The servers are up and running but, for those of you stuck at work or away from your gaming machine, the Caitlyn spotlight is also available. Her skill set seems strangely defensive, although to be honest, I haven’t had a chance to play her yet. My impressions should be up later today or early tomorrow.

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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.