Stop playing Kalista, please

“But but but Jaxon” I hear you cry, “I love being outscaled at 10 minutes!”.

Apparently, that’s the regular split meta. Early game, early game, early game. Priority, invade, dive. You hear it over, and over, and over. Hell, Rogue built their whole reputation off of drafting lane priority and nothing else. 

And in regular season, it works! Nobody can be arsed to actually draft properly, they just pick Gnar/Renekton every game, Kalista + Nautilus and one of about four junglers. Super fun stuff. 

So why is Kalista bad, Jaxon?

Once you hit BO5s, teams really look into what you’re trying to do. Rogue can no longer just pick priority and win the early game because now they’re playing against teams with an actual plan mid-game and late game – and that’s when picks like Kalista and Renekton really struggle. 

The game doesn’t end in the early game. If it did, Armut would still be in Turkey.

It’s especially bad when full AD or single AP comps are so prevalent, due to the AP itemisation being horrible (and pro players being so scared to try anything new). Kalista’s super high damage build of… Shieldbow into attack speed items doesn’t really cut through any kind of armour, and though LDR is totally unbalanced, Kalista doesn’t really like building it.

Side note; people need to start picking last picking Malphite more. He beats nearly all the meta toplaners and makes Kalista and Ashe totally useless. Especially into Gnar/Wukong/Jayce three tricks. Not talking about anyone in particular.

Just don’t do it.

ADC is the one role where you kind of need that scaling, and as shown at last year’s Worlds, scaling comps become more effective the later you go into a tournament. Good teams don’t let you walk all over them early game, so you need to be able to compete in the late game. 

I’m not saying you have to go full Crownshot and pick Jinx every game, but maybe playing Ashe, Senna, Aphelios or even Kog/Lulu more might help.

Yeah, Tahm Kench sucks after about eight minutes, but if you pick Kalista and Lucian into him he’s going to build Thornmail and have the time of his life. Kalista was completely screwed by the item rework, but isn’t going to get fixed if you keep picking her to bully bad bot lanes.

Riot please disable Kalista, thank you. pic.twitter.com/HIkX3NOvkM

— Vandiril (@Vandiril) August 25, 2021

Uh, maybe this might make it worth it. Anyway…

“Rogue time” is partially due to their inability to close a game, but a large part of it is that they draft for early game all the time and then wonder why when they make one mistake, they choke the whole game.

And they’re not the only ones, either. TSM have some absolute war crime drafts with Kalista/Nocturne/Lee Sin at the same time. 

Did… did I miss something? Is armour not purchasable any more? Does the game just end at 15 minutes every game now?

Nah, I really am just smarter than pro teams. They’ll figure it out eventually. Feel free to ask me for more drafting tips on Twitter, Grabbz and co.

7k gold down and your team is still ahead, funny how that works. Should interview lucian/kalista/tahm and ask how it felt to play into viktor/varus/jayce despite gold/lvl advantages. Amazing what draft gaps can do in games, not important though.

— LS (@LSXYZ9) July 24, 2021