Katarina is an AWESOME character. She can be used MANY different ways, the most fun way being for multi kills. When playing Katarina, always go mid. There really isn't any real alternative as you aren't effective at all in the bot lane and Katarina will get massacred by bruisers in the top lane. Moving on, Katarina suffers a fate similar to Kassadin’s in which she must either take damage to farm or use a nuke. Although Kassadin has a silence so he can Q -> farm, Katarina can just use her Q to farm creeps that you know you won’t be able to auto attack without taking damage. By not having a mana pool, Katarina can farm without too much difficulty, but don’t count on getting any kills before level 6; you’ll want to be avoiding exchanges as much as possible. Throw Q’s on the enemy when possible/safe, but try to not miss any creep kills while doing so. Be wary as to the consistency of which you throw Q's, since Q's bounce and hit other creep, you are automatically pushing the lane every time you cast it, putting you at risk for ganks. Always hold wards for jumping in addition to vision.

Once you hit level 6, your presence in the lane increases dramatically. If the enemy champion has a stun that they have to build towards, like Annie, try to time her stun so that she won’t be able to cast it at all (after she burns it by using a Q on a minion, for example) and Q > E > R her. This will almost always either cause the enemy to go back or burn a summoner spell, or sometimes both - either way, you’ll either gain a superiority advantage in lane or open an opportunity for your jungler to gank. When going against champions like Brand, who have skill shot stuns, simply wait for them to burn their cooldowns and then jump on them - if they end up not opening an opportunity like this, keep farming the lane and either wait for a gank or farm passively. On the other hand, if you are counterpicked by champions with easy to use hard Cc (kassadin, leblanc, etc), simply farm whenever you can, and call the jungler to gank whenever they can. (Remember that jungler's cannot gank successfully at all times, you have to set up ganks for them).

Remember that in the laning phase, your top priority is abusing mistakes the enemy makes. If these opportunities don’t come up, either push out the lane and gank another lane or ask for a jungler gank if you really want early game kills. Don’t try to force kills when you’re uncertain of the success rate, as Katarina’s damage can either be fatal or easily negated.

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