Paladins: Koga Guide (How to Play Koga)

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This is a guide to playing the new champion from 1.3, Koga. This guide was made because I haven’t seen many good Kogas out there. Koga is just a great champion to play and is hard to learn. I want to spread what I’ve learned from my many games of Koga and how you can be a good Koga too.

Other Paladins Guides:

Paladins Koga Guide

Koga is Paladins’ newest champion. He was introduced in Patch 1.3, titled Koga’s Revenge. Koga, (In my opinion of course) is one of the champions that has a high skill floor and an even higher skill ceiling. Koga can carry your games as he is just a really powerful pick. Not many people know how to counter him quite yet and so he’s even stronger.

This guide will go over his legendary cards (Talents), counters, priority picks, items, and other helpful tips and tricks to get better (and hopefully master), The Lost Hand.

Flanking

There is one important thing I need to tell you. Before we get into this guide. The role of a flank. I”m serious.

Flank characters really just want to keep the enemy backline as busy as possible. This means being really really annoying. They don’t necessarily need to kill the enemy. Keeping the enemy dps busy while the team fight goes to your team’s favor simply because the dps wasn’t able to do their bursts of damage. If you have distracted the BK and the healer in the backline for more than 15 seconds and you die. That’s totally ok. Your team has won because your tanks killed the enemy tanks without any healing and not enough damage hitting them. There’s a difference between feeding and doing your job. In that situation, where you died. That’s totally ok. However, if you always die without being a pain in the butt for the enemy team. That’s when you need to stop and rethink how you are playing. Maybe the flank class isn’t for you.

Now, onto the Guide.

Koga: A New Design

Koga is Paladins first character that does not have a cooldown system. Instead, he has an energy bar that has 3 charges. These charges are regenerated at around 4.5 seconds each. Now remember that, this is crucial to your success as a Koga player.

Koga is also Paladins’ first champion to have a different kind of vertical mobility: Wall Climbing. Koga’s ability to Wall Climb gets him to places that not many other champions can go. Keep in mind that when your wall climbing, your movement is really predictable and makes it easy for projectile champions to hit their shots. Use this extra mobility in areas that not many people on the enemy team can see you.

Legendary Cards / Talents Not to Use

When playing Koga there are only 2 legendary cards you want to be using. Adrenaline Junkie and Master of Arms. I’ll explain why in a bit. The other 2 cards are Blood Reaper and Dragon Fangs. I’ll explain why these 2 talents are the worst ones to use. This is non-negotiable your screwed if u use these legendaries.

Dragon Fangs

Dragon Fangs is based on your Dragon Stance ability. Instead of claws taking up valuable energy, it takes your health at a rate of 200 health per second.

DO NOT USE THIS CARD. I REPEAT. DO NOT USE THIS CARD

Most people who run this talent add life steal to Koga’s claws. This is so useless. Cauterize is such a powerful burn card that most people buy it instantly. Then your quote-unquote regeneration of health screws you over simply cause you don’t enough sustain at all. Koga’s mere 1900 health is nothing when bursted down by Impulse Cassie or a Sha Lin with good aim.

Blood Reaper

This talent is based around your Skewer ability. If you use skewer with 1 full bar, skewer does 1000 damage to your opponent. Any energy less is a percentage based off of 400 extra damage.

NEVER USE THIS CARD OR I’LL KILL YOU MYSELF WHILE YOU SLEEP

This extra 400 damage does not increase based whether you have more than 1 bar. It’s MAX damage only comes after ONE frickin (NOT ON MY CHRISTIAN MINECRAFT SERVER) BAR.

ONE BAR Not only that, skewer is SO BUGGY. I can make a list too:

Not hitting the target
Cancelling
Getting caught on random stuff
Random Teleportation
No damage

On top of all that, skewer takes up all your energy. THE MOST CRUCIAL PART OF YOUR KIT. Insult to injury, just insult to injury. It’s skewer is soo broken it’s like your spinning the wheel of misfortune. Like hey WHAT CRAPPY BUG ARE YOU GOING TO GET NEXT???

Legendary Cards You Actually Wanna Use

Alright now that I’m done ranting. Let’s get on to the stuff that’s actually useful to you. The talents that are going to be what is necessary to be the best Koga you want to be, are Adrenaline Junkie and Master of Arms.

Master of Arms
Master of Arms is my personal favorite. If you can hit successful shots on any opponents, the bullet doesn’t count and you keep it. This is my favorite card because it’s just so good in the current draft meta: 2 tanks, 1 damage, 1 flank, 1 healer. The 2 tanks are easier to fight against because you will never have to reload against them. Their hitboxes are the size of the moon so you should never have to reload against one. Reloading is the downfall of most characters and the pure negation of that helps you win more duels against other champions. Using agility along while your pumping out damage with your trusty rusty smgs makes it harder for your opponent to hit you while you pump out constant damage almost never having to reload.

Although, this shouldn’t always be your go to pick 100% of the time. Some champions have thinner, harder to hit htiboxes, Like Inara which is why you also want to be able to use the other talent. Adrenaline Junkie

Adrenaline Junkie
Adrenaline Junkie with the right build is just a beast. Shots with your smg charge your energy bar faster. Running the right loadout with this talent gives you tons of room for error. You are a stall G O D with the correct build.

The Best Way to Utilize Koga’s Abilities

I’m going to break this up into 2 categories to make it easier. Normal Stance and Dragon Stance. But I need to start first with something you should be using all the time. Agility.

Agility F
Agility increases your movement speed by 50% and increases your jump height. Agility lasts 4 seconds. Your energy charges fully charge up around 4.5 seconds. (remember that?) You have 3 bars of energy. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Koga Pro Wannabe, meet Agility, your primary ability of engagement. The 50% increased movement speed closes the gap between you and your targets. While also making it harder for them to hit you. Keep in mind that this makes it harder for you to hit them but that’s why you have ammo recharges in your loadout for right?

Normal Stance Abilities

SMGs Mouse 1 (unless your a random guy that uses like “Return” as shoot also highly recommend rebinding this to Alt + F4)

Pretty self-explanatory, hold W + M1. Point and Click adventure, have a great time. Watch the satisfaction of yellow circles and critical damage noises fill your brain as you go crazier and crazier. Also, learn to aim. I won’t teach you that. I’m teaching you how to pwn noobs k?

Shadow Step Right Mouse Button (I’ll call this dash ok? I don’t wanna deal with SHADOW STEPPING all the time)

Shadow Step dashes you forward in the direction you’re looking, like Androxus’ dash (Nether Step gosh do I have to be so specific?). One thing to note is that your dash is a cleanse. This means that it gets rid of stuff like cauterize, Tyra’s reveal etc. This is great because after you dash getting a heal off from Furia means you’ve got full health again and it’s uninterrupted by cauterize.

I do not endorse engage with Shadow Step. Paladins is a pretty bright place, and your shadow stepping. Making your champion ALL BLACK. Hmm, I wonder what’s easy to see in a bright place? Black. This is simply because once they see you coming, their crosshairs are set to you or they’ll use an escape ability. Making you use another dash and then they’ll get further away from you, slowly making their way towards the GIANT ULTING MAKOA WITH A BIG HAMMER ABOUT TO MESS YOU UP. Good thing you have an escape ability that makes you invulnerable to all damage and – whats that? You used them all? welp can’t help you there bud. You played yourself.

Koga’s Ult

Alright now to Koga’s ult.

Look Koga’s ult is awful. Cast time takes 10 billion years to go through and then the guys as it turns out, is as slow as a SNAIL. A SNAIL PROBABLY EVEN SLOWER.

But seriously, this is probably the weakest part of Koga right now. Not only that, it’s bugged. You can actually hit him at the last second of his ult. And there’s nothing he can do about it. He’s literally a sitting duck at the end of his ult. Did I mention that it takes FOREVER to charge? No? Now you know.

But if your wondering, use it on point. I’s area of damage is huge, basically, the entire point. Not only that, it does 3000 damage over the course of its 2 seconds of duration.

If you want to solo ult, bait out your targets movement ability, then ult. Their basically sitting ducks and you can laugh as they are cut to pieces by your sheer skill of pressing E. Wow you’re a pro.

Loadouts

Alright, now there are 2 loadouts I highly recommend having. 1 for the Master of Arms talent, and 1 for Adrenaline Junkie. Keep in mind these Loadouts are built for my playstyle. These loadout cards are all very good cards and I will also recommend other cards after I’m done.

Master of Arms Loadout

Trigger Happy: 4
Harsh Training: 1
Raw Talent: 2
Wind’s Embrace: 4
Tenacious: 4

This is my current loadout for Master of Arms. Constant firing, means constant increased healing from Trigger Happy. Trigger Happy also negates the effects of cauterize by the same amount. So my load out has 40% increased healing which is based off of the healing affected by cauterize. This also affects life rip and kill to heal just extra healing and sustain. I have Wind’s Embrace simply because agility is my primary form of engagement. As it should be. The healing is also boosted by Trigger Happy so I have more sustain. I added Tenacious 4 simply because I like the sustain during a 1 v 1 duel. Having extra healing is just great and it’s helps with your duels and escapes. Extra speed for agility is pretty self explanatory.

Adrenaline Junkie

Tenacious: 5
Surprise!: 5
Raw Talent: 2
Something to Prove: 2
Harsh Training: 1

Adrenaline Junkie’s loadout is a more up in your face kind of playstyle. Since you don’t have the magic ammo clip from Master of Arms, your forced to having ammo built in to it. That’s where Surprise! comes in. It’s really a rinse and repeat of the following things:

Counters

That’s where you’re wrong. You can be countered. Easily. Your dashes can be timed so that you take damage at the end of your dash. You are also countered by deathballs. There’s really nothing you can do about deathballs. Unless you have your ult. Then say BYE BYE to the deathballs.

I don’t want to do a character specific list since there’s a lot of champions and I don’t really feel like explaining everything about them(Besides I’m going to do a 1 tip for every champion with Koga so I don’t really want to go too in depth). So here’s a blanket statement about the characters you don’t want to deal with.

Burst Characters
(1000+ damage in less than 1 second)
Burst characters SUCK. You are Koga. You have smgs. You have 1900 base health. Your max health is 2100. I don’t know a worse arrangement that sucks more. Seriously. Less than 1 second and you’re already down to less than 50% hp. Now you have to hide and you haven’t done your job. See my reasoning?

Crippless
Seriously, everything in your kit counts as a movement ability. Let’s list your abilities:

Agility? Nah, movement ability
Shadow Step? Movement ability
Dragon Stance? How is this even useful?
Skewer? Bugged
Your ult? probably still charging because 100000000 headshots doesn’t give ult charge apparently.

And what does that leave you with? Nothing. You’re screwed. Ladies and Gentlemen, we got em. I could go into character specifics later, but I don’t really want to. Maybe later.

Tips and Tricks

A General Koga Tip

The best Koga’s can are the ones that can be efficient with their energy. This is why I said to engage with Agility. What’s not to love about it? You can get into your preferred range with Koga at the expense of 1 health bar which is also regenerating as you use it. Now your back to 3 and you can use agility again. This is truly my best tip. I can’t stress enough how many times I myself have died because I was stupid enough to engage with Shadow Step. The distance you can cover with Agility is much more than what you cover with Shadow Step. It’s just a better option. Use your shadow step when you absolutely need to.

A Simple Trick

Don’t forget that you have a wall climb. If you are low and are running away from an enemy get around a corner and climb. My time playing Drogoz has taught me that no one looks up. So if you find a suitable wall climb, this may be enough time for your regen to kick in or a charge of your energy may come giving you an escape. You may even be high enough to get healing from a healer due to the line of sight.

Smart Utility

If you need to escape a hairy situation and you have 3 charges, don’t waste them all on dashes. At least have 1 charge used for agility. You can cover more ground with agility and you also are harder to hit if you have good movement. I personally do a dash, dash, run. Since I have the healing cards on my dash I get some of my health back. Then if I’m not back with my team, I have 1 more charge left because I used agility instead of a dash which gets a regen of charge.

A Paladins Tip for ANY Champion

Ok, I lied. Being efficient with energy isn’t the best tip I can give you. The very best tip I can give you is learning to play other characters. Seriously. There are different mindsets to when you play other characters. Understanding what you are facing is much better than understanding efficiency. Understanding the game mechanics of other characters helps you out in the long run. Then you understand timings that will help you out in your duels. I can list everything I can about how I beat this champion or this champion but at the end of the day, I am not you. You need to learn this by failing. Timing isn’t something you learn overnight. It takes hundreds of games to understand that.