Caitlyn, The Sheriff of Piltover

One of the reasons Piltover is known as the City of Progress is because it has an extraordinarily low crime rate. This hasn't always been the case; brigands and thieves of all sorts used to find the city-state an ideal mark for plunder, primarily due to the valuable resources it imports to fuel its techmaturgical research. Some even theorize that it would have fallen long ago to the chaos of organized crime if not for Caitlyn, the Sheriff of Piltover. Born the daughter of a wealthy statesman and a pioneering hextech researcher, Caitlyn discovered her natural gift for investigation when, at age 14, her father was assaulted and robbed on his way home. She snuck out of her house that night with her father's rifle and tracked down the muggers from the crime scene. At first, her parents did their best to discourage her from such risky hobbies, but she was incorrigible. Wishing to protect her daughter in the only way she knew how, Caitlyn's mother began outfitting her with techmaturgical devices tailored to her sleuthing needs.

Caitlyn quickly gained notoriety, both because she was single handedly defeating crime in Piltover and also because she soon developed into a ravishing beauty. She never backed down from a case or a challenge, and she was one of the sharpest shots in the city-state. Her services were soon requested by Demacia to help track down a mysterious outlaw who had begun committing high-profile heists. The bandit, who always left a card with an ornate 'C' at the scene of the crime, became Caitlyn's arch-nemesis. To this day, Caitlyn still searches for this cat burglar, and the chase has led her all across Valoran. She has joined the League to hone her skills and gain the influence necessary to track down the only quarry that has managed to evade her.

Caitlyn is a very solid and standard AD carry, her greatest strength is that there is nearly no possible way to stop her from farming early on because of her insanely long attack range. Her greatest weakness is that all her abilities have significant cast times, making them not as attractive to cast late-game.

Caitlyn is a great AD carry, her range and zoning are the main points you must abuse to be successful, balancing her auto attacks with her cast times at each stage of the game is also very important. Like any other AD carry, play safe, farm, position well in good fights, and you will win many of your games.

Pros
-Excellent farming skills
-Great damage dealer
-Using your passive correctly leading to line control
-Can kill low-hp enemies in a great distance
-Smart chaser with the 90 Caliber Net skill
-Can change the outcome of a team fight if positioned correctly
-Can take on both mid and top/bottom line cause of the bushes
-Great range (650) for tactic 'hit and run'

Cons
-Very squishy
-Can't do much in teamfights
-Target in team fights
-No reliable escape tactics
-Skills are partly useless late game
-Very low mana pool
-Her traps are visible
-Easy to counter, by stacking armor
-Ulti can't be reliable because enemies can interrupt it if they step in front of target

For soloing top or mid
For duo laning bottom

Early game goals:
x2
Buy your B.F sword early if you manage to farm that well, but generally speaking you want to get the 2 Doran's blades early on for lane dominance, then whatever you can afford past that point.



Mid game goals:

An alternative is Infinity over BT, while that path offers greater DPS output, it has no sustainability. Meaning if you get low in a fight, you're going to be running instead of doing DPS. If the enemy team doesn't have many divers, and you know for a fact that good positioning is enough to save your neck, then Infinity is the way to go, but very seldom do you actually encounter such a team.



Late game goals:

Pretty obvious.

21/0/9 is the standard AD carry build, there are no solid alternatives.

Havoc is too much to pass up at this point.

Red - Armor Pen - Best in Slot
Yellow - Mp5/Level - I run into mana troubles as Caitlyn, while I'd love to stick to Flat AD, Mana is just too important on Caitlyn
Blue - Attack Speed - You can also run Flat MR vs a heavy caster harasser in lane
Quints - Armor Pen - BiS

Explanation:


Ghost Flash is also viable, as always.

Exhaust makes fighting certain divers more manageable, and can also handle jungle ganks as well as Ghost. It also makes dueling late-game AD vs AD a breeze, in the case that they run Ghost Flash.

Flash is a necessary tool to make plays and manage situations.

Passive: Headshot

Every 8 / 7 / 6 attacks (at level 1 / 7 / 13) (attacks while in brush count as 2), Caitlyn will fire a headshot, dealing either 150% damage to a champion or 250% damage to a minion.



Explanation:


Caitlyn's passive is very straight forward; bonus damage. It's obviously good.

The bonus damage helps a lot if you're soloing top or duo laning bottom. It also allows Caitlyn to get red/blue buff in a timely manner.


Q: Piltover Peacemaker

Caitlyn revs up her rifle for 1 second to unleash a penetrating shot which deals 20 / 65 / 110 / 155 / 200 (+130% Attack Damage) physical damage (deals 10% less damage to subsequent targets, with a maximum loss of 50%).

Explanation:


Piltover is a great nuke, wave clearer and poking tool, but the cast time on Piltover is insanely long. This means that it's always a great farming tool, and like all other nukes, scale very well early-mid game, however late-game it's generally a mistake to use Piltover instead of auto attacking for DPS.
It's very important to recognize when Piltover damage falls behind your auto attacks.


W: Yordle Snap Trap

Caitlyn sets up to three traps to find sneaky yordles, which trigger on champions. When sprung, the trap immobilizes the target, reveals them for a short duration, and deals 80/130/180/230/280 (+80% of ability power) magic damage over 1.5 seconds.

Traps last for 4 minutes.

Cooldown 20/17/14/11/8

Cost 50 mana

Range 500

Explanation:


Snap Traps are one of the more interesting skills on an AD carry, it has a lot of uses and can really set apart the good Caitlyn players from the best.

Can chain snare off things like Warwick ult and GA.
Can cover areas at level 1.
Can zone players in lane and at towers.
Can randomly spot ganks and player positioning on the map.



E: 90 Caliber Net

Caitlyn fires a net to slow her target by 50% for 1/1.25/1.5/1.75/2 seconds. This deals 80/130/180/230/280 (+80% of ability power) magic damage and knocks Caitlyn back.

Cooldown 18/16/14/12/10 seconds

Cost 75 mana

Range 500

Explanation:


One of the slowest animations on an escape ability.
Can setup a Piltover.
Great for traversing certain thin walls.
Can combo with Flash.

R: Ace in the Hole

Caitlyn takes time to line up the perfect shot, dealing 250 / 475 / 700 (+2 per attack damage) physical damage to a single target at a huge range. Enemy champions can intercept the bullet for their ally.

Cooldown 90/75/60 seconds

Cost 100 mana

Range 1900/2050/2200

Explanation:


Her ultimate does a lot of damage, however again, has huge cast time. The best times to use it to either poke(in lane, or before fights), or to finish off an injured opponent.

At level 11, the base damage increases from 250 to 475, which is a HUGE deal, if you can hit that critical level 11 before a fight happens for dragon, it may make all the difference. The same applies to level 16, however at that point the 225 damage increase matters less(due to champion armor, hp, etc).

Farm to the best of your ability. Use your range and traps to your advantage, zone them and harass if possible. Try and not to spam Piltovers, your mana is precious and also it is generally a disadvantage to have your lane pushed. If you are low on HP, try and clear the wave with Piltover before returning to base. At level 6, its generally good practice to ult whoever you're laning against, to harass and also test damage.

As an AD carry at this point, it is still your priority to farm. It is late-game where you shine thus do not confuse mid-game with late-game. If you start to be too active with too few items you will not be able to achieve too much and also hurt your farm and scaling during late-game.

If your team attempts to do Dragon at this point, it's important you have 3 traps setup at critical bush positions.

Supposing you have farmed very well, it is now where you truly shine. You should be actively staying with your team and doing as much damage as you possibly can in team fights while staying alive.

Positioning is key for any AD carry. You must know where you can stand to do as much auto attack damage as possible while staying away from the threats of the enemy team. Knowing who to focus is also very important; sometimes your best focus is their tank, however if any squishy comes into a "safe" range for you to attack, you should also be acute enough to switch instantly.