Well, it looks like Riot decided to nerf Annie's range right after the last Weird Pick Wednesday, so that bubble's been popped. However, since today's Patch Day hopefully you'll get a little more mileage out of this one. Today's WPW features Kalista in her standard bottom lane role, but this time under the role of a support!
Introduction
Well, it looks like Riot decided to nerf Annie's range right after the last Weird Pick Wednesday, so that bubble's been popped. However, since today's Patch Day hopefully you'll get a little more mileage out of this one. Today's WPW features Kalista in her standard bottom lane role, but this time under the role of a support!With her strong utility, free wards, and partner saving abilities, it seems like she makes a good candidate!
How to Play
Kalista's set up can change around depending on whether you decide to go more of an offensive or a pure supportive role. As such, support Kalista can be played as a standard ADC build/rune/mastery set-up with a sightstone, or you can elect to go for a more cooldown based Kalista with 21 in utility.
Either way, I'd recommend maxing out your E (Rend) first followed up by your Sentinel (W). Get one point in your Q at level 3 though.
The main reason I'd recommend building this way is that as a support, the rate that your damage comes through is much slower compared to a regular ADC. Without AD scaling, Sentinel is a much better choice than Pierce, and also provides increased map control.
Benefits of Support Kalista
- Extremely strong early game ranged and sustained damage;
- Free moving wards;
- Instantaneous carry saving ability;
- Percentage based damage good for taking down tanks targeting the ADC;
- Strong objective control with Rend; and
- Personal survivability very high, especially vs melee champions.
Disadvantages of Support Kalista
- No initiation skill (that you'd want to be using);
- Difficult to appropriately time when to pull an ADC out of a fight (especially in solo queue);
- Squishy once enemies close the gap;
- No AP scaling makes blue gold item less efficient;
- No supportive sustain; and
- Easy to take kills with Rend.
Conclusions
Kalista's definitely got a very interesting kit full of plenty of little nuances that make it seem like it may work well as a cheese support early. However, because she does lack burst damage, she has difficulty trading against most traditional burst mage supports like Sona early on.
That being said, I could see her being extremely fun against someone like a Thresh or a Braum.
Probable Placement: Low Tier 3