the best in the game regardless of class
I don’t like Hextech store, it is against Terms of Use of Riot. You should know this. Correct me please if iam wrong. Still good Video.