From an out-of-meta ADC, Caitlyn is becoming a “hot girl” headhunted by a lot of teams in pro leagues around the world in LOL Patch 10.16.
If you have been watching pro leagues, you definitely can easily see that the ADC position is now having an incredibly small champion pool and smaller than any other positions’ one. Since the Summer Split (after Lethality Varus was nerfed), the trio of Aphelios, Ezreal and Ashe have appeared in every single match of pro leagues. And if they are all banned, champions like Kalista, Kai’sa or even Jhin will have a rare chance to appear.
However, yesterday, everything completely changed when Caitlyn constantly appeared in nearly every ban/pick phase of a lot of pro leagues. Her win rate has not been considerable at all, so now there is a big question that why did Caitlyn become so hot that she could even replace Aphelios?
Why did Caitlyn become so hot ?
Firstly, Caitlyn is an ADC that can control her lane easily due to her outstanding attack range and W – Yordle Snap Trap to control her surroundings. Secondly, this champion can attend early fights (right after purchasing B.F Sword) thanks to her large amount of damage that comes from both her autos and skills. All in all, Caitlyn is a moderately good option in bot lane.
But that is just the story of soloQs. What makes Caitlyn suddenly has been picked a lot by pro teams is she was massively buffed in patch 10.15. Particularly, her basic AD increased by 2, from 62 to 64 and movement speed rose to 330. This obviously led to her much better kiting, attacking, escaping from enemies and also dodging skills.
Caitlyn is basically a nice champion and after that buffs, she literally became a frightening monster in laning phase. And for sure, pro teams will not miss the chance of owning a champion that can win nearly every ADC in bot lane and brings a wide range of advantages to their team. And right after LoL patch 10.15 was applied, Caitlyn has become a hot pick.
Nevertheless, Caitlyn becoming stronger is just half of the whole story! The other half is the coming back of Support Lux with buffed Support items. A proof for this is that every time Caitlyn is picked, her Support will always be Lux, like the match of Suning against Vici Gaming. Even in LCK, although Team Dynamics was taken down by Afreeca Freecs, the duo of Caitlyn and Lux still helped them to win the second match.
The appearance of Lux will contribute to strengthen Caitlyn as both their skills’ range are extremely large so they can easily harass as well as prevent them from approaching or attacking them. Moreover, Spellthief’s Edge and its upgrades’ buffs also made Lux much more terrifying in laning phase and even late game. In conclusion, it is understandable for this duo to come back to Summoner’s Rift after a long period of time.
Surprisingly, Riot didn’t adjust anything to this duo in LoL patch 10.16, so that they will definitely appear much more regularly in pro leagues’ playoffs worldwide.