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Karthus,The Deathsinger
![[image loading]](http://www.lolstrategy.com/admin/images/champions/69015.jpg)
I noticed there was no Karthus thread so I decided to make one. I'm a decent Karthus and I used to play a lot of games with Pdiz so I'm pro 'n shit.
Karthus is a very strong mage and an insane snowballer. He is my #1 caster to carry bads with (after Annie but Annie op) due to his strong laning, great ganks, and KS'ing ulti.
Summoner Spells:
![[image loading]](http://edge2.mobafire.com/images/summoner-spell/flash.png) ![[image loading]](http://edge2.mobafire.com/images/summoner-spell/teleport.png)
Flash, always
Flash op needs nerfs. Flash ---> Wall for billion range and 80% slow is pro.
2nd summoner is up to you but I get Teleport 100% of the time. Karthus is a great ganker due to his wall. He is also great at clearing minion waves so lategame you can solopush fairly well.
Masteries and Runes
9/0/21: Pretty obvious but get the point in advanced TP and Flash and reduced death time. I get reduced death time on all my champs that use util tree but some people are weird and get the other thing. Don't be weird.
Runes: Mpen reds, AP yellows, AP blues, AP quints. Runes are 100% up to you though. Just don't run mp5 because you will get a tear to fix all your mp5 problems. Movement Speed quints are also an option.
Skills
![[image loading]](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101208200935/leagueoflegends/images/6/66/DeathDefied.jpg)
Death Defied: (passive)
Upon dying, Karthus enters a spirit form allowing him to continue casting spells for 7 seconds. During this time his abilities cost no mana. This is what makes Karthus really strong. You can run into the enemy team and suicide and dish out lots of damage for no mana cost and you can not be cc'd. If you want to use your ulti while dead make sure to do it before 4 seconds because you need 3 seconds to channel it.
![[image loading]](http://edge1.mobafire.com/images/ability/karthus-lay-waste.png)
Lay Waste:
Creates a delayed blast at Karthus' cursor position. After a half a second delay, it will deal magic damage to each nearby enemy. The damage is doubled if it hits only a single unit. This spell works like Urgot's Q. You move your mouse to where you want it to cast and click Q. It does only half damage if it hits more than 1 target so aim to the far side of creeps when using this to last hit.
![[image loading]](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101208200806/leagueoflegends/images/7/79/WallofPain.jpg)
Wall of Pain:
Karthus creates a wall between 2 obelisks at target position. Any enemy passing this wall have their armor, magic resistance, and movement speed reduced for 5 seconds. The wall lasts 7 seconds. Probably the best slow in the game. If you hit someone with this skill they are pretty much guaranteed to eat every lay waste you throw at them.
![[image loading]](http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101208200955/leagueoflegends/images/1/10/Defile.jpg)
Defile:
(Toggle) - Off: When Karthus kills a unit, he restores mana.
On: Drains mana to deal magic damage to nearby enemies each second. Great farming skill and AoE damage for when you run into the enemy team and suicide. The mana passive is great for keeping your mana high in lane.
![[image loading]](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101208201002/leagueoflegends/images/c/c1/Requiem.jpg)
Requiem:After channeling for 3 seconds, Karthus deals magic damage to all enemy champions. An amazing spell. This ability lets Karthus rack up soulstealer stacks and snowball out of control. Tell your team when you are lvl 6 and keep your eye out for enemies with low hp. When your jungler ganks a lane, use your ulti (make sure you aren't in range to be cc'd out of it by an enemy though) and get free gold by either securing a kill for your team or doing enough damage that you get an assist.
Skilling Order: Q, W, Q, E
Max Q first and level E and W evenly.
Build
Saphire crystal / Dring / Boots
Tear of the goddes
Rylais or Deathcap
Rylais or Deathcap
WOTA
Void Staff
Archangels
For boots get mpen or mercs. Never get CDR boots. Boots3 could also be a good option.
You should start ganking as soon as possible. Karthus pushes insanely fast so when you get the opportunity, push your lane and go gank. Also, Look out for enemy ganks. Karthus is a great counter ganker. Look for wards on your team, you can teleport to warded brushes and get an easy kill. (harder to do now that tp reveals wards.)
Due to Wall of Pain, you can kill Baron extremely fast with your team. You are a great candidate for golem buff so ask your jungler for it when he feels like he doesn't need it (especially great once you build your tear.)
In teamfights you can do 2 things.
1. Play very careful. Get a wall off on the enemy team and kite whoever tries to focus you. With your Rylais it is pretty much impossible for a melee to get to you and if they do you can usually out DPS them. Use your ulti to cleanup whoever tries to run away.
2. Wall as many members of the enemy team and run into them. Don't worry about being focused as you can simply die and still deal damage for another 4 seconds + 3 for ulti.
Original Message From r.Evo:
Hey there,
I basicly just started playing around with Karthus and, honestly, the current thread for him looks worse than any morde thread we ever had. Like so many "Hurrdurr this is how I do it in normals!!!11"-builds and shit like that. :S
Since I know from your other posts that you usually know what you're doing I'd love if you maybe can update the OP with some questions I have about him and maybe tell the normal trolls to gtfo and stuff. =D
1) There seem to be two big "schools" for Karthus. The Revive/TP "Zombie" crew and the "normal" people who use Flash/TP. When and why would which of those be superior to the other?
2) When playing the "normal" builds, there seems to be one camp advocating Tears first builds, another one RoA rush. I believe you said you think that Tears / Rylais / Deathcap is superior to RoA builds whenever you don't need the Catalyst for laning. To me it seems some people love Tears (same for Rylais) others plain hate it. This usually means both is viable, just with varying strenth under varying circumstances. When would you recommend which and why?
1) Revive TP is much harder to pull off. It's definitely for more experienced Karthus players that know perfect times to use revive, have great map awareness so they don't die without flash, are great at TP ganks etc.
2) Yea I like Tear if I'll have an easy lane. There are laners that will punish you for having minimal hp early on (Kass, Leblanc, Annie) so you need to get a cata. I still don't get RoA on them though, I usually just save the cata for a late bveil. I don't know which to recommend, there are great Karthus players that use either build. It's probably just up to your playstyle.
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is awesome32274 Posts
This is 100% pubstomping opinions as I never play karthus in ranked:
I don't see the point of tear because I always always get blue. Shouldn't have another have someone who needs blue more than you (anivia and swain overlap with karthus, the only one I can think of is Udyr maybe).
I go:
Sapphire + 2x pots
boots
Cata
RoA
Rylais
Deathcap
Zonyas
Es so tanky that people try to jump on you and don't realize how much you can take.
I see you skipped Zonyas in your list. Any reasons?
Also, I never was a fan of Mejai cause it delays my "tanky" items and when teamfights start I die too easily. Maybe it's because I pub and full AP karthus diving into the team works when you got 5 people working into that start.
Also, any reason to QWQ instead of QEQ? Your Q range should let you be out of everyone's range farming happily (which is was karthus doest best). Maybe not against Cait.
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- Same reason you get tear on someone like Anivia. You can't have blue buff 24/7 and you will run oom even with blue if you get no mana items. If you didn't get Cata in your build you wouldn't be saying golem is enough.
- I don't like getting RoA because of his passive. Karthus is a caster you can go all in offense and suffer no consequences. I'd much rather get a tear for my mana costs and then get rest all damage.
- Zhonyas can be cool but I'd rather just get more AP. I wouldn't completely rule it out though.
- I get W at lvl 2 because you can harass very well by simply walling someone when they are away from a creep and get free q's in.
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Baa?21242 Posts
Why Rylais so early instead of just Cata -> Deathcap or something? By your rationale, the HP on Rylais shouldn't really matter early and you slow enough with wall anyways.
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Bearded Elder29903 Posts
Uhm, I'm _never_ getting Rylais on Karthus as it's useless IMO. I go straight cata > soulstealer > rod > rabadon or cata > soulstealer > rabadon > archangel / void
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Why do so many ppl get deathcap?
I usually get tear -> roa -> archangels -> deathcap -> hourglass -> last one depending on the game.
It provides some hp to stay in the middle of the fight and still gives some nice ap.
The bad part is low ap at the start.
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Because Karthus can cast a ton of spells no matter how the fight goes, and there is nothing better suited to make those spells hurt than a Deathcap.
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On June 28 2011 16:52 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Why Rylais so early instead of just Cata -> Deathcap or something? By your rationale, the HP on Rylais shouldn't really matter early and you slow enough with wall anyways.
Wall slow is great but you won't be able to slow 5 people with it and the cd is quite long. Rylais lets you stick to a target if you land 1 Q. You also AoE slow with defile.
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Baa?21242 Posts
On June 28 2011 18:44 HazMat wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2011 16:52 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Why Rylais so early instead of just Cata -> Deathcap or something? By your rationale, the HP on Rylais shouldn't really matter early and you slow enough with wall anyways. Wall slow is great but you won't be able to slow 5 people with it and the cd is quite long. Rylais lets you stick to a target if you land 1 Q. You also AoE slow with defile.
Doesn't it feel like you do no damage until you have 2.5 (tears, rylai, hat) big items though? :|
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Real way to play karthus: revive tp, full reduced death timer runes.
How to play: farm until you die. tp or revive back to lane to farm even more until you die, split pushing is advised. Rinse and repeat until you and the rest of your team are superfarmed (you from creeps, your team from ending the killstreaks the opponents got on you). Then teamfight, allowing yourself to die, ult, then revive and tp back to the fight to finish off the enemies.
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United States37500 Posts
Rylai's slow is kinda redundant on Karth. I'm more of a fan of Catalyst into either RoA or Banshee depending on what you need more of AP or Spell Block.
On June 29 2011 04:00 Two_DoWn wrote:
Real way to play karthus: revive tp, full reduced death timer runes.
How to play: farm until you die. tp or revive back to lane to farm even more until you die, split pushing is advised. Rinse and repeat until you and the rest of your team are superfarmed (you from creeps, your team from ending the killstreaks the opponents got on you). Then teamfight, allowing yourself to die, ult, then revive and tp back to the fight to finish off the enemies.
Real hanyuyu style
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On June 29 2011 03:51 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:Show nested quote +On June 28 2011 18:44 HazMat wrote:On June 28 2011 16:52 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:
Why Rylais so early instead of just Cata -> Deathcap or something? By your rationale, the HP on Rylais shouldn't really matter early and you slow enough with wall anyways. Wall slow is great but you won't be able to slow 5 people with it and the cd is quite long. Rylais lets you stick to a target if you land 1 Q. You also AoE slow with defile. Doesn't it feel like you do no damage until you have 2.5 (tears, rylai, hat) big items though? :|
Farm really really hard.
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Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 04:00 Two_DoWn wrote:
Real way to play karthus: revive tp, full reduced death timer runes.
How to play: farm until you die. tp or revive back to lane to farm even more until you die, split pushing is advised. Rinse and repeat until you and the rest of your team are superfarmed (you from creeps, your team from ending the killstreaks the opponents got on you). Then teamfight, allowing yourself to die, ult, then revive and tp back to the fight to finish off the enemies. Real hanyuyu style
He my hero bro
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Baa?21242 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Cidg8.png)
Hanyuyu style best style.
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On June 29 2011 05:42 Carnivorous Sheep wrote:Hanyuyu style best style.
Csheep: running hanyuyu style without revive or TSD quints.
win anyways cause wala
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Baa?21242 Posts
Best style. I'm totally setting up my TSD quint page again for every time I play Karthus.
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On June 29 2011 04:38 NeoIllusions wrote:Rylai's slow is kinda redundant on Karth. I'm more of a fan of Catalyst into either RoA or Banshee depending on what you need more of AP or Spell Block. Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 04:00 Two_DoWn wrote:
Real way to play karthus: revive tp, full reduced death timer runes.
How to play: farm until you die. tp or revive back to lane to farm even more until you die, split pushing is advised. Rinse and repeat until you and the rest of your team are superfarmed (you from creeps, your team from ending the killstreaks the opponents got on you). Then teamfight, allowing yourself to die, ult, then revive and tp back to the fight to finish off the enemies. Real hanyuyu style
I should get Pdiz in here and slap you. Hella haters.
I don't like Hanyuyu style because I still think it's retarded. I know it's strong and what not but the amount of morale you lose feeding the enemy kills will not win you games.
Also, Karthus is strong before you get a deathcap. With Full ap page, an unstacked SS and Rylais you will still dish out crazy deepz.
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real reason to never get rylais is because when you die in the middle of 5 and turn on your e everyone thinks that the lil ice particle does damage and runs away. if you don't get rylais people will ignore you cuz you already dead and marinate in your AoE.
tru fax
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Oh karthus, one of the funniest champs I ever played. Also one who has one of the highest skill caps.
I usually do d-ring opening, if I loose lane, 2-3 drings with sorc / mercs. then catalyst into RoA or rylai
if I win, its 2-3 d rings sorcs deathcap void then go from there.
If you wanna be a real pro, then you do jungle karthus with tank build:
cloth armor 5pot start ofc
then you go catalyst / tear / frozen heart / banshee / void / rylai / archangels. Tank like a boss and people dont wanna focus you cus even if they kill you, youll be up for some more seconds.
Yep, I have no idea how to build him 
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karthus is a really good ap character if you know how to farm him well.
first off, i like to start with pure magic pen + mp regen runes. for masteries its up to you, but my preference is 9/0/21, or 2/7/21 with ghost and flash
he's really good at any lane basically but my preference is mid for the early lvl 6. i like to start off with boots, 2 hp pots and 1 mana pot. start off with lay waste. you should never run out of mana early game once you get defile, just last hit with your Q.
harass the enemy, grab slow at 4, and then try to make him waste his flash if he has it. remember the most important thing is to master the art of landing that Q. predict where the guy is going to run, and cast it ahead. it does alot of damage early game if u hit him alone. u can either flash in and gank him at level 5 or wait for 6 and then get his hp low enough to ult.
my build from there is sorc boots, archangels -> deathcap -> voidstaff if other team stacks MR like crazy -> hourglass ->all archangels
you want to grab the blue if you can and just farm wave after wave of mobs by keeping defile on. once you get hourglass you can literally tank the other team and engage first. just run in with defile, wall everything flash in and then when they start hitting you turn on the hourglass and laugh as your team clears them up. if you die just hit a few more Q's and then ur ult for the 1k+ damage on everyone. ultimate lulz.
u can also gank anybody. just ask if ur teammates if the guy in whatever lane has used his flash yet. turn on ur defile and wait for him to flash away before u slow him. pubs always run from karthus when he has that huge aura on.
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On June 29 2011 07:25 SlayerSBriefS wrote:
karthus is a really good ap character if you know how to farm him well.
Press E
Pick Nose
Press E
doesn't seem very complicated.
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How do snowballing items fit in when playing vs. zombie karthus?
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Baa?21242 Posts
On June 29 2011 10:59 Hynda wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 07:25 SlayerSBriefS wrote:
karthus is a really good ap character if you know how to farm him well.
Press E Pick Nose Press E doesn't seem very complicated.
Landing Q in lane? Otherwise you're just gonna go into midgame with no farm and super denied zz.
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Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^
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I wouldn't get a soulstealer in some supersrs game but in solo queue I get it all the time and get 20 stacks easy.
1800~ elo us.
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i feel like karthus should always go top because he has the longest effective range ult in the game, so even if your teleport is down for a dragon fight, you can contribute
also i really don't like rylai's on him. cata->RoA->deathcap or just rush deathcap
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Bearded Elder29903 Posts
Karthus is the best champion for solo Queue IMO... my match history proves it :f
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Karthus is beast in soloqueue because he's the only champ that still deals absurd damage even if dead, doesn't even matter how retarded your team is you still kill everything.
I'm bad with the Q mechanic otherwise I'd play the fuck out of him :/
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Gonna have enough ip for karth tonight, can't wait to try proto-Cass :D
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Updated the guide a bit. Took out soulstealer (though it is a great pub stomper if you feel you're above the enemy team's skill level). I'm still building rylais, but I prioritize Deathcap 90% of the time. I'm still building tear over catalyst. I've tried going RoA but I dislike it.
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On August 14 2011 08:21 HazMat wrote:
Updated the guide a bit. Took out soulstealer (though it is a great pub stomper if you feel you're above the enemy team's skill level).
Every time the enemy team has Karthus in a normal 5v5, I cry a bit on the inside. He almost invariably racks up an obscene amount kills because people are dumb. There was this funny Karthus vs Karthus battle where some premades on my team were basically all suiciding to deal near fatal damage so Karthus could wipe out everyone. The carnage was unreal.
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Tear/Cata Revolver Deathcap infinite farm at the expense of imbadamage
actually infiniter farm at the expense of superwtfimbadamage
Also lets you take blue buff safer and solo dragon if you feel like it (lol).
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My karthus build starts sapphire, 2x hp pot, into Archangels, Magic pen Boots (can't think of name), Rod of Ages, Will of Ancients, Void Staff, Rabadon's. Pretty standard pub stomp build for me, as he is my favorite hero. I also take flash and clairvoyance so I can spot run aways to nuke.
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You should change this:
He is also great at clearing minion waves so lategame you can backdoor fairly well.
Backdooring is when you destroy a turret without minion support.
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On June 28 2011 17:00 Crucifix wrote:
Uhm, I'm _never_ getting Rylais on Karthus as it's useless IMO. I go straight cata > soulstealer > rod > rabadon or cata > soulstealer > rabadon > archangel / void
Sorry but you have NO IDEA how awesome karthus is with rylais. If you get even one hit with lay waste you enemy is dead. One hit lay waste move in with defile up and continue to lay waste: there is no escape unless they turn and manage to kill you before they die.. which basically doesn't happen. Karthus becomes an incredible ganker and team-fighter with rylais at the mid to late game stages.
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On August 16 2011 11:58 clickrush wrote:You should change this: Show nested quote +He is also great at clearing minion waves so lategame you can backdoor fairly well. Backdooring is when you destroy a turret without minion support.
Meant solopush, fixed.
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Obviously Karthus belongs in the jungle, you ever seen his double buff gank? Shit is scary yo.
I meant to buy him a long time ago and then I quit... I should get back on that.
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I LOVE Karthus! :D I haven't played in a while besides one game a few days ago and went 12-3-11 lol. He rapes bad players so hard and is a handful even vs good team. I love going mid vs him and Q people to death who are retarded. Last game I played vs another Karth in mid who was really bad. I Q him to death 1st then 2nd time I Q him to like 100 hp right as I turned lvl 6 and BOOM. If the enemy team doesn't get any D items vs magic then they are fucked hard.
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On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^
Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss.
Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap.
To sum it up :
9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs)
red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap
start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots)
then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage)
in some case you can get banshee before void staff
summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team
PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears.
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I own with my Q as Karthus. I use it to farm magic minions while auto-attacking melee ones. I occasionally use it to chip away at the enemy champ in my lane. Brand and Caitlyn are your main worries in lane as they both out-range you. However, you can easily trick Brand into wasting mana by running back and forth while laning against him. I have two playstyles as Karthus.
1) You can't touch this. I use wall and E to prevent enemy champs from having much of a chance at killing me. I focus on map awareness, always letting teammates know when my ult is ready. I tend to rush AP as fast as possible if I can kill the enemy champ in my lane, otherwise I go for catalyst. If my teammates are pretty decent I'll consider a mejai's. I average around 3-5 deaths and significantly more kills and assists going this focus.
2) Kathus the dead Terrorist. Suicide bomber Karthus is so much fun. There's nothing like dropping a wall in the middle of a team fight, running in with your defile up, using a couple of Qs, and then ulting after you die. Which I follow up with "SILENCE! I KILL YOU!" when I get a double kill, mutliple assists, or better.
I always go for the magic pen boots. Map awareness is an absolute must with Karthus. Your ult is also good for dissuading enemy champs from chasing your teammates.
Champions with a built in flash/teleport are always troublesome for Karthus as your wall gives you 0 protection from them. Karthus' worst enemy is his own team. When you use your ult to pick off an enemy champ your teammates may try to initiate on other champs and end up getting themselves killed. A great Karthus can compensate for 1 bad teammate, 2 if you really excel at Karthus.
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Ugh, Hate having a karthus on my team, they never participate in any teamfights, and only use their ulti. Suicide Karthus is the best, but too bad almost no one plays him like that.
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On August 17 2011 01:54 wei2coolman wrote:
Ugh, Hate having a karthus on my team, they never participate in any teamfights, and only use their ulti. Suicide Karthus is the best, but too bad almost no one plays him like that.
Well, you just have to hope you team up with me then. You'll like how i play Karthus.
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On August 16 2011 19:31 RouaF wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^ Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss. Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap. To sum it up : 9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs) red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots) then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage) in some case you can get banshee before void staff summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears.
Why do Europeans build everything so badly.
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Boots 1st? I only use boots + pots if im forced to lane otherwise I go dorans 1st into a cata to RoA. Then next items are built depending on what the other team is doing with their builds and team make ups.
wei2coolman, you are playing with inexperienced Karthus players then who are too tentative with a squishy.
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I really want Karthus badly, wish Riot would put the price down on him i still have about 4100 points left to go 
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On August 17 2011 14:35 SEA_GenesiS wrote:I really want Karthus badly, wish Riot would put the price down on him i still have about 4100 points left to go
Hehe he was the 1st champ I saved up for back when I 1st started playing. Now I basically only play him! Though I don't play much anymore
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On August 17 2011 14:28 Slaughter wrote:
Boots 1st? I only use boots + pots if im forced to lane otherwise I go dorans 1st into a cata to RoA. Then next items are built depending on what the other team is doing with their builds and team make ups.
wei2coolman, you are playing with inexperienced Karthus players then who are too tentative with a squishy.
I actually agree with boots first. Pretty much every mid nowadays starts boots so you're forced to open boots or pretty much lose the lane automatically.
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Ah well I haven't played consistently in a while. Back when I played most I didn't really have problem with that, but I don't play at high elo so the skill of most players I play against is low to average.
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On August 17 2011 13:01 HazMat wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2011 19:31 RouaF wrote:On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^ Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss. Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap. To sum it up : 9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs) red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots) then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage) in some case you can get banshee before void staff summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears. Why do Europeans build everything so badly.
Lol. Could you elaborate ? And not just quote a wall of text and say "meh it's bad" ... posting standards ... TL .. etc.
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tear is bad on karthus and i stomp the few karths i play who get it first, you shouldnt be spamming q anyway and when defile becomes useful mana in team fights is not an issue.
I will put it to you this way, with the crap ap ratios he has on defile you are better of living for 2 to 3 seconds longer than dying and going out with rather underwhelming bang.
I especially laugh when i see an archangels on him that isn't his last item. Glass cannon for the lose.
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I've started getting a catalyst if I'm going against an annoying laner. (Pretty much only Annie or some bruiser if I'm forced to solotop)
Tear is a great item on Karthus as long as you don't die from being very vulnerable until you get Rylais. Against Annie it's pretty much suicide to go tear.
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On August 18 2011 05:41 RouaF wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2011 13:01 HazMat wrote:On August 16 2011 19:31 RouaF wrote:On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^ Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss. Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap. To sum it up : 9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs) red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots) then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage) in some case you can get banshee before void staff summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears. Why do Europeans build everything so badly. Lol. Could you elaborate ? And not just quote a wall of text and say "meh it's bad" ... posting standards ... TL .. etc.
Sorry I take that back. It's an ok build but I still think Tear is needed. I've had succesful games with tear though so I guess both work. I'm still a bigger fan of Tear unless I need Catalyst for the laning power.
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On August 16 2011 19:31 RouaF wrote:Show nested quote +On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^ Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss. Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap. To sum it up : 9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs) red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots) then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage) in some case you can get banshee before void staff summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears.
So at what ELO does EU west's builds start to follow what they say? Whether or not I disagree with getting Rylai's, you say Karthus needs no health, then get BV AND RoA (and no tear)?
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RoA makes a lot of difference I have found. I generally build that first. after either getting a dorans or bots + pots to start out with. Then it generally depends on how im doing vs the person im laning against.
I started to use the boots + pots opening more and I like being able to spam Q a bit more for harass, especially vs players who are not skilled at dodging or have predictable movement patterns.
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On August 17 2011 01:54 wei2coolman wrote:
Ugh, Hate having a karthus on my team, they never participate in any teamfights, and only use their ulti. Suicide Karthus is the best, but too bad almost no one plays him like that.
Yeah, Skillthus players are amazing. Do nothing to help their team and suck horribly, get 2 kills with their ulti after a team fight and proceed to claim they are the best players ever in chat.
That ulti really should be changed, so boring and has pretty much no element of skill for the opposing players. Vlad can pool it, some heroes can shield it... but most characters just have to hope they have enough hp or defense to take it.
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It adds another factor into game; namely even if you die, you are guaranteed to deal damage to everyone. Not only that but it serves so you can 'participate' in skirmishes early to mid game.
Account for his ult damage.
EDIT: I really wish Karthus Q could be toggled between automatic smartcast and point-and-click. I hate the former. I bought Cass without knowing her Q was the same...
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They could make it that you can only use the ult when you've just died, and if you get a kill, you come back to life. That would be pretty funny.
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On August 24 2011 21:27 jtype wrote:They could make it that you can only use the ult when you've just died, and if you get a kill, you come back to life. That would be pretty funny.
Hell, how about just having his ultimate always do 100% true damage, and every time he kills someone with it, he gets an extra life? Sounds perfectly balanced to me.
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On August 24 2011 15:53 Zdrastochye wrote:Show nested quote +On August 16 2011 19:31 RouaF wrote:On June 29 2011 12:40 Goshawk. wrote:
Standard EU build goes with RoA, I think the slightly more tanky build is really nice for karthus.
RoA->deathcap->void staff->banshee/rylai/zhoyna starting with dorans or boots, with flash+exhaust/tele/ignite depending what your team needs.
Soulstealer is pretty fail in any sort of serious/high level game too. ^^ Hey, 2K ELO eu west karthus here (with about ~65% winrate with him, used to had 70 qq). I think this post sums up best what my build is. The reason you do NOT get tears is because you will be waaaaaaaaay to vulnerable to early ganks, cata is so much better early on. With no tears mana becomes a problem, you cannot spam E as much as you want and you have to use it carefully till you get blue. Once you have blue you can spam like a boss. Also getting rilay is ... stupid sorry guys, it really is. The role of karthus is to deal shitloads of damage not to get hitpoints or a slow. With rilay you *might* be able to get some more solo kills but that is unlikely and that is not what karthus is meant for, you are a MASSIVE damage dealer in team fights. To do even more shitloads of damage you need deathcap. To sum it up : 9/0/21 (obvious, with 2 points in +30% neutral buffs) red mpen, yellow & blue ap per level, quint flat ap start : boots + pot x3 (too dangerous to start sapphire against something like annie or brand with boots) then catalyst -> mpen boots -> roa -> deathcap -> blue pot -> void staff -> depends (usually banshee but in some case you can build even more damage) in some case you can get banshee before void staff summoners : depends, but i get ignite most of the time when there is a healer in the opposite team PS : the only downside of this build is that you do not want your blue buff stolen. if your team is pushed/hasn't got the advantage you will be very sad because of no blue. You will still have quite much mana with roa but you want be able to spam E infinitely, in this case rushing in and dying (in teamfights) is almost always the better option (don't run OOM ! smart players will just ignore you till your whole team is dead). Of course this is not meant to be played in a dual ap setup, if you're top and anivia is mid you will most likely need tears. So at what ELO does EU west's builds start to follow what they say? Whether or not I disagree with getting Rylai's, you say Karthus needs no health, then get BV AND RoA (and no tear)?
Way to not read the entire post ... amazing. I've highlighted it for you. The reason you build banshee later on is mostly because there are no amazing ap items left, but as I've written it DEPENDS. You read in my post only what you wanted to read.
edit because maybe it's not clear (but seems obvious) you build RoA first because you built catalyst ....
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I'm pretty damn sure I've been carried by Rouaf Karthus a few times. Also xpeke probably the best karthus is the world uses basically the same build so you should stop bashing him like idiots. I don't think I've ever seen a good karthus get rylais. (As opposed to other items which are better, Rylais is obviously not bad, lol..)
Tear of the godess on karthus? Why? You're going to die before you run out of mana. Karthus doesn't burn mana fast all spamming Q and when you are using E you are generally flashing into their team and killing them all dying in the process. Once you're dead you have no mana issues.
On August 17 2011 13:01 HazMat wrote:
Why do Europeans build everything so badly.
Like these kind of comments coming from inferior karthus players piss me off. Why go tear+rylais instead of building RoA and then getting more AP? You're getting blue buff 95% of the time anyway and as I said you'll die way before you run oom.
Again, there's no such thing as a bad item but investing 1k into an item that gives no damage and no defensive stats is highly questionable unless you are in a double AP setup where you definitely won't be getting blue and
1: Definitely not on US server
2: Still don't think its needed.
And how tanky you build on Karthus depends purely on their teamcomp IMO. If they have annie or something and someone to kick you away like lee sin or alistar you cant' afford to get roa/void staff/deathcap because they just insta burst you before you can get into a good position. Then fair enough RoA/BVeil/Rylai is fine but normally your Wall+flash into them is enough to do more than enough damage to win a teamfight.
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I go 9/0/21 exhaust/flash. Boots/Sapphire-->Cata/Rod-->Deathcap (core items)
After the Rod/Deathcap it gets pretty situational, if my team benefits from will of the ancients I'll pick it up since it does come it quite useful during pushes/laning to always be at full hp. Usually I just get the first spellvamp item finish void staff then get wota into whatever luxury items might work out. I really don't plan out item builds for a full 6 slots since it really isn't that common to reach. But just for the hell of it here u go:
boots-->rod-->deathcap-->void-->wota/archangels--->zhonyas/BV
Rylais: I'm not a huge fan of this item but it's by no means useless. Extra HP and slow is nice especially if the other team is heavy melee. I'm completely fine relying on my initial wall slow to get me into a nice position to "die" so I usually invest into heavier AP items.
Archangels: I only get this as a 6th slot item when I just want as much AP as possible in a dragged out game. The Rod recipe is much nicer to your early/mid game while giving a wide variety of useful stats.
BV: I only buy BV versus casters who have a stun/silence in their burst that is instant like veigar/annie. Otherwise I'm fine relying on the zhonyas active to make sure I don't get completely blown up before I get to at least put down wall and get some nice AoE off.
Edit: (xPeke played an amazing karthus versus RainMan singed top, his cs was pretty incredible considering how aggressive that lane played out, I'm a fan even if they still lost that match)
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United States37500 Posts
Don't see how you can ever miss a Lay Waste with Rylai's slow proc. That in itself is reason enough to buy Rylai's imoimo.
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I guess I should give it a shot just for testing purpose. But I don't see when you can build rilay. You don't start RoA then ? Because you can't build rilay after RoA, you need rabaddon after that or you will be too low on ap. Starting with rilay also seems kind of strange because your items will basically be crap before you have the whole item.
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Rylais is like something you have to skip void staff for after rabadon/roa I don't see any other place to put it.
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Don't ever let 5HITCOMBO play karthus if he's on your team. Nuff' said.
<3
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On August 25 2011 03:31 Slayer91 wrote:
Rylais is like something you have to skip void staff for after rabadon/roa I don't see any other place to put it.
Which you can do at low elo because sometimes the other team is retarded and don't get any MR even when you are massacring them.
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Hey guys I finally bought Karthus!!!! :D
Hes great and hes gonna be my main mage forever <3333
Anyway, what do you think of my build?
Boots -> 3 HP pots -> Void Staff -> Zhonya's hourglass -> Sorcerers boots -> Rabadons -> Rylais -> Morello's Evil Tome
I like to rush Void Staff early because I want to do a lot of damage with my ult (I think lvl 1 Ult is horrible, I can almost never get a kill at this part)
My masteries are: 9(With magic penetration)/0/13 skipping out the summoner spell boosts for others
With 3 Magic penetration runes
I get the summoner spells: Flash and teleport
I'm only level 21 so please if theres any flaws, I welcome any criticisms.
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Imo Dorans ring--->boots 1+2x dorans-->Sorc-->Deathcap-->Rod of Ages-->Void staff is a superior build. Flash and tp is pretty solid though. 9/0/21 is standard caster setup, so can't go wrong with that.
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On August 26 2011 17:25 SEA_GenesiS wrote:
I like to rush Void Staff early because I want to do a lot of damage with my ult (I think lvl 1 Ult is horrible, I can almost never get a kill at this part)
i dig your enthusiasm but you need to do the math behind this purchase before you continue it
flat magic penetration, as found in runes, masteries, and sorc boots (all core on karthus) can give you 30+ magic penetration. your ult will deal true damage to anyone that isn't MR spec'd.
any MR on top will be hit by the voidstaff. so if they have 40 MR, the voidstaff will remove only 4 (40% of 40-30 for your flat pen). if they have 80, voidstaff will remove ~20. that's the same as a haunting guise. it's just not worth it at early levels
instead of that, you could spend 2k on pots, wards, and a NLR, and do OODLES more damage
get the voidstaff lategame when enemies actually HAVE MR
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On August 26 2011 17:51 gtrsrs wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2011 17:25 SEA_GenesiS wrote:
I like to rush Void Staff early because I want to do a lot of damage with my ult (I think lvl 1 Ult is horrible, I can almost never get a kill at this part)
i dig your enthusiasm but you need to do the math behind this purchase before you continue it flat magic penetration, as found in runes, masteries, and sorc boots (all core on karthus) can give you 30+ magic penetration. your ult will deal true damage to anyone that isn't MR spec'd. any MR on top will be hit by the voidstaff. so if they have 40 MR, the voidstaff will remove only 4 (40% of 40-30 for your flat pen). if they have 80, voidstaff will remove ~20. that's the same as a haunting guise. it's just not worth it at early levels instead of that, you could spend 2k on pots, wards, and a NLR, and do OODLES more damage get the voidstaff lategame when enemies actually HAVE MR
Okay! Thank you you very much. 
I didn't really go indept and think about it really, I just thought it was incredibly effective to have that much MR early in the game.
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On August 26 2011 17:56 SEA_GenesiS wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2011 17:51 gtrsrs wrote:On August 26 2011 17:25 SEA_GenesiS wrote:
I like to rush Void Staff early because I want to do a lot of damage with my ult (I think lvl 1 Ult is horrible, I can almost never get a kill at this part)
i dig your enthusiasm but you need to do the math behind this purchase before you continue it flat magic penetration, as found in runes, masteries, and sorc boots (all core on karthus) can give you 30+ magic penetration. your ult will deal true damage to anyone that isn't MR spec'd. any MR on top will be hit by the voidstaff. so if they have 40 MR, the voidstaff will remove only 4 (40% of 40-30 for your flat pen). if they have 80, voidstaff will remove ~20. that's the same as a haunting guise. it's just not worth it at early levels instead of that, you could spend 2k on pots, wards, and a NLR, and do OODLES more damage get the voidstaff lategame when enemies actually HAVE MR Okay! Thank you you very much. I didn't really go indept and think about it really, I just thought it was incredibly effective to have that much MR early in the game.
Please read the thread. You will find several good karthus builds. Yours is well .......... far from optimal.
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Rylais is simply awesome on karthus, Wall has too long cd.
boots+3 -> tear -> hextech revol -> roa(if you think it's gonna be long game)/rylais -> finish wota
finish sorc boots at some point where you get the monies, get voidstaff when they start building MR. Tear and hextech I consider core, with those you have the sustain on lane and in smaller fights, Rylais on top of that for never ever missing your target and the hp boost. Pretty much like Dyrus plays Karth I guess.
You won't have the 800 ap by that point, but you don't need it either, you have enough hp buffer to stand in the fight a bit longer and be annoying. Use flash offensively after initiation to get into the thick of it, point of this build is to be very aggressive. Wall + rylais slow will keep the enemy team crawling while they are in your defile. If you get fed early and finish items fast you'll be at high AP compared to the enemy's item build lvls, so ulti is better then used during the initiation before the flash in, in most cases.
I find this way of playing karthus far more fun and effective than the glass cannons I see far too often. Like one guy whose "core" was 2x archangels + rabaddons. He had less hp than a Shaco jungler so he sure didn't need the mana from those 2 AAs as he was dead after landing his wall. All the AP in the world isn't gonna help you too much if you die in 2 hits. By no means build a tank (although trolling with tank build is also fun :D), but don't overestimate your passive either, you gotta be able to take a few hits while you give them out while still alive. Once you die you are immobile, so if the enemy team is able to reposition during the fight, all you are left with is your ulti and that's like being an Annie who only flashes in to drop tibbers and dies right before the rest of her spell reel.
Anyway that's my take on Karthus, I've been having fun playing like this.
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On August 26 2011 19:16 RouaF wrote:Show nested quote +On August 26 2011 17:56 SEA_GenesiS wrote:On August 26 2011 17:51 gtrsrs wrote:On August 26 2011 17:25 SEA_GenesiS wrote:
I like to rush Void Staff early because I want to do a lot of damage with my ult (I think lvl 1 Ult is horrible, I can almost never get a kill at this part)
i dig your enthusiasm but you need to do the math behind this purchase before you continue it flat magic penetration, as found in runes, masteries, and sorc boots (all core on karthus) can give you 30+ magic penetration. your ult will deal true damage to anyone that isn't MR spec'd. any MR on top will be hit by the voidstaff. so if they have 40 MR, the voidstaff will remove only 4 (40% of 40-30 for your flat pen). if they have 80, voidstaff will remove ~20. that's the same as a haunting guise. it's just not worth it at early levels instead of that, you could spend 2k on pots, wards, and a NLR, and do OODLES more damage get the voidstaff lategame when enemies actually HAVE MR Okay! Thank you you very much. I didn't really go indept and think about it really, I just thought it was incredibly effective to have that much MR early in the game. Please read the thread. You will find several good karthus builds. Yours is well .......... far from optimal.
I never actually asked anyone to give me a new build, just to review it. Please review my post again.
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What I meant is that if you had read this thread you would've understood that your build isn't good. Your post almost sounds like a troll post "hey guys i'm lvl 23 what do you think of my build I rush an item which is only useful in late game and I complete my lvl 2 boots after having bought two expensive items meaning i'll get them at the 35min mark"
Might sound a bit rude but it's how it is. So here are my advices :
get lvl 30
read about optimal templates/runes
experience yourself
try out different things you think would be good
post feedback !
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A tip that might help you with your ults a bit if you're having trouble getting kills with it, even though it's probably obvious to most people anyway, is to aim to use it on players that have health at around 1/2-3/4 the amount of damage your ult will be doing.
Lots of champions can shield/heal each other and, if you cut it too fine, even a couple of hits on a creep with lifesteal during your 3 second channel or just chugging a HP pot can be the difference.
That way you're less likely to experience the most frustrating feeling in the world, which is channeling your ult on a 'sure kill' and just have it followed by silence.
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Generally I open either Dorans or Boots + 3 mana pots. Then I build a catalyst into a RoA then deathcap with sorc boots of course
And for your ult at lvl 1 really get on your teammates with telling you about other champs. Or suggest they engage the enemy and you can nuke them and give them a bit of an edge in the engagement.
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So I just bought Karthus yesterday morning, and the pentakill skin, only to have him disabled entirely after 4 games :/
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On August 25 2011 03:39 TadH wrote:
Don't ever let 5HITCOMBO play karthus if he's on your team. Nuff' said.
<3
quoted for truth
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Played a game last night with a hard farming Karthus who eventually had a Deathcap and FIVE Archangels. He had a hair shy of 1500 AP. His defile was all he really needed at that point with more than 4k mana and the ticks doing upwards of 20-25% damage on the enemy carries.
It was beautiful.
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On August 31 2011 05:46 StrigHT wrote:
Played a game last night with a hard farming Karthus who eventually had a Deathcap and FIVE Archangels. He had a hair shy of 1500 AP. His defile was all he really needed at that point with more than 4k mana and the ticks doing upwards of 20-25% damage on the enemy carries.
It was beautiful.
i did that a few times with heimerdinger, xcept i had zhonya's ring (and the 3 blasting wand vers at that). damn i feel old
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On August 30 2011 22:54 SgtSama wrote:
So I just bought Karthus yesterday morning, and the pentakill skin, only to have him disabled entirely after 4 games :/
Think yourself lucky, this just makes you want to play him more.
I bought Talon, and got bored of him after 3 games.
:/
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Dyrus does a similar playstyle. They both go Tear and Rylais, too :D
I go flash/tp though because I'm a pussy.
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I thought Revive on Karth was kinda moot now a days (never played that style but I heard it fell out of style) But hes a solid champ. My fav personally. Rylias on Karth seems like its kinda wasted imo. Just that there are better items that can go on him but *shrug* Im a low elo noob. Tear I never get until I build an AA's late game because I never really have mana problems. Especially in teamfights where you usually get focused.
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On August 31 2011 15:27 Slaughter wrote:
I thought Revive on Karth was kinda moot now a days (never played that style but I heard it fell out of style) But hes a solid champ. My fav personally. Rylias on Karth seems like its kinda wasted imo. Just that there are better items that can go on him but *shrug* Im a low elo noob. Tear I never get until I build an AA's late game because I never really have mana problems. Especially in teamfights where you usually get focused.
you usually want to get tear somewhat early cause it takes quite some time to charge it up fully.
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On August 31 2011 05:46 StrigHT wrote:
Played a game last night with a hard farming Karthus who eventually had a Deathcap and FIVE Archangels. He had a hair shy of 1500 AP. His defile was all he really needed at that point with more than 4k mana and the ticks doing upwards of 20-25% damage on the enemy carries.
It was beautiful.
And this is the thing I see people on Karthus try too often.
1x deathcap + 5 AA = you got what 1600 hp at lvl 18 with full build?
Ranged AD carry crits you 2 times and you die. Ok so your requim will hit like a truck. Then it's on cooldown and now what? Not to mention getting to that point is...
very squishy karthus just isn't as effective as if you'd build roa/rylais, then you can go up to brawl with the melee dudes and come out on top.
Yea I'll get if someone just wants to do that for the heck of it, but considering that a valid build is eehhhh I know I wouldn't want one in my team. Such a liability unless you get to a 50 minute match that your team was winning since 15 minutes.
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So.....
A) Tears -> Deathcap -> Void/Rylais/Zhonyas/AA
B) Cata -> Deathcap -> Void/Rylais/Zhonyas
C) Tears -> Rylais -> Deathcap -> Void/Zhonyas/AA
I don't really know. Rylais feels awesome. Rylais without Tears is weak though. Not sure if Rylais+Tears is more efficiant than RoA for AP/Mana/HP.
Rylais+Tears: +80 AP. +500 Health, +1k mana (stacked), slow: 3105 + 995 = 4100G.
VS
Fully stacked RoA: +80 AP, +530 health, +725 mana: 3035G
I just can't see how Rylais + Tears beats RoA. Someone tell me why. 1k gold for a slow proc? 1k gold for the ability to build AA later?
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my build,
boots lvl1,amp tome, catalyst, kages pick/soulstealer depending on how dumb the enemies are, roa, (all this is usually built around 18mins), deathcap.
from here onwards I vary the build according to what the other team is doing, what heroes they have etc etc. usually the next item is a zhonyas becuase of the yi/tryn bs that currently saturates the normal queue. But as I said I change t around depending on enemy comp and their items so other things i get regualrly are an abyssal septer, void staff, and rylias.
I have a purely theoretical build for vsing a pure ad team and that is to get a sunfiire cape somehwere in the build. It synergises quite well with defile and provides further armour essentially making you unkillable with a zhonyas and rylias.
I usually run flash and yes clarity. Why clarity, simply for the awesome sustain it provides. Its also pretty good late game since I don't build mana items such as tear as i think they are a waste of an item slot and as such can just clarity when defile starts to get my mana lowish.
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I feel stupid when i hear about your builds. I usually go mpen marks, hp/lvl seals, mres/lvl glyphs and either flat ap quints or flat hp quints.
Boots 3hpots -> Cata -> RoA -> Deathcap -> Zhonya -> Void staff
For boots i go merc threads very often (all that CC). I dont value sorc shoes much, since i find them abit meh on someone like karthus, since he's always focused like shit. Mercs provides you some defensive stats in terms of mres against your lane opponents and CC reduction which i consider very very useful. But im just a small town girl
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I find Tear quite overrated, if you get RoA you don't need tear unless you like lay wasting every bush 3 times before entering. Just don't leave defile on when you can't hit anything.
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archangels > RoA imo because
1) archangels gives more AP
2) archangels gives even more AP considering that his q has such a short cd
3) survivability is overrated on karthus. he's better dead than alive. i hate when my ult channel gets cancelled because i use it reflexively
also, mejais sucks because youre gonna die as karthus, and its fairly okay to die as him
my build goes meki/sapphire + 2 healthpots -> tear -> sorcshoes -> rabadons -> void staff -> archangels.
then it depends, survivability items, or a lichbane for pushing, another rabadons, etc.
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I disagree that Karth is better dead than alive, while you are dead you are immobile. I'll rather be alive and rushing towards them still with defile on, it scares the shit out of so many players. Then you get some melee hit you and they realize "oh shit he didn't die instantly" and then you drop wall on them and start lay wasting.
Don't ult when it's not safe.
Anyway that's just based on my experience as and against Karthuses. Wall is on long CD so if you had to use that on the initiation and then die, you got nothing left to keep them at you.
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Ouch I just got raped hard vs a kass in mid T_T could not deal with his teleport at all past lvl 2. 1st fight we both die 2nd fight he lives and manages to live with 30 hp. Then we just owned the fuck out of me :[ How should you play vs an aggressive kass player?
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Zero survivabilty Karthus works fine, but you have to play like a boss when it comes to intiation and stuff. If you get picked off before the fight starts or go in too early you do nothing.
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On September 01 2011 04:51 Slaughter wrote:
Ouch I just got raped hard vs a kass in mid T_T could not deal with his teleport at all past lvl 2. 1st fight we both die 2nd fight he lives and manages to live with 30 hp. Then we just owned the fuck out of me :[ How should you play vs an aggressive kass player?
Kass and Leblack are #1 Karth counters. Early you should be able to outpoke him but once he's 6 it's hell. I'd get a cata vs Kass/leb and get a somewhat bveil.
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On September 01 2011 05:06 HazMat wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2011 04:51 Slaughter wrote:
Ouch I just got raped hard vs a kass in mid T_T could not deal with his teleport at all past lvl 2. 1st fight we both die 2nd fight he lives and manages to live with 30 hp. Then we just owned the fuck out of me :[ How should you play vs an aggressive kass player? Kass and Leblack are #1 Karth counters. Early you should be able to outpoke him but once he's 6 it's hell. I'd get a cata vs Kass/leb and get a somewhat bveil.
Doesn't Ori own him pretty hard as well? Ball just does so much damage.
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I don't have problems with Orianna for some reason. I'd consider myself pretty experienced with Orianna so I guess I'm just good at dodging her ball. Though she's banned 90% of the time so I have minimal experienced laning Karthus vs Ori
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Is there a way to not smart cast his Q? I have trouble with the AOE of the Q, so I always miss or hit multiple targets. He is hard to play...
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On September 01 2011 04:56 Woony wrote:
Zero survivabilty Karthus works fine, but you have to play like a boss when it comes to intiation and stuff. If you get picked off before the fight starts or go in too early you do nothing.
This, anytime I don't build some survivability I get focused too fast. So I pretty much always start with catalyst and get RoA fairly quickly.
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On September 01 2011 05:49 nosliw wrote:
Is there a way to not smart cast his Q? I have trouble with the AOE of the Q, so I always miss or hit multiple targets. He is hard to play...
afraid not, its just something you have to get used to, but when you do it is very usefull and funny, especially when you own the uber agressive mid ashes.
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On September 01 2011 04:51 Slaughter wrote:
Ouch I just got raped hard vs a kass in mid T_T could not deal with his teleport at all past lvl 2. 1st fight we both die 2nd fight he lives and manages to live with 30 hp. Then we just owned the fuck out of me :[ How should you play vs an aggressive kass player?
I haven't played against a kass, but against leblanc I usually just go double null magic mantle on my first buy around the time she gets lvl 6 then go for merc treads+chalice with them. Gets you about 95 MR early (I use MR/level glyphs) so you can survive their burst and farm.
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first time playing as karthus. i just went 16/0/19...
play like a pussy and stack that soulstealer early
its so stupid how gay this champion is. god i hate playing against him but it's like free wins when he is on your team X_X
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On September 01 2011 13:28 Neon_Monkey wrote:Show nested quote +On September 01 2011 04:51 Slaughter wrote:
Ouch I just got raped hard vs a kass in mid T_T could not deal with his teleport at all past lvl 2. 1st fight we both die 2nd fight he lives and manages to live with 30 hp. Then we just owned the fuck out of me :[ How should you play vs an aggressive kass player? I haven't played against a kass, but against leblanc I usually just go double null magic mantle on my first buy around the time she gets lvl 6 then go for merc treads+chalice with them. Gets you about 95 MR early (I use MR/level glyphs) so you can survive their burst and farm.
As someone who plays kass, I have no idea how a karthus could possibly deal with you mid past lvl 6. Its a brutal hard counter.
Kass has his passive reducing your damage 15%, gets his slow wave up every 2 seconds from you spamming blisters, silences you, and can easily tele over the wall and aura and blisters.
Up to lvl 6 karthus can do very well but once tele comes up the kass just teles in and out every 20 seconds dealing a full combo, theres no way you are going to hit him with anything and its like half health each time he does it.
I really can't see any way for karthus to be successful against kass.
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I dont even bother picking karthus in solo q unless talon/kass are banned. Its such a hard counter its ridiculous, and you can hardly rely on soloq to switch lanes with you every 2 minutes.
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just want to add that karthus late game is shitty , imo/
Hes q is a joke and doesnt scale well at all , his pbaoe is crap - any warmongs combo will outlive the dmg - plus the mana consuption is hilarious.
the only good thing is his r which even with 600+ ap does like 800 something dmg with a long cooldown and when most bruizers can reach 3300+ hp idnt a big deal.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 26 2011 04:33 topoulo wrote:
just want to add that karthus late game is shitty , imo/
Hes q is a joke and doesnt scale well at all , his pbaoe is crap - any warmongs combo will outlive the dmg - plus the mana consuption is hilarious.
the only good thing is his r which even with 600+ ap does like 800 something dmg with a long cooldown and when most bruizers can reach 3300+ hp idnt a big deal.
What? How does his Q not scale well at all? The base damage and AP ratio are comparable to nukes with 4-5 times its CD.
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On October 26 2011 04:33 topoulo wrote:
just want to add that karthus late game is shitty , imo/
Hes q is a joke and doesnt scale well at all , his pbaoe is crap - any warmongs combo will outlive the dmg - plus the mana consuption is hilarious.
the only good thing is his r which even with 600+ ap does like 800 something dmg with a long cooldown and when most bruizers can reach 3300+ hp idnt a big deal.
that is pretty much the opposite of how it works, R falls off lategame but Q and E do so much sustained damage. Obviously you aren't gonna 1v1 any bruisers, but you make it horribly uncomfortable to fight anywhere near you, even if you get focused down.
The most skill based part of Karthus is dying somewhere useful.
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On October 26 2011 04:33 topoulo wrote:
just want to add that karthus late game is shitty , imo/
Hes q is a joke and doesnt scale well at all , his pbaoe is crap - any warmongs combo will outlive the dmg - plus the mana consuption is hilarious.
the only good thing is his r which even with 600+ ap does like 800 something dmg with a long cooldown and when most bruizers can reach 3300+ hp idnt a big deal.
I don't think this is true at all unless your team is waaay behind and the other team is farmed and your not. Defile does a shit ton of dmg to everyone near you and Q when it hits solo targets does awesome damage. Plus his wall fucks movement speed and MR up highly. I play Karthus a lot and the whole point is them bursting you down while your team rofl rolls them because you continue to output good damage after you die. A lot of team fights yes you die but your team trade your life for 2-4 kills on the other team because you do so much damage. Plus if your tanky with like Rylais+RoA+GA/zohnyas or AS or something you take a pretty decent amount of time to kill which just makes them waste even more time killing you while your team has their way with them (all the while your still doing good dmg)
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What remains true is that is that the best item counter to karthus is warmog, building mrez won't save you against a roa->rabaddon->void staff build but warmog definitely will save you often from ulti. I remember a game where I was so freaking fed but couldn't deal with a smart vayne who, instead of going IE PD BT banshee went like IE PD warmog atma and never died in team fights while still doing good damage.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 26 2011 06:05 RouaF wrote:
What remains true is that is that the best item counter to karthus is warmog, building mrez won't save you against a roa->rabaddon->void staff build but warmog definitely will save you often from ulti. I remember a game where I was so freaking fed but couldn't deal with a smart vayne who, instead of going IE PD BT banshee went like IE PD warmog atma and never died in team fights while still doing good damage.
Uhh, no.
Karthus has a flat MR shred spell. If you don't buy MR against him, he's going to be doing true damage to you from the -35 MR on Wall of Pain.
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First of all end game is usually team fights so gl getting single laying waste.
Talking bout lay waste he does 120*0,3 wich is laghable low if not single target and any good player with high apm will dodge it every time. So yea pretty sueless i dont see how it scales well with 0.3 ability per ratio which is one of the lowest .
Defile requires karthus to be melee range , any bruizer will kill karthus in 2 sec unless hourglass.
Also defile does 110*0.25 which is good but not great to kill everyone with this.
Considering bruizers with 3500 hp wil lbe first to jump with lots of lifesteal and health regen i dont see how it kills anyone unless well fed ( which obviously vs noobs then )
So again i havent see how karhtus late game scales any good compare to other ap carries which have % dmg or much better burst.
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Russian Federation3631 Posts
On October 26 2011 06:16 topoulo wrote:
First of all end game is usually team fights so gl getting single laying waste.
Talking bout lay waste he does 120*0,3 wich is laghable low if not single target and any good player with high apm will dodge it every time. So yea pretty sueless i dont see how it scales well with 0.3 ability per ratio which is one of the lowest .
Defile requires karthus to be melee range , any bruizer will kill karthus in 2 sec unless hourglass.
Also defile does 110*0.25 which is good but not great to kill everyone with this.
Considering bruizers with 3500 hp wil lbe first to jump with lots of lifesteal and health regen i dont see how it kills anyone unless well fed ( which obviously vs noobs then )
So again i havent see how karhtus late game scales any good compare to other ap carries which have % dmg or much better burst.
Lay Waste cooldown is like, what, 1 second? I also believe that the Defile AP ratio applies to a per second tick so its effective CD is 1 second.
Compare that to Annie Q, which is .7 AP ratio for a 4 second cooldown spell.
While its true that you'll be casting only a finite amount of spells in a fight before dying in a fire (and thus front loaded damage is better), over a period of time the AP scaling of Lay Waste/Defile is actually better.
There's also the not trivial thing that Karthus still deals damage after dying.
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The thing is you can build karthus tanky and he won't get wtf raped bursted at all, you say 3500 hpp bruisers? Well almost 3k hp karthus will stay alive to aoe the fuck out of a lot your team by just standing there and q people face off (esp if your qing some range char he will be solo) oh then you die? Defile continues on anyway doing dmg and then a nuke that hits everyone and can't be interuppted. That's a lot of dmg, even if your not at super duper ap lvls with a tanky build he can melt your face quite well.
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There is definitely a lot of misinformation floating around these last few posts.
Endgame Karthus's job is to get in the enemy team's face as much as skeleton-ly possible dealing tons of damage with defile/lay waste and shredding MR/MS with wall. (Also a good initiator if your team is positioned well.)
Eventually Karthus will die....if you die in a good spot then you create a positional advantage for your team because the enemy team will not fight in that lingering defile. You can also pop your ult and take away a good chunk of the team's remaining health if you haven't used it already. (If you're running tele/revive you want to die real early and then get right back into that fight!) Karthus isn't about the burst, he deals insane sustained damage even after he is killed.
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Which is why he is a boss. Also if you use wall early as an initiator you can cast a second wall when your dead ^_^ Really fucks up a team with his damage to multiple targets which is usually high as hell.
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So I hear revive/tp karthus is FotM these days
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So why is revive/tp on Karthus good, but not on any other champion?
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On October 26 2011 14:41 Chairman Ray wrote:
So why is revive/tp on Karthus good, but not on any other champion?
It's okay on Yi, because it allows for decent bd'ing and the 6v5 option
Also seen it on Shen, but that's about it
Karthus seems strong with it due to his passive (he dies, passive, defile/spam lay waste, revive, tp, die, passive, defile/spam lay waste/requiem)
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It also works on pantheon, but yeah its amazing on karthus mostly because of his passive but also because of the move speed boost, so you can get in to a good position to die again.
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If you want to watch a quality Karthus player, check out PhantomLord.
He is unparalleled...doesn't miss any Qs, owns his lane like a boss. Only character he can really play though.
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Karthus is a monster on Dominion. First is naturally his ultimate which is a supreme tool for disrupting captures. His wall if very effective in the low MR enviroment of CS. And to finish up his pushing power together with his passive mean he can trade kills compfortably.
A few interesting things: Hextech sweeper will reveal everyone hit by the ultimate. Turning defile ON will break captures but turning it OFF won´t. And just a reminder: his autoattack is literally the worst in the game, it´s replaced by his Q basically.
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I really truly don't understand a karthus pick on dominion... U should not be stacking ANY cool down reduction (except for meijai which isnt even available in dominion) so his ulti is a waste of time... All other damaging global ultis have a smaller cooldown (and for obvious reasons).
Karthus is by far my favourite hero, no not because I love to press R; even though its insane to see the amount of retards incapable of picking up a hexdrinker and then proceeding to complain about imbalances... Karthus' strong point is not his R! NEVER build archangel staff on him NEVER. I mean come on guys, mana isn't a problem after early game- you should be picking up your team's blue every time and I can't imagine straying from a very simple build...
1. Doran's ring (only if you plan/CAN be agressive ie; you are not facing a Brand, Orianna, Xerath, LB, and there are a couple of others that will simply own you without boots.
2. Sorc Shoes (duh)
3. Meijais unless you feel very underconfident; in which case I hope you didn't ask for solo mid in ranked.
4. Rod of ages
5. This is where personal preferance comes into play for me; If the opposing team's ad heros are doing anything positive at all; I LOVE to pick up a zhonya's. Most under-rated item in the game imo. Any competent team WILL be focusing you either 1st or 2nd, when they do pop ur E spam your spells then pop zhonya's, and unless your team is completely retarded, your DPS should be devastating to atleast all their melee chars which is quite simply huge= easy team win.
6. Rylais/abyssal/rabadans depending completely on how you're doing/surviving
My main point is: Too many people rely on Karthus' passive, yes you can die. Does that make it beneficial for you to die within the first 5 seconds as a paper cannon stacking raba/arch angels? No. Your E and Q spamming make you a DPS ap carry, and you should be played as such. Archangel staff in general is just a horrible item and should never be picked up except maybe as a final item but even then... I'm so sick of seeing horrible face-palm-inducing-builds.
Although Karthus can be considered (barely) bannable, he is by no means OP, his ulti can/will annoy the enemy team at low elo early game since if you're paying half-attention to the map (as any decent LoL/HoN/DotA player should be.) you will beable to snipe the occasional hero or 2/pick up assists/save your team mates.
Most people that complain about karthus being imbalanced are just simply too stupid to read through the item description list. I can't stress how badly hexdrinker pwns early/mid and honestly even late game karthus' ulti. Unless your requiem is doing 600+ damage with full magic penetration (which basically means your way too farmed anyways) they should survive it.
Karthus is not a R champion, he is a DPS carry and should be built/played as such.
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On December 16 2011 09:42 MyTHicaL wrote:
I really truly don't understand a karthus pick on dominion... U should not be stacking ANY cool down reduction (except for meijai which isnt even available in dominion) so his ulti is a waste of time... All other damaging global ultis have a smaller cooldown (and for obvious reasons).
Karthus is by far my favourite hero, no not because I love to press R; even though its insane to see the amount of retards incapable of picking up a hexdrinker and then proceeding to complain about imbalances... Karthus' strong point is not his R! NEVER build archangel staff on him NEVER. I mean come on guys, mana isn't a problem after early game- you should be picking up your team's blue every time and I can't imagine straying from a very simple build...
1. Doran's ring (only if you plan/CAN be agressive ie; you are not facing a Brand, Orianna, Xerath, LB, and there are a couple of others that will simply own you without boots.
2. Sorc Shoes (duh)
3. Meijais unless you feel very underconfident; in which case I hope you didn't ask for solo mid in ranked.
4. Rod of ages
5. This is where personal preferance comes into play for me; If the opposing team's ad heros are doing anything positive at all; I LOVE to pick up a zhonya's. Most under-rated item in the game imo. Any competent team WILL be focusing you either 1st or 2nd, when they do pop ur E spam your spells then pop zhonya's, and unless your team is completely retarded, your DPS should be devastating to atleast all their melee chars which is quite simply huge= easy team win.
6. Rylais/abyssal/rabadans depending completely on how you're doing/surviving
My main point is: Too many people rely on Karthus' passive, yes you can die. Does that make it beneficial for you to die within the first 5 seconds as a paper cannon stacking raba/arch angels? No. Your E and Q spamming make you a DPS ap carry, and you should be played as such. Archangel staff in general is just a horrible item and should never be picked up except maybe as a final item but even then... I'm so sick of seeing horrible face-palm-inducing-builds.
Although Karthus can be considered (barely) bannable, he is by no means OP, his ulti can/will annoy the enemy team at low elo early game since if you're paying half-attention to the map (as any decent LoL/HoN/DotA player should be.) you will beable to snipe the occasional hero or 2/pick up assists/save your team mates.
Most people that complain about karthus being imbalanced are just simply too stupid to read through the item description list. I can't stress how badly hexdrinker pwns early/mid and honestly even late game karthus' ulti. Unless your requiem is doing 600+ damage with full magic penetration (which basically means your way too farmed anyways) they should survive it.
Karthus is not a R champion, he is a DPS carry and should be built/played as such.
i'm pretty sure AA isn't for the mana problem, but for the extreme ease you can get the bonus AP by spamming q all day. then again you're not playing a balls out on the floor style, so it's understandable. but i think you're really underestimating the passive. his passive is the reason it's ok to go balls out glass cannon style. that shit hurts. sure it requires better positioning, but imo it's much more rewarding then building hp + ap. if you're dying right before a team fight fully blows up then you and your team are doing something wrong
again. 2 different styles. but they both work. plus you could always go hanyuyu with tele/revive. that shit is op as balls
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Anyone know what scarletdoom's build is? Curious to know what he uses.
As for the current discussion as revived by Mythical AA is really if you want extra AP from the mana but I rarely use it. I personally usually open Boots/Dorans then go into RoA->Deathcap then from there varies. If I want to live longer then Ryalis and maybe Abyssal Scepter if they are heavy AP Zhonyas as well. Void if MR stacking. I haven't used WotA but I have seen it on the solomid guides lately. Glass cannon works because passive allows you to be one. I prefer tanky just because I like to be alive in fights a lot longer and position myself best for the inevitable death. Hell I will even use flash to get to further back targets to chase them out and to allow for Q's to hit single squishy targets so they implode. Basically tanky karth with RoA+Rylais+Zohnyas+Abyssal along with Deathcap still allows for a good damage and being able to take hits because you have to be close and in the middle of things for your AoE to be hitting multiple targets.
As for Mejais I really do not get it commonly at all because its a snowball item and it delays your RoA and you need that for sustain in lane (esp when your facing a champ that clears waves fast)
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Well mejais is obviously completely situational, the same goes for any stacking item... But I guess I'm just too used to random pubbies with uncoordinated team fight initiations etc. I guess that I will admit that a glass cannon karthus with a well organised team, set up to die in the midst of battle will maybe put out more damage than my tankier ap build... But then I guess it also depends on the enemies team's heros (and your own team's make up ofc), etc. I do see the point in rushing deathcap after RoA, but as I stated before I'm completely against any consideration of archangel... I just think the massive mana boost is completely useless, and as for the AP well... meh.  . I just don't/can't play karthus in random ranked games like that.
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yo, how about karthus on dominion? He feels SUPER powerful.
here's a proof
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dONLL.png)
His q can intterupt capture in the most annoying way. I normally camp top windmill, hide in the brush. If they try to cap it I'll poke my head out and q them on their feet.
If they try to go behind the brush try to kill me I'll move on top of the capture point and toss down a wall.
That always delay them long enough for teamates to show up.
Ult intrrupts capture like a boss
His aoe is insanely good first fight on top windmill, turn your E on and it chews them up SO fast. With 3 other teemates around you they cannot even try to atk you as they get shredded so fast hahha
My build is standard
ProspectorRing + Boot + Morrelos' Tome + DeathCap
R > Q > E > W
just lvl 1 wall early.
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What to build on jungle karthus first o.o
I have tried doran's ring to start, but without health pots Im always at SUPER low health
I like cloth + 5, but I feel like I waste the cloth armor and never do anything with it...
I tried amplifying tome + pot, but that doesnt give me enough pots...
I tried boots + 3 but thats just like wtf am i doing with boots
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You might as well build Karthus as a glass cannon. Rushing health (RoA and Rylais etc), is kind of a waste IMO. Most teamfights hardly last for more than 5-10 seconds, and half that time is covered by your passive. Better to do a metric shit ton of damage rather than be completely be ignored by the enemy team in order to be picked off later. Especially with Revive/TP karthus.
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On December 20 2011 09:22 FuzzyLord wrote:
You might as well build Karthus as a glass cannon. Rushing health (RoA and Rylais etc), is kind of a waste IMO. Most teamfights hardly last for more than 5-10 seconds, and half that time is covered by your passive. Better to do a metric shit ton of damage rather than be completely be ignored by the enemy team in order to be picked off later. Especially with Revive/TP karthus.
Revive/TP Karthus does play glass cannon but other builds do not. For instance Scarrletdoom plays him a bit tankier Karthus has is just as if not more successful with him. You usually get focused anyway so why not live longer? Besides once your dead any good team will move the fight away from you and you can become stranded and not able to AoE+ get in like A Q or 2 before ulti.
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On December 20 2011 07:53 evanthebouncy! wrote:
yo, how about karthus on dominion? He feels SUPER powerful.
very interesting but I know the real reason you posted that was to show off your 5 archangel deathcap Karthus build 
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On December 20 2011 08:36 CeriseCherries wrote:
What to build on jungle karthus first o.o
I have tried doran's ring to start, but without health pots Im always at SUPER low health
I like cloth + 5, but I feel like I waste the cloth armor and never do anything with it...
I tried amplifying tome + pot, but that doesnt give me enough pots...
I tried boots + 3 but thats just like wtf am i doing with boots
Starting items on him are very situational... It completely depends on who you're laning against. For example against Brand absence of boots = auto fail... I would never recomend getting cloth, I tend to either go for boots/pots or doran's ring depending on who I'm up against.
But GOD IS LB ANNOYING OR WHAT? I have no idea how to counter her whatsoever except by playing mega mega defensively, but I hate playing like that... Anyone have any good early game builds to deal with a "good" lb mid? The only thing I've come up with is: forgetting about harassing, only trying to last hit with q (but even that is tricky since her combo range is almost as long as karthus' q spell ), and basically trying to out farm her/hope that my jungler is actually half decent and will bother showing up for a gank someday... I basically have to auto back as soon as she combos me untill I get a RoA; I guess I kind of half answered my question but I hate playing so goddamn cowardly... I guess I should fool around with early ruby crystal (since I get RoA later..). Or maybe rush rylais getting giant's belt first- I'm basically assuming that if I can survive the burst I should beable kill her with ignite/wall/mass qs (and if worst comes to worst die and use ulti - I hate wasting it like this) I saw a Doran's SHEILD starting-build karthus on youtube which made me laugh, I really don't think that that would work either so.. thoughts?
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On December 22 2011 06:44 MyTHicaL wrote:Show nested quote +On December 20 2011 08:36 CeriseCherries wrote:
What to build on jungle karthus first o.o
I have tried doran's ring to start, but without health pots Im always at SUPER low health
I like cloth + 5, but I feel like I waste the cloth armor and never do anything with it...
I tried amplifying tome + pot, but that doesnt give me enough pots...
I tried boots + 3 but thats just like wtf am i doing with boots Starting items on him are very situational... It completely depends on who you're laning against. For example against Brand absence of boots = auto fail... I would never recomend getting cloth, I tend to either go for boots/pots or doran's ring depending on who I'm up against.
What if he's not laning against anyone? Read his post.
Anyway, the only times I tried jungle Karthus I started cloth+5 and either sold the cloth later or kept it for a really long time and turned it into GA. If boots+3 or something like that works though, that'd be awesome.
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On December 22 2011 06:48 EquilasH wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2011 06:44 MyTHicaL wrote:On December 20 2011 08:36 CeriseCherries wrote:
What to build on jungle karthus first o.o
I have tried doran's ring to start, but without health pots Im always at SUPER low health
I like cloth + 5, but I feel like I waste the cloth armor and never do anything with it...
I tried amplifying tome + pot, but that doesnt give me enough pots...
I tried boots + 3 but thats just like wtf am i doing with boots Starting items on him are very situational... It completely depends on who you're laning against. For example against Brand absence of boots = auto fail... I would never recomend getting cloth, I tend to either go for boots/pots or doran's ring depending on who I'm up against. What if he's not laning against anyone? Read his post. Anyway, the only times I tried jungle Karthus I started cloth+5 and either sold the cloth later or kept it for a really long time and turned it into GA. If boots+3 or something like that works though, that'd be awesome.
Lol I was like wha....
I don't see why starting boots would be a bad thing... you're going to get them sooner rather than later anyways.
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Testing out boots 3pot jungle karthus using armor yellows ap/level blues ap quints. This might not be enough armor, we shall see.
Results: Ran out of pots and died to double golems - route was weak pull blue, wolves wraiths golems.
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what's the point of jungle karthus anyway ? as most ap champs he needs to have lots of levels fast and jungle doesn't give much xp ...
oh also for those wondering about lb vs karthus yeah it's insanely hard for karth, your best best is to take mr blue runes and open mantle+2 pot. but this is always bad for karth as he needs to be doing as much damage as possible so skipping ap lvl blue runes is kinda meh
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Karthus farms the jungle decently well and very fast, his wall is absolutely great for ganking, and come late game he'll have quite enough farm to be really scary for the other team to deal with because his scaling is quite good. You can also bait counterpicking with him in 5v5 draft games. (Just dont bait the Soraka :< ) He's particularly good if you want a jungler that brings a lot of AoE to the teamfights (not just aoe for farming)
One of the big problems with jungling him of course is he's very pots-dependent early on, and the way you open him tends to be cloth + 5, with the cloth not building into anything at all.
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The problem with Karthus jungle is that he is very vulnerable doing it. Other than that he is actually a good jungler, with top tier clear speed and good ganks. Red buff procs from q, makes his ganks even stronger..
In my opinion, Karthus is better than Fiddle in the jungle now.
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does red buff only proc if you hit one target?
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On December 16 2011 09:42 MyTHicaL wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
I really truly don't understand a karthus pick on dominion... U should not be stacking ANY cool down reduction (except for meijai which isnt even available in dominion) so his ulti is a waste of time... All other damaging global ultis have a smaller cooldown (and for obvious reasons).
Karthus is by far my favourite hero, no not because I love to press R; even though its insane to see the amount of retards incapable of picking up a hexdrinker and then proceeding to complain about imbalances... Karthus' strong point is not his R! NEVER build archangel staff on him NEVER. I mean come on guys, mana isn't a problem after early game- you should be picking up your team's blue every time and I can't imagine straying from a very simple build...
1. Doran's ring (only if you plan/CAN be agressive ie; you are not facing a Brand, Orianna, Xerath, LB, and there are a couple of others that will simply own you without boots.
2. Sorc Shoes (duh)
3. Meijais unless you feel very underconfident; in which case I hope you didn't ask for solo mid in ranked.
4. Rod of ages
5. This is where personal preferance comes into play for me; If the opposing team's ad heros are doing anything positive at all; I LOVE to pick up a zhonya's. Most under-rated item in the game imo. Any competent team WILL be focusing you either 1st or 2nd, when they do pop ur E spam your spells then pop zhonya's, and unless your team is completely retarded, your DPS should be devastating to atleast all their melee chars which is quite simply huge= easy team win.
6. Rylais/abyssal/rabadans depending completely on how you're doing/surviving
My main point is: Too many people rely on Karthus' passive, yes you can die. Does that make it beneficial for you to die within the first 5 seconds as a paper cannon stacking raba/arch angels? No. Your E and Q spamming make you a DPS ap carry, and you should be played as such. Archangel staff in general is just a horrible item and should never be picked up except maybe as a final item but even then... I'm so sick of seeing horrible face-palm-inducing-builds.
Although Karthus can be considered (barely) bannable, he is by no means OP, his ulti can/will annoy the enemy team at low elo early game since if you're paying half-attention to the map (as any decent LoL/HoN/DotA player should be.) you will beable to snipe the occasional hero or 2/pick up assists/save your team mates.
Most people that complain about karthus being imbalanced are just simply too stupid to read through the item description list. I can't stress how badly hexdrinker pwns early/mid and honestly even late game karthus' ulti. Unless your requiem is doing 600+ damage with full magic penetration (which basically means your way too farmed anyways) they should survive it.
Karthus is not a R champion, he is a DPS carry and should be built/played as such.
This advice is terrible and I would advise against listening to it. There are situations where you want to build Karthus different ways but pretty much all of them involve a tear + revolver/WotA, and yes, I've been told this by pdiz and phantoml0rd after asking them back when I was playing Karth.
On December 16 2011 10:30 Slaughter wrote:
Anyone know what scarletdoom's build is? Curious to know what he uses.
As for the current discussion as revived by Mythical AA is really if you want extra AP from the mana but I rarely use it. I personally usually open Boots/Dorans then go into RoA->Deathcap then from there varies. If I want to live longer then Ryalis and maybe Abyssal Scepter if they are heavy AP Zhonyas as well. Void if MR stacking. I haven't used WotA but I have seen it on the solomid guides lately. Glass cannon works because passive allows you to be one. I prefer tanky just because I like to be alive in fights a lot longer and position myself best for the inevitable death. Hell I will even use flash to get to further back targets to chase them out and to allow for Q's to hit single squishy targets so they implode. Basically tanky karth with RoA+Rylais+Zohnyas+Abyssal along with Deathcap still allows for a good damage and being able to take hits because you have to be close and in the middle of things for your AoE to be hitting multiple targets.
As for Mejais I really do not get it commonly at all because its a snowball item and it delays your RoA and you need that for sustain in lane (esp when your facing a champ that clears waves fast)
Pretty sure scarlet quit playing? Can anyone verify that? At the very least I haven't ran into him in ages.
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On December 23 2011 22:52 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Pretty sure scarlet quit playing? Can anyone verify that? At the very least I haven't ran into him in ages.
profile stalking shows he last played less than a week ago, but no ranked games in his history
maybe that's why you haven't run into him
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ok zerg russian(rus...). No top solo karthus player builds like that or should. Its pretty much the lamest way to build him. But then this is a low skill game to begin with so I guess anything flies. Since your question to 2 top tier players was probably sent pre season 2, the answer has no bearing. I resent the fact that u say "dont listen to him, this is how ur supposed to do it; these 2 "pros" (the idea of a LoL pro is a joke anyways) told me to do this so this must be the only way!" without actually using any arguments whatsoever to back it up. Real constructive kiddo.
Especially since the definate mainstream build at high level is: RoA into Rabadans.
User was temp banned for this post.
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I've been really unimpressed by tear+wota builds I've seen them all underpreform because karthus gets bursted so hard anyway I feel like what's the point you never get oom and you have infinite mana when you die. You could have RoA instead of tear+wota and sure the laning phase is weaker but karthus already gains sick mana back from farming creeps.
Also Rabadons isn't a sure guarantee best item. Remember that game where xpeke went RoA-->QSS-->Zonyas and just tanked everything? Was pretty ridiculous.
I haven't seen pdiz and phantomlords in tournament and haven't seen them in solo queue since I'm in EU side so I can't comment on how good their karthus is, although karthus is like perma ban here because of how easy it is to win with him.
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On December 24 2011 22:20 MyTHicaL wrote:
ok zerg russian(rus...). No top solo karthus player builds like that or should. Its pretty much the lamest way to build him. But then this is a low skill game to begin with so I guess anything flies. Since your question to 2 top tier players was probably sent pre season 2, the answer has no bearing. I resent the fact that u say "dont listen to him, this is how ur supposed to do it; these 2 "pros" (the idea of a LoL pro is a joke anyways) told me to do this so this must be the only way!" without actually using any arguments whatsoever to back it up. Real constructive kiddo.
Especially since the definate mainstream build at high level is: RoA into Rabadans.
Hi, I'm 5HITCOMBO. The name "ZERG_RUSSIAN" is a play on words that probably went over your head ("zerg rushing"). Sorry for the sophisticated humor, I shouldn't assume everyone is a strong reader. Who are you cuz I was plat S1 and I have literally every high elo karthus on my friends list.
Like, if you're platinum atm or were ever 2k+ I'll listen to you because you might know what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure that your advice is horrible because it's directly in contrast to what two of the best karths to ever play the game say.
I hate to be pulling rank but seriously the first post I read from you had something like "karthus doesn't have mana problems" in it.
I'll expand even more--revolver lets you straight up solo people 1v1 with your vamp. You still get catalyst, it's part of the core, and obviously you're not finishing AA until your last item, but you can't pass up wota as an item on karth considering that it gives you (and your team) massive sustain. Generally I make the catalyst into a banshee's because I run flat ap/mpen/scaling ap/scaling ap on karthus and get rylais for the hp slot because rylais is retarded good and I generally hate having both rod and rylais on a champ because usually the rod could be a deathcap or an abyssal.
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You really think tears+catalyst is necessary though? The only time I've ever seen karthus players get it is with the zombie karthus like tears+wota you're talking about. I feel like karthus can kill creeps with relatively little mana used even just spamming Q, compared to other AP champs who need blue buff to get away with it. Combined with the fact you can expect blue buffs from level 6 onwards I really question it even If I'm not a karthus player.
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On December 24 2011 23:09 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 22:20 MyTHicaL wrote:
ok zerg russian(rus...). No top solo karthus player builds like that or should. Its pretty much the lamest way to build him. But then this is a low skill game to begin with so I guess anything flies. Since your question to 2 top tier players was probably sent pre season 2, the answer has no bearing. I resent the fact that u say "dont listen to him, this is how ur supposed to do it; these 2 "pros" (the idea of a LoL pro is a joke anyways) told me to do this so this must be the only way!" without actually using any arguments whatsoever to back it up. Real constructive kiddo.
Especially since the definate mainstream build at high level is: RoA into Rabadans. Hi, I'm 5HITCOMBO. The name "ZERG_RUSSIAN" is a play on words that probably went over your head ("zerg rushing"). Sorry for the sophisticated humor, I shouldn't assume everyone is a strong reader. Who are you cuz I was plat S1 and I have literally every high elo karthus on my friends list. Like, if you're platinum atm or were ever 2k+ I'll listen to you because you might know what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure that your advice is horrible because it's directly in contrast to what two of the best karths to ever play the game say. I hate to be pulling rank but seriously the first post I read from you had something like "karthus doesn't have mana problems" in it. I'll expand even more--revolver lets you straight up solo people 1v1 with your vamp. You still get catalyst, it's part of the core, and obviously you're not finishing AA until your last item, but you can't pass up wota as an item on karth considering that it gives you (and your team) massive sustain. Generally I make the catalyst into a banshee's because I run flat ap/mpen/scaling ap/scaling ap on karthus and get rylais for the hp slot because rylais is retarded good and I generally hate having both rod and rylais on a champ because usually the rod could be a deathcap or an abyssal.
Just because he doesn't really know what he's talking about doesn't mean you should just bash him like that D:
This could discourage him from posting in the future.
Edit:
ok I just read his post, and it is a bit... obnoxious and naive.
But I still think we don't need to bash and destroy him like that.
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This guy's annoying and I always wish someone with a stun would go mid for him. Otherwise you see the red gas on your head and go "oh shit... how many of my allies are gonna die this time". So strong. So hard to prevent from starving.
Even then he can usually push a lane, then go behind tower and channel req so it can't be interrupted. Teamfight occurs? Focusing him won't kill him till seven seconds later, and you can't stand in his circle of death.
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The reason karthus wants more mana is because when that fight or chase happens you want to have your E on for as long as possible without running out of mana, but E drains mana like fucking crazy.
I generally don't go tear though, i do like ROA --> WOTA --> deathcap. Then maybe like rylas, void staff, or zhonyas, depending on their comp. For mana I just whore the blue.
Spudboy has a really mean karthus actually, he doesn't get WOTA until after deathcap. I think he goes ROA --> deathcap. Then mostly either wota or void staff from what I have seen.
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I added in WotA into my build a few times and while it is good for 1v1 situations I rarely find myself losing them anyway (I play at low elo tho so people are retardly easy to kill 1v1 most of the time). Maybe its just the effect of me playing with low lvl players so I don't need it though. I also rarely have mana problems and I rarely go tear or AA at all. I start with boots 2 hp pots and 1 mana pot and just use those with Es passive to not have mana problems. Then catalyst helps and Blue buff. After finishing RoA straight into DC and then it depends on what the other team is building and how they act towards me in team fights because depending on if your priority 1 to kill or not really molds how I build him. I mean I like RoA+Ryalis because you can take a shit ton of damage. If I don't need a void staff My final build looks like RoA/DC/Ryalis/Zohnyas/AB if i want to be tanky and my god you ARE tanky for an AP caster. Especially for one where they in effect waste time "killing" you only to have you still do a fuck ton of damage for a few seconds and then a team wide Nuke.
Thats how I view him though, I want them to focus me because I want them to not be hitting someone like my AD carry because I view myself as expendable because of my passive. I don't know how many games I have seen where we aced the other team with only me dying and I pick up 1-4 kills and the rest assists.
This is at my low elo though so of course it will be different for higher level play. Thats why I really want to get better so I can see how its different and also play vs better people which will make me even better.
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WOTA is just as big or bigger for teamfights than for 1v1. E leaches a lot of life when multiple people are next to you.
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I actually think karthus shouldn't get Wota until after Deathcap atleast, preferably after Rylais. Unless you have another AP in the team in which case you can get it before Deathcap. During that time its far more useful for him to have pure damage, then spell vamp imo.
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Oh I know and it helps your team as a whole, thats why I have been building it more because honestly I had builds that worked for me so I didn't look at guides for him until recently (this thread pointed it out so thanks for that). Its also why I like TL because people like Zerg_Russian who know what they are talking about post here so I can see discussions and adjust/experiment accordingly for more efficient ways to play him.
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On December 25 2011 04:54 SHr3DD3r wrote:
I actually think karthus shouldn't get Wota until after Deathcap atleast, preferably after Rylais. Unless you have another AP in the team in which case you can get it before Deathcap. During that time its far more useful for him to have pure damage, then spell vamp imo.
Thats when I get it, RoA-Deathcap-WotA when I build it.
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On December 25 2011 04:54 SHr3DD3r wrote:
I actually think karthus shouldn't get Wota until after Deathcap atleast, preferably after Rylais. Unless you have another AP in the team in which case you can get it before Deathcap. During that time its far more useful for him to have pure damage, then spell vamp imo.
Honestly the only reason I end up completing my wota first is because I end up going back and I have just enough money to make wota, it's so damn cheap so i just shrug and go eh why not it'll be useful
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On December 16 2011 09:42 MyTHicaL wrote:
I really truly don't understand a karthus pick on dominion... U should not be stacking ANY cool down reduction (except for meijai which isnt even available in dominion) so his ulti is a waste of time... All other damaging global ultis have a smaller cooldown (and for obvious reasons).
Karthus is by far my favourite hero, no not because I love to press R; even though its insane to see the amount of retards incapable of picking up a hexdrinker and then proceeding to complain about imbalances... Karthus' strong point is not his R! NEVER build archangel staff on him NEVER. I mean come on guys, mana isn't a problem after early game- you should be picking up your team's blue every time and I can't imagine straying from a very simple build...
1. Doran's ring (only if you plan/CAN be agressive ie; you are not facing a Brand, Orianna, Xerath, LB, and there are a couple of others that will simply own you without boots.
2. Sorc Shoes (duh)
3. Meijais unless you feel very underconfident; in which case I hope you didn't ask for solo mid in ranked.
4. Rod of ages
5. This is where personal preferance comes into play for me; If the opposing team's ad heros are doing anything positive at all; I LOVE to pick up a zhonya's. Most under-rated item in the game imo. Any competent team WILL be focusing you either 1st or 2nd, when they do pop ur E spam your spells then pop zhonya's, and unless your team is completely retarded, your DPS should be devastating to atleast all their melee chars which is quite simply huge= easy team win.
6. Rylais/abyssal/rabadans depending completely on how you're doing/surviving
My main point is: Too many people rely on Karthus' passive, yes you can die. Does that make it beneficial for you to die within the first 5 seconds as a paper cannon stacking raba/arch angels? No. Your E and Q spamming make you a DPS ap carry, and you should be played as such. Archangel staff in general is just a horrible item and should never be picked up except maybe as a final item but even then... I'm so sick of seeing horrible face-palm-inducing-builds.
Although Karthus can be considered (barely) bannable, he is by no means OP, his ulti can/will annoy the enemy team at low elo early game since if you're paying half-attention to the map (as any decent LoL/HoN/DotA player should be.) you will beable to snipe the occasional hero or 2/pick up assists/save your team mates.
Most people that complain about karthus being imbalanced are just simply too stupid to read through the item description list. I can't stress how badly hexdrinker pwns early/mid and honestly even late game karthus' ulti. Unless your requiem is doing 600+ damage with full magic penetration (which basically means your way too farmed anyways) they should survive it.
Karthus is not a R champion, he is a DPS carry and should be built/played as such.
I just wanted to quote this because I really agree. Archangel is always my last item when I get it. Sometimes, I'll get a fast needlessly large rod if I am getting farmed early.Karthus dying should only be done to make a push happen or when you have a good chance of wiping out the enemy team. If I do not get at least 1 kill and 2 assists, then dying was a waste. I consider dying successful when I get triple kills or 2 kills and 1 assist, or we get kills and a turret. I prefer to initiate with a wall, and then let DPS champs weaken them, and then go in with Defile to finish them off.
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i'm so puzzled about all those people getting wota on karthus ... i just don't understand it. you die so fast and wota has an horrible gold/ap ratio. not even talking about tears which will make you even more one-shottable in the laning phase. roa->deathcap-> void staff still my favorite build but karthus is permabanned those days
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/d7M2y.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/iRfkV.jpg)
Pdiz likes rylais after tear/revolver while phantoml0rd tends to finish wota and go straight deathcap. Scarlet's the only one who goes catalyst but I only have a one game sample from him.
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i think the reasoning behind tear vs cata should be: Am I good enough at karthus to abuse his 875 (+100) range nuke and his 1000 range wall to be able to sufficiently farm and harass without my enemy touching me. If the answer is yes, go for tear, if no, go for cata for the hp buffer. I fall in the latter category, I know i'm terrible at karthus so i always go cata first on him. My build on karthus is cata -> roa -> rylais -> frozen heart -> abyssal, because i already know i'm not going to be able to maximize my damage output, so i might as well go for a higher utility build. If i honestly wanted to pick up karthus as a champion i want to be skilled with, i would start going for a more glass cannon build.
Wota/tear honestly seems like a good item combo (note this is from a purely theorycraft perspective, i havn't even played karth recently, but the build 5hit offered makes a decent amount of sense to me) since it's essentially a different buildpath from catalyst. Tear covers the mana part of catalyst and wota/revolver covers the hp sustain, but ofc, why replace catalyst? Well the benefits over catalyst is with tear you get an enormous mana pool really fast, as opposed to roa where it will take some time. Revolver sustain is pretty clearly superior to cata's, especially since karthus' dps output is pretty enormous, so hopefully i dont need to explain that. This isn't really a fair comparison tho, since we're basically looking at a 1300 gold item vs a 1k and 1.2k gold, totalling ~2.2k, but if you compare it to a roa rush (which you're prob inevitably going to do) then if you move on to the next step, you're going to be comparing roa vs tear + wota, and then i can see how a tear + revolver start can be justified.
Btw, this is just kinda rambling, hopefully i said something that sorta made sense, but i'm starting to get LoL withdrawal (omg want my laptop to come back t.t) so i seem to be thinking about these kinds of things more often.
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On December 25 2011 03:24 Abenson wrote:Show nested quote +On December 24 2011 23:09 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:On December 24 2011 22:20 MyTHicaL wrote:
ok zerg russian(rus...). No top solo karthus player builds like that or should. Its pretty much the lamest way to build him. But then this is a low skill game to begin with so I guess anything flies. Since your question to 2 top tier players was probably sent pre season 2, the answer has no bearing. I resent the fact that u say "dont listen to him, this is how ur supposed to do it; these 2 "pros" (the idea of a LoL pro is a joke anyways) told me to do this so this must be the only way!" without actually using any arguments whatsoever to back it up. Real constructive kiddo.
Especially since the definate mainstream build at high level is: RoA into Rabadans. Hi, I'm 5HITCOMBO. The name "ZERG_RUSSIAN" is a play on words that probably went over your head ("zerg rushing"). Sorry for the sophisticated humor, I shouldn't assume everyone is a strong reader. Who are you cuz I was plat S1 and I have literally every high elo karthus on my friends list. Like, if you're platinum atm or were ever 2k+ I'll listen to you because you might know what you're talking about but I'm pretty sure that your advice is horrible because it's directly in contrast to what two of the best karths to ever play the game say. I hate to be pulling rank but seriously the first post I read from you had something like "karthus doesn't have mana problems" in it. I'll expand even more--revolver lets you straight up solo people 1v1 with your vamp. You still get catalyst, it's part of the core, and obviously you're not finishing AA until your last item, but you can't pass up wota as an item on karth considering that it gives you (and your team) massive sustain. Generally I make the catalyst into a banshee's because I run flat ap/mpen/scaling ap/scaling ap on karthus and get rylais for the hp slot because rylais is retarded good and I generally hate having both rod and rylais on a champ because usually the rod could be a deathcap or an abyssal. Just because he doesn't really know what he's talking about doesn't mean you should just bash him like that D: This could discourage him from posting in the future. Edit: ok I just read his post, and it is a bit... obnoxious and naive. But I still think we don't need to bash and destroy him like that.
treat others how they deserve to be treated... clueless but nice people always get good advice here. kids acting like dicks... i think it's amusing seeing them get shut down. also as a karth main'er i should read ZR's advice because i've just been doin my thang basically, had never even considered spell vamp on him.
e-- Can you, ZergRussian, offer some advice on building karth/what champs in particular to watch out for 1v1?
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Oh like anyone that can burst you for over 1/2 your hp is pretty much a stiff counter. With Ahri out now it's even harder. I'd say bad matchups are Ahri/Cass/LB/Kass/Xerath and it's why you haven't seen much of Karth mid lately.
Buildwise it doesn't matter TOO much... you're gonna do a ton of deeps almost regardless, as long as you have spellvamp and some ap items that make sense you're looking good.
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Can't you just hang back and basically take their harass out of it though with Q? Or will good players abuse that. I simply don't know cause of the low level I play at but whenever I play vs one of those chars I can just farm and play a bit passive and pick up kills/assists with my ult and unless they are wandering in other lanes I will have more then them. And not feeding those chars (esp LB) makes them seem a bit UP late game in my observations (Xerath I don't have much exp though but Dat range makes him super annoying at all times).
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On December 26 2011 11:04 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
Oh like anyone that can burst you for over 1/2 your hp is pretty much a stiff counter. With Ahri out now it's even harder. I'd say bad matchups are Ahri/Cass/LB/Kass/Xerath and it's why you haven't seen much of Karth mid lately.
Buildwise it doesn't matter TOO much... you're gonna do a ton of deeps almost regardless, as long as you have spellvamp and some ap items that make sense you're looking good.
i've never tried spellvamp seriously on karth, i'll give it a shot. yeah Ahri looks really fun, I haven't really played since she was added.
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I think vs cass is alright. Can't really stop you from farming. Only bad matchups I have had are leblanc, and post-6 kass/akali. Akali not too big of a deal though.
I guess Talon is probably a similar situation to akali.
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I've never ever lost a lane as hard as I lost Karth vs Xerath and it's why I kinda stopped maining him AP mid
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haha that makes sense
anyways i just got unofficial penta (sooooo close to official penta) with karth playin with plats! so kewl
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I agree the new champs are pretty much hard counters to Karthus. I guess you will just have to play it safe and tower hug. But again, Elementz still has Karthus ranked in tier 1 because of his global ult that can initiate and finish people. Furthermore, he provides more utilities to a team with the wall of pain.
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His damage potential vs multiple targets simply makes him awesome and the wall is just icing on the cake so he will always be solid. Xerath though I agree is a mother fucker but no one plays him at my elo except me and a couple others.
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My thoughts on archangels cemented and will rest unchanged, I did try the spell vamp (u said to beable to 1v1 pretty much any1) and honestly its a great idea provided I get the farm... Good core edition. Kind of going sorc shoes, roa, hex tech revolver, zhonya's (fuck do i love this item... as soon as team fights start its just sooo godly, obviously I will unfortunately skip this if the opposing team is very ap orientated), and then whatever I feel I need. Revolver is a nice cheap pick up.
And yeah I recently was crushed by a decent xerath mid... Didn't originally realise how badly this hero counters karthus. Not quite sure how to counter him, I don't even know if there is a build that would counter him except maybe tankarthus which is pretty retarded IMO (but I have seen it work- played by others, but then not vs xera...)
I guess a solution is to simply ban the mofo if u have 1st pick/plan on playing karthus.
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Karthus Jungle style.
Smite and flash
magic pen reds. armour yellows. ap/level blues, ap quints.
start cloth armour 5 pots and take a point in q
get blue and go clear camps toggling pools and spaming q. buy some boots when you can afford them
get a point in the wall for your ganks.
Get a mana gem item, catalyst or tear.
then you're free to go for RoA, Archangles, Deathcap, Voidstaff, later in game sell the cloth armour for chain vest and buy Zhonya's, just build what ever items you want after the mana gem item but if catalyst go RoA ASAP.
You're Karthus, so feel free to die in team fights and still do all your damage.
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Alright. I've been playing karthus a lot more recently since froggen decided to play nothing but karthus for a day. I open much the same as on ryze with boots+3 into either a catalyst or a tear depending on the lane and deviate from there.
I've taken to not helping at all with wolves/wraiths and taking the enemy big wraith over the wall at 1:40 before running to leash blue after seeing reginald do it. If top lane/bot lane help with wolves/wraiths it's generally alright IMO since it sets the enemy jungler somewhat behind and it puts you at a decent advantage early game. I've taken to grabbing the big wraith against most blue starting junglers at their first spawn at 1:40 and the third spawn at ~4:20 after I've pushed the lane. It's early enough in the game that they shouldn't have the wraiths warded and it's safe to steal it plus most junglers have just finished their first full clear and are in fountain or making their way to wolves/doubles.
I've only got about a dozen games or so on karthus so I'm curious. Because of defile's passive mana return and the first two items karthus generally builds, mana regen isn't necessary on karthus. Obviously tear first is optimal if you're allowed to get away with it but catalyst -> tear -> RoA or just cata-> RoA, putting off the tear until much later. Once it hits lategame karthus is obviously a beast but how much does the lack of a fully charged tear-> AA impact karthus's lategame? I've never failed to build a tear on karthus since he charges it so quickly but I haven't had any insanely hard lanes yet (kassadin is a bitch but it's tolerable)
Also post-6, I generally don't follow my lane unless I catch them moving somewhere early (seeing them at baron/dragon area) and instead just push mid and take all the wraiths, relying only on karthus's ultimate to assist. It'll only do ~275-285 damage before resists to everyone so it's not huge but it's usually enough. I'm wondering though. I generally ulti the second someone in someone in another lane hard initiates onto someone else whether it's a jungle gank, taric stun or whatever. Is it worth blowing the cooldown for the assist gold or attempted save on a teammate or should I wait until someone gets away with low health which might or might not happen?
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AA and tear are completely unnecessary in my opinion, you need the sustain from catalyst if you want to be competitive with most mids nowadays, and tear/AA aren't as strong as Rylais/Deathcap/Zhonya's/WOTA in utility (and obviously Deathcap is more dmg). Choosing between Void Staff and AA late game would be nice, but it's hard to determine early in the game if you're going to need the pen or if you can go full damage. The nice thing about catalyst is that sometimes you can just hold it for a Banshee's in certain matchups and rush Rylais. I can't really think of many matchups where I would build tear first anymore. Since they buffed passive mp5 and nerfed mp5 runes a long time ago and retooled the mastery trees I think Karthus has been pretty good on mana with just Cata/blue if you manage correctly and bluepill at the right times. Karthus has really forgiving bluepills because the champs he has trouble with can't usually take towers extremely fast and you can just blow all your mana shoving a wave and be back before they miss you.
9/0/21 with exhaust/flash, flat ap/mpen/flat ap/scaling ap and a boots + 3 opening is where it's at right now in my opinion.
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I don't believe karthus needs blue in lane since defile gives mana back. If you're just last hitting, you're pretty much mana positive. The reason you go AA+tear is that combo'd with a RoA and charged up, it's absurdly cost-effective in terms of the AP it gives you.
karthus has ~1350 mana at level 18, 725 from RoA, up to 1400 from AA. 45+105 = 150 AP, before deathcap is factored in. If you can live with the tear and get it built, it gives massive amounts of damage. Putting into perspective, this is more AP than a second deathcap would give you.
I might play karthus differently than you because I personally build
Boots
RoA
AA
Dcap
Hourglass
Voidstaff
since his job is to do as much damage as possible before dying and then die in the enemy team with defile up and ulti. I don't see why you need a particularly large amount of survivability on karthus. WotA especially I find useless on karthus since spellvamp is worthless if you're dead. The only survivability item I'd ever get on karthus is an abyssal since that synergizes very well with the suicide karthus idea.
As far as matchups go, against anything without 100-0 possibility if I'm playing correctly I build a tear first. Anivia and orianna are two champions that I dont' feel pressured into going catalyst first against.
My opinion is that since karthus generally runs mpen+AP all the way in runes, there's no point in not going all the way for damage on him and going 21/0/9.
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I think it's just a slight difference in our styles, then. I play a bit more of a utility Karthus that can actually tank huge amounts of damage and focuses more on pushing and engaging favorably with mass slows from Rylai's and w than picking a spot and winning a fight. I like being able to initiate without feeling like I'm going to all-in and be able to use Karthus' retarded lategame damage vs towers after fights, and the reason I like wota is because coupled with the innate vamp in the utility tree and the amount of HP I have from cata item + rylai's it actually becomes very tricky to judge what will kill me when I do decide to all-in. I feel like AP is trumped by survivability on the second to the last item choice in particular, because Rod/Rylais/boots/Deathcap is pretty much standard no matter which style you choose, and there's definitely a flexibility aspect that goes into it which all higher-level games incorporate. I'll give the old tear-cata a try next time I'm playing a matchup I think I can get away with it. I kind of abandoned it in favor of rylai's midgame because you just become so stupidly overpowered when you can wall->land every q, but there's something to be said for wall->kill with q before slow wears off, too.
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What no one else goes boots first into Needlessly large rod? It's probably not viable anymore since there are a lot of hard counters to karthus, but when you aren't fighting any of those, it is great for some really oppressive ults early in the game and fast pushing mid so you can gank more.
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On July 12 2012 17:38 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
AA and tear are completely unnecessary in my opinion, you need the sustain from catalyst if you want to be competitive with most mids nowadays, and tear/AA aren't as strong as Rylais/Deathcap/Zhonya's/WOTA in utility (and obviously Deathcap is more dmg). Choosing between Void Staff and AA late game would be nice, but it's hard to determine early in the game if you're going to need the pen or if you can go full damage. The nice thing about catalyst is that sometimes you can just hold it for a Banshee's in certain matchups and rush Rylais. I can't really think of many matchups where I would build tear first anymore. Since they buffed passive mp5 and nerfed mp5 runes a long time ago and retooled the mastery trees I think Karthus has been pretty good on mana with just Cata/blue if you manage correctly and bluepill at the right times. Karthus has really forgiving bluepills because the champs he has trouble with can't usually take towers extremely fast and you can just blow all your mana shoving a wave and be back before they miss you.
9/0/21 with exhaust/flash, flat ap/mpen/flat ap/scaling ap and a boots + 3 opening is where it's at right now in my opinion.
Can you elaborate on your mastery choice? Why do you prefer utility?
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On July 13 2012 06:12 Perplex wrote:Show nested quote +On July 12 2012 17:38 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
AA and tear are completely unnecessary in my opinion, you need the sustain from catalyst if you want to be competitive with most mids nowadays, and tear/AA aren't as strong as Rylais/Deathcap/Zhonya's/WOTA in utility (and obviously Deathcap is more dmg). Choosing between Void Staff and AA late game would be nice, but it's hard to determine early in the game if you're going to need the pen or if you can go full damage. The nice thing about catalyst is that sometimes you can just hold it for a Banshee's in certain matchups and rush Rylais. I can't really think of many matchups where I would build tear first anymore. Since they buffed passive mp5 and nerfed mp5 runes a long time ago and retooled the mastery trees I think Karthus has been pretty good on mana with just Cata/blue if you manage correctly and bluepill at the right times. Karthus has really forgiving bluepills because the champs he has trouble with can't usually take towers extremely fast and you can just blow all your mana shoving a wave and be back before they miss you.
9/0/21 with exhaust/flash, flat ap/mpen/flat ap/scaling ap and a boots + 3 opening is where it's at right now in my opinion. Can you elaborate on your mastery choice? Why do you prefer utility?
Most likely MS, gp10, CDR and summoner spell cooldown (Maybe experience?) It's actually pretty decent in hard lanes since it keeps you relevant even if you fall behind and having exhaust up more often is always nice but you lose out on the 21st point in offense which synergizes so well with your ultimate.
Also, now that wall got nerfed so hard, I've given up on levelling wall second. It was ridiculous how strong it was prepatch at level 9-13 when you could wall every time the cooldown was up and take 50% of your opponent's healthbar with minimal repercussions. It's still worth taking a point in it at level 8 IMO to get the slow and wall size strong enough to deny entry into important spots around the map but I just leave it at two points and level defile since the slow is extremely strong and the wall size is big enough at that point.
Anyone else want to share insight on skilling on karthus?
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On September 03 2012 19:22 Lmui wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2012 06:12 Perplex wrote:On July 12 2012 17:38 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
AA and tear are completely unnecessary in my opinion, you need the sustain from catalyst if you want to be competitive with most mids nowadays, and tear/AA aren't as strong as Rylais/Deathcap/Zhonya's/WOTA in utility (and obviously Deathcap is more dmg). Choosing between Void Staff and AA late game would be nice, but it's hard to determine early in the game if you're going to need the pen or if you can go full damage. The nice thing about catalyst is that sometimes you can just hold it for a Banshee's in certain matchups and rush Rylais. I can't really think of many matchups where I would build tear first anymore. Since they buffed passive mp5 and nerfed mp5 runes a long time ago and retooled the mastery trees I think Karthus has been pretty good on mana with just Cata/blue if you manage correctly and bluepill at the right times. Karthus has really forgiving bluepills because the champs he has trouble with can't usually take towers extremely fast and you can just blow all your mana shoving a wave and be back before they miss you.
9/0/21 with exhaust/flash, flat ap/mpen/flat ap/scaling ap and a boots + 3 opening is where it's at right now in my opinion. Can you elaborate on your mastery choice? Why do you prefer utility? Anyone else want to share insight on skilling on karthus?
I've done the same after they nerfed his wall, used to level up W and E simultaneously. Now I just go QWEQ with a second level in W at 8 and leave it there.
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On September 03 2012 19:22 Lmui wrote:Show nested quote +On July 13 2012 06:12 Perplex wrote:On July 12 2012 17:38 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote:
AA and tear are completely unnecessary in my opinion, you need the sustain from catalyst if you want to be competitive with most mids nowadays, and tear/AA aren't as strong as Rylais/Deathcap/Zhonya's/WOTA in utility (and obviously Deathcap is more dmg). Choosing between Void Staff and AA late game would be nice, but it's hard to determine early in the game if you're going to need the pen or if you can go full damage. The nice thing about catalyst is that sometimes you can just hold it for a Banshee's in certain matchups and rush Rylais. I can't really think of many matchups where I would build tear first anymore. Since they buffed passive mp5 and nerfed mp5 runes a long time ago and retooled the mastery trees I think Karthus has been pretty good on mana with just Cata/blue if you manage correctly and bluepill at the right times. Karthus has really forgiving bluepills because the champs he has trouble with can't usually take towers extremely fast and you can just blow all your mana shoving a wave and be back before they miss you.
9/0/21 with exhaust/flash, flat ap/mpen/flat ap/scaling ap and a boots + 3 opening is where it's at right now in my opinion. Can you elaborate on your mastery choice? Why do you prefer utility? Most likely MS, gp10, CDR and summoner spell cooldown (Maybe experience?) It's actually pretty decent in hard lanes since it keeps you relevant even if you fall behind and having exhaust up more often is always nice but you lose out on the 21st point in offense which synergizes so well with your ultimate. Also, now that wall got nerfed so hard, I've given up on levelling wall second. It was ridiculous how strong it was prepatch at level 9-13 when you could wall every time the cooldown was up and take 50% of your opponent's healthbar with minimal repercussions. It's still worth taking a point in it at level 8 IMO to get the slow and wall size strong enough to deny entry into important spots around the map but I just leave it at two points and level defile since the slow is extremely strong and the wall size is big enough at that point. Anyone else want to share insight on skilling on karthus?
Actually I take improved recall, utility mastery, mana regen, movespeed, spellvamp, 2 points in experience, cdr and capstone. That's a good point about the ult snipes, though.
Oh also QEQWQR R>Q>E>W imo. Start maxing W when teamfights happen if you want but defile is just so much damage and wall utility depends more on placement than on how many points it has in it.
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I've always found that level 1 wall was never really sufficient to guarantee hits on Q since wall has a bit more range (125 more) than Q and that level 2 slow felt necessary in order to chase and hit guaranteed Qs so out of habit I still put two points into wall before even thinking about levelling defile more. Froggen's busy preparing for OGN so he rarely streams and I haven't been able to see what he's doing with karthus now (I copied him and levelled wall second instead of alternating wall/defile prepatch which wrecked any mid that didn't have a dash).
Since the slow is the only scaling utility on wall, some quick calculations on how strong it is (There's diminishing returns on slows below 220ms, according to http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Movement_speed
350 ms
215/198/180/163/145
380 ms
228/205/186/167/148
410 ms
246/213/192/171/150
You start running into diminishing returns at level 2 wall on pretty much everyone. Was an interesting little exercise to see the numbers.
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how do you play against mids with gap closer like kat/ahri/diana... cry and lose?
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Kartus's wall now reduce MR from 42 to 36. Meganerf too stronk.
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The amount of MR you need to make new karthus wall better than the old one is stupid
100/133/166/200/233
On September 04 2012 07:57 CeriseCherries wrote:
how do you play against mids with gap closer like kat/ahri/diana... cry and lose?
In general:
Don't wall offensively, ever, save your exhaust for an all-in and run MR blues+hp/level yellows if possible.
For katarina/diana where their gap closer only gets them onto you.
The moment they jump in, wall, turn on defile and spam Qs (This is one of the matchups where you want one point in wall and everything else into defile)
Against katarina, if she shunpos and starts her ulti, exhaust immediately.
Against Diana, you want to exhaust the moment she jumps onto you
You'll want to grab a catalyst starting with the ruby crystal ASAP so that they can't kill you with an all-in.
Against ahri.
One of the hardest matchups next to kassadin for karthus. Just farm and harass ahri pre-6 if possible. If she spirit rushes, your first priority is dodging the charm and second is exhaust+walling her. Try to use your Qs right when she lands somewhere since there's a cooldown on her spirit rush that's longer than the explode time on your Q. This matchup essentially revolves around whether or not she hits you with her charm when she uses her ultimate. It's dangerous as karthus to try outpushing ahri since that invites her to hit you with Q so focus on farming wraiths/wolves and assisting through your ultimate.
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Where are all my Karthus players? I sure as hell hope they didn't disappear in Season 3. I can't contribute to any of the other champion discussions but for Karthus, I definitely can. How do you guys feel about Karthus in Season 3?
I, personally, think that Karthus has not changed one bit. He still is the same late-game beast that farms for pretty much the first half of a match. I don't feel any of the new items apply to him much. I guess Liandry's Torment could(?) work in synergy with his E but I haven't tried it myself but other than that, I don't think Season 3 has affected him too much. The only thing that I can think of is the fact that AD bruisers invading the mid lane and I have played my handful of them myself. However, in my opinion, I think you just play karthus as the very passive mid laner, like he is. Mid laners like Panth , Talon, Riven rely on getting in your face through gap closers and if you are just way back just spamming your Q, you should have no problem.
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I haven't played him much this season (played like 250 games in season 2) with him as I have been working on my supporting this season but so far this season I have built him similarly but he doesn't get as many easier/farmy lanes anymore. Plus this season I have sucked with him (lol down like 20% on my win rate with him).
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On January 05 2013 07:22 Slaughter wrote:
I haven't played him much this season (played like 250 games in season 2) with him as I have been working on my supporting this season but so far this season I have built him similarly but he doesn't get as many easier/farmy lanes anymore. Plus this season I have sucked with him (lol down like 20% on my win rate with him).
I completely read that wrong and I thought you said you were saying that you were starting to play Support Karthus and I had the biggest WTF face on.
Well the thing is, I know this sounds pretty weird, but I FORCE my lane to be a farm lane. I don't do any auto attack harass/no harassing with Q at all. I even tell my jungler to not gank my lane because I know how passive of a lane it is. I know it has many faults that could happen, like THEIR jungler coming to gank, but most of the time it should work!
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flash + clarity or flash + exhaust still the way to go IMO, scarlettdoom style.
With the new penetration masteries, you can forego sorcerer's boots and go merc treads + get liandri's. Basically what I like doing is this:
9/0/21 masteries. Spell pen, armor, magic resist runes with spell vamp quints.
Start boots + 3. On the first back, get a tear and a flask if you feel you need it (I personally like it in harder lanes, otherwise no point. I used to be a fan of buying more health pots as I came back to lane but not really a huge deal)
In a really sustainy lane just get RoA and hextech into WoTA, same as ever really.
If you can get kills go RoA or even just cata into the haunting guise.
Situational/lategame are deathcap, zhonya's, abyssal, voidstaff, twin shadows, athene's, rylai's and that spectral wraith thing - really any AP item works, they're all dependent on the situation IMO. Against a really bursty AP I sometimes will even start null mantle 2 pots into chalice + mercs or abyssal, or just get the RoA and build the MR items afterward. I find rod of ages is too hard to pass up a lot of the time, given how much it gives you.
In a really hard lane I wouldn't go tear. Against bursty champions I like exhaust over clarity, against sustain I like clarity.
I play very aggressively as karthus, and it's not hard to do at all. You can last hit with your auto and harass with your q really easily, since if you are in the right position near the wave you can do both simultaneously.
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Never tried Flash Clarity but I ALWAYS go Flash and Exhaust. Best two spells you can have on a Karthus.
And I am going to have to disagree with your choice of going merc threads instead and mysteries. Why does a Karthus need merc threads? He doesn't need the tenacity and he doesn't need MR necessarily. Sorcerer's boots are good even if you already have penetration masteries. The more pentration the better . As for your runes, spell vamp quints? I don't find spell vamp very important because his goal in a team fight is to just stand in the middle with his E up, Q people around you, and ult after you die. I guess spell vamp could maybe give you an extra 1-2 seconds to live but I do not think that would do much. Regarding this spell vamp thing, I would also question your choice of WoTA and hextech. Karthus doesn't need THAT MUCH spell vamp, none at all in my opinion.
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Flash clarity is the old-school scarlett build. He had a 90% winrate with it. I find it better than flash + exhaust personally in a lot of situations because when you harass, you run low on mana a lot. It also helps you stay in lane forever, since you can just push the lane, farm wraiths, harass, clarity up and you're good to go. When I've run flash + exhaust there have been times where I dive a guy just to run out of mana, and if I had that last Q or if I had mana for ult I'd have killed the guy. Wall is generally good enough to root people in place so you don't really need exhaust for that; the real good part about exhaust is the damage reduction IMO. That's why I get it vs bursty champions.
spell vamp quints give 9% spell vamp with utility tree masteries. If you hit a single target with level 3 lay waste, it means you will leech ~15 health. That's pretty significant; it means that just by last hitting you can negate some harass. 10 last hits and you have a free health pot. I don't find AP quints or magic pen quints to be that useful, given that they don't allow you to stay in lane, and don't help you farm either. Karthus doesn't have damage problems, he has survivability problems. You have all the damage in the world and I have very very rarely wished for that 15 more AP. For the same reason, I find merc treads are better on him in the new season, because the magic resist and tenacity helps you live longer. %pen was buffed but sorcerer's shoes were accordingly nerfed. Paying 750 g for 15 spell pen is a bit much IMO. Also with merc treads you can survive ganks more easily, and I find myself being ganked quite a lot as karthus; unlike mid laners like Ahri, Anivia, LB, Kennen, Vlad or TF etc. your only reliable escapes are flash and a slow. You're also just as squishy as any of them.
Stuns and slows are pretty killer when it comes to your damage output too. Yeah, sure, the penetration helps with damage, but a lot of the times being stunned or slowed longer means that you won't be in range to get your damage off, or you'll be disabled when you could be hitting the guy with lay wastes. Also, the longer you live, the more damage you can do before you die. Sure, it's not a big deal if you die, but that doesn't mean you should simply aim to die in every fight.
Magic resist items and spell vamp help you basically stand in the fight and soak up damage for longer. If you live even 2-3 seconds longer in a fight you'll be taking much more damage and attention, while potentially dealing more too.
e: think about it, karthus is not a burst champion. He doesn't go in and just 100-0 people. He's supposed to stand in the middle of the fight and do damage over time; that's his strength. With that in mind, spell vamp is perfect for him. Also, WoTA is severely underrated since it benefits your whole team.
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I think Karthus isn't played a lot anymore because his base damage is sort of meh (meh compared to his AP ratio) and mpen builds are the rage right now. Also the wraiths nerf hurts him really bad.
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I see your argument now. Karthus is a sustain AP type of champion, much like Vlad or Swain, so the more sustain he has = the better. I never though it about that way. I will try it in a game soon!
I don't find anything wrong with his base damage, it's in a pretty good state. I agree with you on the wraiths though, they take a few more seconds to do but after you push your lane up, you use that time to do wraiths!
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I think a combination of things has made Karthus really strong again after the latest round of changes.
1. Health items cost more than they used to.
2. Negatron cloak magic resistance items are still not that good.
3. Seeker's armguard makes him able to cope with AD mids a lot more easily (if they're not named Kha'zix).
I find that the combination of the first two points means that midgame, almost no one has much magic resistance, because it substantially slows down the completion of warmogs. This means you can more easily go tear/catalyst (for maximum lategame AP) and still be really strong mid game.
Also, Seraph's and Zhonya's makes you a royal pain in the ass to kill if you use them well.
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How are you building him early game zero?
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On January 05 2013 11:52 Sufficiency wrote:
I think Karthus isn't played a lot anymore because his base damage is sort of meh (meh compared to his AP ratio) and mpen builds are the rage right now. Also the wraiths nerf hurts him really bad.
Double damage Q's his ult and defile still hurts even with Mpen being all the rage tbh.
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With people stacking health left and right karthus killing potential is really nowhere near what it was in s2. Tbh I'm a 2400 s2 karthus player and I had troubles breaking 2K in s3 before the division patch, my winrate was like 55% when it used to be 65+ over hundred of games. Bruiser mid are not a big problem but I don't agree with the fact that karthus still is the late game monster he was before, I've lost a LOT of games (in s3) going into late game while completely fed simply because I wasn't able to 1v5 (putting everyone at 20% isn't enough). In season 2 this would never happen. New items simply aren't that good on Karthus and all AP items were nerfed (even if they cost less), this + the health stacking trend = bleh.
Also don't bother with the spellvamp/support build its awful, you deal 0 damage and still die instantly. I won't even talk about clarity l0l. The best build is still 21/0/9, mpen red, scaling ap yellow (or armor if bruiser mid), scaling ap blue, flat ap quint, roa, deathcap, zhonya<-> void staff, rilay. The only variation I can see is putting the new archangel somewhere but in most games you need catalyst asap, not tear.
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I agree with the above post; you need the RoA rush for the health, mana, and sustain as fast as you can so you don't instantly blow up in a teamfight. Once you get to lv 13, you'll prolly do about 20-30% of the enemy team's health in a team fight with just the RoA and sorc boots.
The question here is about the next item to get after RoA; I've been thinking about putting deathcap after zhonya and maybe void staff (and maybe even a rylais just because of the extra health it gives you) simply because single-stat items like tear and deathcap aren't very good to rush for unless you somehow get a +1000 gold advantage 10 minutes into the game. Even if tear does upgrade into something better, it takes over 20+ minutes to get there, and that's 20+ minutes of investment towards an item that has little/no use for you if you have a RoA. Not to mention it puts you at -700 gold for a decent amount of time as well.
I've also replaced my AP mid seals with scaling health rather than mana regen or scaling AP because I feel like every bit of health, esp for squishes, is extremely important now. And with the rise of AD mids, I've found that taking tele/flash and making the lane super passive is the best way to go, using tele to gank bot or to get back to lane if you're doing poorly.
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I'm not saying he is as strong as he was at his peak (because he was absolutely nuts at his peak), but he's closer to where he was at the end of season 2.
I go flask/3 pots into tear/catalyst/sorc shoes/RoA/Deathcap/Archangel's (which is a Seraph's by the time you get there, usually). After that it depends, but I usually skip Rylai's because I don't feel like it helps that much unless its against a highly mobile team. Some combination of Zhonya's/Abyssal's Scepter/Liandry's/Void Staff usually rounds out the rest.
Aside from that, same masteries/runes that RouaF mentioned. I wouldn't underestimate an early tear though, once you get Seraph's you get a shield for ~750 health if you're at max mana, which increases your durability substantially.
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Yeah I think seraph can be good but it's just a matter of whether you can get a tear or not. You can't get tear before catalyst even if you play super safe its way too dangerous. Getting tear after catalyst would be the way to go but that delays your RoA quite a lot, a bit less early/mid power but more late game power I guess.
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Been playing karthus a bunch recently and just testing something I watched faker do in OGN. Against melee mids and non-gap closing mids, level 1-3 and as safety allows, he only autoattacks creeps to last hit them and zones out the other laner with Q's. ~42 AD at level 1 is difficult to last hit with (I can hit 5 of 6 pretty reliably with purely autoattacks after a bit of practice) but this frees you up to poke with a essentially free mana skill.
It applies incredible amounts of pressure in your lane against melees, allowing you to sit inside your creeps and play much more aggressively than most people expect a karthus to be able to.
Interesting way to play and completely worth it once you learn it. It's especially good against khazix, zed and jayce level 1 as I've found.
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EPT
