Hello, I'm Sam, or otherwise known as e36 and this is my roam Catherine guide for how I play her successfully in both ranked and competitive matches.
I am most well known for my Catherine play, and she is easily my favorite hero to play. The way she can drastically change team fights is extremely fun and very appealing to play. She's also very good to play in solo queue, as you can carry games easily by playing her effectively.
I hope you enjoy!
- Sam (e36)
Captain of the Guard
"Catherine gains 1 armor & shield every time she stuns or silences an enemy hero with her abilities."
Catherine's heroic perk gives her 1 shield and armor for each enemy she lands a stun or silence onto. While relatively weak in the early game, it scales very well into the late game, giving
Catherine a lot of extra tankiness. To gain a lot of extra stacks, stay in lane to stun the enemy laner whenever possible without overextending. Be careful not to put yourself in a bad position or use stun at a time when it might better soon be used in a different scenario.
"Catherine gains a burst of move speed. Her next basic attack is replaced by a powerful stun attack. Resets basic attack cooldown on activation."
Easily one of the best abilities in the game,
Catherine’s A ability
Merciless Pursuit has immense utility and many situational uses. Once activated, it gives her a boost of movement speed, resets her basic attack cooldown and makes the next basic attack a stun with a duration that scales with the level of the ability. Similar to
Glaive’s
Afterburn,
Catherine’s
Merciless Pursuit is an amazing escape tool with the bonus move speed combined with a stun. If
Catherine has a decent amount of energy, she is nearly impossible to catch when running away and is great at preventing uses.
Merciless Pursuit has a 3 second window to use the stun once activated, so if the enemy uses
Reflex Block, wait to stun them until the
Reflex Block wears off.
The stun part of
Merciless Pursuit has many situational uses. It is best used when close to an enemy hero since it makes it much harder to use
Reflex Block, and is the best ability in the game for cancelling enemy abilities. For example, you can use
Merciless Pursuit to cancel a
Skaarf,
Ringo,
Ardan or
Adagio ultimate and easily change the course of a fight. Be careful in doing this from a distance, however, as it might put you out of position or be easily reflexed blocked.
Merciless Pursuit is also great for protecting your teammates that are getting dived on. Use the stun on melee heroes that diving on top of your carries, allowing them to stay alive and create distance to remain dealing damage. You can easily zone the enemy away from your team by properly using
Merciless Pursuit.
You can also use
Merciless Pursuit to hold enemies in place to combo with other abilities, or to silence them from using activatable items in key situations.
Merciless Pursuit is great for setting up plays to combine with other crowd control (cc) abilities like
Joule’s
Rocket Leap or
Celeste’s
Core Collapse. Additionally, you can use
Merciless Pursuit on a roam hero when their teammates are low health or when a major crowd control ability is about to hit the enemy like an
Adagio ultimate to prevent them from using
Crucible or
Fountain of Renewal to save their teammates.
- Try not to engage from a distance with
Merciless Pursuit unless you know for certain that the enemy cannot block it.
- Don’t engage onto a team that is full health with
Merciless Pursuit, as you will be overextended and with the recent changed to
Stormguard, you will get deleted instantly. Instead, use it on someone who is out of position to secure a kill or peel for your teammates.
"Activates a pulsating bubble that burns nearby enemies and deflects damage above 77 (+7 per level) to nearby enemies. Each deflection reduces the shield duration by 0.5 second.
Overdrive: Damage reflected by this ability is increased by 25%."
Catherine’s
Stormguard bubble is interesting in that each time she takes damage over 77 (+7 per level), she will reflect that damage onto the enemies. Each time she takes damage, the duration of the shield is reduced by .5 seconds, so be careful not to overextend and take too much damage so that the bubble expires quickly. Part of being an expert
Catherine is knowing how much damage you can take before you should disengage and wait for the
Stormguard to be off of CD. Through practice, try and know when the shield is going to drop so you can disengage and reengage when
Stormguard is available again. If done correctly, you can remain at full health or close to it through most of the fight while still adequately protecting your teammates. Use
Stormguard to bait the enemy into using high damaging abilities against you. Before the ability is about to land, activate
Stormguard to deflect a lot of damage back at them. For example, in the laning phase and throughout the game you can often bait out
Phinn’s
Quibble by doing this. Against mage heroes, stand on top of your teammates to force the enemy to either not target your teammate or deal damage to themselves with the reflections.
Upgrade Priority:
Upgrading
Stormguard gives it a slightly lower cooldown at each level, and when overdriven, the reflect damage is increased by 25%. Max
Stormguard first when playing against mages like
Celeste and
Skaarf, and any hero that does a lot directional damage with skillshots like
Kestrel or a CP
Joule. Maxing
Stormguard is also good against a
Ringo since he can’t do any damage to you while
Stormguard is up, allowing you to get close and use Atlas Cauldron and
Merciless Pursuit. Otherwise, take the overdrive on
Merciless Pursuit for the extra stun duration.
Blast Tremor
"Catherine slams the ground, damaging & silencing enemies in a large cone in front of her."
Easily one of the most disruptive abilities in the game,
Catherine’s
Blast Tremor provides devastating crowd control in the form of an AOE silence. The effectiveness of
Blast Tremor is entirely dependent on how good you are at timing it, and how well you can conceal its usage from the enemy. Usually, not using silence at the beginning of a fight is the best option, as it is much harder for the enemy to block it if you wait until there is more action taking place. The area of
Catherine’s silence is cone shaped, so in order to get all 3 enemies in the silence, take a step back before using it. To virtually guarantee a silence landing, use
Blast Tremor from behind the Kraken or a place where you are hidden from vision like behind a wall or in a bush.
For maximum effect, try to time
Blast Tremor with the activation of major abilities from your teammates to prevent your enemy from being able to react to them. For example, using
Blast Tremor before an
Adagio ultimate lands can be devastating for the enemy team. You can also combine
Catherine’s
Blast Tremor with
Vox’s
Wait for It to silence the enemy team for virtually the entire fight.
- Don’t engage with
Blast Tremor unless you know you are going to land it, as it is easy to block or prepare for and the enemy can often just run away and wait for the silence to expire before reengaging.
- Try not to use it when the enemies are all at a distance from your teammates, as it will be hard for them to properly take advantage of the silence.
- Do NOT use
Blast Tremor to finish off a kill, unless it is for an ACE or it is late game and you have some CD build and you know that it will be available for the next engagement.
Start the game with
Ironguard Contract because
Catherine is very squishy in the early game and is also very energy hungry. With recent changes to
Ironguard Contract, it restores energy as well when big lane minions are killed, making it very effective for clearing jungle and going to lane to get some energy and health back. Depending on how comfortable I am with the jungle matchup, I’m not really scared to be aggressive in the early game with
Catherine. If you time your ability correctly and have good positioning,
Catherine can be very strong in the early game. After the initial aggression, it is usually best to camp out in the lane, and rotate if needed to jungle.
Catherine is extremely mobile, and can get to the jungle to help teammates out very quickly. This allows you to be very active around the map, and an extreme annoyance to the enemy.
The mid game is all about putting pressure on the lane with the objective of putting the enemy laner behind. Call for ganks a lot to get a numbers advantage to be able to then put pressure on the enemy jungle. Having control of the lane allows you to then be able to easily rotate to the jungle to push objectives and contest enemy minion camps. Focus on getting your own laner fed, while at the same time making the enemy laner’s life really bad. Annoy him by stunning and using your
Stormguard to attempt to put him on tilt and behind in farm.
Catherine is one of the best heroes for being a general annoyance to the enemy team. In the mid-game, once she gets some cooldown,
Catherine is almost unkillable allowing
Catherine comes into play most in the late game, as this is where most of the crucial fights will take place.
Catherine is extremely good at engaging with a combination of
Merciless Pursuit,
War Treads,
Blast Tremor, etc. She excels at team fights, so focus on preparing for team fights by placing a lot of vision and executing your skills in the fights.
In team fights, try and bait out major enemy abilities like
Phinn’s
Forced Accord. You can overextend a little bit to do this, but never get into a position where you will get deleted instantly. Depending on your comp and the enemies, you will either want to engage onto the enemy or stay back with your team. If the enemy has a dive composition, stay back and peel for your team. Similarly, if your team composition is one that needs to engage onto the enemy, you can easily do so in a number of different ways.
Catherine is extremely good at kiting back, then hard engaging out of nowhere and completely turning fights around. By saving
Blast Tremor for later in the engagements, you will increase the chances of landing the ability and usually increase the effect of it.
Prime Directive
Active Camo
Glimmershot
Krul
Thank you for reading! I hope you found it useful. Send any questions you may have to 
Quick Comment () View Comments
You need to log in before commenting.