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SUICIDE KARTHUS guide:
Take a solo lane if you can. Don't play Karthus if you can't.
Start with Crystal & pots, unless you're more comfortable with Doran's Ring.
Last hit with autoattack/lay waste, but try to stay around full mana. Get defile next for staying power, but max lay waste. If the enemy mid is aggressive and doesn't have a port, get Wall at 4; most of the time get defile tho. Obviously grab ult at 6. Hopefully your teammates are being aggressive and you can snipe someone with ult as soon as it's up. Maybe you can pick off mid.
I usually head back immediately after blowing my ult and buy Tear of the Goddess, usually boots, and sometimes Tome or Ruby Crystal.
+ Show Spoiler [Why I like Tear on Karthus] +No mana problems. As long as you're careful to turn off Defile when you're done with it, you shouldn't ever have those "oh no I don't have the mana for Requiem!" moments. Lay Waste charges it very quickly, especially if you spam it just to charge it. And frankly, Karthus's AP ratios are nothing special. Sacrificing a little damage for several more seconds of Defile is almost always worthwhile.
At this point in the game, you should be staying back and not being aggressive. You're really squishy. Lay Waste to farm and harass, and try to have at least one level in wall by 9. Defile isn't really going to come into play in teamfights until you can survive being close.
In teamfights, hang back and spam Lay Waste. Drop your Wall in the middle of people. It's a wall, and the psychology of separating them is worth more than slowing everyone. Always stay back, play it safe.
This all changes when you get Rylai's.
Now you should have about 2.5-3k hp, and Defile CONSTANTLY slows everyone in the area by 15%. Now you should wall behind everyone, run in with Defile (after your initiator of course!) and start spamming lay waste on the target or anyone stunned. Thanks to Tear, you have the manapool to leave Defile on for ~20 seconds, even while Lay-Wasting. If they ignore you, they're smart and hopefully you have a good tank to stun people. If they focus you, you'll probably die, but since you're Karthus that doesn't stop you. Turn on Defile as soon as you die (it turns off even if you had it on at death), spam Lay Waste, and start counting down the seconds until you're truly dead. At three to go, hit R. (Err on the side of caution, of course.) When dead, your ult is uninterruptible. If you don't die, try to get somewhere safe before ulting. Dying will cancel your ult.
+ Show Spoiler [Why I don't like Mejai's o…] +Yes, it's a very efficient AP item. No, it doesn't help your survivability. Yes, you get stacks from assists while dead. No, you don't get stacks from kills while dead. Safety Karthus, who builds almost nothing but Ability Power and stays back as far as he can, can get 20 stacks easily and safely. Suicide Karthus, obviously, can't. You'll hopefully get 5 stacks every teamfight from Defile, but you'll also likely lose 1/3 of your stacks every teamfight due to defile's short range.
So at this point, you should have Tear, Sorc Boots, Haunting Guise, and Rylai's. Next build Void Staff if you need the magic pen or Archangels if you don't. You now have virtually no mana limit and a modest amount of AP. This is usually when games end. Sometimes I finish Zhonya's, for two extra seconds of survivability with defile.
Don't be afraid to be bait. You can permaslow people, then turn around and wall behind them as reinforcements arrive. I suggest pairing Karthus with Warwick because his ult makes hitting Lay Waste so much easier in ganks and so that a straight-up DPS carry can take a solo lane and make sure that DPS is done. This is not a pubstomp build. This is for (very)soft-tanking and soft-carrying a well-organized premade. Don't play this with Gozey because if you lose a teamfight he will call you a feeder.
I take Flash and Clairvoyance because only careless Karthuses rely on Clarity and nothing else is really special. You need some way to escape; if you prefer ghost go with that. Clairvoyance because I have this obsession with seeing what my opponents are up to.
Buy wards for your team if you need to once you get Rylai's. Everything beyond that is luxury.
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Wow, that's actually a pretty solid Karthus guide. Not that I really know how to play him or anything, but it's well-written enough that I probably just got better with Karth.
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I just looked at the last page and that Anivia guide is the best one I've read. I had always opened with q before e, but rerqqe makes a lot more sense.
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On May 06 2010 08:57 Southlight wrote:
I dislike Tears/Arch because it's really slow. I actually do Guise Sorc Zhonya and then stack Blasting Wands, and I still feel like it's "slow." Yet it's probably the fastest you can be in terms of stacking damage output. Hahah.
After acquiring the 3 blasting wands for it, actually finishing Zhonya's is only efficient per money if you have ~200 AP. You're better off going guise/sorc (or just sorc depending on how much MR your opps have) and stacking out blasting wands, and then getting Zhonya's.
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On May 06 2010 21:37 oberon wrote:Show nested quote +On May 06 2010 08:57 Southlight wrote:
I dislike Tears/Arch because it's really slow. I actually do Guise Sorc Zhonya and then stack Blasting Wands, and I still feel like it's "slow." Yet it's probably the fastest you can be in terms of stacking damage output. Hahah. After acquiring the 3 blasting wands for it, actually finishing Zhonya's is only efficient per money if you have ~200 AP. You're better off going guise/sorc (or just sorc depending on how much MR your opps have) and stacking out blasting wands, and then getting Zhonya's.
Ooh, I hadn't thought about that. Coolio.
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On May 06 2010 07:12 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Just so you skype users know, you can disable push to talk in vent options and stream your mic all the time. It is pretty annoying to most users, though, vent people get annoyed at listening to clicking and breathing.
the 1st 3-man premade that day i was in with baikin n uta, we could hear fiddle sounds from turkey >_>
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'Twas Smash, and yea that was awkward. I heard Fiddle and Kat sounds all the time going *twitch* oh wrong game *twitch* o wrong game HOLY SHI- FIDD- oh wrong game.
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Marshall Islands3404 Posts
lol queued with akatosh yesterday and he just never connected, started playing on my main again a bit. Now I remember why I dont.
not to mention this heimer, "you ok with 2v1 lane? cause I can easily do it with shen."
nah man im good its aight
FIRST BLOOD
he teleports back
AN ALLY HAS BEEN SLAIN
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On May 06 2010 22:24 Southlight wrote:
'Twas Smash, and yea that was awkward. I heard Fiddle and Kat sounds all the time going *twitch* oh wrong game *twitch* o wrong game HOLY SHI- FIDD- oh wrong game.
the funniest thing about that was that that game wasn't even close enough for me to care about fiddle or kat being all up in my grill. I was like 3K HP with TF, so they'd just focus me down over like 10 seconds and then my team would slaughter them.
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On May 06 2010 13:33 Tooplark wrote:
SUICIDE KARTHUS guide:
Re: the guide.
First of all IMO you should always open Doran's; the mana regen from runes, DR, and Defile should really be enough to keep you going with Lay Waste. If not, you're doing something wrong. It's a pain laning against Karthus because his mana pool regens so fast.
Second, and this is obviously more of a playstyle issue as well as a "solo-queue or no" sort of issue, but my philosophy regarding casters and mana regen items is that you should never get them. It's kind of like getting health regen/lifesteal on DPS heroes - you might think they're nice, but my opinion is that they delay you from doing "your job," and you should never be holding yourself back like that. This is particularly the case for mana regen, as a quick trip to the golem (you should definitely be warding up your golem if you think they might steal it) will get you all the regen you should need for a considerable amount of time.
Third, IMO a must-have item for Karthus is Zhonya. The most obnoxious Karthus players I see rush Zhonya, turn on E W, Ghost into us spamming Q, and then trigger Zhonya. Now we've got a two-second statue killing us with Defile that we can't do anything about; we're forced to run, but the rest of his team can slow/stun, and it's really tough to deal with.
Edit:
I'd prolly also mention Karthus is a great ganker, and solo mid should really be ganking unless they can drop the tower anyways. I don't understand what you mean by "it's awkward to drop a wall" because I just use that bitch like an AoE snare. Just place it on the hero you wanna screw over, and you'll 100% slow them, and even force them to not run in a straight line (cuz they have to move sideways to get out of it, assuming you come in at a perpendicular angle).
On that note the summoner skills I usually take on Karth are Ghost/Flash, same as Fiddle. For all intents and purposes he's a Fiddle without the free teleport, with regards to his damaging role (and he has to surpass Fiddle's DPS output because of his lack of comparable shutdown).
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Yeah, if there's a caster that zhonya's was made--err,reworked for--it's Karthus. Two second unkillable defile followed by a death defile is so hard to stop it's ridiculous.
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On May 07 2010 00:31 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Yeah, if there's a caster that zhonya's was made--err,reworked for--it's Karthus. Two second unkillable defile followed by a death defile is so hard to stop it's ridiculous.
Ya, it's wonderful. 'Tis great on Janna, too, even if I keep epic failing to use it.
Edit:
By the way, Karthus' AP ratios suck because per-second they're crazy compared to other nukers. Just sayin' 
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Well, I dunno exactly how Karthus plays out, but on AP Ezreal, I religiously subscribe to opening with a fast Tear. I just run through abilities so quickly and there's almost always golem contention (whether intra-team or with the other team is irrelevant), so just having an item that gives me over 1K mana and builds into Archangel's later is a nice investment. So I guess I kinda disagree with investing in mana/mana regen being a bad way to open with mana hungry casters.
Weirdly enough though, I really agree with southlight about lifesteal on DPS. It's something you add on once you get to the point where you can do your job, not before. Nothing pains me more than seeing a trist/ashe walk out to mid with a vampiric scepter.
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Ezreal isn't a hero that's designed to be mana guzzling (low base maximum mana and low base mana regen in proportion to his skill costs and cooldowns), so that's not really surprising. He's one of very, very few. Zilean is another that comes to mind - it's hard to play Zilean without massing base mana and/or mana regen, because Rewind will tear through his mana pool like nothing else.
The majority of burst nukers, though, should really just be more deliberate with spell-cast timing (don't waste spells), and the majority of them have enough base mana to keep them chugging on a per-fight basis. Anything else can be overcome with Golem.
Karthus is in between 1 and 2, but Lay Waste costs almost nothing, he has a passive that returns massive amounts of mana per kill, he has great base mana, and anything else can be dealt with via Golem.
It's very playstyle-based though. You've seen me play Anivia - after every fight I'm pretty much forced go back to base to heal up mana. But my damage output trumps even Annie, except for the fact that I can't punish clumps like she can.
Edit:
Yeah, look at the list of champions. Can you honestly tell me any heroes other than Ez and Zilean that it's worth investing in mana/mana regen for? Every other hero can be played by simply being more judicial with spellcasting. Beating a dead horse, but if you like harassing and laying down suppressive fire with spells, you can do that, but you move from being a nuker to being a harasser.
Lifesteal is a different animal altogether - life steal gives you less hp return than regen, so it's pretty stupid. I can understand Tristana opening Vamp though - the usual first item on her is BT, so it's a fairly logical opening.
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I'm used to seeing Trists who open Vamp do something stupid like make malady with it.
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I know, right?
Speaking of Malady, I've been running the on-hit effect stacking build on TF recently (bloodrazors + some combination of phage, malady, and wit's end + zerker's greaves) and it's pretty funny even if it hurts his potential to backdoor.
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I like Malady on Udyr, I think that's about it. It works nice on Udyr because he's 100% an attack-speed hero, and most of his damage comes from Phoenix Stance so Malady's perceived lack of damage really doesn't matter. I've basically never played the new TF so I have no idea how it works on him \o/
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well, on a bloodrazor type build, you're basically all-in on attack speed anyway, so Malady's pretty good. It synergises really well will TF's whole Stacked Deck thing and the result is pretty potent. I'm not really sure if it's better than LW -> IE vs. champions, but it's pretty close (I think it hits harder earlier and scales worse except for tanky teams). The issue is when you're hitting towers you do way less.
now for something completely different
on LoL forums, I'm hearing a bit of bitching over all tank teams. I've never really run into a 3-5 tank team, but I'm curious if anyone's run into problems fighting something like Sion + Singed + Shen + Jax + Rammus. I can see how a bunch of tanky dudes who come with nice built in DPS would be a pain in the ass, but I still think that team would get rolled by a more balanced team comp. I also hear bitching that the end game just becomes impossible if all of said tanky characters stack sunfires.
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EPT
