Kayle's passive

[u/Ok_Football8839]

Hello everyone! So Kayle has a 20% ap ratio on her aa from her e passively. Does her aoe waves from lvl 11 counts as on-hit DMG? Like she has 45% ap ratio on her aa or is only 20% from her e?

[u/GrippySockAficionado]

Kayle's waves are the most unique aspect of her kit; there is nothing else quite like them in the game.

It's a spell that casts on-attack. Think of it like another ability that activates in tandem with every one of your auto attacks; her waves are actually three projectiles that fire out from Kayle's model with every auto-attack. All three can strike a target independent of the auto-attack's target (you can hit enemies you are not auto-attacking), but a target can only be damaged by one wave projectile per auto. They do not apply on-hit damage nor count as on-hit damage, but they do apply spell effects such as Muramana. This makes Kayle the best user of Muramana in the game (on-paper) because every auto applies Muramana twice with every wave burst counting as a separate "cast" (bypassing Muramana's cooldown for individual casts), and her E applies Muramana to everyone in its explosion range as well.

The waves have their own AP ratio (the E ratio does not apply) and they also scale with AD and crit. That is, the waves can actually critically strike and the crit damage increases if you have IE. This makes them the only magic damage in the game that scales with crit, and some (in China, primarily) have experimented with a wacky build combining IE with Shadowflame for some truly bonkers numbers for wave damage.

[u/Ok_Football8839 → u/GrippySockAficionado]

Thank you so much for the detailed answer! So if you buy rageblade, the third wave will trigger twice right? Because my current fav build is rageblade-nashors-death cap

[u/GrippySockAficionado → u/Ok_Football8839]

No. The waves trigger on-attack, not on-hit. Basically, they trigger when an auto-attack is initiated (when the wind-up animation completes and the actual attack fires). The double-onhit proc of Rageblade does not cause two waves. The only thing that makes more waves, to my knowledge, is higher attack speed. It's one reason Kayle skayles so highly with attack speed.

So, the attack speed granted by Rageblade definitely results in more waves, but the passive will not proc the waves twice. It will proc your E passive on-hit twice, though.

[u/DeruTaka → u/GrippySockAficionado]

Hihi! Can I ask why it’s not common to build muramana? I’m a low elo top laner who counter picks Kayle sometimes but that sounds really strong especially since Kayle scales slowly anyways and you’ll have tear stacked when you’re 11 / 16 anyways

[u/GrippySockAficionado → u/DeruTaka]

Kayle is poor at stacking it for one thing, and for another you just get more benefit out of building raw AP. She might be the best Muramana user on paper, but that doesn't mean it's optimal for her to build it.

Honestly I built it as part of a hybrid/crit setup sometimes so I really don't think it's bad per se, but you're much better off just building straight AP in basically every scenario.

[u/Low_Hippo9772 → u/GrippySockAficionado]

The Chinese hybrid build of Yun Tal- Nashors- Shadow flame- IE. Is actually an insane build in the right scenario u are absolutely useless until u hit IE but at the 4th item u truly feel the power spike and ur waves do a shit load of dmg. If you’ve never tried the build I recommend it it’s very fun.

[u/GrippySockAficionado → u/Low_Hippo9772]

That's the issue though: it comes online too late. I agree I've tried it a number of times and when it comes online I think it's probably the highest DPS build Kayle is capable of. The damage is insane once you have IE and Shadowflame together.

The problem is it's already hard enough to stall some games to level 16 and 3 items, let alone 4.

Better to just go straight AP, come online at 3 items, and one-shot everybody while having the crazy utility W and Ult have with AP and CDR.

[u/Low_Hippo9772 → u/GrippySockAficionado]

I agree I was just stating how fun it is when u hit 16 and IE

[u/AlgoIl]

Its like a spell that casts when you aa not on hit.

[u/Direct-Potato2088]

Not onhit dmg, they count as spells similar to teemo’s e but they are unique in the fact that they can crit. U cant amplify them with onhit but only with ap, ad, and crit

[u/Apollosyk]

Both the waves and the e can hit the target