Why Katarina is Better than She Looks

Katarina. The first thing that comes to mind when you think Katarina is the fact that she's easily CC'ed out of her ultimate by pretty much anything that comes to mind. A support like Janna or Alistar will make your life a living hell when you try and get your ultimate off.

I'm not going to say she's a good ranked 5s character. However, I'm going to say that I think she's MUCH better than people give her credit for in solo queue.

Her Kit:

• Voracity (Passive): Her cooldowns are reduced by 15 seconds after any kill or assist. With bouncing blades hitting 6 enemies at once when maxed, assists are easy as pie.
• Killer Instincts: In this heal meta, the 50% healing reduction is absolutely KILLER to heroes like Warwick. (Warwick counter anyone?) The fact that Shunpo reduces damage taken by a percentage based 35% is also ridiculous as anybody who's ever played Spectre from DOTA knows.
• Shunpo: This skill has great scaling and makes her nearly ungankable even if you don't place a ward behind you in lane.

Reasons Why Her Kit is Awesome:

• Ranged Harass on a short cooldown (Good Early Game)
• Voracity resets everything except her ultimate even with ZERO cooldown reduction (Heavy Late-game Snowballing)
• If they're saving a CC for you, they lack the usage of it early in the teamfight to initiate or stop your AD carry
• Your Shunpo + Bouncing blades do a decent chunk of damage even WITHOUT your ultimate

Tips for Playing Katarina:

• Early game farming is super important for Katarina, but be sure to also gank other lanes once you hit six.
• Know how many CCs they have, which ones they can hit you with easily, and wait until a few are gone before jumping in with your ultimate.
• During teamfights always use your W for Shunpo before using Death Lotus.

Guide to Playing Katarina:

• The guide I follow for her skill build, runes, and masteries is this one by on Solomid.net.
• If you can find TiensiNoAkuma streaming on this link sometime, it'll definitely be worth your time since he plays Katarina at 2345 ELO as of this writing, and consistently dominates with her.