Talk:Katarina/@comment-24947613-20140710040818/@comment-25180401-20140714233850

It was most popular with older kat, just after her rework and early season 3 I believe. Her burst damage was low (allegedly) and/or people did not know how to use her the way that she is now. She was a very weak pick because she brought no ultility or tank, and little damage because her only damage was sustained, but she blew up too fast.

People realized that although her scaling was poor, her base damage was rather impressive, especially with her infamous passive once she survived long enough to use another round of abilities. Thus, peoople began building tankarina: a tanky caster who would theoretically rely on penetration to deal true damage to tanks and carries alike, much like a carry amumu build nowadays. Common items included sorcs and void for penetration, abyssal for mr and reduction, liandrys for penetration and % health sustained dot,  and randuins and sunfire for tank and close-range teamfight utility.

Other situational items included banshees and zhonyas, for a funny reason. Even though kat built tank, people still instinctively used all their cc and damage on her. Death lotus still hurt, but not nearly as much as it would on glass cannon kat. As a result, kat would still get focused, even as a tank in teamfights. As a tank, obviously that was optimal, so banshees, zhonyas, and even randuins to an extent helped her to shake off aggro and delay death in the middle of a fight to keep her team stomping while the enemy kept attacking the tank.

So, in summary, tankarina took advantage of great base damages and people hating kat to keep katarina viable in that harsh rework transition phase. Since then, her damages have changed and she is much more viable glass cannon. That is not to say however, that tankarina is no longer playable, simply that, like AD kat, it is no longer optimal.