Every patch seems to bring with a slew of forum posts about Katarina. Since her nerf a few patches back, players have been clamoring for a remake, at the very least a buff back to even low-level viability. That hasn’t happened, and she remains queue dodge material for a lot of players.

It’s understandable. Personally, I consider games she’s in a 5.5v4 – yes, I think she’s currently so bad she’s giving the other team a leg up while simultaneously gimping her own. Part of the problem is her current mess of skills. Bouncing Blades scales with attack damage while Shunpo scales with AP. Killer Instincts doesn’t scale at all. It’s so bad that even when she was playable most people ignored it. Her ultimate scales with both AP and attack damage, though with poor enough coefficients that you need massive farm to put out respectable damage. There’s also the simple fact that she relies on her skills to deal damage, so in between cooldowns she’s incredibly weak and easy to kill.

The newest patch will give Killer Instincts more staying power, as the stacks carry between targets, but it still isn’t enough damage to make her viable. Consider the other characters in the game with no CC. Those toons nearly all have high damage output, which is necessary for survival. They play a lot like mages, relying on the kill-you-before-you-kill-me strategy for success.

In short, Katarina is terrible. She’s in desperate need of a skill rework to make her viable again.