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Recommended Items
Spells:
Flash
Ignite
Items
Ability Order
Voracity (PASSIVE)
Katarina Passive Ability
Threats & Synergies
Fiddlesticks
BEWARE! THIS CHAMPION IS REALLY ******* ANNOYING! He has a ranged silence that can bounce between minions and you, a fear, and a skill that'll literally negate all of your ult's damage. Sure, your ult inflicts griveous wounds, but that doesn't matter! It's on such a short cooldown. Only way to really survive this lane is to last hit with your bouncing blades and call the jungler hotline for help.
Introduction
Here is a pic of my ranked stats with Katarina: http://gyazo.com/4a6883d7d1500723c068fbed572dbb9f
Edit: I am back in platinum!

+ Katarina is a highly mobile AP assassin who is adept at killing important targets. Thanks to her passive, her cleanup potential is very high. She can easily burst most carries down with ease thanks to her MASSIVE AoE damage from her ultimate. Also, if you were looking for a good champion to carry you out of "Elo hell", then this is the champion you've been looking for.
DISCLAIMER: I am in no way, shape or form, the best League player out there. There are probably better guides than this one, and to be quite honest, I don't expect that many people to view this. If you do though, thanks! I just want to share my knowledge with everyone else.
+ If you have any questions, be sure to leave a comment and I'll try to answer them.






RIP Deathfire Grasp :(
+ Save

TL;DR Basically, don't use your ult as often. You can use it to harass if you
Patch 5.6 - Nothing too big, lower base hp, more hp per level, and lower hp regen. This doesn't really change much in terms of damage, obviously, but sustain in lane will go down, so a doran's shield start doesn't look too bad now. Boots and pots are still my go-to starting items though.
Patch 5.13 - This patch is really coming down on almost every AP item there is, some good changes and some bad. One big change that I think will really affect how Kat plays is the price reduction on the

AoE - Area of effect.
DoT - Damage over time
TL;DR - Too long; didn't read. I sometimes ramble, so look for a Tl;DR if you're lazy.
AP - Ability Power
AD - Attack Damage
Quints - Referring to the quintessence runes.
Seals - Referring to the yellow rune, also called a seal, which mostly deals with defensive stats.
Marks - Referring to the red rune, also called a mark, which mostly deals with offensive stats such as magic penetration or attack damage.
GA - The item,

Ult - Ultimate ability, assigned to the "R" key.
Pros
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+ Easy to farm with + Multi-target ultimate + Restricted by cooldowns ONLY + Has great synergy with a few select champions + Easy to learn, hard to master + GODLIKE mid-late game |
Because of her ultimate, she has great cleanup potential in teamfights. What this means is that she's not the one to go into the fight head on, deep into the fray. She's going to stay back and wait for her team to do some of the work for her. For example, the enemy team uses all of their CC on your team. Once your team gets the enemy team low enough, or the enemy uses their CC on your other teammates, ![]() ![]() |
Cons
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+ Squishy + EASILY shutdown by hard CC + Melee + Weak early game + Useless if behind + TERRIBLE at CS'ing under tower + Can't push lane very well early game |
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M A S T E R I E S |
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![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Q: Why this specific setup? This setup aims at making you deal some good damage early while helping you survive the early game with some added durability. With this setup, your early game shouldn't be a living hell. |
+ The reason I don't take

EDIT 7/8/15: Due to the small change in the defense tree, I now take the slow reduction since the hp regen isn't really as useful as the slow reduction.
Why max


Since sinister steel has more utility than damage, I max it second. You can max sinister steel first for a bit more burst damage and utility, but I prefer maxing

Max


Get

Greater Quintessence of Ability Power: These will give you a good damage boost early game as well as improve your ability to last hit minions with your
Bouncing Blade. You need to take AP quints in order to make use of your magic penetration marks, because you need AP in order to penetrate! Basically, without early AP, you won't be doing as much damage as you would with AP quints.
Greater Mark of Magic Penetration: I take magic penetration because
Katarina scales soooooo well with magic penetration and they're really the only good choice for her.
Greater Glyph of Magic Resist: These are what I use. These are used to help when going against an AP mid lane. Alternatively, you could take scaling AP or magic penetration, but I highly prefer magic resist glyphs with the added durability.
Greater Seal of Scaling Health: These will cause you to be less squishy late game, and as you know,
Katarina is quite the squishy champion. You can substitute these for armor seals when going against AD champions.
Of course if you are against an AD mid take armor seals as said above.

+ Instantly refreshes




+ In teamfights, the more resets you get, the more damage you will deal.
+ Can help secure easy kills under tower.


+ This is what makes or breaks a good


Cooldown: 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8
+ Used for poking/last hitting
+ Multi-Target skill
sinister steel Sinister Steel - Katarina whirls her daggers, instantly dealing 40 / 75 / 110 / 145 / 180 (+ 25% AP) (+ 60% bonus AD) magic damage to all nearby enemies. If she damages an enemy champion, she gains 15 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 35% movement speed for 1 second.
Cooldown: 4
+ Gives a nice movement speed boost
+ Used to detonate

+ Good for harassing and wave clearing

Cooldown: 12 / 10.5 / 9 / 7.5 / 6
+ Your only reliable escape
+ Used to jump over impassable terrain (walls)
+ Used to jump into ( or out of) the fight
+ Gives you a 15% damage reduction when used
+ Can be used to dodge skillshots or reduce damage from something such as


Cooldown: 90 / 60 / 45
Death Lotus can hit a single enemy champion no more than 10 times.
+ MASSIVE AoE damage
+ Great tool to cleanup
+ Can have its cooldown reset back to 0 at a minimum of 3 resets, unless for some reason you have some form of cdr (around 15%) which should reset it back back to 0 at level 3 ult.
+ Can hit/detect stealthed champions
All of these stats are from Kat's wiki page
















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Other champions that are good but not mentioned here








Starting items:




















1st back, hopefully around level 6










Viable options






















Difficulty rating is ona scale of 1-10, 1 being the easiest and 10 being the hardest.

Difficulty rating: 3
Akali is a pretty easy champion to go against. All you really need to do in this lane is poke her with your





Difficulty rating: 5
Ahri can be a pain. All you really need to do to win this lane is poke her with




Difficulty rating: 7
Annie is tough. How I see it is that there are 2 types of Annie players. Ones that always keep their stun up, and ones that just farm with





Difficulty rating: 6
This lane can be a bit of a pain. Pre 6, just harass him with



Difficulty rating: 10
BEWARE! THIS CHAMPION IS REALLY ANNOYING! He has a ranged silence that can bounce between minions and you and interrupt your




Difficulty rating: 8
is the go-to counter for






Difficulty rating: 5
I don't see very many




Difficulty rating: 7
Veigar is one small pain in the rump for Katarina. Once he gets level 6 and he has a








Difficulty rating: 8
lissandra is one of the biggest counters to






Difficulty rating: 8
Malzahar is a big meanie. He just throws out his





There are more champions at the beginning of this guide. These are just a few champions I felt like going in-depth about.


This is







This is the "point of no return" combo. Use the




Is your enemy low and sitting underneath their turret? It's really one of the stupidest things anyone can do when playing vs




It is very important that you use all of Katarina's skills in the correct order for maximum damage output.

GLHF!
NOTE THAT THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!!
11/6/14 - Added synergy section, clarified some things.
11/10/14 - realized stupid mistake. fixed said mistake
11/12/14 - fixed mistake in skill sequence
11/16/14 - Fixed minor things
11/23/14 - Added some champions under SYNERGY section. WIP
11/30/14 - 6,000 views! 1 step closer to world domination...
12/12/14 - Some dude QQ'd so I changed some things, made things less colorful.
12/14/14 - Edited formatting
2/1/15 - RIP DFG :(
3/24/15 - It's been a while, but I updated some information, added Luden's echo to item build.
7/8/15 - updated some information, gave new (better) insights.
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