The one-shot machine
Thanks to multiple buffs to her kit and to items like Infinity Edge, Caitlyn deals insane amounts of damage with her headshots and ultimate ability.
In this guide you'll learn all about her so you can kill your opponents with a single basic attack.
Abilities
Her passive lets you "headshot" opponents every 5th attack. This headshot deals a lot more damage which also scales with your Critical Strike Chance. If you are attacking inside a bush you will get twice as many stacks.
Your Q is your waveclear tool. It deals full damage only to the first and trapped targets and half to everything else; it also expands and gets a bigger hitbox.
W is the highest damage dealing ability in your kit (your ult may deal more damage sometimes) which is why it's important to land them and not waste them either. When you trap someone you will be able to headshot them from up to 1300 range but also deal even more damage than with your passive.
Your E is a dash which goes to the opposite direction of where you casted it. If you land the net you also get a free headshot with bonus range but no additional damage.
Nothing much to your ult, it's a point and click projectile that can be body blocked and only damages the first person hit.
Summoner Spells
Ever since Ghost got nerfed Heal is always the best option to take.
Runes
In patch 14.10 First Strike got changed nerfing the amount of gold you get based on the damage it deals BUT they heavily increased the base gold you get by simply using it. Because of this change you should look to proc it off cooldown since now you can get way more gold than normal. The damage increase synergizes amazingly with Caitlyn as well.
You take Magical Footwear instead of Cash Back since it would take essentially 3 full item purchases to outvalue it. Unless you have a lane where you really want early boots, but those are pretty rare these days since stacking AD is so OP.
Items
As always there's no reason to buy anything else at the start of the game.
Tips & Tricks
- During almost all your animations and cast times you are actually able to put down traps. You can do it as you're dashing with your E for example.
- Similarly you can cast your Q while travelling with your Net. Simply press E and Q instantly after; the Q will travel from the direction in which the dash started.
- Because of these E interactions it's important to practice these multicasts since you can use the E slow to set up your own W traps or simply have better self peel by doing 2 animations at once to better zone opponents away from you.
- You start out with 3 W charges and only gain more as you put multiple points into the spell so you have to be careful of when are you actually using traps. Since you really want that extra headshot damage be aware of when it's better to use it for zoning opposed to guaranteed damage. It's not a bad habit to keep 1 charge available.
- The easiest way to guarantee your trap damage is to use it on your ally's CC but even this might be harder than you think. Your W needs 1 second to arm so pay attention to your positioning and memorize how certain abilities (Like Thresh's hook) will move champions so you don't waste your traps.
- Because you get your passive headshots twice as fast when attacking inside a bush try to do this when fighting in lane or during jungle teamfights.
- Using your ult for poke can be very good sometimes. This can make tower dives easier early game for example. Later into the game if you can hit a squishy carry who isn't near anyone who can block it for him it can be a good idea to chunk them down before a teamfight so they have to try and enter with half their HP.
- Your main gameplan during laning phase is to constantly push into your enemies turret, get platings and put traps between the tower and the wall or under the tower where the camera can't see it to make it very hard for the enemy to last hit under tower. If done properly jungle ganks aren't too scary because the enemy botlane would be too low HP to even fight.