League of Legends is an infamously dense game with a practically endless number of champion-specific mechanics—many of which interact with each other in confusing ways.
Today, the League community discovered a new mechanic en masse on the game’s official subreddit. Swaths of players found out that Kalista earns credit for minion kills whenever the champion she’s tethered to via The Black Spear last hits a minion.
The discussion came via a Reddit thread asking why there aren’t more useful loading screen tips, and the original poster of the thread, a user named Bebeebap, gave some examples, some of which are listed below:
- “[ARAM] Relics heal more the lower your health is.”
- “Bushes light up everybody inside if you attack from them”
- “Kalista’s bound teammate gives minion last hits to Kalista!”
That last one in particular sparked a serious reaction from the community, with many players in the comments of the thread having no idea it was a mechanic. The only mention of the interaction is vaguely described in the passive effect of Kalista’s Sentinel (W) ability, which clues players in on bonus damage dealt by both entities, as well as an execute effect that finishes targets off when they’re below 125 HP.
“She only gets the last hit if both she and her support auto for her W passive damage,” one League player named TchicVG explained in the Reddit thread. “Last-hitting by her bound target doesn’t go to her automatically unless her W passive is being procced.”
Kalista and her partner both have to attack the same target for this mechanic to come into effect, so it’s not like you can tether yourself to a solo laner and get cross-map credit for CS kills while playing the champion. But well-coordinated lane partners can definitely make the most out of this part of her kit, especially now that more players know it even exists. If it made its way into the loading screen tip rotation (along with other important gameplay tidbits), I’m sure plenty of players would find it useful.
Personally, I’m all in favor of the game’s loading screen tips being more gameplay-oriented as opposed to getting a fun fact before a game. If I received a piece of game knowledge while loading onto the Rift, I’d likely be inclined to try it out in that game.
I know whenever I’m in a loading screen with my friends, we’ve often asked why there aren’t more loading screen tips that are applicable to the actual game. I’m not even joking, man, there’s a loading screen tip that says “Jax’s favorite food is eggs.” In what world is that going to help me? Is that going to be of any service when Jax is pummeling my team’s top lane inhibitor turret 12 minutes in? Like, “Oh great, their Jax is 7/0/0, maybe he’d love some sunny-side-ups right about now.”
Forget that. Give me something substantial, Riot Games.
