Prior to the new split, Lucian and Kalista (and to an extent, Sivir) bullied most AD carry opposition into submission as the clear choices in the bottom lane in competitive play. Teams didn’t explore other options because no reason to explore other options presented itself. These picks had few equals in or out of laning phase, but with targeted nerfs, the landscape has changed. Many teams have looked for alternatives, and while Ashe has gained a prominent following, Caitlyn seems to have sticking power in Europe.

“I think Caitlyn is the best ADC now,” Team ROCCAT AD carry, Pierre "Steeelback" Medjaldi, said last week. “Caitlyn is the best right now because it's the best in lane — lane swap as well, it pushes very fast — the teamfight is good, and late game is super good, so that's why I pick Caitlyn every game."

This week in particular, League of Legends Champions Korea and the League of Legends Pro League have shied from the Caitlyn pick almost entirely, but she continued to see play in six games in the European League of Legends Championship Series. Outside just Steeelback, Caitlyn appeared for Fnatic, H2K-Gaming, Team Vitality and Splyce. With Caitlyn’s power as a turret trading AD carry and ability to work well in split and siege strategies, it makes sense that the EU LCS would gravitate toward her.

In this week’s games, Caitlyn demonstrated a great deal of use in professional play, but also some weaknesses that teams had to play around or that contributed in part to losses.

Player Comp Opponent ADC Opponent Comp Item note WL Steeelback Trundle; Gragas; Viktor; Janna Ashe Poppy; Kindred; Azir; Karma Oppressor L Rekkles Shen; Nidalee; Ryze; Braum Ashe Maokai; Rek'Sai; Viktor; Soraka W Police Irelia; Gragas; Viktor; Janna Sivir Shen; Kha'Zix; Ryze; Nami W Freeze Gragas; Elise; Viktor; Bard Sivir Irelia; Nidalee; Fizz; Karma Maw; Oppressor W Kobbe Olaf; Elise; Viktor; Nami Ezreal Gnar; Nidalee; Azir; Karma Dominik's L Kobbe Fizz; Rek'Sai; Swain; Soraka Ezreal Gnar; Nidalee; Vladimir; Karma L

The most obvious use for Caitlyn comes in lane swaps. With Piltover Peacemaker’s ability to clear minion waves and her long range, Caitlyn can get through turrets and push faster than almost any other AD carry in the game at level 1. H2K-Gaming’s Aleš "Freeze" Kněžínek demonstrated this best in the first game against G2 Esports. H2K seemed ahead in the swap by virtue of simply having a Caitlyn.

In H2K’s and Fnatic’s games in particular, Caitlyn demonstrated the skill that likely makes her most appealing to some of Europe’s top teams. If a team’s objective comes in the form of avoiding early fights, Caitlyn can merely stick to lanes and trade turrets quickly. In Fnatic’s game against Schalke, despite occasionally getting caught out or losing early skirmishes and falling behind in kills, they stayed ahead in gold due to Martin “Rekkles” Larsson’s ability to get through turrets quickly throughout early and midgame.

Specifically in Fnatic’s game, Rekkles showed a very strong use of Caitlyn’s Yordle Snap Traps. By constantly re-positioning the traps, Rekkles could keep the siege on a turret going for a longer period of time while opponents tried to navigate them. It made his Caitlyn and his team difficult to catch and dodge. Because of the increased traps available to place and the recharge duration reduction, often Caitlyns max the trap ability first after level 1 (though some pros did take one or two additional points in Piltover Peacemaker before maxing Trap).

It makes a lot of sense that Freeze would pick the champion, given how his team likes to play. Not only do H2K value Caitlyn highly, but they did so enough to ban it in Game 2 against G2 Esports, and Vitality banned it both games against H2K. When Freeze did play it, a short poke battle at the start of the game forced G2’s bottom lane into a lane swap scenario, which allowed H2K to utilize Caitlyn’s power in pushing turrets.

Given Caitlyn’s strength in standard lanes with Headshot ramping up and Piltover Peacemaker, one may question why lane swaps might be considered the ideal scenario. In Vitality’s game, the only game in which Caitlyn played the 2v2 at the start of the game, Park "Police" Hyeonggi and Raymond “kaSing” Tsang caught out their opponents and got a quick first blood.

2v2s present a strong situation of power for Caitlyn, but a few factors make lane swaps more ideal. In a lane swap, Caitlyn will almost always control the tempo because of her speed, whereas it's less assured that a Caitlyn will take the lead in a 2v2. Outside of the fickle nature of the 2v2, Ashe serves as a reasonable counter to Caitlyn with a strong support because she can zone Caitlyn's support and deal a lot of early damage with Focus and her passive.

Getting ahead early is very important for Caitlyn, as she must bypass a weak midgame. Caitlyn requires an expensive core item build before she gets to late game. As a very strong late game carry because of her ability to re-position and the way her kit synergizes with critical hit chance and attack speed, Caitlyn builds two items that both complement each other and her passive as well as cost a hefty amount — and that’s after building Infinity Edge.

Runaan’s Hurricane and Rapid Firecannon both provide attack speed and critical strike chance as well as on-hit effects (enhanced range, which is strong for sieging, and multi-target bolts) and movements speed. As a result, Caitlyn gets the most out of building both after Infinity Edge before moving onto a Last Whisper item (with the exception of one game, EU’s Caitlyns built Mortal Reminder this week).

As a result, Caitlyn’s mid game play has a lot less strength than AD carries with less expensive builds. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Caitlyns this week was seeing how teams played around her mid game power trough. In the case of Fnatic and H2K, they played the swap and turret trade game expertly to get a huge gold injection from turrets and build Caitlyn’s items for late game. By this point, they had built leads massive enough that they didn’t need to make as much use of Caitlyn’s other strength: her late game team fighting.

In Vitality vs. Unicorns of Love, though Vitality managed to get a clean first blood, they were not mindful of Teleport ganks after they pushed up in lane. As a result, they got set back, and Police went into a situation with the rest of the team where he had to freeze and farm.

Vitality’s composition came with Gragas and Janna, champions with the most powerful disengage ultimates in the game, that could provide a buffer so that Vitality only had to fight when they wanted to fight. This meant Vitality could wait until Caitlyn had her four main items. Upon completion of Last Whisper, they immediately moved to catch Kang “Move” Minsu in the jungle, and the game ended quickly from there.

These games represented the advantages of Caitlyn, but Team ROCCAT and Splyce had less luck with the pick. Though Steeelback has expressed his faith in the champion vocally, ROCCAT’s game showed the pitfalls of Caitlyn when one doesn’t optimize her use in the early game.

ROCCAT’s strong late game team fighting has earned them praise, but complete indecision in the early game meant that Origen got a lead. Once ROCCAT fell behind, they had very few opportunities to make a comeback in the mid game, and while they looked for opportunities to farm, Origen continued to pressure them and find picks using Ashe’s ultimate.

ROCCAT’s game did eventually demonstrate the strength of Caitlyn in team fights, especially with Viktor. Viktor, one of the most common picks complementing Caitlyn this week, creates a Gravity Field across which Caitlyn can continue to deal damage. Viktor’s ultimate also creates space. The two of them together can stall out mid lane in 1-4 split-push scenarios or just siege a turret with wave clear and long range. When ROCCAT played with Caitlyn and Viktor around Baron, they won two fights, even from a deficit, but Origen finally got their way and closed.

Perhaps the most interesting losses for Caitlyn this week came when Splyce went 0-2 against Fnatic. Many European teams have struggled to take advantage of jungle-centric strategies. Last split, much play took place in the side lanes, rotating and trading turrets, and few teams outside G2 seemed to constantly invade and take vision control in the jungle to look for collapses.

As this slowly changes in Europe, one can see that Caitlyn, a champion that has most of her use in open lanes with traps and the ability to use Ace in the Hole with vision on her opponent, doesn’t complement teams focused on invading well and can find herself countered by them. Fnatic demonstrated that Ezreal’s mobility paired well with Nidalee’s speed and Lee “Spirit” Dayoon’s focus on controlling Splyce’s jungle. They kept the line of vision moving into Splyce’s side of the map.

Splyce could not hold the jungle with weaker jungle matchups, and Caitlyn found herself with less of an ability to farm. Since most of Caitlyn’s power comes out in siege scenarios, Fnatic’s jungle-centric strategy splintered Splyce and made it so they couldn’t push minions safely.

Generally speaking, Caitlyn suits Europe’s focus on lane swaps and sieging in 1-4 or 1-3-1 scenarios, but she still seems niche. As European teams develop more dimension and more teams willing to play around the jungle like Fnatic or G2 evolve, more teams may gravitate toward champions better suited to pick comps or high mobility skirmishing. Ashe has trumped Caitlyn in many other regions and has grown in popularity already in Europe.

Lane swaps may also dwindle as more teams become content with 2v2 top. Yet at the moment, Caitlyn seems to have a healthy niche in competitive play in Europe. As compositions evolve, teams may begin to pick her with stronger jungle matchups and either command the 2v2 or get better vision for pushing hard in side lanes.

I appreciate that Caitlyn has kept a foothold in Europe this week for her strong sieging and teamfighting. As EU LCS teams evolve, continue to watch for her.

Kelsey Moser is a staff writer for theScore esports. You can follow her on Twitter.