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.

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The official Caitlyn bundles and champion skins included in her patch have been announced. For the Sheriff of Piltover you’ll be able to purchase Sheriff Cait…wait, what? Yes, the Sheriff has a purchasable Sheriff Caitlyn skin. It’s a good looking skin, but why on earth isn’t that her default? Her second skin is Resistance Caitlyn, which also looks really nice.

We finally get to see Surgeon Shen and, at his side, looking sexy as ever, Nurse Akali. A short note on that – Look at Nurse Akali’s outfit. It’s hot, and yet her nipples aren’t on the verge of springing loose from her top. Riot, pay attention when the artist responsible for that skin has ideas on other champions. Caitlyn seriously looks like you chopped off Sona’s top half and pasted it onto a different pair of legs.

We’re now more than two weeks past the Cassiopeia release date, which puts Caitlyn outside the normal release window. Though I’ve been excited to see her launch, I’ve actually enjoyed the extra time. That’s a little silly to say since I haven’t been playing much LoL lately, but it’s nice that I’ve been able to indulge in some other games without worrying that I’ll be falling behind in my understanding of new champions and mechanics.

I’d really like to see Riot stick to a three or even four week release schedule, and instead focus patch weight on champion changes and balance tweaks. There is still a lot to be done for the game, and though I know Riot says balance and new champion design are two different departments, I’m sure the two processes are similar enough to reallocate some manpower.

Evelynn still hasn’t received her oft-rumored remake, and several designers have been quoted recently as saying jungle Eve puts too much stress on the enemy team. That’s something that needs addressed fairly quickly in my mind, even if there aren’t many Eve players out there. Gangplank has also been slated for a review/remake for some time, yet he remains unchanged.

I’m guessing we’ll see a return to the champion-every-two-weeks model of development once the holidays have passed, but sometimes it’s nice to dream a bit.

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Here it is, folks. Caitlyn’s skill list has been announced via the usual ‘Champion Approaches‘ post, giving us a look at her abilities and her artwork. From the sound of things, her skills are indeed a good bit different from Miss Fortune’s, but I’m still not impressed by her art design. She’s a sheriff, right? So why is she wearing a costume dress with a crinoline poking out underneath? Maybe she’s the sheriff of the circus. I’m not trying to play the feminism card here, but why not put her in a duster and a wide-brim hat and make the skin shown a purchasable skin? My two cents, as always. On to the skill list.

Piltover Peacemaker: Caitlyn revs up her rifle for 1 second to unleash a penetrating shot which deals physical damage (deals less damage to subsequent targets).

Yordle Snap Trap: Caitlyn sets a trap to reveal sneaky yordles. When sprung, the trap immobilizes the champion and deals magic damage over 1.5 seconds.

90 Caliber Net: Caitlyn fires a heavy net to slow her target. The recoil knocks Caitlyn back.

Ace in the Hole (Ultimate): Caitlyn takes time to line up the perfect shot, dealing massive damage to a single target at a huge range. Enemy champions can intercept the bullet for their ally.

Headshot (Passive): Every 8 attacks (attacks while in brush count as 2), Caitlyn will fire a headshot, dealing either 150% damage to a champion or 250% damage to a minion.

Wait, she has a skill called Ace in the Hole? Is she TF’s lover? Wasn’t it the burglar she couldn’t catch that was leaving the playing cards
? So many questions for the design department on this one. Okay, back to the skills. I promise.

She definitely sounds like an interesting control champion, and it looks like she’ll be able to play as both AP and AD, which is nice. It sounds like her Q is a bit like Mystic Shot on Ezreal, just that it goes through units. That should give her some good farming capability, but might make harassment a little too easy. We’ll have to see what the range is like.

If you look at one of the screenshots I’ve linked, you can see that she has two traps down at golem at once. Granted, she could have run away after setting one, but that seems like an odd thing for Riot to put into a screenshot. I’m guessing traps have a fairly short CD, maybe low enough to let her jungle?

The net sounds like it could be good for running away, but not so much for chasing. It makes me wonder again about the cooldown. The only reason I could see for the knockback would be so that she can’t chain snares on you, but that seems strange.

I always loved Dwarven Sniper from Dota, so I’m excited about her ult, even if it is poorly named (there was a blog that thought her ult might be named ‘The Long Arm,’ which seems more appropriate). I like that Riot has taken away some of the frustration of playing against Sniper by allowing allies to block the shot. I don’t know how often that will be a good idea, but at least it gives a teammate the option to save you.

That’s it for now. As always, I’ll be playing her on release (actually might have to buy her – I’m running low on IP since the Cataclysm release) and posting my play impressions shortly after launch. It’s not clear when we’ll actually see her, but I would guess Thursday. Maybe we’ll get lucky and she’ll show up a day early.