Introduction Top
Hello! My name is DancingUnicorn and I am a Roam/Captain main. Today I will be showing you a guide about Catherine, probably the easiest roamer there is to learn. Now that's out of the way, let me shamelessly promote two of my other threads
here and
here.
Catherine Lore Top
You can the tragic fate of Catherine in this lore right
here. So sad :(
Move Breakdown Top
Passive Ability -
Captain of the Guard
Each time your beauty queen
Catherine silences or stuns an enemy, you gain one stack of this. Each stack gives you an extra armor and defense. I cannot say this enough. THIS IS CRUCIAL TO CATHERINE. Catherine needs this in order to stay alive as her bubble isn't always available.
Merciless Pursuit
Catherine gains a burst of movement speed for 1.5 seconds and your next basic attack stuns the enemy. Even after the movement speed ends, your next basic attack will stun, although that goes away after a second. This ability is very important because it is the best stun in the game. It has a short cooldown, isn't a skill shot, and gives a burst of movement speed. Although not flashy, the usage of this ability can win games. Use this to cancel ultimates, initiate, chase, or peel for your ally. What you use it for is entirely up to you, but you need to focus on the highest priority. For instance, if their Krul has a huge item advantage over your Vox, you might want to think about using your stun to provide peel for your Vox instead of blocking their Captain Adagio's
Verse of Judgement.
Stormguard
Activates a pulsating bubble that burns nearby enemies and deflects damage above 77 (+7 per level) to nearby enemies. Each deflection reduces the shield duration by 0.5 second. Notice that this ability is your maxiumum default health. That is the amount of health you would have at that level if you didn't buy any items. So building crucible doesn't affect this. I used to think it affected your maximum health including items so if you built crucible, less abilities would trigger the reflect on your bubble, making it useless if you built enough health items, which is not the case. This ability keeps you alive, not your allies. Whenever you are in danger, do not instantly use your bubble. If you see a powerful attack incoming, such as
Kestrel's
One Shot One Kill that is about to hit your ally, stand in front of it and activate your bubble. When initiating in a team fight, that is when you should use it, as some Crowd Control (CC) abilities will hit you, so you can reflect them back.
Blast Tremor
One of the best ultimates in this game,
Catherine slams the ground, silencing all enemy items and abilities, while doing damage. I usually like to initiate a fight with this, however you can also use this in the middle of the fight. I would not recommend to use this to kill an enemy unless they are the last person and you know it will kill, otherwise you are just wasting a cooldown.
Why These Items? Top
Fountain of Renewal is the essential item that makes a Captain a Captain. You need this first in every game. No exception.
War Treads are another essential item that roamers should have. This shouldn't be your second item as you should put that item to counterbuilding as I will go more in depth on that later. Although Catherine does gain alot from
Halcyon Chargers with their energy increase and cooldown reduction, War Treads are curical for enabling your team to escape or chase down that last enemy for the ace you wouldn't have gotten with
Halcyon Chargers.
Crucible is a very helpful item that increases your health by 500 (the highest it can be raised by one item) and gives your entire team within a radius of you a reflex block upon activation. You can use this to stop powerful crowd control like
Verse of Judgement or
Forced Accord, or use it right before you use fountain so your allies don't die before it reaches them, although it is better to save it for CC. You almost always want this in a game.
Atlas Pauldron slows down an enemies attack speed. It is important to know how to use it most effectively. If you use
Merciless Pursuit than activate Atlas instantly after, you should reach your target, stun them, and have Atlas hit them as well, making them much less powerful. 90% of the time you should be using this on their WP Carry. You usually want to get an atlas in every game.
Contraption is great if you want to control vision. Very effective against heroes that turn invisible. You should almost always get this in a game even if they don't have anybody who turns invisible.
Nullwave Gauntlet is a item that came out in 2.0 that I have never been a fan of. Basically, you can use it on a hero and it silences their items, meaning if you silence a roamer, they can't use fountain, which is very powerful. Personally, I never use it, but it can be effective.
Shiversteel is a very underused item. It gives 500 health and is very cheap. Upon activation, for the next 6 seconds (4 if you are ranged, which Catherine is not) your basic attacks slow the enemy. This is good if you have a
Krul or
Reim on your team who is having issues sticking to their targets, but I usually let them get it as Krul in particular needs that extra health.
Stormcrown makes all of your basic attacks do bonus true damage, this means that armor and shield are ignored, and it always does that amount. It does less damage to heroes as it does to objectives, so WP Carries should never get this item. This lets you capture objectives much quicker, and you can even solo objectives as a roamer. This also gives you cooldown reduction.
Aftershock is an item that is usually used by Catherine instead of Stormcrown, just because of her A ability. Aftershock deals 10% of their maximum health on your next basic attack after using an ability. This is good for Catherine as
Merciless Pursuit resets the basic attack cooldown, and even if you don't see the animation, she instantly basic attacks, meaning just using your ability does 10% of their health and does the damage of Merciless Pursuit. This also gives a cooldown reduction.
Why not both
Stormcrown and
Aftershock? Captains are meant to keep your allies alive. With two offensive items, you can't be as effective if that extra slot was used for a helpful team item. Aftershock lets you do more damage to enemy heroes, Stormcrown lets you do more damage to objectives. In fact, you could get another defensive item instead of Stormcrown or Aftershock, however I like to get one just because it provides cooldown reduction and it provides damage so you can help in teamfights.
Three items that you should never get as Catherine are
Metal Jacket,
Tension Bow, and
Aegis. If you want to build armor, get atlas, or get something else instead. Tension bow is basically the aftershock for WP Carries. Is Catherine a WP Carry? No. Don't get Tension Bow. Fountain already has shield built into it so Aegis isn't important as it doesn't provide any team benefits.
Jungle Cathrine? Top
While CP Jungle Cathrine provides plenty of stuns and is fairly tanky, she just doesn't do enough to put her in the jungle. If you want a tanky CP Jungler, just go CP Lance, or CP Glaive better still.
Early Game Top
Catherine is weak early game. Like, very weak early game. To be an effective support, she needs to wait until level 2 to get her bubble, and even then, it's better to avoid fighting until mid-late game when you have your Captain of the Guard stacks. The current meta in 2.4 is for the Captain to stay in the lane with their Carry. Because of this, you can easily get stacks off either their roamer who is most likely in the opposite bush, or their carry.
TL DR; Just get fountain and don't forget vision
Mid Game Part 1/2 Top
By now you should most definitely have a
Fountain of Renewal, and probably another item. It can be confusing how to counterbuild as a roamer, so let me break it down for you. If you have no idea what to do, just read this and it will help you get through the game as this is a general rule of thumb, but you can get fancy items later.
Counterbuilding Top
What items you get and in what order can change the outcome of the game. If they have a WP
SAW and a CP
Alpha, should you get a Atlas or Crucible? Although ALpha's ultimate does alot of damage, Saw can easily be crippled by just one Atlas.
If they have any of these heroes, then you should get a
Crucible :
Adagio - Very easy to block his
Verse of Judgement that's all you need to worry about.
Alpha - If CP, medium to low for blocking priority. This is a fairly low priority ultimate to block as it only has damage, not a large effect.
Baptiste - If you feel confident blocking his ultimate, then get a crucible. Otherwise, focus on counterbuilding something else.
Baron - If there is nobody on their other team who is on this list, get a crucible to block his ultimate. Low priority for same reason as
Alpha.
Catherine - As I talked about earlier, her ultimate is one of the best in the game. If you can block it, this is probably the highest priority counterbuild on this list. If you can block it, then block it.
Glaive - If playing against a WP Glaive, blocking his
Afterburn is low priority, and if it's CP, then it's no priority as he can just afterburn again in 5 seconds.
Grumpjaw - If you can block his ultimate, not only are you a god, but you should get crucible.
Gwen - A mid priority ultimate to block, if you can block it, great, but usually your carry should take this one.
Joule - If fighting against a Joule, a very low priority is to block her Rocket Jump as it doesn't do much damage, and you can stun her out of it. If fighting against CP Joule, stun her out of that instead, or
War Treads your team out if your entire team is in the middle.
Kestrel - You can crucible her ultimate, but its better to just body block for your carries. Never crucible yourself on this though, unless both your teammates are dead and you will die otherwise]]
Koshka - Her ultimate isn't that hard to block, but it's pretty good to block it, or you can stun her out of it. I would prefer to block it then stun her, so your carry (assuming that's who she attacked) can beat down on her as well
Krul - If you can block his ultimate, it's medium priority. It's not too bad if he stuns your ally from up close, but if he does the thing where he throws it behind him to get the extra stun duration, it is crucial for you or your ally to block it.
Ozo - If your carries are not dumb, they can block this themselves, or you can stun Ozo out of it.
Phinn - High priority ultimate, if you can block it, get a crucible as it is key.
Reim - Medium to low priority ultimate to block, don't need to worry about rushing crucible
Ringo - Your carries better block this on their own or else
Samuel - High priority ultimate to block, easy to block, you shouldn't have an issue
Skye - Very low priority ultimate, very short stun, hard to hit.
If they have anybody on this list, then you should get
Atlas Pauldron :
Adagio - Low priority, you don't need to worry about this unless you have nothing to buy. In fact, I would get
Contraption or
War Treads instead of atlas if they have nobody else on the list.
Baron - Though he already has a slow attack speed, if he is building WP, this is very helpful as it stops him from dealing as much damage.
Blackfeather - Low priority target, but still helpful
Glaive - If WP, high priority target. If CP, don't bother.
Grumpjaw - If WP, medium priority.
Gwen - Medium priority
Idris - Medium priority
Krul - Except for Saw, this should be your number one priority! Unless they build CP. Then it's not as big of a deal.
Lyra - If carry Lyra, low priority. If Roam, no priority.
Ringo - High priority if you can land it.
Rona - Medium priority
SAW - OMG YOU BETTER GET ATLAS FOR THIS BOY
Skye - If WP, medium to low priority
Vox - If WP, medium to high priority.
If they have heroes that turn invisible, and nobody of medium or high priority, then it's ok to get
Contraption as second item. If they have CP Skye, WP Taka, and Roam Lyra, there isn't much you can do to counterbuild against Skye and Lyra.
Taka, CP
Kestrel, or
Flicker are the heroes that can turn invisible, and it's only ok to get contraption second if they have one of those heroes, and nobody of medium/high priority in the Atlas or Crucible department. If they have two or three heroes that turn invisible, then it's up to your better judgement on who their third hero is, to see if you should get contraption second.
Mid Game Part 2/2 Top
Now that you have your two items, you should definitely have
Sprint Boots and maybe even have
Travel Boots by now. You should have vision placed in your mustache bush (The bush in the lane, if you look at a picture of the Halcyon Fold, the two bushes look like a mustache), one in the Kraken/GM pit, one in your jungle shop, and one in your shop. You should always have a flare with you as well. Just because you're going to get Contraption later, doesn't mean you shouldn't get vision now. That pesky
Taka on the other team isn't going to stop going invisible because you don't have vision. A good Taka (hahaha they don't exist in solo que) will take advantage of that. He'll play extremely aggressive because he knows he can just turn invisible and avoid any harm. You should have at least 15 stacks of
Captain of the Guard.
Late Game Top
By now you should have
Fountain of Renewal,
Travel Boots or
War Treads, and two to three other items. Your stacks of
Captain of the Guard should be over 35, and by end game you should have around 50 unless it ended quickly because their team was Lance, Koshka, and Gwen. One thing to note is that
Aftershock or
Stormcrown, whichever you pick, should be your last item.
Hero Synergy! Top
Synergy is how well two heroes work with eachother. I will be going through these synergies.
Strong Synergy
Celeste
Celeste has strong synergy with Catherine because she can land her skillshots easily when Catherine uses her stun, also Celeste can use her stun right after for a SUPER STUN. Also, Celeste has no reliable escape which Catherine can provide with her peel, they are part of the same lore, AND THEY BOTH START WITH THE LETTER C! What more could you ask for?
Yes I ship this relationship. Ages are just a number.
Joule
If Catherine stuns an enemy, Joule has a free Rocket Jump that she can land on the enemy, and if they are playing CP Joule, she can hit that
Big Red Button, or if playing WP, just hit with a thunder strike.
Kestrel
Can easily land skillshots on stunned enemies. That's about it.
Skaarf
Same reason as Kestrel, except also has Goop which deals massive damage if they are stunned.
Skye
Same reason as Kestrel.
Decent Synergy
Adagio
Just for the fact that they can either decide to use
Crucible to block either your
Blast Tremor or Adagio's
Verse of Judgement because whichever one they get hit by is a huge game changer. However, they can stun Adagio's verse fairly easily...
Alpha
Her stun makes it easier for Alpha to land
Prime Directive and her ultimate.
Baron
She can lock down Baron's targets as his only weakness right now is his early game and his speed. The only reason why they don't have great synergy is because their early games are fairly bad.
Gwen
Landing your stun lets her easily land her stun which has a surprisingly long duration considering it's literally just a playing card... Other than that, however, there's nothing much.
Idris
Stunning them let's Idris deal lots of damage with his Chakram
Krul
The stun just for that extra bit of stickiness, as well as the silence so they can't use boots, reflex block, or abilities to escape from him.
Lance
Has decent synergy just because they can lockdown targets forever, but that means WP Lance, and I'm not really a believer in jungle Lance.
Ozo
Catherine is a counter to Ozo so that helps that they can't pick Catherine. Ozo is mainly shut down when he is rooted, silenced, or stunned, but if they're silenced or stunned, they can't silence or stun him. He can also chain his ultimate with Catherine's stun for a super stun.
Reim
Same reason as Krul.
Ringo
Makes it even easier for Ringo to kite using
Merciless Pursuit. (Ringo mains, it's not hard to kite, you aren't cool)
Rona
Using your stun to keep an enemy in their Red Mist will have every Rona love you.
Samuel
Using your ultimate lets Samuel put down
Drifting Dark and just go to town on those helpless little heroes. It's almost sad :(
Vox
He has a short attack range so he's very close to melee heroes. If you can stun them, it makes Vox stay alive longer which is something to smile about.
No Synergy or because they are on the same team so you lose anyway
Ardan
Why is he on your team?
Baptiste
No real synergy
Blackfeather
No real synergy
Catherine
Error 404
Flicker
Why is he on your team?
Fortress
No real synergy
Glaive
Although you can afterburn + pursuit... it just = meh
Grumpjaw
He can eat them and you can stun them under turret, but that is just 1 extra turret shot which isn't that much of a big deal...
Koshka
No real synergy
Lyra
No real synergy
Petal
No real synergy other than peel which petal desperately needs
Phinn
Why is he on your team?
SAW
People play Saw? Why?
Taka
No real synergy
Thank You Top
Thanks for reading this thread if you even did or you just scrolled down here to say something like "Your build sucks! I'm Just Beginning Bronze and I main AFK and you're supposed to get all boots! Don't get fountain!"
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