Champion Relaunch: Katarina, the Sinister Blade

Posted on at 6:59 PM by Moobeat


A Render of Katarina's new model.
It looks like the long awaited Katarina remake is here! Check out the new model and updated kit coming,  in the next patch, for the Sinister Blade.
"This patch, we’ll be overhauling one of our classic champions: Katarina, the Sinister Blade. Although Katarina’s manaless, cooldown-based abilities put a unique spin on her gameplay, she’s historically faced a number of challenges in the very early game and in team fight situations. In this update, we’ve made a few changes to her kit aimed at addressing these difficulties, while retaining the core elements that make playing this Noxian femme fatale a fun and satisfying experience. We also gave her a complete visual upgrade, including a new model, animations and spell effects on all of her abilities!

Katarina’s New Abilities
  • Voracity (Passive): Champion kills or assists reduce Death Lotus' cooldown and refresh your basic abilities.
  • Q - Bouncing Blades: Katarina throws a dagger that bounces from enemy to enemy, dealing magic damage and marking them. Striking a marked target with an ability or basic attack will consume the mark to deal additional magic damage.
  • W - Sinister Steel: Katarina whirls her daggers around her, dealing magic damage to all enemies in the area. If she hits an enemy champion, Katarina gains Movement Speed for a short duration.
  • E - Shunpo: Katarina instantly moves to her target's location and takes reduced damage from enemies for a short duration. If the target is an enemy, she deals damage.
  • R - Death Lotus (Ultimate): Katarina becomes a flurry of blades, throwing daggers with unrivaled speed at up to three nearby champions. Daggers deal magic damage and reduce incoming healing on targets hit.


The first problem that Katarina players often faced was weak performance very early on, primarily related to the steep damage curve of her core damage ability, Bouncing Blades. While Bouncing Blades scales dramatically as it levels up, early on it ricochets only a few times, dealing relatively low damage. This forces Katarina players to play conservatively early in the laning phase, encouraging passive play until Bouncing Blades can be used to harass effectively.

To address this disparity, we normalized the damage inflicted by Bouncing Blades and made it bounce the same number of times at every level of the skill. In addition, each ricochet will now select the nearest available target instead of bouncing randomly. This change should both facilitate interesting counter-play for opponents and open up new harassment opportunities for advanced Katarina players who are able to predict where their daggers are going to bounce.

In addition to her early game difficulties, Katarina’s reliance on the massive damage potential of Death Lotus has always made her a challenging champion to balance. A fully channeled ultimate could quickly reduce a team to ashes, but a well-timed interrupt from a canny defender could quickly transform Katarina from a maelstrom of death into an easy kill. For this reason, we decided to move the healing debuff from Killer Instincts onto Death Lotus and decrease the channel time slightly. While this reign in the overall damage numbers slightly, replacing some of this raw punishment with a bit of utility gave us the opportunity to make remainder of Katarina’s kit more dangerous.

To accomplish this, we swapped Killer Instincts for a spammable, area-of-effect attack that grants Katarina a brief speed boost when it lands. This new ability, dubbed Sinister Steel, gives Katarina superior mobility and allows her to continue laying down damage on multiple targets during a team fight if Death Lotus is interrupted by a stun or knockback. For a little added kick, Bouncing Blades will now apply a debuff that is consumed to deal bonus damage when Katarina strikes the target with an attack or ability. These changes should give Katarina the extra damage she needs to play aggressively right out the gates and the flexibility necessary to keep her damage potential high once the team fights start.

This brand new take on Katarina, the Sinister Blade, will be baring her blades in an upcoming patch. We hope you’re ready!"

I am officially torn between being excited about this ( as well as seeing the updated models for Kat's other skins ) and being disappointed we haven't yet received the Soraka remodel.

32 comments

  1. i really want to see her skins remakes

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  2. This sounds so exciting! Honestly mid/late game I was always extremely happy with the current Kat, but hopefully this will help her early game while still keeping the fun parts of Katarina during late game. Crossing my fingers that this new Kat go well seeing as she's one of my mains ^^

    I think the next champions that seriously need model updates are Nidalee first, then Soraka, and in the long run some Evelynn skins need work, TF, and hopefully Karma will get a splash art & model update with her rework.

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    1. and twitch somthing a little less ugly and a little more crazy

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  3. Noooo, where's my Soraka remake!? D:!
    I've been waiting so long for it already, lol...maybe a double remake release? :<

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    1. I want a Soraka remake and some new skins too :(

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  4. Ult nerf = no me gusta >:(

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    1. did you even read? its the exact same skill now with a heal reduction tacked on thats a BUFF. READ ! before you whine.

      deals continuouse damamge the 3 people like always! + now applies a healing reduction debuff to targets affected.

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    2. plus shorter channel

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    3. My love gets a love :) I am very interested...

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    4. I think it's more about the passive which states 'shortens ult cd' now compared to the 'refreshes' before. That'd be really a nerf. However the buffs and changes make up for it <3 Finally being able to harass at lvl1 properly <3

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    5. once again more lack or reading, the OLD passive lowered all CDs by 15, her Q,W,E are all shorter than 15 seconds, so all they changed was the wording on the tooltip. its the same shit, get a kill and Q,W,E are ready to use and R is 15 seconds off just like always. realy the change just should have said "reworded tooltip"

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    6. Nnnno, it's a nerf. Yes, she got a healing debuff added onto it. To get this healing debuff added onto it, she lost it from her Q, where it was infinitely more helpful. She also lost 1-200 base damage and had her ratios for it reduced by 2 and .5 respectively. So yeah, it's a nerf.

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    7. were are stictly talking about her passive, you are talking about her utlimate see how we are discussing two different things?

      but since you braught her ult up, it deals that damage in 2.0 seconds rather than 2.6. its total damage potential whent down but its DPS whent up. (theyve done this before pre season 1 it was 3.0 seconds and had even higher damage potential than now)

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    8. The SUPER nerded the ult now instead of dealing a certain amount of damage per person it splits the damage so instead of say 200 per blade doing 2000 per person it is 2000 split between 3 people

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  5. Looks like Kat was given Miss Fortune's hair. I don't really see any difference between the original and the updated model. The updates seems slightly noticeable. It isn't as drastic as Ashe's was, but still it's a welcome change. Hope Karma, Soraka, and Nid are next for updated models and splash arts.

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  6. OH MY GOD!! FINALLY! I'M SCREAMING LIKE A LUX IN HER LAUGHT! :D SO SEXY!)

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  7. In case i get replies:

    Her Q now functions in the same manner as Akalis
    her W is just like Akali's E

    I might be a bit cynical about it, but i hope i am wrong, and she still plays the same as she does post-patch as she does pre-patch.

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  8. Except more OP because she just ults and everything is instakilled. I hate fighting Kat >_<

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  9. Replies
    1. Riot: Karma rework? lol wat? NEW CHAMPIONS!!! derp derp

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  10. Katarina was fine... Karma on the other hand... I just dont getr why karma is not ready yet but kata is ;_;

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  11. The new item, elusive to Rengar. Which offers ... just a typo on the necklace item pic description (exclusive).

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  12. 1) get a support and a toplane with a stun (additionally a mage)
    2) ruin all ults when ganking
    3)...?
    4) profit

    It's just that easy. A good Kat will wait till the cc is off so you can waste her time not wasting it and waiting. Bad ones... Will fall flat anyway.

    Also can we stop comparing champs just because they seem similar? Akali is not as squishy as Kat, has innate spellvamp and can just drop her shroud to escape cc. Kat however has to watch the cc's. Also Akali has no speedboost on her AoE. Similar =/= the same. I remember so many camp x v2.0 posts when new champs got out... They all ended having a unique playstyle.

    Nuff said

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  13. Katarinas new Sandstorm skin... is horrible. :/

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    1. D: But that was my favorite one QQ Guess I go back to using the High Noxus one :<

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    2. The sandstorm one is the only one I own for her cause I liked it so much. High Command looks awesome with the graphical update, but... I'm not dishing out more money :/

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  14. hey hey one moment.. that item galio have in the second new texture image

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