why would you pick her against swain? just wondering.

Okay, I have seen a kat use her ult twice within the corse of 25 seconds. It already has a low cd and the fact that her passive takes away 1/3 of the cd if she kills something makes her an amazing champion. She doesn't need cc or cc protection because cc is the ONLY way to take her down. She has a flash if an enemy or ally is nearby and she has a multi-target mini nuke. If she gets into trouble she just Shunpo's away.

Or, have someone be Morgana in your team, then stay around her the entire time so she can just put Black Shield on you when you're about to use your ult.

Although, that is a lot of work just for Kat XD

This sounds promising but I have no idea how they'd go about it.

Kat can be extremely dangerous and get these chains if the enemy team isn't careful or makes some serious mistakes, generally in an ambush situation. I've gotten these chains mostly when chasing an enemy team back to their towers after the fight was already won. And they were pubbers so they didn't have the organization to stop me. For me, her passive *usually* helps in situations that aren't a significant challenge. Rarely did it turn the tide of a battle for me.

Shunpo is a great escape skill, but you need it to best position your ult, and if you get stunned off your ult you probably won't get that kill. Of course a big part of Kat is the strategy required to place her ult and at the right timing to get those kills. Still, she needs to be up close to deal damage with anything other than a dagger, which is dangerous enough for a ranged AP carry, moreso for a short range one that can't stun their target first or stop the majority of their damage from being interrupted. She's squishy so I wouldn't say CC is the only way to take her down, but regardless she's always going to be in range of your CC since she needs to be in ult range.

Good points, I hadn't thought of other aoe channeled spells. And it's true, a good pairing can provide the CC that Kat needs, depending on the situation. Again, she doesn't need it much in the laning phase IMO, but obviously a good CC champ would work wonders with Kat late game. Personally I haven't had much luck with good CC support, so that might be why I'm here.

Banshee's veil is a decent item, and I didn't say I refuse to buy it for Kat. I often do, especially in longer games. But I don't think it's the solution to this problem long term. Indeed, it almost begs to be the solution because Kat has a glaring weakness built into her that could be addressed in this thread.

Because Killer Instincts gives her BB a healing reduction debuff which halves Swain's healing from his ultimate.

She is a clean up AP assassin squishie . She isn't meant to take a lot of damage, she is meant to be prone to CC.
Plus, Hextech Gunblade or/and Rylai's solves most of your issues usually. A banshee's veil after that.
You can't deny Katarina's farming skill.

All I'd like is to make her ultimate shorter by 0.5 to 1 second, compressing the damage dealt in 3 seconds to 2.5-2 seconds. 3 second ult is way too long, you hardly ever use more than 1.5 sec.

i usually love playing malzahar and its very effective to have nice support like morgana or someone who can keep the enemy stunned/cc'd until im done with my channel ulti.

we went against a nunu once who had morganas shield and a banshees of his own...it was sheer horror for us.

one combo i like to do when one of my friends is playing kat is be amumu...he initiates since his channel time is longer but no one really would cc in half a second...then i would go in and ult and it usually ends up in a triple or quadra. im assuming it would work well with galio as well.

That's a good point on her being an assassin. If she were played as an assassin I think I would be more okay with her fragile nature, but what specifically makes her an assassin rather than a nuke carry? She has no stealth abilities and no CC and her shunpo cooldown is too long to chase with any legitimate effectiveness (like say, Akali's ult). I'm not really sure why she's classified as an assassin.