Ever since her release, Caitlyn has been known for being a poke heavy, lane dominant champion, with a kit designed to rule the laning phase and snipe enemies from afar. One aspect of her kit that really allows her to shine is her ability to manage chokepoints while viciously assaulting objectives or to deter attackers from pushing forward through the use of her W, Yordle Snap Trap. Throughout this guide, numerous different positions of these traps will be discussed, describing how to use the traps when sieging neutral objectives, attacking and defending turrets, as well as other miscellaneous scenarios that will help take your Caitlyn game to the next level.

For starters, let us look at the ability itself. The ability reads as follows:

Yordle Snap Trap
Cost: 20 mana
Range 800

“Sets traps that an enemy Champion can spring, immobilizing them for 2 seconds and revealing them for a short duration. Traps last for 90 seconds. 3/3/4/4/5 traps may be active at once. Trapped enemies take an additional 30/70/110/150/190 (+0) increased damage from Headshot”

So how can better trap placement help improve your Caitlyn play and win more games? It is really quite simple. In a game like League of Legends, every second and every tick of damage can make the difference between your nexus exploding or theirs and being able to recognize when and where you should place traps can help swing the tides in your favor.

Assaulting Turrets:

We all know about the typical trap placement when assaulting turrets, but is this always the best set-up? Not necessarily, and we hear it time and time again, complacency leads to lost games. So what other ways can traps be effectively utilized besides the standard set-up pictured below?

There is a variation used when sieging the tier 1 turrets, and can be seen being used by Team Solo Mid's ADC, Yiliang ‘Doublelift’ Peng. Instead of forming a straight line across the siege point, which in this case is the Tier 1 turret, he forms an arc sweeping from the wall of the Raptor Den up into the wall separating the jungle path from the river.

As we can see here, Doublelift knew that there was the threat of a flank of an enemy jungler, so the angling of the traps deterred any possible aggression from the jungle path heading to blue buff. This line of trapping can be applied when vision makes the enemy jungler visible and/or the threat of a flank coming from the path is possible.

There is another atypical trap line that can be used with great success, especially in conjunction with other Champions that have large AoE crowd control abilities such as Gnar or Orianna. This simple trap formation forces enemy champions into a narrow chokepoint, making it very easy for Champions that can initiate fights or create picks to shine and start that wombo-combo that could give your team a victory!

Defending Turrets:

While defending, the typical straight line set-up is still the most useful in the typical scenario in which you are being sieged on. In contrast with assaulting, in which the traps should be placed closer to the turret in an effort to push the enemy back, the traps should be placed farther out away from your own turret, as demonstrated by Doublelift, in order to give your turret and team some breathing room to operate with.

Neutral Objectives:

When it comes to contesting neutral objectives, expert trap placement can be crucial for securing a buff for your team. Depending on where the enemy is coming from, there are two main set-ups that are viable in almost every scenario: the linear set-up and the two-point set-up. Let it be stated that these can always be altered depending on what information your team's vision provides to you, such as sacrificing some jungle traps to put them into the river or vice versa.

As shown, the linear set-up is viable in situations in which the enemy team is heading to contest coming from the mid lane through river, while the two-point set-up is viable when they are heading to contest from base, through the jungle near blue buff. Both of these placements have the same goal of deterring the enemy, buying time to secure the buff or to be able to successfully bait an objective to get a pick or two, allowing for a successful rotation to another lane thereafter.

Miscellaneous Situations:

In terms of miscellaneous situations that could call for Caitlyn traps, a lot of them come with synergizing well with your laning partner or reacting properly to an ability. When it comes to laning, placing a trap on top of an enemy who is let’s say, snared by a Morgana Dark Binding, can lead to that little bit of extra damage and crowd control that can take your lane dominance to the next level. Placing a trap on top of yourself after an enemy is engaging onto you can make the difference in between escaping or staring at a grey screen. Making sure to implement both of these into your game can make you a more valuable asset to the rest of your team.

Conclusion:

With all this being said, these trap formations will not always be the best choice, as there are many things to account for when sieging a turret or contesting a neutral objective such as: team composition, enemy team composition, and the positioning of both teams. Hopefully these different formations will help to bring your Caitlyn game to the next level and assist in gaining that coveted LP.

Like our content? Support us by getting our merchandise in our shop