Good point! Thanks for the suggestion. But maybe I'l future proof it and call it 1.20 :P

Excellent point. Out of all those heroes, the one that I definitely pay most attention to is Skaarf as it's incredibly strong and can't really be dodged. It's incredibly satisfying to deny a Ringo his ult.

Well the shield is already part of FoR so you'd build that anyway, but then I suppose the question is do you spend 550 gold to upgrade to kinetic shield first, or 300 gold on an oakheart first? I've not tried to work that one out before so if I do that now...

Supposing you are a level 4 Catherine with 50 armour, 89 shield and 973 health from a light shield only, upgrading to a kinetic shield increases your EHP against weapon by 243.25 and against crystal by 340.55. An oakheart on the other hand improves your EHP by 225 against weapon and 283.5 against crystal. From those numbers I'd draw the conclusion that you should get the shield first if you have the gold for it, but, particularly if you're up against weapon damage buying an oakheart is a good decision if you have between 300 and 550 gold.

Good point regarding the T2 boots and SGB. That's 1350 gold out of the 1500 needed to complete fountain from kinetic shield. I definitely need to give that section a bit more thought as what I have there at the moment was only hastily put together. However, that is pretty much the way that I currently play and maybe that's the reason why I'm happily sitting at a 50% win rate and not moving past SA bronze.

Going to have a think on that, thanks for the feedback!

Edit: And on second thoughts, I've removed those sections so I can focus on what I originally intended to which is to give a factual breakdown of her abilities.

Sometimes you do need something else when stuns and silences aren't enough so I definitely wouldn't go with the max CDR build every time, but in a lot situations it really is enough. I'm going to fill in the final builds section eventually with that sort of information, but it's kind of boring really because I'd mostly be rehashing what can already be found in other guides already. Love your guide btw! It's hilarious and pretty damn spot on as a general how to support guide.

I want to focus on enemy abilities vs stormguard right now since the entire reason I even started this guide was to create an in depth guide to the mechanics behind stormguard and how to best utilise it. The resources available if you search up about it right now are very scattered, incomplete and often contradictory. I also figured it was a good chance to just lay out everything I had on Catherine because I've probably got about 700-800 games of experience playing her and have so many things I could say if I can just find the time to put it all down somewhere.

Sure. Hope you'll excuse the copy paste, but I answered pretty much this exact same question just yesterday on Reddit.

"Fountain is the first item that is finished in this build, but I find that in most situations that's as far as you need to go down the traditional support item route.

Catherine's utility as a support comes from her abilities. She has tankiness from the perk and B skill, a stun on her A and a silence on her C. Add to that the healing power of the fountain and you just need cooldown to amplify the usefulness of her abilities. That's pretty much the philosophy behind this build and it does work for me.

There are times when you might need something extra like a crucible or a pauldron, but you'll still have plenty of cooldowns even with one or both of those."

There's no items that can stun or silence, and that's what makes Catherine so great. She brings into the fight something that many other heroes can't, no matter what items they buy. When buying cooldown what you are investing in is Catherine's stuns and silences, but if for some reason stuns and silences aren't much use in your game, then you should go with standard support items.

The stun is always useful, but there are situations where the silence may not be particularly effective. This happens when you face heroes who do a lot of auto attack damage like Ringo, Krul or WP SAW. In those cases you may want to forgo either the second clockwork or the aftershock in favour of an atlas pauldron.

Regarding your comments on Eve and Sorrowblade, I've considered an Eve on occasion for the ability to heal up from deflecting damage. In theory it has some nice synergy with Catherine, but I feel like it's one of those items that you will never actually buy unless you're completely steamrolling your enemy and just want to rub in how far ahead of them you are... which is possibly not the best idea given the change to gold bounties in 1.12.

As for Sorrowblade, you really shouldn't ever be buying this item on Catherine if you are playing her as a support. Catherine does have I believe the second highest base attack speed in the game after Vox, but other than that this item really has no synergy with her. Very situationally, if your team has gone double CP, and the enemy has responded by not building armour, and your teammates are not doing enough damage, and you are surviving well in fights, I might consider a breaking point as a 6th item.

Hope that helps!