Katarina

Katarina is the ghastly companion who has been bound to serve the Van Helsing family and thus has to help the members of the family in their quests. In the game she's a constant companion that's controlled by A.I and levels along side the player albeit a bit slower. Based on the players preferences she can be commanded to either help in battle using melee or ranged attacks or stay in her Ghostly form.

# Katarina forms

## Ghost form

Outside battle or when commanded Katarina will stay in her ghost form which makes her invisible to enemies and invulnerable to their attacks. In this form Katarina cannot attack enemies but can provide player with passive bonuses from her Sentinel skill-tree. If Katarina gets "killed" in her other Melee or Ranged combat forms she will return to her ghost form in weakened state which makes her unable to change to her other forms for a while or use her Spirit guardian skill. This weakened state lasts for several seconds which can be reduced with perks and enchantments.

While it may initially seem tempting to focus purely on the Sentinel skill-tree and keep Katarina in the ghost form throughout the game. Doing so completely ignores her powerful Specter and Corpus skills that can make her invaluable asset in combat applying numerous debuffs to enemies or simply just by standing there as a distraction. Most Sentinel buffs are negligible at best and have greatly diminishing returns for skill-point investments.

## Melee form

Katarina will turn in to ferocious monster that attack enemies using her equipped wraith claws. Since her Corpus ability increases both her melee damage and health and her Ethereality increases her resistances and her chance to trigger her skills focusing on melee form can be a good idea for those looking to use her as tank for their ranged character.

## Ranged form

In this form Katarina will turn in to a creature that will fire projectiles from distance using the equipped wraithmark. Since her ranged attacks get boosted by Kinesis. While Kinesis also boosts dodge it can still be a good idea to invest in Ethereality and her skills Spectral resilience and Armor of defiance to make her more durable in combat.

# Equipment

## Weapons

While Katarina uses wraith claws when in melee form and wraithmark when in her ranged form the she will still enchant benefits from both weapons. This means that even if you use her only in melee form it's worth it to equip her with wraith claw with enchants that provides bonuses to her stats and damage.

## Resistance

While Katarina is unable to wear belts, gloves or boots she can still gain resistances from her weapons and armor. Wraith claws provide Katarina with Elemental resistance, Wraithmark provides poison resistance and Armor provides physical resistance.

## Level requirements

When it comes to item levels only the player level matters so it's still possible to equip Katarina with level 100 gear even if her max level is 60 as long as player character is level 100.

## Magic item find chance

Any enchants that increase magic item find chance provide only half the benefit when equipped by Katarina. But if you prefer not to use Katarina for combat you should still equip her with as much magic item find chance boosting enchants and essences as possible to gain most out from item slots.

# Difficulty

When playing on higher difficulties Katarina will receive bonus to her health and damage just like enemies do.

# Skills

Katarina has three tabs of skills Sentinel, Corpus  and Specter. With each level Katarina gains one skill-point that can be used to improve one of the skills. Max level for Katarina is level 60 so Katarina can obtain up to 59 skill-points from levels along with additional 6 skill points from Scholarly ghost perk and 2 from Wight perk.

Each skill has max level of 10 but the boosts receive some diminishing returns after levels 5 and 7. To access next skill in the skill-tree you need to meet the Katarina's level requirement as well as have at least one skill-point in all the linked skills higher up in the tree.

## Sentinel

Sentinel skills allow Katarina to buff the player in many ways. These are always active even when Katarina is in her weakened state or away selling items.

## Corpus

Corpus skills are passive bonuses that boost Katarina's stats.

## Specter

Spectre skills are skills that have chance to trigger whenever Katarina hits and enemy with either melee or ranged attack.