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Hey TL, so my friends and I have already made a premade, and our best player mains Karthus. And when I mean main, I mean main. IMO, he can get to at least 1800 ELO with the skill level he is at. What I'm trying to figure out is a good team comp for karthus. I figured a solo top bruiser would work really well, since if you can get somebody low enough, karthus is insta-kill.
However, my friends figured that if you have a karthus mid, you need either shen or soraka. We were against a team who counterpicked us shen AND soraka because he accidently auto-locked in karthus. Shen isn't a bruiser though, and that might give our mid a bad start. So should we ban shen and pick soraka? Because soraka can heal through karthus ults until he starts getting ~300 AP.
Also, who synergizes extremely well with Karthus as a jungler? I was thinking of amumu (Maybe because I'm a beast with him, or maybe because I absolutely love his ganks) or maybe even somebody like Lee Sin. If you guys can try and give me a standard team comp, that would be pretty nice. So far, we're running -
Ban shen, rammus, cass
Pick AD nidalee solo top bruiser (I think shes undefeatable solo top bruiser)
Karthus mid
Amumu, lee sin, or udyr jungle
Ashe AD carry (We were thinking somebody like graves or kog, but we only have 1 CC and that is if amumu or udyr jungle)
Sona, Janna, or Alistar Support
However, we need to take out kassadin somehow. I really don't want to give up the rammus ban, since his ganks are just to deadly. So is there in any aspect that karthus beats kassadin?
Any answer will be appreciated
Thanks TL
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No. Kass beats Karth's head in.
He can E you based purely on last hitting, and just outdamages him.
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Your team comp seems to be fine imho. What Karthus wants mid-late game is to get into the middle of all, live or die and deal as much damage as possible. Amumu, Ashe, Alistar all are good for this since they have AoE slows / stuns which allows Karthus to catch up and not be kited.
Kassadin after level 6 and blue buff is very strong against most mids, but especially so against Karthus. You basically rely on landing your Q's to do damage but that's extremely difficult since he can just whenever jump in, silence and slow you, and move away and even R again if he needs to. But it's not impossible by any means. Karthus will just have to be using a lot of potions.
In a way Karthus can also be good at Kassadin due to his pushing potential, since he can keep pushing the lane and making sure Kassadin can't roam. This is of course only if he doesn't die himself to Kassadin / jungle.
Like in most cases, dealing with Kassadin is best done through shutting him down early(pre-6 before he has his ulti) through jungle ganks. So picking a safe bot / top would allow jungler to focus on ganking mid.
Any special reason why you are banning Cass? Shes strong all around for sure but if your picking and banning for Karthus, I think you can reduce that match up into a massive farm fest if you want to. (Which is what Karthus should want.)
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ban kass over rammus and ward in anti-rammus places if he gets picked (farther out)
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If Karthus is the centerpeice I don't think NIdalee complements him at all. I think you would be a lot better off running something with some cc top, or double wota. Nid is good in lane but she does nothing to complement your ap carry, which is what your asking.
I would consider going Riven/Shen/Vlad/Rumble/Kennen
don't need Olaf because you don't really peel for Karth. Jungle mumu is strong as long as you can pass blue 2nd time, again if you are building your team around your mid, hogging blue is a bad choice, if you don't feel comfortable I'd stick to lee or possibly Riven for the (minor) cc.
for support ban or pick Raka, and Janna is always good because of the passive but her Ult synergizes terribly with Karth in team fights.
again a lot of what I say is based on the question at hand, that Karthus is your best player and you want to build to exaggerate that.
also about Kass, in most cases picking your ap last is an effective 4th ban against Kass, although I agree with the above poster that the Cass ban is a waste, it's not a terrible matchup and he is your best player, may as well ban globals/other lanes.
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I think Karthus is pretty strong in most comps. The characters that really help him though are those that can capitalize on the basically forced engage that his wall creates - Alistar, Malphite, Amumu, Wukong, Shen, Ashe all greatly benefit from the slow that karthus creates. If this guy creates an obvious place to engage and one of these characters above takes it is extremely benefitial. I think a bigger concern however would be the fact that Karthus tends to be sort of binary - if he farms well he is incredibly strong and can basically deal enough damage to kill the entire other team, while there a few characters that just can stop him from farming, and he becomes useless and squishy for the rest of the game. Ahri, Kassadin, Leblanc, Fizz, Talon, Pantheon, Annie can all basically force him to stop farming because Karthus's main method of trading comes in the way of landing a wall and a few q's while taking minimal damage himself. All of these characters have mechanics that stop this from happening. They are also all incredibly strong traders early in the game, when Karthus's damage from defile is essentially negligible.
I've played a lot of Karthus myself, and I find that he is a very strong champ when he gets farmed. He is pretty easily countered in lane, however, and it's important that your team gains some more balanced heroes mid in terms of power curve. Karthus's playstyle isn't all that unique so there are a few characters that you can basically pick up immediately as a Karthus player - Mordekaiser and Galio are pretty good examples I suppose.
Just some advice, you don't actually need to listen to me  . There are people on this subforum that are in every way more qualified to give an opinion on this haha.
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caitlyn really good with karthus i think
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Big fan of Graves when I'm karth. Slow and aoe very relevent. Ashe is the same way, but a bit more late game.
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somehing like galio ammu karthus sona graves super aoe
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Since Karthus has to get up close to do the best damage with his E which makes him very vulnerable. Champions that can AoE taunt, stun or slow to keep opponents in range should compliment him best. His R is a useful gimmick but not the reason why he is quite strong. Yes, his passive allows him to stay in battle even when he dies... but he can't chase the opponent then and the opponent might not be low enough for the R to be useful.
I'm thinking Shen top, Leona, Nunu or Galio Support, some AoE AD carry like Graves bot and jungler Ammumu or Nocturne. The initial laning phase won't be that strong but team fights should always go in your favour and with Shen (and maybe Nocturne) you have great split pushing potential. Basically teamfights should consist of karthus following shen into the middle of the opponents and then all others chain stun, snare, slow or taunt the opponents while Karthus just has his E active, spams his Q and laughs as he does insane damage.
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If I would center all and everything around Karthus, I'd do the following:
Bans: Shen, Kass, Talon (obvious)
Picks:
- Soraka (obvious)
- Vlad (double WotA and your ults synergize really well)
- Mundo/Naut (you need something tanky and something to peel for you)
- Ashe or Graves, both for their utility and they both work well with Soraka.
I'd prefer Ashe and Naut. Decent amounts of CC, HUGE teamfighting capabilites.
Another idea would be to ban Soraka too instead of Talon and then pick Sona or Alistar. A good Talon will rape Karthus six ways from sunday, though, and by banning Soraka you risk a Karthus ban.
Also, but that's just a side note, Nidalee is far far far from being unbeatable.
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Karthus doesn't really need a specific setup to work. He mostly needs not to be countered which you seem to have understood already.
What counters him is mostly annoying mid picks : leblanc, kassadin (xerath and lux can be hard too due to high range) and to a lesser extent heals and shields, the less heals and shields there are in the ennemy team the better for you.
The most nasty thing I can think of in terms of synergy is the karthus + yorrick combo, yorrick ult on karthus is extremely strong.
The thing that surprises me tho is how much you think about top when bot should be your main focus, botlane has less levels, less hp and usually less resists, there are 2 people there which will both be affected by your ult. Running an agressive botlane (ex : taric tristana) can be very rewarding with karthus.
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Why has noone mentioned gragas or fizz? Both are fricking godlike against karthus ;o. The aAa mid player (I can't remember his name and I'm too lazy to check... moma?) plays almost exclusively karthus, and if the enemy team gets karthus he just goes fizz ;o. Kassa needs to be autobanned  .
What other champions does this top player of your team use? He can't only play one champion. . .
I think that both amu and varus have ultimates that can synergize well with karth, but karth can fit into almost any team. As already stated above your main problem is a hard counter mid pick and/or a babysitting jungler.
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Jarvan is a sick combo with Karthus since he can trap people inside of his Defile.
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nobody mentioned Fizz because he is not popular enough for anything but target banning. The fact that he rapes Karth is not news, all Fizz players know this.
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On May 17 2012 05:53 Slusher wrote:
nobody mentioned Fizz because he is not popular enough for anything but target banning. The fact that he rapes Karth is not news, all Fizz players know this.
I guess that this is server dependent, there are quite a few fizz players on EUW...
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On May 17 2012 08:38 Sufficiency wrote:
Pick Karthus last?
Not the point at all?
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For karthus you need Yorick. Free win lane, free 3 lives for karthus.
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pick karthus last, enemy would be retarded to pick leblanc or kass before that. karthus needs to be in the center doing damage, so having at least 1 aoe disable is nice(amumu, galio, kennen, leona, alistar, etc.). soroka needs to be banned at the very least, but is a strong pick on a karthus team as well. her heals let him stay alive longer in team fights and adding another global makes life hell for the rest of the map. ad carry isnt particularly important as AOE is nice, but sustained damage to clean up the low hp enemies is nice as well. with a hyper carry like karthus shitting out damage and needing focus, carries like kog and vayne are able to stay alive a lot longer late game. lulu as support giving karth her ult late game is pretty broken too. generally an aggressive jungler is a nice pair with karthus as his ult adds a lot to aggressive ganks/dives, but a late game pick like amumu works as well.
something ideal would be:
riven/vlad top
karth mid
amumu/naut jungle
soroka/alistar/lulu support
corki/graves/ez/kog/vayne bot
team comp isnt end all be all for karth at all though, a farmed karth works well in a lot of team comps so dont play champs you guys are bad at just to achieve the "perfect karth comp"
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Our solo top, which is me, play a lotta champions. I just prefer nidalee over other solo tops such as renekton and shen because nidalee wins the lane. The way she can sustain and harass the lane just rapes most other commonly picked. Normally, its a lot of shen, talon, irelia, renekton, and riven top. I like nid because I can beat every champ in that list with her. I would play jarvan, except for one problem. Pick jarvan and they'll pick a lee sin just to rape you. Originally, the meta behind our bot lane was a hyper aggresive lane, and then pick a mummy jungle. This works for us because you have dominance over late game with amumu, but you win at least bot lane with the combo. HOWEVER, the thought of CC came to us. With this matchup, we would be depending on mummy to be the main sort of CC, since we dont have like an Ashe slowing. I guess we could run a trist/taric or even an urgot/alistar, but then we would have to get karthus pretty fed. Him and nidalee are going to be the damage because urgot has bad late game dmg.
*Sidenote, Urgot can win the lane and then transition to full-out tank right? I've seen Genja do this, but no idea if it actually works....
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I always liked having a Jarvan on my team so he could dunk people and allowing me to safely aoe them while they can't touch me lol. Also as people have said aoe disables work well so you can be in the middle of fights and live longer.
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I don't know why you make the thread if you ignore the advice, you say "help my build a team around karthus" you get a unanimous Nid does nothing for him, and respond with "I play Nid anyway"
and please don't confuse this with me saying Nidalee is a bad champion. I'm saying to complement Karthus, she bring nothing to the table, when plenty of viable tops can really enhance his performance.
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EPT
