Reset, Rinse, Repeat. A Beginners Guide to Katarina by BloodWalk

I can almost guarantee that at some point since your very first game (Maybe even your first) you've been unfortunate enough to experience the incredible frustration of playing against Katarina.

You can probably remember the sheer anguish you experienced as a seemingly easy teamfight turned into a 0-5 Ace in a matter of seconds, or a well organised gank suddenly collapses as you facecheck a brush, only to hear the distinct *Clink* of Bouncing Blades, followed by a flurry of abilities as the screen flashes to grey and the announcer's catch-cry of ~"you have been slain"~ broadcasts through your headphones, leaving you in a state of ambivalence, a mixture of shock and anger as the inevitable "Who fed Katarina" message appears in your chat bar.

If you've ever had this experience, then this guide will help you understand how to play, and play against Katarina. Well, like I always say "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!"

I personally love playing Katarina, she is a mobile, melee, reset based assassin generally played in the midlane, but she is not a stranger to toplane. I like her midlane capabilities due to the shorter lane size coupled with her harass and ability to roam. I've been playing Katarina since around the first quarter of season 2. After parsing my LoL client I found that I have totalled a considerable amount of playtime as Kat, around 100+ hours in about 6 months of casual play. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but I'm sure I can at least offer some insight for beginning Katarina players.

So let's begin with some of the pros and cons of Katarina.

PROS
-Fun to play
-Insane multi target damage
-Easy to learn, but hard to master
-Her ability to snowball is incredible

CONS
-Very weak early game
-prone to being the focus of the enemy team
-Very vulnerable to any Crowd Control effects
-Reliant on getting resets to chain kills/assists

However, many, many new players might see someone absolutely steamroll an entire game and decide "Hey Kat is sooooo op," play their first game and end up playing insanely bad. To fully understand how Kat works you need to look at the basics, I'm not going to go into specifics here (damage numbers with specific items, ranges, cooldowns at specific levels etc.).

Let's start with her passive and basic abilities:

Katarina's passive is quite possibly the most important part of her kit, as it refreshes the cooldowns of her basic abilities and takes 15 seconds off her ult on kills or assists. It's designed so that after a minimum of 3 kills/assists removing all of her cooldowns, and allowing for very fast paced teamfights, where Katarina is constantly able to pull of her combo multiple consecutive times.

 

Katarina's Q is called "Bouncing Blades" (referred to from now on as B.B) it is primarily used to poke and set up ability combinations. After casting it, the blade bounces to up to 5 enemies, doing reduced damage with each hit; an enemy can only be hit once by a single cast of B.B.

After B.B hits an enemy champion or minion it marks them. Any of Katarina’s other abilities will detonate the mark which deals extra magic damage.

You will want to take a point in this skill at Level 1 and use it to secure early minion kills and leash jungle buffs for your jungler. Because Katarina is a melee champion, if you are against a ranged caster you may want to take a few more points in B.B after level 3, while still taking points in her W so you have follow up for when you decide to go "all in." Try putting a point in her Q, then W and continue alternating this point allocation, so both skills are maxed at roughly the same time.

 

Katarina's W is called "Sinister Steel" (referred to as S.S) S.S is a player centred AOE type ability that hits all enemies in a small circle around Katarina. S.S will detonate marks applied by B.B and gives Katarina a small movement speed buff when it hits an enemy champion. I prefer to leave it in a teamfight to unleash a devastating finish to her ultimate "Death Lotus."

I recommend taking a point in S.S at level 2 and putting a point in it at every level possible after level 3 if you are laning against melee mid champions, such as Zed, Gragas, Akali etc... This makes sure you can maximise the amount of hurt you can bring to a close quarter trade during the early stages of the game. The movement speed buff is also very useful for retreating from a sticky situation while you wait for Shunpo to come off cooldown.

 

The last of the basic abilities is called "Shunpo" (called S.P from now on) and it is a short range teleport. The target of Shunpo can be pretty much anything, friend or foe I.e. friendly wards, teammates, enemies, minions/jungle creeps, certain champion abilities; Jarvan 4's flag, Zac's Cell division passive blobs, Thresh lanterns, so basically anything with a hp bar.

S.P deals a small amount of magic damage when cast so it’s not going to be your primary damage dealing skill. S.P is probably one of the best short range TP abilities in game, for the fact that it places you behind whatever you TP to, a trait that many players forget during the confusion of a fight, this aspect shines brightest when used against skillshot based champions like Ahri and Ezreal, because you can almost completely negate any kind of damage done in a combo, simply by timing S.P so that you are behind them when they fire off their skillshots.

 

Now comes the second most important part of Katarina's kit, her ultimate ability "Death Lotus." Death Lotus is one of those ults that can swing a fight in your favour very quickly; it is a multi-target ability that deals an insane amount of magic damage to the closest three enemies over the course of a 2.5 second channel. The scaling on her ultimate is both AD and AP so it's mixed damage, which makes it surprising effective against the majority of an enemy team.

The fact that Death Lotus is such a devastating ult means that an enemy will try to CC Katarina ASAP during her channel, which basically means charging into a 1v5 normally turns out horribly against anyone with any sort of CC. What you want to try to do, is stay back for a bit, at least until you see most of their CC get used on your teammates, then jump in on the lowest health target and send their team through a spin cycle.

 

Some possible items

Item builds are mostly situational on Kat, here are just a few items that I've seen/played around with and tried to build as core for many of my games:

Sorcerer's Boots, more movement speed and magic penetration, perfect for Kat, depending on how the game is going. There are two distinct choices as to what enchantments you might want. Furor, for an increased MS buff from her W, or Homeguard, for turtling when you need to.

 

Rabadon's Deathcap is a must, I almost always rush it first, going back at around the 6-8 minute mark to pick up the Needlessly Large Rod needed to build it. It's a simple tactic especially at lower levels/elo, it's a risky buy at higher levels, or against certain champs, (Leblanc for example) but you needn't worry about that for now. The ability power given by the passive increases based on a % of your total AP, meaning with a few items, it can give you around ~124 extra AP.

 

Zhonya's hourglass is a decent buy at around mid-game, where you need a huge damage spike, but are still very squishy. The stasis active is great for saving your own life or delaying an engage from the enemy team. Coupled with a Quicksilver sash, it can completely wipe any negative debuffs you have.

 

Deathfire Grasp is a good item on most ap assassins. I'm not a huge fan on using it on Kat, but the ability power given by it works great with the Rabadon's Deathcap passive. The only reason I don't recommend it is just because it is a fairly expensive item, and gives you very little space to build defence.

 

Abyssal Scepter is great; it lowers magic resist of nearby enemies and gives a fair amount to you as well. It's a great first item when you are laning against someone like LeBlanc, where surviving laning phase is a priority. Or for later in the game when the other team builds magic resist.

 

Liandry's Torment is a great item on Kat, a 2-4% health DOT coupled with more magic penetration helps chunk down those tanky toplaners, or a pesky Gragas, the percentage health damage is doubled from 2% when the enemy taking damage is movement impaired (Slowed, stunned etc.).

 

Hextech Gunblade...Please, Never buy this item, it really only comes into play if you are so far ahead that you won't even notice the spellvamp effect anyway. Just, don't build it, it was good after her rework, but it's not as good as other items now, there are better items...however, it's your choice, it's never black and white as to what to build in a game so if you think it will help, go for it.

 

So there you have it, my beginner's guide to building and playing Katarina, hope you made it through it, GLHF all.

~Bloodwalk