u/DeterminedDragon

I am a long time League player. After taking a long break, playing Kayle made me come back to the game. I started by playing her top and playing at an emerald level. I loved her so much, I wanted to try to climb, so I watched DesperateNasus's vods every day, swapped to mid, and vod reviewed my own games. I ended up getting to ~700 LP masters last split with Kayle and once again am mid/high masters this split (JsMethod#na1).

Most Important Things I Learned

1) Kayle is a micro heavy champion
I used to play a lot of low micro champions like Annie, Tryndamere, Ahri, etc. I thought Kayle was similarly easy. Simply "dont die, hit 16, win game". It turns out, getting to 16 and still being in a position to carry is not so easy lol. One day of reviewing DesperateNasus, I saw him solo kill a Yone pre 6. Then I watched him stay near 100% HP in a lane vs a control mage. And if you've ever watched DesperateNasus, you will notice the insane amount of clicking he does. I thought that is just insane, why and how is he able to keep that up.

I found he is a master at baiting out abilities utilizing W and passive move speed, THEN doing what he wants. For example, pre 6 he almost never goes for CS UNTIL his opponent is either busy doing something else or has already missed their ability. However, that doesn't mean he just sits back and does nothing. No, he is CONSTANTLY dancing on the enemy's edge of attention. Constantly pretending to go for a minion just to click back at the last second. Constantly dancing in and out of the opponents range. All of this to bait out the opponents spells.

As I started to implement this in my own games, I realized this had MASSIVE rebounding effects. Not only are you able to stay safer by dodging spells, but you can also use those opportunities to get CS and win trades. Also, the more you can get inside your opponents head by trying to get them to focus on you, they can't roam. That is HUGE. As Kayle, we can't proactively apply pressure on the map, so the best we can do is bait pressure mid. We WANT the enemy jungle to gank us. We WANT our lane opponent to be hyper focused on poking us. That buys us time.

2) Movespeed is OP
This is really an extension of the first point. Because of our move speed advantages from W, passive, runes, and sometimes items, we are able to bait opponents to overstepping / wasting cooldowns and reactively run them down. We have to lean into this movespeed advantage to outmicro our opponents.

I found this was one of my weakest points at the beginning of my Kayle journey. I wanted to stay back and be safe. But you can leverage Kayle's superior move speed to play much further up than normally comfortable because we are just so hard to get hit with how fast we are. This is the foundation to putting ourselves in a position to punish our opponents and win on micro.

Move speed also really helps with map plays. We obviously don't want to proactively roam very much as Kayle, but we DO need to punish our opponent. I have 1v9ed many games at this point from my opponent roaming too much and I get to roam to the other side for free without losing any income mid. For example, my laner may shove and go bot -> I would counter shove, get a mid plate, then roam top. I would be up money from mid lane AND be even in map roams. Just like we are punishing our opponent's micro, I do the same thing with their macro decisions. When they commit to something, I reactively punish on the other side.

This move speed helps in mid game too. From levels 11 - 16, my numer 1 goal is to catch up in gold. I use this move speed to catch bot waves, then run around the map stealing jg camps, catching other waves, etc. I have found I can often lead the game in CS by optimizing this mid game portion well.

3) Early game decides your carry potential - get to 6 without dying, use R timers efficiently, keep up in income by trading reactively
Despite being a hyper scaling champion, our early game decides if we get to carry or not. When I was starting, I would sit in lane and do nothing waiting to scale. Playing at 16 is the easy part. All of my challenges came from the map pre 16. My team would disintegrate around me. My bot lane fed. My jungle complained about having 0 prio. I would be behind gold and XP in mid lane. You cannot put blinders on and ignore the map. You HAVE to understand how the enemy team wants to win and how to punish that. If you are playing against someone who roams a lot, you need to be prepared to ping it, trade sides, and get ahead in income in midlane so you can trade to keep them mid.

This extends to ult timers. Wasting the first or second ult timer for the game can be enough to keep us just far enough behind that we will never get to catch up in gold or be able to scale effectively. Dying to the enemy jg can snowball them to perma farm our teammates, we can NEVER die to ganks.

My results came after I optimized my first 15 minutes. Getting to 6 unscathed. Using my micro to win lanes post 6. Ensuring the map stayed playable with my first couple of ults.

YT Guide and Review - I also made a video talking about Kayle's game plan in mid lane and also watching a DesperateNasus vod to show what I was looking for when reviewing his games every day - https://youtu.be/9TeDa357ucE

Hopefully my thoughts and experiences will be interesting to my fellow Kayle enjoyers. Thanks for being a great reddit as well. I have been lurking here every since I picked Kayle up last year.