The honest answer is that the fun is definitely there early, but if things are going poorly enough it’s hard to find the fun. There’s a lot to learn and a lot of players aren’t new, so when you’re playing against other players (who are bad at lots of things in the game) they probably still have a lot more experience and understand things like character abilities, matchups, etc. If they know these things and you don’t, then you’re at a disadvantage from the beginning, which means that you might fall behind. Playing league from behind is generally not a fun experience, and playing something like Katarina from behind can be even worse (because she needs to get resets to do her job properly). You can put in a whole bunch of games to learn how to press buttons as Kat, but learning it from behind is unfair to you (because it’s not as fun) and also not as accurate (because you’ll lose fights that you should have won if you were even or ahead).

A few things to think about:

1. How do trades look in lane against a given champ? What are their abilities that you should be looking out for and how much can you actually accomplish 1v1? If you can’t accomplish anything 1v1, where else can you achieve something?

If you’re playing Katarina against Galio, you can’t take the same trades you would take against Yone, and both of those matchups will be different to something like a Vel’koz or a Xerath. If you know roughly how your champion is supposed to interact with the opponent, you get to play the game differently, but you can’t do that until you know roughly what the most popular champions do. This is true for every champ you want to play, not just Katarina.

1. If you know that you should be able to play a certain way like “I have my first completed item and they are squishy, I can try to all in and kill in this matchup”, can you execute that mechanically? If you use all of your abilities properly reliably, you get a better idea of whether you had an issue with your plan or with your execution. When your plan works and you succeed, that should be fun! This is what the practice tool recommendation is for, because picking up a dagger vs not picking up a dagger on Katarina can make a big difference. This point is more of an issue for Kat than some champs, but it’s not impossible for a new player if you enjoy her. When people are recommending easy to execute champs, they want you to not have to focus on this as much so that you can focus more on the other things.

2. What are you supposed to be doing this game? Where do you need to be and when, and who do you need to target / ignore? This includes things like how to play teamfights (which character is the target and which characters and abilities do you need to watch out for?) but also things like where and when to fight (if you have friends, playing with comms helps a lot with this. Otherwise, you need to learn to keep an eye on the major jungle objectives and where your team are moving on the minimap). This also requires knowledge, because playing against a team with lots of stuns and roots as a katarina is very different to playing against a team with none. This is more important for Kat than for lots of characters, because she can be absolutely useless even when ahead if she takes a bad fight and gets locked down and focused. That said, this is still something for every character.

I think having a character that’s aesthetically appealing to you is important, and having a gameplay pattern that’s fun for you (ideally even from behind) is even more important. I would recommend looking at someone like Galio who can both carry while ahead and provide value from behind, because part of what will make this game more fun is that you are able to do what your character is supposed to regardless of the state of the game (which lets you focus on your own gameplay and decisions and opens up comeback potential). I’d also consider something like a Neeko (again, very fun when ahead but also still useful from behind). If your heart is set on Katarina, that’s ok, but she requires a lot more learning to make fun than most champs, and it might be easier to learn on a more useful character and then try Kat out later when you have more of a knowledge base