Introduction Top
This is a short and sweet guide to playing a tanky, versatile support Catherine.
The purpose of Catherine is to be the guardian angel for your teammates when they get into trouble and keeping them alive, while also sticking to the scariest enemy carry to mitigate their damage and help burst them down as fast as possible.
Be aggressive, you should almost always be in the front line of any team fight, initiating with your stun and soaking damage like the tank you are.
Skill Build Top
Merciless Pursuit - this is your main ability. Use it for damage, use it to gank, use it to peel enemies and save your teammates, use it to run away like a little girl if you have to.
Level it first and foremost, pick its overdrive.
Stormguard - this ability makes you a tank, if used correctly. Any damage over a certain threshold is reflected back at nearby enemies. However, any damage BELOW the threshold will not reflect the damage, but will still reduce the duration of the shield. This means taking small amounts of damage very quickly from multiple sources (i.e. getting attacked by Petal munions, standing next to an enemy Catherine who also has her shield up) can potentially remove your shield in no time, without reflecting any damage. Luckily the cooldown is very low (4 seconds when maxed out), so even if it gets burned out quickly, you can have it up again in no time.
Since its overall and overdrive damage were buffed in 1.9, I recommend picking its overdrive over
Blast Tremor in most situations.
Blast Tremor - this ability can make or break team fights, especially in the mid / late game. Silencing an enemy prevents them from using abilities AND items. This means supports cannot pop
Fountain of Renewal or
Atlas Pauldron or
Crucible to save their team from huge damage, and nobody can run away using
Journey Boots. See "How to Team Fight" below for more details on using this ability effectively in team fights.
I do not recommend picking this ability's overdrive, as the only benefits are a decrease in cooldown by 20 seconds, an extra half second of silence, and a slight increase in damage. The cooldown reduction is nice, the silence duration increase is pretty negligible, and you can potentially deal much more damage over the course of a teamfight with an overdriven
Stormguard by comparison.
1 - Early Game (Start / First Rotation) Top
Start with
Ironguard Contract, 1
Halcyon Potion, and either 1
Flare Gun or a 2nd
Halcyon Potion. The flare is a must if there's an enemy
Taka, and is generally useful to use on their shop bush / tri-bush if you want to go for some harass damage or attempt to push their jungle.
After the first jungle rotation, buy
Sprint Boots and a
Scout Trap. If you cleared jungle fast enough, you may have to wait a few seconds to get enough money for the trap.
Either trap your own shop bush / tri-bush for defensive vision and go back to farming, or push their jungle and go for a fight (drop the trap at your feet as the fight breaks out for potential extra damage). Make a judgment call based on who your jungler is and who their junglers are, and whether you think you can win an early team fight. If the enemy has a a significant amount of stun / damage (such as
Catherine /
Glaive), it may not be a good idea to invade. If they have heroes that require heavy farm, such as a
Krul, and you have dual stuns, it would be very wise to push into their jungle.
Don't forget to pop a
Halcyon Potion early if you do get into a fight. The earlier you do, the more effective HP you'll have over the fight's duration.
Whenever possible, if their laner pushes too far up, go for a lane gank with
Merciless Pursuit. Worst case scenario, they get away, but you got some harass damage and an armor/shield charge from stunning them.
2 - Core Build Top
Rush a
Fountain of Renewal as your first item, buying
Scout Traps in between the components as needed.
Having a Fountain earlier than the enemy team gives you an enormous advantage in team fights. As soon as you have your Fountain, you should be playing aggressively as a team, either trying to take a turret or invading their jungle to force a fight.
Buy enough traps to give your team good vision in the early game, but not so many that it delays your Contraption too much. Place traps to provide vision in their tri-bush, lane bush, and shop bush.
Once you take your first major team fight, take the gold mine, and keep that miner beefed up with a
Minion Candy as often as possible. 1.10 will cut the duration of the candy buff on jungle creeps by half (60 seconds down -> 30 seconds), but otherwise they continue to output the same insane amounts of damage, so it's still very much worth it to keep the gold miner candied whenever there is even a slight possibility of the enemy team going for it. Keep that ***** buffed.
Get
Contraption as your second major item. I see a lot of guides suggest Warhorn rather than Contraption, but I much prefer team coordination and vision to some run speed. Vision wins games.
Place traps in every bush, drop them during team fights, and if there's an enemy Taka, always keep a charge up so you reveal him when he pops his invis.
After Fountain and Contraption, upgrade Sprint Boots to
Travel Boots.
3 - Save Your Team Top
Your third major item should be a defensive item based on what the enemy team is building.
If the enemy has any carry with high attack speed, and especially with weapon power (i.e.
Krul,
SAW,
Ringo), build an
Atlas Pauldron.
If the enemy has carries with high crystal power, or stuns that can prevent your squishy carries from kiting or channeling abilities (i.e.
Joule,
Ardan,
Celeste), build
Crucible. Activating it gives your entire team a
Reflex Block buff, preventing them from getting stunned and absorbing a bunch of damage.
It may not be a bad idea to buy both of these. Remember, saving your teammates is your #1 priority.
(Don't Be a Selfish Prick) Top
These only provide benefit to you, and none to your team. Your job is to save your team, not yourself. If you die every team fight but your team wins the fights, your mission was accomplished.
4 - How to Team Fight Top
FIND THE ENEMY CARRY. SMACK HIM AROUND WITH
Merciless Pursuit. STICK TO HIM LIKE AN OVERLY ATTACHED GIRLFRIEND.
Your goal every team fight should be to rush whichever enemy carry will do the most damage to your team, and help burst them down as quickly as possible. Stun them using
Merciless Pursuit and, if you have
Atlas Pauldron, immediately activate it; Atlas has a brief delay after activation before it actually goes off, and your stun will prevent them from running away before the Atlas effect hits them.
Save your teammates with
Fountain of Renewal. Don't use it too early, or they won't get much of a heal out of it. Don't use it too late either, or they could die before getting much out of the heal. I generally use it when they are below 1/2 but above 1/3 HP.
Using your silence from
Blast Tremor effectively can make or break a team fight. There is a delay once you activate it (think of it as a cast time) before the silence goes off, during which time you can be stunned. If that happens, your silence won't go off, but the ability will be on cooldown. I generally try to use it from the bushes to start a team fight. Otherwise, if you are unable to start the cast from a hidden position in a bush and you have a
Reflex Block or
Crucible, it is often a good idea to use that at the same time as you activate your ultimate to ensure it goes off uninterrupted.
5 - Situational Items Top
Are enemies running away from you or somehow able to kite your carries? Build a
Shiversteel. This also makes it easier to stay on top of any enemy you're chasing to add the extra damage over time when your
Stormguard is activated. The extra HP also makes you even more of a beefcake.
Are both your carries building weapon power, or are the enemies building lots of armor items? Build a
Bonesaw to shred their armor and increase your team's damage.
Are the enemies super tanky? Build an
Aftershock. It gives you some cooldown reduction, and does heavy damage + lifesteal every time you go for that stun.
Not sure what to get? Build a
Clockwork. Faster cooldowns = more stuns, which is always good.
Somehow have an extra slot to fill? Did both your teammates go Crystal Power and now you need to help supplement some damage? Are team fights simply lasting too long?
Breaking Point will turn you into an auto-attacking monster.
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