The LCK is known for having unconventional picks and just after one week, we had the chance to witness the first-ever Caitlyn support. Let’s see what happened.
Image Credits | Riot Games
Caitlyn support and its first-ever debut as a support
Caitlyn was picked as support by T1’s Ryu “Keria” Min-seok in Game 2 of the series against Kwangdong Freecs. Paired with Gumayusi’s Varus, this bot lane duo went up against Zeri and Yuumi, with the main goal of abusing the weak early game that KDF’s bot lane had.
With the double-ranged bot lane, as well as great wave clearing, T1 could do whatever they wanted during the laning phase, managing the minion wave as they wished. Thanks to the great early game poke by both champions, as well as some help from T1’s jungler Oner, Caitlyn proved to be a great pick to initiate a snowball in the bot lane. In less than 15 minutes, T1 was able to grab two bot lane turrets and create a whopping 2.4k gold lead.
Despite Caitlyn not being as useful in the later stages, especially against mobile champions like Akali and Renekton, Gumayusi and T1 had a big enough advantage to close out the game in 25 minutes, and taking the 2-0 against KDF.
Will we see Caitlyn in an unconventional role again?
We already mentioned the strength and the main reasons why Caitlyn was picked as a support. LCK teams are given a lot of importance to lane priority in bot, given that the current meta heavily favors playing around dragons over the Rift Herald or the top side of the map.
Therefore, it’s likely that we will see her again in specific spots. Just like Jhin or Heimerdinger, Caitlyn has a similar role in ensuring bot lane push and the ability to deny enemies’ farm and experience with her poke. As long as the bot lane will remain similar, we should see her again: not often, but there will be situations or spots where she is a strong pick.
That said, a potential meta shift is coming up for the bot lane with the new patch 13.1b (13.2) so we will have to wait a little more to know whether Caitlyn support will become a viable pick. For now, though, she can only be treated as a highly-situational pick.
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