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@@popamihnea6695 She's popular because she's a hot woman in a skintight suit. Nothing wrong with that on its own, but, in this case, it clashes with her lore so much that she might as well not have any.
I understand that concept art does not always fully translate to the final game (Sett’s swirly thing, Lewis’s long trench coat, etc.) but not keeping the pale skin and purple eyes has to be the worst design choice Riot has ever made. It makes her actually look somewhat monstrous while keeping her conventionally attractive (and makes that one panel from her comic not as comical as it is)
I also really liked her dreadlocks. It looked haphazard, since she wouldn't have the time nor resources to be maintaining her hair in the Void, but the ring things show she still cares somewhat for her appearance. There are some animals that decorate themselves, but by and large, self-decoration is mostly a human thing, and something we don't see the Void do. It's a subtle thing that contrasts between Kai'sa the hunter, and Kai'sa the human If nothing it else, it'd have been way better than her perfectly maintained, flowy hair that elegantly blows in the wind
her concept art was insanely cool and seeing every discussion post about it just filled with people saying they prefer the current design just shows that the majority of the player base only cares about pretty emo gf and riot delivered on that part instead...
@@alimammadov1415Or maybe people are just more attached to the current design. For example, there is Janna from LoR and Janna from WR, I prefer the Janna from WR even though I know that LoR Janna is more cohesive with the lore, but the Janna I've known for years is the Janna from WR (and from league, I've been Janna main since 2014)
kaisas design would be improved significantly if her purple markings that just look like tattoos were instead some kind of fucked up slits like gills or scales or even just scaring bruised tissue
if those marks are fleshy gills, imagine if her mouth was sealed shut or something like that, and she had to breathe through those things. keep her physique but change the facial features, and she can look both human and inhuman at the same time. maybe even hit the perfect uncanny valley
Do you know what they are supposed to be? They are supposed to be war paint that she did herself using the blood of voidborne she's slayn. Which doesnt come across at all~
There's a game from 2002 called Freedom Force, and it's a pastiche of all kinds of superhero comics. One of the villains is a masked woman who leads an army of monsters and wants to bring down the civilization because it rejected her after she became horribly disfigured. When she gets unmasked, it turns out she's a former supermodel with a tiny scar on her cheek. Kai'sa is that, except 15 years later and not a parody.
Kai'sa, and as the majority of releases lately, major problem is the design to only purpose is to cater to some audience instead of being a full fledged character in the world of Runeterra. And we have things like this in League (Screw Riot for selling Miss Fortune visual update as a skin), those things are A DECADE OLD and not something released rather recently. You can approach some random person in the streets and ask them "What do you think that a person would look like after falling inside a Lovecraftian abyss, forced to fight for years for their survival and bonding with a parasitic creature to increase the odds of it would look like" and I bet that 11 out of 10 people will not get close to what Kai'sa looks like.
Kai'sa to me feels like they wanted to make Samus Aran in League. Like they loved the idea of a hot woman in a space suit. but unlike Samus who can take the suit on and off and it's actually protective. They wanted the suit to be on her like Venom. I feel like it's such a mishmash of ideas that just doesn't really work.
I mean, it could work. In LOR, it does work at least a bit. They do stuff with the symbiotic idea. In League???? Thats literally JUST a woman in a purple skin suit. Nothing else. No ties to the actual story they put with her.
@@ofanichanYup, you can tell her entire design was developed with the intentions of KDA, they just werent sure if releasing KDA as her launch skin would land or not. Then they thought that they could make that work with Seraphine's launch.
"Kai'sa might just be the worst champion ever added to League" Thats one hell of an understatement. Kai'sa being as popular as she is alongside the rise of AI generated slop despite the backlash is clear proof that the lowest common dominator continues to get lower as time goes on. I truly hate everything about this champion. The Kit, the Scalings, the weird Hybrid build that is often somehow overly restrictive, the character design, the lore, the personality and the INSANE AMOUNT OF ATTENTION SHE GETS FROM RIOT AND PLAYERS! Other champions have the spark of a good idea within them, even Kai'sa does to some extent, but it's so unbelievably obvious that Kai'sa was made with "let's put a pretty face onto a void champion who is a human" as the design philosophy and nothing else. She might be the most uninspired uninteresting design in the entire game, and I am so genuinely depressed that she has become so iconic and associated with the game, because she represents the VERY WORST OF Riot's design teams output. I could write a fucking noveltte on all the missed potential Kai'sa has in her that will NEVER EVER be realized by riot. but we all know this already, I just hope she stops Eating Ornn's skin slots.
also her bullshit w hitbox being the bane of existence in arams , plus her ad builds play like if vayne had 200 years of eXpErIeNcE injected into her lol
The AI part hits too close to home. The fact that people pay for commissions that those "prompters" shit out instead of going to an artist who could make something specifically tailored to them is sad. People genuinely have 0 standards, Kai'sa's popularity is the perfect example of that.
So what you hate is people's taste and standards, not Kai'Sa. Plenty of things in life (and League) are worse than Kai'Sa, but the hateful sentiment seems to be around her popularity. I think she has an awesome design that with a slight tweak to the lore can justify her looking almost perfect. I don't like her very much compared to tons of other champions but I think she is cool. And when it comes to her gameplay, while the build doesn't change how she plays too much, it does make her an interesting pick in the sense that she can adapt her build to the game (which suits her "survival" theme a little, but I'm probably reaching). She is exciting to watch in pro when it's not just full AP and she is fun to play at a high level. So you can hate me despite putting a lot of thought on why I like her in contrast to the majority of her fans which are, as I agree with you, just people with low standards and unrefined taste in art. But I would direct my hatred elsewhere if I were you. There are so many worse things out there. And AI is just a tool. Artists who use AI to save time on their art are going to be lucrative. While it's admirable that one can create a drawing from zero, the eye of an artist often is the reason they are as skilled as they are. The art > craft. Most proper AI assisted art uses a baseline generation that afterwards is tweaked and modified by a proper artist that knows what the composition and characters needs in regards to anatomy, materials, setting, character, emotion and colours. The AI just gives a quicker base to work with. I am an animator/game developer by trade and AI saved me hundreds of hours of menial work. I could've done it myself. I have the skill. I have done it all hundreds of times before. But here I get a chance to actually spend these extra hours on making the finer details better. Get better camera movements, more emotion, cleaner design, etc. AI didn't replace anything. It just made me work faster and elevated my skills. It's another tool I sometimes use. Sometimes I don't use AI because I know the limits it has and do the manual work from scratch (fixing the AI outputs could take longer than doing it myself from zero). It's all a matter of perspective. People who think you just prompt the AI and call it a day have no idea how art pipelines work at all and themselves don't have good standards. When I transition fully to game development, I'm looking forward to hiring artists and to show them the new AI toys they can use to speed up the process and create more amazing art. Over the past century where we've had the most technological progress every in the history of humanity, we also got the most new jobs ever. Technology that replaces menial tasks and invites more specialization create more use for professionals in fields. Not only will this not kill artists, it will likely increase their demand and elevate the skill requirements. The art a good artist can produce with the help of AI as a tool will always supercede what AI can create on its own. Until we create AGI which we don't even know if that's possible yet and it is decades or centuries away. Kai'Sa is a fine design or even great if you modify the lore slightly, her gameplay is great (way more appreciable in higher ranks) and AI is just a tool - not a replacement. Have a great day!
@@SiMeGamer Thank you for your perspective on AI generated content. I don't agree with you, but appreciate the different view on such a controversial subject
You know for a symbiote, it doesn't look and feel like two beings working together. Couldn't they had at least made her skin tight suit rattle, crawl, or pulse? It doesn't have to be two characters into one champion like kayn and rhaast, just make the suit at least feel like its alive.
Exactly, like I don’t think it should be a person since personhood and sentience is meant to be a big deal with the void with most being pure instinct, but it should very much be alive! Make is move independently! Make it pulsate and twitch! Make it obvious that the action kai’sa just took wasn’t her doing but the suit! Bring some possessed body horror into the design!
Kai'sa, more than any champion, feels engineered to sell skins. There is absolutely no issue sticking her into whichever skinline they feel like because, like you said, her pauldron things are detached from her body, as well as that she's just a generic looking woman. Even with like, KDA, which is filled with conventionally attractive female champs, you still have to work in Ahri's tails, Evelynn's spikes, and Akali's ninja weapons. Kai'sa? Nah, easy peezy. Or, Star Guardian, you have to make due with Miss Fortune's guns, Ezreal's gauntlet, Jinx's various guns, all to work as magical girl nonsense. Kai'sa? Literally just an anime schoolgirl who happens to be even more generic (I thought she was Lux in the cinematic) In conclusion, making Kai'sa's weapons, being those weird pauldrons and triangle things on her hands, detached from her body, on top of having no blemishes, makes me think she was made intentionally to sell skins by making her so boring she becomes adaptable.
The retcon of her lore as a pre-existing character from being sacrificed to the void by malzahar to "teehee i let the goats out" will forever be one of leagues goofiest
Kai'sa's whole existence is being a weeb fan service. She doesn't belong in the void, even the league universe.The Devs could have gone wild for her but they didn't.
to be honest kai'sa's problem in my opinion isn't her design. Its her story/bio she works great as a samus aran badass stoic warrior archetype. An lets be honest thats what riot has always used her as. Trying to shoehorn a boring troubled "im a monster angle" is just mucking things up and is the real problem. Let her enjoy her new found power. let her be reveled as a hero by the people in shurima. If you need to have an edge of darkness angle than just add the symbiote is trying to take her over ala venom and she has to keep her composure at all times lest it gain control for even a moment. But the whole monster hideous angle is overplayed, boring and uneccessary. Erase her story start again and kaisa is fine.
I really think that the Samus Aran Archtype is far more played out (especially in video games) and less interesting than the unwillingly transformed monster trying to be accepted. Of course it would be fine: the Archtype has an extremely high 'floor' for how interesting it is, but I think that a Kai'sa that actually leaned into the monster angle would be more interesting.
@@aidanmillow566 to be honest i feel we rarely see any samus arans these days but that may just be me. I think a better angle would be that kaisa's a hero and is loved for it. But fighting the void and her symbiote are slowly corrupting her slash giving her ptsd not unlike the darken from the icathia war. which would be a nice lil parallel in my book.
I like Kai'Sa as a design for the most part. The fundamental of her having a symbiotic relationship with a voidborn makes her being a supermodel really work because her having perfect features, body, skin and hair shows how healthy she is, basically the benefits of the void. Making her some paragon messenger for the void being positive. But she knows better and uses it to fight it because she is aware of what the void truly is. And her lore only needs to be tweaked. The reason people see her as a monster is because they know the history of what the void has done she is basically a carrier of a parasite that could start the void invasion again. People fear her for being mixed with the void, not because she looks scary. I don't mind the alternative version that Nicky and Skyen present but Kai'Sa looking perfect can work. I'd definitely change her war paint thing on her face to something more interesting, but other than that, she is awesome. I bought her big statue and it's such a beautiful thing. I'm not a fan of the character but by god do I enjoy her design and what it can represent. A slight tweak and she is perfect. Her relationship with Taliyah is made so much easier like and explaining it her after the things she learned from Yasuo also fit nicely since it's basically letting this type of nature flow through you and directing the energy towards whatever. I'd even go as far as saying that she should be the opposite of Venom. Kai'Sa needs to fight the symbiote to a degree because it feels too good to be a voidborn, rather than feeling like she's fighting for survival - agony. I really can't see the problem unless you view it from the perspective and reading of the current lore which then does present a problem with the design. But if you go with the design first and slightly tweak the current lore, it becomes such a cool character. I do agree her skins are mega boring for the most part and Bullet Angel is the best (I do love the KDA effects and sounds the most, though).
Sounds similar with Kai and Valmar trying to fight against Varus dominating the body they share. So yeah Riot can't even try to be more mindfully at there own creations.
@@SiMeGamer The void isn't actually trying to show her benefits tho - that voidling that fused with her was fucked up runt that was never gonna survive if she didn't show up, with itself not having a conscience at all. Bel'Veth is the very first time the Void as a thing was given a conscience that has ego, before (specially with Vel'Koz) it was brutal and fathomless eldritch horror that was only interested in us as far as we could last 3 minutes under lobotomy. Even Bel'Veth herself isn't trying to manipulate things, she just wants to consume, and she is the closest we have of a Void that tries to seduce humans (even then that is not the case, since her apperance doesn't have anything to do with her trying to lull people, but is about the sheer amount of people she ate and how *we* corrupted the Void too). It would be the antithesis of what the void is, and I don't think its a good idea to completely rework the void so that pretty Kai'Sa can make sense, it isn't a slight tweak by any means, SPECIALLY the part of her people hating her because of her appearance being completely and utterly stupid and really would never be able to fit in her character, even if we consider they hate her because she carries a supposed parasite. Like, she isn't Witchblade. If she was that would be okay (although even as far as sexy babes flaunting their sexuality with skin-tight symbiotes, Sara's design is WAY more interesting then Kai'sa's, since it actually looks like a symbiote instead of a fullbody spandex), but for her to be that you'd need to change the whole void to fit her. Or at least Riot would need to try a little better in coming up with excuses for her being in pristine condition
In Ben 10 Omniverse there is a planet of monsters-like aliens (they look like werewolves, mummies, frankenstein's monster...) where on it humans are treated like ugly monesters. I belive that on this planet Kai'sa would be a brilliant champion design.
I always thought that making Kai'sa kind of a satire would make her so much better. When she starts going on about "being a monster" if everyone else was like "nah ur fine, actually you're kinda hot" would give the hardened lone wolf character a cool spin imo.
You are wrong about the build diversity thing. Lethality Kaisa (not viable anymore) alters her playstyle in a way that you have to instakill squshies (assassin) and snowball early to mid and it sucks into frontline because she can't attack fast enough to proc multiple passives, can't evolve E. AP Kaisa sits 3 screens away and pokes you. On-hit Kaisa can kill frontline/dive. Nashor Kaisa is hybrid, she deals less dps but can still dps and she can poke but the poke is not as strong (jack of all trades). She definitely plays differently based on build.
the idea of kaisa kinda being like the "samus" mixed with a bit of "kerrigan" of league is fun in isolation. but they focuse to much on the its a sexy ladie part of her concpet and never on the fact that she should be a badass with cool void powers. the idea of a girl being traped in the void and survive its a story that writes itself. but riot just made her a sexy cosplayer.
Mentioning a monster lady waifu, Kerrigan crawled so Kai'sa could trip and land on her own face. Riot's been known to ape other franchises, so they literally could have just made Void Infested Kerrigan, shipped it, and it would've been fine with the thematic she was *supposed* to be.
The story potential with Kassadin braving the void in a makeshift homemade suit to find his sacrificed daughter who probably is already dead, is so fucking cool to me. I want Arcane to portray it. Maybe Arcane can do Kai'sa justice, too.
I think Kai'sa should've had an evolution system like Kha'zix. Have her start out in the skin tight suit and have leveling the abilities morph the suit. Level Q and The pauldrons start as small shoulder guns that grow into the big fuck off wings. Level W and her legs gain thrusters or something Level E and her weapons visibly shift
I think if someone in Runeterra saw Kai'sa they wouldn't be horrfied but they would be uneasy. Sure she is in no way a monster but she certainly does give off some off vibes. The issue is that the vibes are split and makes the overall design feel uncommitted.
I think the best way to redesign KaiSa or atleast take insperation, would have been to be like Hegemon Husk/Edelgard from Fire Emblem Three Houses. You still see the human part/face of her and recognize that she was human once before. Also, her body is so different and deformed that she will be feared by others as a monster(like in the lore). And still have some kind of attractivness, because those who designed KaiSa are weird people.
If they made her suffering inside symbiotic costume and having some really fucked up,brutal look as well having other capabilities other than just being running ass with rockets and "piu-piu" gun,she wouldn't be bad
Riot could've pulled inspiration from both. Who knows. But I agree that she resembles Kerrigan more than Samus overall, save for Kai'Sa's champion theme.
@_l-_-l_ im not taking any shots at kerrigan over the design comparison. To be fair to kaisa, shes basically wearing a marvel symbiote while kerrigan was altered at the genetic level.
@@werst9 She kind of feels like a Bio-mech version of ironman. Like she can even take off the faceplate for reasons? I think if she couldn't do that it would give more credit to being a monster.
What baffles me the most is how they decide to stop making side games of the Runeterra universe due to not making enough money and wanting to focus on League of Legends (which is silly considering the marketing was negligible at best)... When they literally have a golden opportunity to make a metroidvania of Kai'sa which in turn could of hit both the Kai'sa fans, those that like monster champions and the people who are invested in the lore respectively. *It's like as if Riot just WANTS to make Kai'sa fanservice the character, like....WHY!?!*
Like why not at least do a Kill la Kill thing where she gets this voidborne symbiote, but the tradeoff is that it uses her blood? Or if that’s too similar, maybe it’s slowly stealing her sanity as a tradeoff for the power it gives her? It still doesn’t solve the whole “hot anime babe in a skintight suit” problem, but at least it gives the character a bit more depth, and shows how the void corrupts and kills slowly.
I agree give KAi a 12 pack and make her yoked. I mean it would be cool if they made the reason, she's so healthy is that the suit eats everything she hunts and that can be their symbiosis. She lives and it gets to eat. Also maybe people fear her because they see the suit eat and kai can't stop it sometimes. Maybe she hurt someone when the suit was out of control.
1. Gigantics back and it's character designs are just Mua exactly what one should be doing, well for most alteast, can say I haven't seen a single character I can make a joke like" it's just this version of X" and not look weird. 2. Tbskyen's "short" rant about her perfectly examplies the miss poinetniall in her tragedy, an addition I would add is the suit like the venom suit having a back and forth with kai'sa were the suit cares about survival and kai'sa cares about living.
I highly doubt that they'll ever rework Kai'Sa's visuals, but I think a lore rework would go a long way in fixing the narrative dissonance. Perhaps she did fall into a void rift but maybe a certain chronokeeper with a fortress outside of time rescued her, raised her, and brought her on as a sort of protoge in ways to fight back against the void. One day she goes in to the void to do research for said chronokeeper and comes back fused to this voidsuit. Problem (mostly) solved.
It's hard to decide who's worse; Senna or Kai'Sa. Both kind of ruin the threat of their foes by virtue of surviving/escaping the foe with little to show the horrors they suffered. I lean towards Senna being worse because she overtakes Lucian in almost everything and she's also a vital being that staves off the Shadow Isles. Though Kai'Sa makes the Void less of a legitimate threat if they failed to kill a child in their own territory. Humans, before Kai'Sa, interacting with the Void either corrupted them (Malz) or gives them space cancer (Kass).
when she was first announced and i heard her theme i was excited because i'm a huge Metroid fan.. but it's been disappointment after disappointment ever since. the design would be acceptable if her base was full suit and the "suitless" form was a rarity like how it is in actual Metroid games, but we got ZSS hornybait as the base form instead of the cool one.
I will always go back to the OC I made to spite the creation of Kai'Sa The corpse of a woman reanimated using void infected leviathan organs, which created a living weapon used against the void by the haunting Sea of Bilgewater as revenge against the Void for killing the race of sea monsters that lived near Icathia. She is extremely religious and sees the sea as a God, thus she is a nun (Fully dressed) who wears a beautiful face of a woman... But she is uncanny, pale and eyes that alternate in red and lavender, teeth as sharp as knives an potrusions extended from her dress, black scaly patches can be seen in her neck, and her eyes are slit like those of a predators. From afar, she looks like a beautiful high class woman, even with the weathered armor she wears above her long skirt tathered dress. But when she transforms, she is a disfigured monster whose armor and dress fuses to her skin, her skin is pitch black with puplish and reddish glowing veins exposed, proportions uncanny as a shark tail is revealed below her dress, columns of eyes all over her face as below them lies a large mouth filled with sharp and pointy teeth, dripping the purplish blood from it. Her breasts are covered by an extra set of hands, glowing cracks on her chest keep dripping the same blood. They could've dondethe same to Kaisa, but they dropped the ball in favor of beautiful waifu because that's what China wants.
@@phoenixflamegames1 I did as a matter of fact, though it was a rough sketch on paper, I am working on renewing her and making her design a bit more visually clear. She is supposed to be a juggernaut top lane champ who is the actual owner of the Chempunk Chainsword, lot of Warhammer 4k and Bloodborne inspiration on her.
Nowadays the whole possessed corpse angle would be weird because 1) it doesn't match with how the void behaves essencially reclying and terraforming organic matter until is voidborn-fitting, and 2) Zyra is exactly that since her retcon: A garden overflowing with unbound magic from the Rune Wars possesses a wizard woman's corpse, growing bitter of the rest of the world after seeing her memories and knowledge. Though Leviathan organs do have their uses since they're threated as magical reservoirs, their practical use is near unexisting because of how difficult is to reach a Leviathan and not die in the process. And I don't know if they'll even survive for long if infected as is with the Xer'Sai: Their flesh is bitter and essencially evaporates from the moment decomposition starts. The whole description also sounds like Agatha Gloomfoil / Double from Skullgirls.
@@diegosaez4885 It is interesting to know this now, though I honestly just laid put the tldr of the lore of this character. Her lore is a bit complicated due to the introduction of a Leviathan race, an underwater rift near Icathia and a Sea monster queen. The character isn't exactly a dead body being patrolled around by an unknown entity, it is a combination of the soul of a human woman and a dead sea monster queen, both created one singular being with it's own mind and it's own sentience, while she shares the memories of the two beings that created her, she eventually acts out of mere impulse, sometimes because of her animalistic side, others because of her human sides, and worst cases because of the Void infection that she can only pause by consuming the voidborn.
I'm only going to VERY SLIGHTLY defend her "ohhh I'm such a monster" bit by saying that yes Runeterra has plenty of animal-people and monsters and things, but her being specifically a bit Voidy looking is probably a special kind of creepy to Runeterrans in a way that, for example, a Fishman in Bilgewater is not. It's like if you saw a normal attractive human man but he had a specific type of haircut and mustache combo (like a certain historical failed painter). In some way yeah he'd just be a normal looking guy, but because of the history of a couple of his features, you'd probably be extra wary of him and uncomfortable.
I feel like they could save it with a short story. Like kaisa on her travels meets malz. They make quick friends because kaisa finaly found someone who "accepts" her corruption. Being classicaly misled malz makes her aware of the sentience of her suit. The self preservation reflexes shes known for a decade is now more than a reflex. Its the suit itself telling her of the danger. Only to let her know that malz is dangerous in a way the suit doesnt recognize. Story atory yada yada kaisa finds out about malz mormonesque activities and leaves "stops" him, he escapes. Then her story of looking to atop malz from forcing others to deal with what she had to with becoming a halfling abomination leads her to belveth where the suit warns her that this is what malz felt like. Then her story leads naturally into the belveth meeting and coruption. Where upon kaisas suit sentience is the only thing to save her from belveth. As the void becomes what it consumes so does the suit. And after ao much time with kaisa it has eaten and develeoped its own will power. Where the suit replaces kaisas insticts is not a strengthening but a replacement. Without is she loses her survival insticts. So with the newly sentient (now talking) suit she overcomes belveths control and the story continues with her now being the protagonist against bel and malz.
People say Seraphine's design is based on/ruined by KDA but my theory is the same happed to Kai'sa and its SO much worse in this case. I like the gameplay tho. Feels good.
The irony is that I think this Kai'sa is probably more popular than either the character in her story or the character in her design (and I acknowledge they are basically seperate characters) would have been. The people who wanted a conventionally attractive woman in a sci-fi bodysuit can largely ignore the sad parts of her story while the people who want the tragic child turned into a monster can imagine either a different design where it comes through (thought experiment: how well do you think a "corrupted Kai'sa" skin that actually embodied that would sell) or just the story working without the design. It's definitely artistically bad but part of my wonders if that actually matters. A gripe I have with Kai'sa is that she's the first in a series of lost loved ones from other champion's backstories to come back. I've always found that undermines the older champion. In Kai'sa's case specifically this could potentially have been an interesting story but basically they haven't done anything with Kassadin since Kai'sa has come out (I think Tbskyen pointed this out previously, you may have as well).
Kai'sa would still terrify me if I were in Runeterra. I feel like if I were to see her in the desert I would first see the human design but as I got closer i see the void look between the shoulder...things... the helmet, and how certain parts of the suit opens up. Yes Shurima has some weord stuff but the lingering effect of the void has scared them to the point of anything void would still terrify them. I think of it as a mimic from the void, they can copy human faces now? Human body shape? How long till they infultrate us looking almost perfect? That is where I think they are going with calling her a monster. If I am all over with my thiughts let me know so I can try to reiterate it to make sense 😅 but I am down to discuss!
I will always agree with the criticism over her design and how it fails to her lore but gosh I just can't help but to still love and enjoy playing Kai'sa, also her design in LoR freaking slaps, I don't believe Riot would change her appearance when it sells so well but I do hope that in the future they add more stories about the actual blending of the void and her body, they can even justify it with some bull shit and say that she gets "corrupted" or "evolves' at a much slower rate saying that it's the void creature adapting TO HER
I agree with you on pretty much everything else, but the different kai’sa builds definitely have completely different playstyles. Crit/Onhit plays similar to vayne and full ap is basically just an artillery mage
The build diversity part isnt quite true, yes you can do a mixed build which works fine, but there are full ap builds which play completely different than onhit builds, the LS build isnt rly good at auto attacking, meanwhile a build with eclipse kraken rageblade wont have any use of her w.
I agree with the fanservice argument, and the whole "I'm a monster, everyone hates me" thing is pretty dumb when she looks like Victoria's Secret meets the Void. I disagree with Nicky Boi's take on her gameplay though. I don't usually like ADCs, and I don't enjoy playing kaisa. I'm a toplaner at heart. But I don't think her gameplay is badly designed or unhealthy for the game. There's such a variety of champions that play in so many different ways, and kaisa doesn't break a single rule or change a single aspect of the game that other characters don't also. Her evolved abilities are good, but take a while to get to and require certain items and stats to work well. Her builds are weird because she's so flexible, and people like making new builds for the character. The take that Kaisa is more egregious than Vayne, especially right now, is so staggeringly bad that I'm kind of shocked someone as in touch with the game as NickyBoi even said it. Vayne is a monster currently. She's so strong in toplane that professional toplaners consider her S tier. She counterpicks a huge portion of the role's regular champs and can circumvent the weaknesses that ranged toplaners normally have. She's very strong early but doesn't really fall off late. She scales well unless you stomp her into the dirt. She has mobility that stays on a much shorter cooldown than kaisa's mobility skill for the whole game, better invisibility, better damage that is harder to itemize against, and hard cc that also displaces, which kaisa doesn't have. Yes, kaisa can shoot you from a lane away and then fly in and do 2k damage in 3 seconds, but she can't get back out. She has to commit all her resources to killing when she ults or she dies. Vayne can walk into a fight invisible, reveal herself, realize "oops, i made a mistake", and then knock you into a wall, stun you, and yeet herself away, and unless you're warwick, you're not catching her. She's also very good in the adc role currently. She's basically guaranteed to always be good or at least viable since she shreds through tanks like pretty much no other adc and deals some of the least counterable damage in the game. I'm honestly baffled that the take "kaisa is more broken vayne" even exists. It's so off base that I'm not sure the reverse is even true, Vayne is just a far more egregious character.
Limbo most likely, just like Camille, Seraphine is one of those skin-focused champions when it comes to profit so Riot doesn't give a damn about her in actual Runeterra storyline, especially with them trying to integrate Arcane into canon where she fits even less.
Wonderful video as always, and I fully agree on all said on Kai'sa. I always found it strange as well how she is able to speak so sophisticated when she's been in this horrible corrupted region since she was 10. I feel like her speech and thoughts wouldn't be as clear and coherent as they are, she'd be at least a *little* off her rocker, even if not entirely. Also my god that LeBlanc needs to chill.
I can't believe she's that popular because there's rarely discourse on her besides her gameplay. I can't say how well her merch does, but her subreddit is only medium sized, for example, and it's hard to find anything on twitter for her.
I mean, LoR concept art came out, the one you show on the video, and it was implied that it's her current form. After years of using that suit. The suit "fused" together with her flesh. It can't be translated into league because her fandom WILL annoy Riot into oblivion. In fact, the people ON the skins team already mentioned or replied to some people that the fact that her suit never matters in ANY OF HER NEWER SKINS IS ON PURPOSE. Kda ruined any potential for Kai'sa in any skin, ever. Plus, Belveth came, brought some "look at this lore fans, corrupted kai'sa, pretty right? Sorry, I will not go over it nor why it is here, bye! Buy our newer skins too!". Like, I love Kai'sa, I really do. Her design being fan faservice is not an issue for me, but the fact that the lore team on league, not lor, wants people to belive that Kai'sa's motif of "I may look good but I'm a monster on the inside" is the same as bel'veth pisses me off. "Look human-like head here, ops, monster if you look closely". Don't belive me? Search reddit for any complaint over Kai'sas recent skins and you will see a certain rioter saying that it's the best thing ever.
I remember the first time i saw kaisa (base not kda) was in warriors cinematic and i thought it was a collab with alita battle angel they looked so similar
Oh my god I just realized they could've made an alien vs predator style story with Kassadin using his artifacts to fight the ever adapting kaisa and neither of them recognizing each other until kaisa blows up her dad's helmet and they finally see how monstrous the two of them have become turning a tense fight to the death into a bittersweet reunion. The wasted potential almost feels like spite from the character designers who made awesome champs like a-sol but when they saw how unpopular their passion projects became hey just said 'fuck it, why bother trying if eye candy will succeed better anyway?'
I mean I kinda get it that people might think she's monster in her full "armored" form but in her unmasked form... you see a GIRL who TALKS and don't MURDER YOU right as she sees you... Let's see the voidborn do that huh (except Bel' Veth cuz she's a menace)
I love Kai'sa(gameplay & design idea wise) but really wish her completed design looked like the LOR concept, Her lims being voidborn like and the pauldrons being huge look so cool. She should also really have visual upgrades upon evolving an ability, like W grows the pauldron sizes for example.
I had to double check the release date of kayn and kai'sa to see who came first because kayn has a "symbiotic" relationship but apparently riot felt like it would be too much have a symbiotic void relationship or actually revealing that knife she was given had mega magic or some shit that slowed corruption for years
I was playing AFK Arena, and they have this Hypogean marksman unit named Olgath, whose design I think is what Kai'sa's design should've been. He still looks hot while being monstrous, and he has a fricking Kog'maw-like pet that serves as his gun, which could be a great symbiotic relationship if they really don't want to fully lean into the aspect of Kai'sa being a half-human half-monster hybrid but just a beautiful girl wearing a void bodysuit instead.
I like Star Guardian Kai’sa, but man would a magical bunny girl with a symbiotic suit would have been awesome. They even could’ve gone the route where she’s fused with a fallen guardian (or something like that) while still maintaining her status as a team leader- she could’ve looked like a freaky star guardian who is literally half cosmic corpse. But even with that huge potential lost, I can appreciate Star Guardian Kai’sa as a pretty Star Guardian design that they played it safe with. Too safe.
I wanna preface this with I've been following you for quite a while and although I find that I often disagree with quite a lot of critiques you give about characters, I continue to follow and respect your opinions on stuff. I've played a lot of Kai'sa, personally think building AP Kai'sa and playing ADC's as poke champions (Poke Ashe and Varus players should be put in jail for ruining my beloved ADC's) is super cringe and dull gameplay. If you play a bit more Kai'sa trying AP and AD you'll understand that with AP you're playing to poke down people before engaging with 1 W, you want to hit a few before you ult in whereas AD kai'sa can go in with one to all in, or I preferably rarely ult in to kill people and save my W to pop the passive in a fight to do a lot of burst damage, which an ADC who is greeding heal and doesn't expect the missing health damage pop will just die with heal or barrier up - whatever defensive option a champion has - Tryndamere in particular greeds his R quite a bit not expecting the W finisher pop which you obviously can't do to him if you're building AD and used it to engage because of the longer cooldown and although with an AP build it will be back up by the time you need it after ulting in, you may as well have just landed another one before engaging at all since its fairly easy to hit and does a lot of damage if you land it in time before the stacks fade off. I very rarely see Kai'sa's do this, if they build AP they usually land one, try to all in and lose immediately because they aren't low enough after landing one hit of poke when it practically resets completely you may as well shoot another before going in but people don't think to do that for some reason, they get super impatient I guess. Yeah I just disagree that her different builds don't change how she plays, she definitely doesn't change as much as others but she definitely switches between a standard ADC to one who pokes for a while first which I think is substantial enough a change that ignoring it completely like you do is unfair, I think you should probably play a bit more of the champion yourself to have a better holistic view of the game and come to understand that it does change how she plays, and if you don't want to do that because you don't like ADC's or don't think she's fun that's fine but I think you have to admit that you are judging her gameplay from an uninformed/unexperienced perspective which I think is important to clarify when you have an audience rather than just spreading misinformation to said audience. Another note to finish this line is that for me personally it's enough of a playstyle shift that I do not find it interesting at all so don't do AP Kai'sa ever. Lore and design wise, I hadn't actually read her bio or anything and there's obviously a few things in there which make zero sense and are dumb. I've heard a lot of people critique the skin tight suit just being sexy bait and stuff which I feel is out of place for something which is meant to be a symbiotic creature fused to the skin. It's meant to be skin tight how else would it fuse to the skin? Would it look baggy? I suppose it could have external organs hanging off the suit but how big is this supposed symbiotic creature meant to be or grow to? Seems like that sort of design should be saved for Chogath, a significantly bigger void creature with a focus on growing rather than just surviving, growing additional parts to his model as he gets larger. The pauldrons are kinda dumb, I also agree that her best skin is Bullet Angel because it makes her actually wear a skin tight suit again which makes sense as an exosuit, and her pauldrons are actually like attached and functional - all of her other skins just make them float, which looks dumb - and also make her just wear normal clothes which I guess are fine as skins because skins are meant to differentiate somewhat but honestly the MAIN reason why I like Bullet Angel is because her ctrl 5 adds a helmet - which makes her seem significantly less human. If Kai'sa's helmet in her original design in her splash art was just always on I think I'd like her as a character much more - every time I play default in game I ctrl 5 all game because I just don't want to look like a human, I like the facelessness of it, it makes it feel more in line with what you say she should have been. In the Warriors | Season 2020 Cinematic on the league of legends youtube channel, at 1:21 seconds there's a frame with her bent down slightly with her mask on in a proper visual setting, this is what she should look like by default and maybe you can take the mask off but I'd prefer it if it was just permenant and they factored that into her other skins more, although at some point I wouldn't mind them releasing a Kai'sa with a face, skins do have to go somewhere different eventually I think they should have just masked her from the beginning. Edit: Also I don't think there's meant to be any visual change to Kai'sa when she evolves like Kha'zix has, would be cool if there were changes but you can't tell what changed because there literally are no changes. Edit 2: Also to clarify as I a Kai'sa enjoyer, I do still think she has an overloaded kit and is unfairly strong at all times, she has never been weak for the 6 years I have played the game.
Hate Kai'sa too since her kit's overloaded but to say all her builds play the same isn't exactly true? AP doesn't really care for the invisibility to go attack speed items when you're nuking people from two screens away, meanwhile the weird lethality thing dropped off almost immediately when people realized you have to be gigafed early and good at the champ to get away with it. Design wise she does feel like Riot regressed back to "fantasy babe" in the same vein where janna and mf were just sexy elf and sexy pirate respectively.
Oof man. That LoR concept is so sick. I'd kill for skins that are just slight redesigns/alt designs based on concept art, other games, lore, anything. A voidy Samus sounds so cool in practice.
I'll play devil's advocate here a lot of the void monsters have human skulls and in the case of Bel'Veth has a full human face and she's super scary to shurimans
the thing about belveth is that the "face" is meant to be fake, meant to lure in prey, but we know better, it's for riot to slap on fanservice on a character that's meant to be a horrifying creature devoid
Seraphine isn't that bad (Sona main here), she was just very cringe because she was made essentially for KDA only, luckily LOR picked up the broken Hextech crystals and pieced everything in a better way, but she's not half the cringe champ she used to be.
I don't see her, not being super easily corrupted by the void, as a plot hole, but rather a mystery. Why didn't she get corrupted like the rest? Whats special about her? Is this part of a greater prophecy? There's a lot left to be explored
''Kai'sa sells a lot because she's pretty, trust us'' is funny when she has THE most build variety in the game alongside Katarina (another sexy babe who sells a lot of skins) AND is one of the strongest champions in the game. Ah yes Riot, this character in the game that you prioritize so much the competitive nature of to the point of casual players leaving certainly isn't selling a lot because of her competitive viability, no sir!
It's probably just the fact that the Chinese market dwarfs the rest so selling pretty faces is more profitable that's why I kinda feel that we got to the point where some character faces look exactly the same cuz u can go so far even with pretty faces , now sometimes I'm not even sure when I'm looking at Irelia or Caitlin and sometime it's nether of them but looks like both of them Riot can do some cool stuff , but profit is Nr. 1 so the artist won't be allowed to do it except from time to time to at least try to satisfy a bit the community At least if u do it for more money use that money to make more VU or reworks like back in the day like c'mon
My headcanon is that Kai'sa is like a robocop type of situation. Where the Void creature is the majority of her body and that Kai'sa herself is like a head and lungs basically.
I love her on paper but LOATHE her in execution. She's not some war torn survivor who people cant stomach to look at both for her deeds and her appearance. She's a void cosplayer! Her gameplay comes down to which of her buttons you want her to chunk you with between her auto attacks and invis dashes. There's zero gameplay changes even if you have totally different builds. She's such a fun an amazing character yet Riot somehow does nothing with her and her rival Bel'veth even when they 'leaked' that promotional art? Just choose if you want a Void survivor and take the Kassadin route or a void waifu and make her a Marry Sue already!
I understand that you might not like her lore as characters, but I don't think anyone can deny that Kai'sa is one of the best champions to watch in professional play. Watching players like GALA, JackeyLove, Aiming, Viper, and so many more eastern ADCs properly utilize her unique playmaking kit to not only mechanically outplay but also dive priority targets is a joy to watch. Watching a team play a pick composition with a Kai'sa is so exciting because you know the engage range is longer than you anticipate and she allows teams to uniquely play around vision control. Kai'sa having low range but higher mobility makes the risk reward factor just so engaging when you know that in pro-play low range is very punishable by the hard engage champions that have dominated pro-play for the past several years such as Vi, Sejuani, Rell, Maokai, etc. Her lore matchup might bother people who are heavily invested in lore, but gameplay wise I think the entertainment and fun factor of her kit and competitive legacy is really solid.
On the topic of Kaisa's skins not matching her character in any way, her broodish voice lines about how shes a monster and such do not fit with any of her skins. Even when other champions have wildly different skins compared to who they are (some evil champs in Cosmic, good in Dark Star, pre-tech champs in future settings, the recent Primal line, etc.), their lines still dont feel as disconnected as Kaisa does, especially since for those champs they dont usually have all their skins have that level of disconnect from who they are meant to be, and their base skins at least tend to represent that as well. Inkshadow maybe matches her character and lines tho, idk I dont know what that skin line is about, really
Honestly just make her look a little more like belveth and then just have people confuse the two when belveth finally does her big villain event that'd make more sense
I love the idea of what Kai'sa was supposed to be, I despise what she has become. I was hoping for like a cool Samus Aran, Metroid character. You know, battle hardened, kinda no nonsense but with a soft side. Maybe some battle damage from her many adventures. Maybe even struggling with the constant fight against the void and the ramifications of never being able to truly be off the clock. But no. No, what we got was a popstar who cosplays as an interesting character on weekends.
