When I first saw Caitlyn’s champion spotlight, I was surprised by her defensive skill set. Her trap, her net, even her ultimate to some degree, are skills to be used to get out of trouble or while you’re well out of trouble’s range. Despite her great range, she didn’t have anything that made me think, ‘oh, that’s how you get kills with her.’ I’ve played a decent number of games with her now and not much has changed.
On the surface, Caitlyn’s design concept is pretty cool. She has big range, an auto attack modifier on her passive, and her skills scale with attack damage, meaning that armor penetration you’re packing is worth something. The deeper and unfortunate truth is that Caitlyn’s usefulness is inversely related to the length of the game. The longer the game lasts, the less effective you become. Here comes the skill breakdown.
Piltover Peacemaker is a great skill in the early game. It hits hard (more than 100 damage at rank one with just a Doran’s Blade), especially if you’re packing armor pen. runes, and it helps you get a big farm going. Once the teamfighting starts, it’s a great tool for hitting multiple targets at once. Unfortunately, the one second cast time means you’ll probably miss here and there, and using it during a chase pretty much guarantees you won’t catch your target. Attack speed items, assuming you have your damage built, also steal its usefulness because it just makes more sense to auto attack after a certain point. That said, this skill is great for snagging a kill through a wall or checking brush, and it still hits a squishy hard in the late game. Of all her skills, this one scales best.
Yordle Snap Trap was sort of doomed from its inception. It’s an interesting concept, but in play, there just isn’t a good balance point. The trap never seems to arm quickly enough, and the stun has only ever helped me get away or kill a reviving Zilean. The fact that they are visible makes them easily avoidable (is she catching blind yordles?) and teamfights are typically mobile enough these days that the trap seems useless. It can be good as a sort of ward, and it will occasionally save you from a gank, but the fact that you’re limited to two of these means, more often than not, you won’t have them where you need them.
90 Cailber Net could have been a really nice skill for Caitlyn. Instead, it’s this weird snare/escape hybrid with conflicting functionality. The skill actually knocks you back when you cast it, so you have to cast behind you if you want to chase with it, wasting the slow effect. If you slow someone with it, you’ve blown yourself away from them which is pretty much only good if someone is chasing you. Unfortunately, the slow isn’t enough to save you from those people in a lot of cases, so you better have a trap ready. It can throw you over walls, like a mini-flash, but you move so slowly, both when you run and as a result of the knockback, that players rarely have trouble catching you. This is a really bizarre skill to me. I’d love to hear Riot’s design process. Were they worried it would be too OP? Look at MF. She’s got an AoE slow without some weird, compromising, ever so situationally useful secondary effect attached.
As her ultimate, Caitlyn has the poorly named and woefully executed Ace in the Hole. It’s a snipe that, though it never misses, can be intercepted by a teammate mid-flight. I say woefully executed because it was a great thought. Dwarven Sniper was a lot of fun to play, but it really sucked if he pulled out ahead of your team. Squishy toons just got bombed from a mile away with no chance to avoid death. The intercept idea was pretty cool, but it’s really frustrating as Caitlyn for a couple reasons. First, her ult doesn’t hit very hard. Even when you have a ton of damage her ultimate feels really underwhelming. Interceptors often just shrug off the hit instead of being significantly damaged as a result. Second, the projectile is slow, making it really easy to intercept. Last is the cast time. As an attack damage champion, you’re losing a lot of potential damage by stopping to channel that ult. It is good for quick skirmishes, mostly to tag a champion for some assist gold, but in a teamfight you’re losing damage by stopping to channel her ult, and I can almost guarantee you won’t hit your target.
On the whole, Caitlyn’s abilities rely too heavily on channels without the added benefit of AoE or heavy single target damage. By mid to late game you’ll be better off auto attacking than using your skills, and your skills don’t compliment an auto attack playstyle. She ultimately fails because of a confused design that is too tied to concept with little attention paid to practical application.
