Caitlyn definitely ranks as one of Chris "Pwyff" Tom's favorite champions, but does that mean she's viable for your competitive team? Find out!

Unfortunately, in actually analyzing Caitlyn's role on a team, she suffers quite a bit as both a utility champion and as a damage dealer. While I would stress the fact that Caitlyn is a lot of fun to play, I'll have to be honest about her shortcomings (and there are many). Yordle Snap Trap has a cast time and a 'setup' time, which makes it nearly impossible for Caitlyn to set one up if someone is right on her tail, and the duration of the snare (1.5s) is typically too short to really achieve anything. 90 Caliber Net is equally underpowered as an ability, as the knockback feature of it, while short, can be a real problem for chasing (even though it slows your opponent, it pushes you away), and the movement slow is almost negligible. In other words, Caitlyn really lacks the ability to catch enemy opponents (unless she is allowed to set up her traps beforehand), and she has great difficulty getting away from chasing opponents: both integral abilities for utility champions.

On the damage end of things, while Piltover Peacemaker has great damage dealing potential
(scaling at a respectable +1.0 bonus attack damage), it suffers heavily in team fights when the squishes targets are always in the back (meaning they take only 70% damage). As well, Caitlyn's ultimate would be quite strong if it traveled faster or enemy champions could not intercept it, but in high level games, Caitlyn's ultimate always gets stopped by the tank if it has to travel through the main team fight; if it doesn't get stopped there, the bullet travels so slowly that smarter teams are almost always fast enough to block it. Ultimately, this means that Caitlyn must either use Ace in the Hole from a different angle, and risk being separated from her team, or she needs to save her ultimate for after a team fight, to catch enemies who are running away.

In the end, Caitlyn's problems all stem from her lack of a real 'role identity' in League of Legends. Even though Caitlyn has more designated utility spells than any other damage dealing champion, she needs to put herself into some dangerous situations in order to contribute due to Yordle Snap Trap's short cast range, and even though Caitlyn has the longest attack range of all, she just doesn't have the passive abilities that allow her to take advantage of this either. Caitlyn ultimately trades a lot of her AoE damage potential and single-target damage potential for two lackluster utility spells.

If, however, you insist on playing her (like I do!) because steampunk rifle-wielding women are just your thing, then feel free to insert Caitlyn into any scenario where you would normally use other long-range DPS champions, like Kog'maw, Ashe or Miss Fortune. You may need to supplement Caitlyn with a little more damage (Sion, Rammus, Singed and Malphite are great, as opposed to more defensively oriented champions like Amumu or Shen), but I suppose this is the price we pay to have fun.