Currently, Caitlyn is under performing in her desired goal as a marksman

@ Any Red

Hello all, just to shed some light on where stand, I've been maining Caitlyn since season 3. Picked her up at about level 17, and have loved her gameplay. The marksman rework did wonders for her, making her actually a lot more skillfull to play, especially when managing your traps and keeping the zones controlled. However, the rework did something that Riot didn't intend. Caitlyn's power was shifted from early to way late game. Riot acknowledged this and nerfed her late game slightly and buffed her early, but it didn't do much. The real reason she is weak in the early is in part the masteries.

Headshot was her early game pressure passive. Because of its 150% damage, enemies would lose cs because she was holding it. People were afraid to farm. However, with these changes, it scales with crit chance. It eventually outscales its former self, once you grab 2 crit items but until then Caitlyn's headshot just doesn't hurt. Furthermore, in league of Thunderlords, Caitlyn had a harder time because she isn't about burst damage. Sure it works alright with her animation cancel combo of E Q headshot, but thats only relevant when enemies engage on you, because its a defensive play. Caitlyn has much better synergy with Warlords because she wants to go into the late game now.

Honestly, Caitlyn is a bit underwhelming right now. Her late game is amazing with 5 traps and headshot hurting, but at the cost of her early. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, if you want Caitlyn to be a strong early siege champ, I would recommend toning down the crit scaling, and making headshot a base of 150% bonus damage. Thank you for reading ^^

Edit: I was wrong about Headshot, the wording was just changed.