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Katarina Build Guide by

[Master]Katarina Pre-S7 Mid Lane Guide (Post-Rework)(In-Prog

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3 Comments League of Legends Build Guide Author Pinks

Katarina Build Guide By Updated on

Guide Discussion (3) More Katarina Guides

Spells:

Flash

Ignite

Items

Standard Buy

1075 gold

1475 gold

Sorc Boots

Luden's rush

Magic Pen

Situational

Core

Ability Order

Katarina Passive Ability

Threats & Synergies

Threats

Synergies

Extreme Major Even Minor Tiny

Show All

None Low Ok Strong Ideal

Extreme Threats

Ideal Synergies

Cassiopeia

Extreme

Synergies

Ideal Strong Ok Low None

UPDATE LOG

Spoiler: Click to view

Imporant

THIS GUIDE IS THE PRE-REWORK KATARINA. I WAS STILL IN PROGRESS OF FINISHING THIS GUIDE, BUT THE CHANGES HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED, SO I AM JUST RELEASING THIS GUIDE FOR CURRENT PLAYERS TO FIND MATCH-UPS, RUNES, MASTERIES, AND BUILD PATHS. I WILL REDO THIS GUIDE AFTER THE REWORK

Introduction

About Me:

Hi, my name is Roar on the NA League of Legends Server. I was a former ADC main in season 4 known as Pinks. I'm a 19-year old korean that lives in the United States. I was platinum in season 3, diamond 1 season 4, diamond 2 season 5, and master season 6! I have been playing League of Legends for around 4 years now ,and I main mid lane.

Currently I have 2 accounts in Master, and I want to make it clear that I am not a Katarina one-trick-pony; I just enjoy playing her.

What's in this guide?

In this guide I will explain basic combos for katarina, tips for roaming, how to play certain match-ups, itemization, and just general tips.

Let me know if you want a guide on a different mid-lane champion.

Basics about Katarina

As you should primarily focus on farming and poking during the lane phase. It is perfectly fine to give up your lane pressure and allow your lane to be pushed into your tower. Your goal during laning phase is to stay healthy and just gather as much farm by using your and sinister steel.

I would recommend using your for poke almost every time it is up and just last hitting with your auto attacks and sinister steel. You generally never want to use for trading unless you know where the jungler is and/or the enemy laner has a few skills on cooldown and you are certain that you can out trade them.

's laning phase is insanely safe and you are almost ungankable if you have a trinket ward and your is available. The only way to really "lose" lane as is if you take bad trades and get zoned off from CS and fall behind in gold and experience.

Honestly, the only way you can really get a solo kill early on as is if you opponent messes up. If they greed too hard and just get poked down by your and never recall, that is pretty much the only way you will get a solo kill.

is more about macro play and roaming rather than mechanics and outplaying during the laning phase. To win as you generally want to focus on ganking your side lanes or gaining enemy jungle pressure with your jungler's assistance.

Summoner Spells

Generally you want to take into any match-ups that you feel has some form of kill pressure. Example would be against , , .

Any mages/assassins that are squishy and usually run , , or are good choices to run against.

I would run against lanes where there is next to no solo kill pressure. Lanes such as , , .

Run exhaust only into high burst assassins such as , , . I still would not recommend exhaust on because it's not really a summoner spell that helps with early game snowballing or lane control.

Starting Items

I will generally always start with 3 s. The extra AP, sustain, and snowball potential makes this item the best choice as a starter for .

I will build into champions like , , and . Basically any AD champion that I feel has a lot of kill pressure.

I only start into and .

Runes

The rune setup I use is pretty defensive and it helps a lot with 's laning phase and scaling into the mid game.

Runes

Precision

Fleet Footwork

Phase Rush

Rune Explanation and Alternatives

Masteries

This is the page I will always run on .
Nothing really abnormal here in comparison to a standard mid-lane thunderlord's page.

I run instead of because you will be roaming a lot and you will most likely be last hitting with your or sinister steel so the bonus damage for single-target attacks from won't apply to your skills.

over because 's passive will make CDR less effective on her compared to flat penetration.

instead of to help sustain during your laning phase.

instead of because you will likely kill everyone on the enemy team at least once, and the bonus damage from means that you will need someone else on your team with a CC with you to help apply the bonus damage. (Unless you buy gunblade/rylais/or a slowing item)

Abilities

Ability Sequence
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18

Pretty basic skill order with maxing Q first, leveling ultimate when you can, and maxing W second and E last.

The only time I would max Sinister Steel over first is when:

I'm building AD
I'm going CDR Tank Katarina
I'm building first item Hextech Gunblade
When I'm against a melee top laner and I feel that I can outtrade the enemy in melee range

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ Not banned in mid to high elo
+ Not much mechanics required
+ Very safe laning phase
+ High movement speed build for easy roaming
+ Can solo carry a game if ahead
+ 40% Healing debuff on ultimate

excels in snowballing a lead once ahead. She can roam down to the side lanes and apply lots of pressure and zoning. She has a very safe laning phase because you can always just use your to a ward. She also has the potential to clean up an entire team fight if you are fast enough with your reactions.

Cons

- Can be easily countered with CC and
- Good enemy laner will bully and zone you
- Falls off hard into late game
- Weak if you can't get any successful roams off
- Banned in low elo
- Low sustain

is generally a very weak pick into confident enemy mid laners and high CC team comps. She does not really allow for much solo kill pressure and strong laners will zone you away from CS and make you very weak into mid game. She also falls off very hard into late game when the enemy starts buying defensive items such as and . As the average elo increases, so do the wards on the map, and the effectiveness of roams decreases.

Gameplay

Lane Phase:

During laning phase, you primarily want to focus on keeping your CS up and harassing your opponent with at the same time. You want to keep your lane shoved or in the middle of the lane after level 3 so you can react to any jungle skirmishes or so you can roam down to the side lanes.

You are generally pretty safe to shove after level 3 because you will most likely always have your available for getting away from ganks. Keep applying pressure by harassing with and you may get the enemy laner low enough that you can , , , sinister steel, for an easy and free kill.

EXAMPLE

Team Fighting:

Your role during team fights is to stay out of the fight until you see either low health enemies or enemy CCs on cooldown. Your objective is to clean up the fight rather than initiate the fight. If you have you could start the fight and get everyone low and then use zhonya's and hope your team cleans up at least 1 kill for your passive to trigger.

After lane phase you generally want to always stay with the team and not be split-pushing or farming side lanes. You can farm side lanes if there are no objectives to take, the enemy is recalling, or your team is recalling/farming mid.

Media/Helpful Links

If you want to learn more about or watch some montages.
Katlife

Flyerbek

Thalies

My Twitch

Conclusion

Overall, I wanted to keep my guide pretty short and just give the general build path, rune setup, mastery setup, and skill order.

I did provide some explanations for why I run these setups and I also explained a little bit about how to play the game as . However, I wanted to stay away from just making walls of text that are too boring to read.

If there is anything more that you want me to add, feel free to leave a comment.