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Sorry Rugfeeder, I think we need a new Karma guide. I'll finish this up later tonight, didn't have time to finish at work, huehuehue.
Karma, the Enlightened One
+ Show Spoiler [Patch Notes] +v1.0.0.125 - 2011-09-14
Fixed a bug where using a summoner spell would sometimes consume Karma's mantra charge
v1.0.0.123 - 2011-08-09
The cooldown before Karma's next Mantra charge and her current stacks are now shown in the same buff
v1.0.0.118 - 2011-05-10
Fixed a bug where by casting spells in rapid succession you could charge multiple spells with a single Mantra Chakra now shows a cooldown
v1.0.0.115 - 2011-04-11
Fixed a bug where the visual for Heavenly Wave occasionally wouldn't align with the direction cast Mantra Soul Shield now shows an area of effect indicator when your cursor hovers over an ally
v1.0.0.114 - 2011-03-28
Fixed a bug where the Mantra version of Heavenly Wave was not granting assists for healing allies Spirit Bond's leash range has been increased by a small amount Mantra now scales with level on a 30/25/20 second cooldown at levels 1/7/13 respectively instead of on 25 second cooldown at all levels
v1.0.0.112 - 2011-03-01
Heavenly Wave base heal increased to 35/55/75/95/115/135 from 30/45/60/75/90/105 Spirit Bond cooldown reduced to 15/14/13/12/11/10 from 20/18/16/14/12/10. Soul Shield Increased the shield strength by 10 at all ranks. Mantra cooldown reduced to 25 seconds from 30 seconds.
v1.0.0.111 - 2011-02-16
Spirit Bond now properly assigns assist markers to allies that receive the haste bonus Fixed a bug where Spirit Bond would break friendly spell shields and not apply the haste bonus Fixed a display bug where Spirit Bond's beam would appear at Karma's feet for enemy players + Show Spoiler [Stats] + Health ................ 410 (+86) Mana ................. 240 (+60) Attack Damage .. 50 (+3.3) Attack Speed ..... 0.625 (+2.3%) Range ................ 425 Health Regen ...... 4.7 (+0.55) Mana Regen ....... 6.8 (+0.65) Armor ................ 15 (+3.5) Magic Res ......... 30 (+0) Mov. Speed ........ 310
Abilities:
Passive - Inner Flame: Karma gains up to 30-130 Ability Power corresponding to her % of missing Health.
This passive is incredible and makes Karma a deceptively hard target to kill, as once she gets low HP, she will unleash a considerably more powerful spells. At 100% HP, you'll gain 0 AP from your passive and then you'll get a proportion of the max AP at your current level equal to the % of your HP that's missing. For instance, at level 1, 50% HP, you'll gain 15 AP from Inner Flame.
The upward threshold on the AP gained starts at 30 at level 1 and goes up by 20 at levels 3, 6, 9, 12, and 15.
Q - Heavenly Wave: Karma sends forth hidden blades from her fans, dealing 70/110/150/190/230/270 + 0.6 AP magic damage to units in a cone in front of her.
Mantra Bonus: In addition to dealing damage to enemies, Heavenly Wave will also heal allies in the cone for 35/55/75/95/115/135 plus (5 + 0.02 AP)% of their missing Health.
CD: 6 Mana: 70/75/80/85/90/95 Range: 600?
Karma's bread and butter nuke. This will always be your most consistent source of damage and it's quite good at what it does with decent range for a spell with it's AoE and a ridiculously short CD for an AoE nuke. The cast time is basically instantaneous, so when you're casting it at a fleeing foe, you'll frequently hit further than you'd expect because of how little delay there is on the cast.
The Mantra charge on this ability is an awkward, but potentially very powerful heal. Since a good portion of the heal is based on your % HP missing, the heal on this isn't very good for topping your team off in lane or in poking fights, but it's INCREDIBLE as an OH-SHIT, WE'RE ALL ALMOST DEAD heal. Also remember that this plays in with the theme of your passive of being deceptively durable at low HPs. If you go low HP, you get more AP to scale off of all that HP that your missing, self synergy ftw.
W - Spirit Bond: Karma creates a beam between an ally or enemy for up to 5 seconds. Allied anchors move 10/12/14/16/18/20% faster and enemy anchors are slowed by 10/12/14/16/18/20%. The beam deals 80/125/170/215/260/305 + 0.7 AP magic damage to enemies and applies the same movement speed adjustment anchors receive to any champion it passes through.
The beam breaks if the bonded target is stealthed.
Mantra Bonus: Karma strengthens the bond to double the effect of the movement speed modifier.
CD: 15/14/13/12/11/10 Mana: 65/75/85/95/105/115 Range: 800 (initial cast) / 1000 (leash max range)
This ability is pretty tricky. Essentially, you tether an opponent to slow them down or an ally to speed them up. Any enemy that passes through the tether between yourself and your target will take damage, and any champion that passes through the tether will be sped up/slowed down depending on whether they're friendly or hostile. Proper usage of this ability and having a team that can effectively utilize it will make or break Karma. It works best on tanky characters that run around the fight a lot, such that it will tag as many opponents with the damage as possible and such that the speed boost will be used to it's maximum effect. Singed is perfect for this, definitely the #1 utilizer of Karma's Spirit Bond. Other good targets include Garen, Wu Kong, Amumu, Malphite, Maokai, Rammus, Skarnar, and Shyvanna.
The Mantra bonus is very straight forward, simply doubling this ability's effect on speed. It's rare that you'll spend mantra charges on this ability, but it can be incredibly potent as an escaping/chasing tool to be able to speed friendlies up 40% and slow hostiles down 40%.
E - Soul Shield: Karma summons a protective shield that absorbs 80/120/160/200/240/280 + 0.8 AP damage for 5 seconds.
Mantra Bonus: In addition to casting the shield, energy radiates out from the shield, dealing 80/120/160/200/240/280 + 0.8 AP magic damage to enemy units around her target.
CD: 10 Mana: 70/80/90/100/110/120 Range: 600? (cast range) / 600? (mantra radius)
Karma's Shield. If you've never been terrored by this ability, consider yourself lucky. This shield is fairly massive. Not quite as big as Sion's, but it does it's damage instantly and unconditionally and it can be cast on allied units. Most mantras will be spent on your shield, as it has the most obviously powerful mantra effect. Between Mantra Soul Shield and Heavenly Wave, Karma has perhaps the most powerful creep farming tools in the game, and can easily 2 shot entire creep waves as early at level 5.
As with Heavenly Wave, consider the interaction this ability has when you get low HP. Low HP = bigger shield. If someone tries to burst you, and falls just short, think about what happens when you suddenly Mantra E -> Mantra Q them. Her able to turn situations around like that is one of Karma greatest assets.
R - Mantra: Karma empowers her next ability to do an additional effect. Karma gains a charge over time and stores up to 2 charges. The refresh rate is reduced by cooldown reduction and does not progress when having max charges. Both charges may be queued for application on the next 2 abilities. Reload begins when Mantra is activated, not when the charge is applied to another ability.
CD: 0.25 Mana: 0 Range: N/A Recharge CD: 30/25/20
What makes Karma Karma. Mantra is a skill that doesn't require any points and is available to you at level 1 (hence why her other abilities have 6 ranks). The recharge CD goes down at levels 7 and 13. Essentially this is a special resource that Karma can use to super-charge her spells. Managing your Mantras efficiently and using them at the proper times is what will make you a good Karma player. Any derp can walk around and mantra every shield, but a good karma knows when to mantra her Qs and Ws for maximum effect.
GUIDES
SOLO MID KARMA Summoner Skills: Flash + Ignite You could probably run other stuff in place of ignite if you really wanted to, but I find ignite extremely potent. I have been considering heal though, as heal does outperform ignite 1v1 and has better team utility.
Masteries: 21/0/9 Offensive Tree OP
Runes: Marks: MPen Seals: Armor Glyphs: MRes Quints: AP
While Karma does love AP, I find that resistances are just too good to pass up on her. With her shield and heal, she has a deceptively high effective HP pool to work with and playing off that resists is the best use of those slots IMHO, especially since itemizing huge resists is harder than itemizing huge AP.
Skill Order: Q > E > W, getting a point in W when it seems prudent. I have skipped W until level 13 and I've gotten W at level 2, it's all a matter of when you need it.
Item Build:
Starting Items
I start D-Ring because I'm a boss. Boots + 3 pots is also a possibility if you're not a boss.
Core + + D-Rings are really cool items and I typically get at least 2.
What Next
Deathcap is already stupidly strong on all AP characters, but once you add in the boatload of free AP Karma gets from her passive, it becomes a giant no brainer. You will always get this item, it's just a question of when.
When you're having some trouble vs. an AP, Abyssal tends to be a strong way to boost your damage output and effective tankiness. It's pricey, but frequently worth it in my experience. ? When I don't expect constant blue buffs for whatever reason, Morello's serves as a nice way to cash in on 2K gold in exchange for blue-buff independence. I don't like getting this item, but Mana and CDR are very important to Karma and if you can't be sure you'll get it from blue buff, you should invest in this.
Boots Options
or
or
I'd say I get sorc shoes 75% of the time and I get them very early. Karma has good damage output and it's a great way to improve it for cheap. CDR boots fit into the I-can't-get-blue-buff game plan nicely, but I don't like that gameplan and the extent to which I do, I'd still usually rather pump blue elixirs than invest in CDR boots ontop of my Morello's. Sometimes you just need Mercs, suck it up and get them instead of wasting an item slot on something stupid like a Moonflair spellblade. You'll frequently want mercs late game anyway, so I find myself cashing out on sorc shoes for late game merc treads.
Finishing Up
Pump dem blue elixirs. These will put you in the 34-39% CDR range depending on whether you have Morello's or Blue Buff and the extra AP is always appreciated. I typically always have blue elixir up post-deathcap.
Since Karma loves getting up close and personal to tether and shield tanks, being able to hit your panic button and wait out the worst of the middle of a teamfight is extremely valuable.
An Essential piece of any finished AP carry build, void staff is pretty great for ensuring that your late game AoE damage is meaningful to everyone it hits.
With her kit, Karma can essentially perma slow via Rylai's and her Spirit Bond. She also benefits from some HP pool later in the game to make sure she doesn't die in 1 round of CC before she can heal/shield. While some people suggest a RoA rush on Karma, I personally don't think she needs the mana pool and would rather invest in Rylai's for the utility of the slow and the fact that you don't need to rush it for optimal efficiency.
// Occasionally, one of these will make sense to pad your defensive stats, but I usually find myself quite happily tanky with rylai's + abyssal + zhonya's.
My Standard Final Item Build + + + + +
Playstyle Karma is a bully in lane. She abuses most people in burst trades because Soul Shield doubles as damage mitigation as well as a nuke, and on top of that, she typically pushes the wave in 2 shots via her standard burst. Which means that you get ahead of your opponent and shove their wave onto their tower pretty much any time they try to trade. The trick is to ward up the gank routes and always be aware of when you might get punished for playing too far into your opponent's face. If you can avoid getting ganked, it's just a matter of being comfortable with how to time your spells vs. the various matchups in order to boss people around and pin them on their tower (especially useful vs. APs with weak creep clearing and/or strong ganking, like kass, leblanc, or ahri).
The trickiest part to playing karma is playing mid game correctly. There are two big reasons for this. The first reason here is that this is where a standard AP carry shines, typically via a WTFBBQ ult that can singlehandedly win teamfights at dragon. Karma is all about sustained damage and utility in teamfights, and without the WTFBBQ ult, you need to be much more crafty about teamfighting and make sure that your team doesn't just get blown up. Essentially, Karma can't punish really stupid positioning as hard as other APs because she doesn't flash Tibbers -> Incinerate for a triple kill when you bunch up. Assuming you can avoid letting the opposing AP unload their full potential and outright kill someone though, Karma is perfectly capable of doing well for her team via sustained damage and damage mitigation. The second reason is that Karma's strongest interactions are with Top Lane champions, and mid game fights are frequently 4v4s at dragon.
Once you can figure out mid game though and not cost your team the game there via botched teamfights (harder than it sounds), you'll see Karma's absurd power late game when a Singed is charging through your team with 40% Movespeed, an 800 point shield that just cut your whole team in half, and a Karma just waiting for you to commit to trying to kill him with a mantra heal that will go apeshit and heal him for another 400 HP while bursting your team harder. karma's late game is so fun it's ridiculous. I live for Karma late games.
+ Show Spoiler [changelog] +
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Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
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On December 21 2011 15:38 Uproot wrote: Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
Despite Mogwai's numerous warnings not to, I went bot with Karma when I tried her out today. my ad kept dying and i would clean up kills, though, so I think I had about equal amount of farm as if I was solo lane (I was also stealing farm because this is a normal and no one even knows that bot support isn't supposed to).
My build was triple dring into a WotA (spell vamp thing) then deathcap. Seemed pretty strong to me. I feel WotA after drings is good simply because you can't heal yourself so it gives you great sustain. obviously not an expert though.
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On December 21 2011 15:38 Uproot wrote: Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
honestly, there are significantly better choices for bot lane if you want to run a babysitter for ranged AD. TBH i can't honestly put my finger on it, and smash might have a more informed idea about it but babysitter karma has always seemed lackluster to me. i've tried some cute stuff with like karma/panth bot lane and karma/garen and they were pretty fun tho.
@ smash, i think if you put the detailed skill descriptions (the numbers and stuffs) in spoilers it might clean up that section a bit, and just leave your thoughts about them.
edit: also, u (i think) told me quite some time ago to go shield before wave, is there a reason u switched it?
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babysitter karma isn't really a support, she's an ap carry/support operating with little to no farm. If you can outdamage your opponent's sustain it's ok, but if you begin to lose lane you're gonna fall behind
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On December 21 2011 15:53 petered wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2011 15:38 Uproot wrote: Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
Despite Mogwai's numerous warnings not to, I went bot with Karma when I tried her out today. my ad kept dying and i would clean up kills, though, so I think I had about equal amount of farm as if I was solo lane (I was also stealing farm because this is a normal and no one even knows that bot support isn't supposed to). My build was triple dring into a WotA (spell vamp thing) then deathcap. Seemed pretty strong to me. I feel WotA after drings is good simply because you can't heal yourself so it gives you great sustain. obviously not an expert though.
If you mantra your Q it heals you, though admittedly it's not that great for sustain / if you have just used it with your shield.
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Updated the rest of the guide. Probably will edit more tomorrow.
On December 21 2011 15:56 barbsq wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2011 15:38 Uproot wrote: Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
honestly, there are significantly better choices for bot lane if you want to run a babysitter for ranged AD. TBH i can't honestly put my finger on it, and smash might have a more informed idea about it but babysitter karma has always seemed lackluster to me. i've tried some cute stuff with like karma/panth bot lane and karma/garen and they were pretty fun tho. @ smash, i think if you put the detailed skill descriptions (the numbers and stuffs) in spoilers it might clean up that section a bit, and just leave your thoughts about them. might try different formats for my guides tomorrow.
the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. you can see this by comparing say, her nukes to a standard AP's nukes. Her rank 6 nukes have roughly the same stat's you'd expect from a standard AP's rank 5 nukes. She also has very little in terms of non-scaling utility. Soraka's gonna give you 120 armor (I still wtf at that number, btw) for no good reason, whether she has 3 CS or 300 CS. Janna's still gonna blow the opposing team away. Sona's still gonna give auras and AoE stun. Traditional babysitter supports provide strong inherent utility on their skills, but karma provides very little. She has average base numbers on her skills and only a 10-40% speed/slow that's awkward to use in terms of general utility. What she does provide though are incredibly flexible skills that, while they don't scale as hard as AP carry skills, are more versatile in terms of what they can provide for your team. So like, while Sion's shield might have higher numbers, he can't save your carry's ass with it, nor can he guarantee the damage right in the middle of their team by dumping it on a Shyvanna that just ulted through them.
the one and only good reason I've come up with to play Karma bot is to play Karma Twitch, which is hilarious btw. The whole point is that you can do some really cheesy shit with mantra shield on invis twitch in lane and then karma with a little advantage can 1v2 while Twitch roams and is a giant asshole to the opposing team. it ends up giving her damn good farm though because twitch roams so much, so it's nothing like standard bot support.
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On December 21 2011 15:56 barbsq wrote: edit: also, u (i think) told me quite some time ago to go shield before wave, is there a reason u switched it? ummm, I think it's when they upped the low level mantra recharge timer (awhile ago). It was just too hard to rely on shield for your damage with 30 second mantra recharge. I think it was secretly always better to level Q up, but when they upped it from 25-30, it was the straw that broke the camels back and converted me.
EDIT: I think sustain laners also had something to do with the need for more repeatable damage output that drove me to Q > E
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Always great to see Karma getting some love, and apparently Guinsoo tweeted about upcoming buffs.
the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills.
This 100% - aside from the slow, all of the functionality on her spells with or without Mantra scale with AP, instead of the static armor buff on Soraka's heal, the AD bonus on Janna's shield, Taric's armor or AD/AP aura, as well as the harder CCs via stun/silence/knockup they + Ali bring - she can't peel/babysit in the same way they can. Especially with summoner Heal giving more flexibility to take people with strong farm-independent toolkits (Blitz/Leona/Gangplank/Yorick) as support bot, Karma doesn't really fit in there.
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On December 21 2011 17:38 Haasts wrote:Always great to see Karma getting some love, and apparently Guinsoo tweeted about upcoming buffs. Show nested quote +the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. This 100% - aside from the slow, all of the functionality on her spells with or without Mantra scale with AP, instead of the static armor buff on Soraka's heal, the AD bonus on Janna's shield, Taric's armor or AD/AP aura, as well as the harder CCs via stun/silence/knockup they + Ali bring - she can't peel/babysit in the same way they can. Especially with summoner Heal giving more flexibility to take people with strong farm-independent toolkits (Blitz/Leona/Gangplank/Yorick) as support bot, Karma doesn't really fit in there. But what are they going to do about this? If they make her skills scale less well with AP (while increasing their base values), they're effectively taking her passive away from her. I think they shouldn't be shoehorning her into the no-farm support role in bottom lane and instead they should buff her so that she's more capable of being a "Farmed AP carry-support" like Zilean, Orianna, etc. She's got the right style of kit for that, too. I think it might just be range that she lacks to succeed in a role like that.
Example on heal - right now it does 6% of missing health with 50 AP and 15% missing health with 500 (which for AP carry isn't that unlikely, considering her free AP) Karma. When your bruiser is low (lets say theyre at 1k out of 3k health) then the latter is a delicious 535 health heal. The heal is pretty garbage with low AP, though, especially since you need to mantra-charge it. That same bruiser with a 50 AP karma (which is like a no-AP-items + slightly banged up) is only looking at a 230 heal - Soraka does significantly better than that, without the need to pump it with any special limited use power, regardless of whether her heal is on a warmog bruiser or a squishy carry (Karma heals are significantly better on bruisers than squishies) and gives a huge armor bonus on top of it. Yeah there's times the stars align and even support karma gets to throw in meaningful mantraQs on enemies and allies at the same time, but she just feels so lackluster when she isnt sitting on at least a deathcap.
Random thoughts... What if they made it so that at 6/11/16 they increased the # of max mantra charges you could stock up on? No nvm, then her late game would be completly ridonkulus. :< I like karma but she's just... weird and is in the classic spot of "Hard to place on a team." Maybe I should try playing her on dominion?
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<3 Karma. I think I can declare myself the only EU player who grabs that bitch from time. (I once had a game where we had Irelia and Lee Win, too much fun. <3)
Random statement: I think ignite is wtfdamnstrong on Karma simply because every single person in the game misjudges her burst potential and ignite is that little GOTCHA way too often for me. I guess heal is great when you play vs people who don't misjudge it. I also guess that only happens at 2.5k elo. =D
Questions:
#1 - I remember one of your main reasonings for E > Q being that mantra E is so damn strong if they try to lasthit because of its huge range. Are there specific matchups where you'd still max it, or is your general plan to E -> Q in their face whenever possible, walk back to safe mantra for sustain & when you need the full mantra E+Q combo?
#2 - Isn't Abyssal redundant when you plan to get Voidstaff later on anyway? After the opening I usually opt for Deathcap -> Rylais / Void -> Negatron/Chainmail -> Banshees/Zhonyas.
I kinda feels that Abyssal is great when you doubt you'll get Voidstaff anytime soon, but pretty bad if you plan to do so.
#3 - Why Rylais after Zhonyas? I usually feel the slow+HP is stronger midgame, the Hourglass active stronger lategame.
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On December 22 2011 05:17 r.Evo wrote: <3 Karma. I think I can declare myself the only EU player who grabs that bitch from time. (I once had a game where we had Irelia and Lee Win, too much fun. <3)
Random statement: I think ignite is wtfdamnstrong on Karma simply because every single person in the game misjudges her burst potential and ignite is that little GOTCHA way too often for me. I guess heal is great when you play vs people who don't misjudge it. I also guess that only happens at 2.5k elo. =D
Questions:
#1 - I remember one of your main reasonings for E > Q being that mantra E is so damn strong if they try to lasthit because of its huge range. Are there specific matchups where you'd still max it, or is your general plan to E -> Q in their face whenever possible, walk back to safe mantra for sustain & when you need the full mantra E+Q combo?
#2 - Isn't Abyssal redundant when you plan to get Voidstaff later on anyway? After the opening I usually opt for Deathcap -> Rylais / Void -> Negatron/Chainmail -> Banshees/Zhonyas.
I kinda feels that Abyssal is great when you doubt you'll get Voidstaff anytime soon, but pretty bad if you plan to do so.
#3 - Why Rylais after Zhonyas? I usually feel the slow+HP is stronger midgame, the Hourglass active stronger lategame. 1. you have to be bullying really really hard for E > Q to make sense. maxing E puts a constant strain on your mantra pool in lane and I honestly just never feel like I can afford that anymore.
2. It's a long time from Abyssal to Void staff in your average game (at least for me). Abyssal is great midgame with sorc shoes, as it can axe someone from mercs and/or MRes Glyphs to effective 0-20 mres.
3. last 3 items are in whatever order.
EDIT: regarding how to buff Karma, all I can think of is making her W more consistent. anything that's not pushing for that goal fucks with the character too much. I really really really really don't want to see her pushed towards a babysitting support.
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Npnpnp, you're a better guidewriter anyways. Seconding that Q>E is definitely better. MantraW is pretty strong for initiating but I wouldn't use it until 13 when mantra cooldown is manageable. Biggest problem with W is the person you W has to know what it does to get maximum benefit. If it didn't require them to run BEHIND the enemy, since all anyone does in solo queue is stand face to face with dudes and auto them... Very little thing, but you can precast mantras - the recharge starts when you press R, not when you use up the mantra charge, so you can mantra - wait a few seconds - spell to get the mantra back slightly faster in some situations.
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England2649 Posts
I'm a big fan of Karma and I think she also does very well top lane versus the right opponents. Her playstyle is great and you can be very aggressive as her once used to her playstyle and never die.
The thing I had to learn for Karma was how to get in to push the creeps without my lane opponent ceasing the oppurtunity to nuke me before I can shield. Once I figured that out, I started to do pretty well with Karma. I do find she really needs someone else on the team to do the burst that a lot of people rely on to win team-fights. We've all had a game where we're being focused for the whole fight and the rest of our team doesn't clean up.
I'd like to ask for some advice on when you use Manta-Q as team-fights start occurring. I normally start with a Mantra-E and a Q in a fight (with W on someone) then when the next cooldowns come around I'm often unsure which way is best. Should I Mantra-E for the shield+damage then Q, or should I go more support and E then Mantra-Q. I normally swing toward the former but I'd like a second opinion.
Random note: My idea for Karma buffs was to make 3 normal casts give one mantra charge. I think she'd benefit tremendously from being able to have just one more Mantra in a team-fight. I'm hoping the buffs are something like that.
Also, if you're normal queueing, try playing Karma and AP Sion in a double AP comp. It's amazing fun.
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On December 21 2011 16:14 Mogwai wrote:Updated the rest of the guide. Probably will edit more tomorrow. Show nested quote +On December 21 2011 15:56 barbsq wrote:On December 21 2011 15:38 Uproot wrote: Good guide to help get me started. I've been wanting to try Karma and now that she's free it's a good time to try her out. Really looking for a good support Karma build for bot lane though.
honestly, there are significantly better choices for bot lane if you want to run a babysitter for ranged AD. TBH i can't honestly put my finger on it, and smash might have a more informed idea about it but babysitter karma has always seemed lackluster to me. i've tried some cute stuff with like karma/panth bot lane and karma/garen and they were pretty fun tho. @ smash, i think if you put the detailed skill descriptions (the numbers and stuffs) in spoilers it might clean up that section a bit, and just leave your thoughts about them. might try different formats for my guides tomorrow. the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. you can see this by comparing say, her nukes to a standard AP's nukes. Her rank 6 nukes have roughly the same stat's you'd expect from a standard AP's rank 5 nukes. She also has very little in terms of non-scaling utility. Soraka's gonna give you 120 armor (I still wtf at that number, btw) for no good reason, whether she has 3 CS or 300 CS. Janna's still gonna blow the opposing team away. Sona's still gonna give auras and AoE stun. Traditional babysitter supports provide strong inherent utility on their skills, but karma provides very little. She has average base numbers on her skills and only a 10-40% speed/slow that's awkward to use in terms of general utility. What she does provide though are incredibly flexible skills that, while they don't scale as hard as AP carry skills, are more versatile in terms of what they can provide for your team. So like, while Sion's shield might have higher numbers, he can't save your carry's ass with it, nor can he guarantee the damage right in the middle of their team by dumping it on a Shyvanna that just ulted through them. the one and only good reason I've come up with to play Karma bot is to play Karma Twitch, which is hilarious btw. The whole point is that you can do some really cheesy shit with mantra shield on invis twitch in lane and then karma with a little advantage can 1v2 while Twitch roams and is a giant asshole to the opposing team. it ends up giving her damn good farm though because twitch roams so much, so it's nothing like standard bot support.
I agree completely
From what I've seen, karma only gets good/dangerous when she gets farmed. Her very base stats and abilities are really weak, and doesn't offer much as a support, unless really well equipped with items, and as seeing she's a support and rarely gets farm she's usually the worse support champion in lol.
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Smash what is your opinion on spellvamp with karma?
Something like revolver rush into deathcap. If you had consistent blues that make mana not a problem, could you use revolver to ability spam and make you absolutely impossible to trade with.
I feel like you could sacrifice two dorans for an early revolver, relying on your shield to deal with burst.
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England2649 Posts
On December 22 2011 07:47 Lancer723 wrote: Smash what is your opinion on spellvamp with karma?
Something like revolver rush into deathcap. If you had consistent blues that make mana not a problem, could you use revolver to ability spam and make you absolutely impossible to trade with.
I feel like you could sacrifice two dorans for an early revolver, relying on your shield to deal with burst.
It works very well top. You can stay in lane forever if you get a WotA. I'm not sure it's necessary mid lane.
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Hehe I like to jungle Karma more than anything else XD Its semi-legit
Mantra-slow + mantra shield + q = pretty good burst damage, and if the lane you are ganking has any CC, then you can probably get a kill.
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i've been playing karma a lot recently, both with cv bot as an aggressive support (get my carry fed and farm later) and a bit as a solo. She needs the farm or the assist kills :[.
Why is wota not optimal on her? I tend to just rush it (and boots obv) and stay and farm forever.
I wish she was better though. After you blow mantra shield + Q you're kinda stuck on damage for a longg time in a fight. But she's so fun!
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She has a shield so that's totally unaffected by spell vamp, also a base heal so her shielding/healing is affected by pure AP so wota is not optimal.
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On December 22 2011 04:15 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On December 21 2011 17:38 Haasts wrote:Always great to see Karma getting some love, and apparently Guinsoo tweeted about upcoming buffs. the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. This 100% - aside from the slow, all of the functionality on her spells with or without Mantra scale with AP, instead of the static armor buff on Soraka's heal, the AD bonus on Janna's shield, Taric's armor or AD/AP aura, as well as the harder CCs via stun/silence/knockup they + Ali bring - she can't peel/babysit in the same way they can. Especially with summoner Heal giving more flexibility to take people with strong farm-independent toolkits (Blitz/Leona/Gangplank/Yorick) as support bot, Karma doesn't really fit in there. But what are they going to do about this? If they make her skills scale less well with AP (while increasing their base values), they're effectively taking her passive away from her. I think they shouldn't be shoehorning her into the no-farm support role in bottom lane and instead they should buff her so that she's more capable of being a "Farmed AP carry-support" like Zilean, Orianna, etc. She's got the right style of kit for that, too. I think it might just be range that she lacks to succeed in a role like that. Even Zilean and Ori have more farm-independent utility though. Zilean with his E and R, and Ori with her W, E (the armor/MR doesn't scale with farm) and R. Karma's W is very much along these lines (a speed buff/debuff) but she doesn't have a splashy, high-utility ultimate.
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A couple questions
1) For the guide, would you consider recording and posting/linking a replay or VOD. Last time I checked your stream channel, there were a couple VODs but I think they were all Old (July maybe?). If those are still relevant, that would work. I feel like after reading a guide, I still want to watch a match to get a better grasp on the skills.
2) complete ignorant theorycrafting: I found the Sion comparisons interesting. I'm terrible on my smurf with the roaming Sion AP build, but could Karma ever be played similarly (atleast if people wanted to play a troll game)? Get blue and boots of mobility, like after every 2 waves (to get charges) push and then keep harassing other lanes. Her lvl 3 shield would do ~50ish less damage than Sion's lvl 3, but her whole kit would do adequate damage I think, with enough slow to make the actual laner really do damage. Probably just a crazy idea, I've just never thought of Karma that way (that sounds awkward.)
3) for the guide, what are some and bad matchups to look for if someone wanted to play and follow your guide. When should someone look to pick Karma, other than preference or making half your team try to queue dodge (huehuehue)?
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On December 22 2011 09:47 FieryBalrog wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2011 04:15 sylverfyre wrote:On December 21 2011 17:38 Haasts wrote:Always great to see Karma getting some love, and apparently Guinsoo tweeted about upcoming buffs. the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. This 100% - aside from the slow, all of the functionality on her spells with or without Mantra scale with AP, instead of the static armor buff on Soraka's heal, the AD bonus on Janna's shield, Taric's armor or AD/AP aura, as well as the harder CCs via stun/silence/knockup they + Ali bring - she can't peel/babysit in the same way they can. Especially with summoner Heal giving more flexibility to take people with strong farm-independent toolkits (Blitz/Leona/Gangplank/Yorick) as support bot, Karma doesn't really fit in there. But what are they going to do about this? If they make her skills scale less well with AP (while increasing their base values), they're effectively taking her passive away from her. I think they shouldn't be shoehorning her into the no-farm support role in bottom lane and instead they should buff her so that she's more capable of being a "Farmed AP carry-support" like Zilean, Orianna, etc. She's got the right style of kit for that, too. I think it might just be range that she lacks to succeed in a role like that. Even Zilean and Ori have more farm-independent utility though. Zilean with his E and R, and Ori with her W, E (the armor/MR doesn't scale with farm) and R. Karma's W is very much along these lines (a speed buff/debuff) but she doesn't have a splashy, high-utility ultimate. Not to mention Zilean and Ori can mid.
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On December 23 2011 01:57 wei2coolman wrote:Show nested quote +On December 22 2011 09:47 FieryBalrog wrote:On December 22 2011 04:15 sylverfyre wrote:On December 21 2011 17:38 Haasts wrote:Always great to see Karma getting some love, and apparently Guinsoo tweeted about upcoming buffs. the problem with Karma bot in a nutshell is that Karma's power does not come from base stats on her skills. This 100% - aside from the slow, all of the functionality on her spells with or without Mantra scale with AP, instead of the static armor buff on Soraka's heal, the AD bonus on Janna's shield, Taric's armor or AD/AP aura, as well as the harder CCs via stun/silence/knockup they + Ali bring - she can't peel/babysit in the same way they can. Especially with summoner Heal giving more flexibility to take people with strong farm-independent toolkits (Blitz/Leona/Gangplank/Yorick) as support bot, Karma doesn't really fit in there. But what are they going to do about this? If they make her skills scale less well with AP (while increasing their base values), they're effectively taking her passive away from her. I think they shouldn't be shoehorning her into the no-farm support role in bottom lane and instead they should buff her so that she's more capable of being a "Farmed AP carry-support" like Zilean, Orianna, etc. She's got the right style of kit for that, too. I think it might just be range that she lacks to succeed in a role like that. Even Zilean and Ori have more farm-independent utility though. Zilean with his E and R, and Ori with her W, E (the armor/MR doesn't scale with farm) and R. Karma's W is very much along these lines (a speed buff/debuff) but she doesn't have a splashy, high-utility ultimate. Not to mention Zilean and Ori can mid. Karma can mid too. I think she's a lot better than both of those jerks mid too tbh.
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On December 23 2011 00:54 Prinate wrote: A couple questions
1) For the guide, would you consider recording and posting/linking a replay or VOD. Last time I checked your stream channel, there were a couple VODs but I think they were all Old (July maybe?). If those are still relevant, that would work. I feel like after reading a guide, I still want to watch a match to get a better grasp on the skills.
2) complete ignorant theorycrafting: I found the Sion comparisons interesting. I'm terrible on my smurf with the roaming Sion AP build, but could Karma ever be played similarly (atleast if people wanted to play a troll game)? Get blue and boots of mobility, like after every 2 waves (to get charges) push and then keep harassing other lanes. Her lvl 3 shield would do ~50ish less damage than Sion's lvl 3, but her whole kit would do adequate damage I think, with enough slow to make the actual laner really do damage. Probably just a crazy idea, I've just never thought of Karma that way (that sounds awkward.)
3) for the guide, what are some and bad matchups to look for if someone wanted to play and follow your guide. When should someone look to pick Karma, other than preference or making half your team try to queue dodge (huehuehue)?
1. yea, I'll try to get a vod up soonish I guess.
2. sion's stun is a pretty big part of his ability to gank people so hard, so I think this wouln't be super duper effective. however, it could be decent at ganking lanes that are already winning and pushing, as Karma is a fantastic turret diver and pusher, so there is potential there. You just can't expect to punish over extending opposing lanes as hard as Sion would.
3. GP and Pantheon are the only really bad matchups for Karma IMO. Standard AoE farming AP carries tend to be stalemate lanes (Brand, Malz, Morg, Anivia) and other APs tend to get fucked up by Karma either via Karma favorably trading vs. them or by just shoving them onto their tower and fucking over their last hitting/ganking options.
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I spent a good while going Karma mid and she is just a beast. She is very hard to beat in lane and she seems to shit on most people.
R E is just godly. Like, seriously. It's got pretty damn good range and you can walk up and RE them. What they gonna do? They take damage and I don't because of the shield - win win. After a level or two in Q you just ship more damage. If they aren't stupid and decide to not openly trade with you, then you win anyway because you can just RE a nearby minion. Those E's really do pile up and actually do quite a fair amount of damage. There should be a very low chance of the enemy champion being in a place where they just cannot be harmed by Karma. The more I played her the more I fell in love with her. E saves people, Q heals them. RE saves and deals out pain and then RQ heals and deals out more pain. They may not be the biggest heals/nukes but when you drop a double RERQ on yourself or a buddy then the battle changes dramatically.
No one should fuck with Karma. When you mid with her just know that you're gonna fuck them up no matter what.
Sometimes I E minions as the opponent's about the last hit them just to fuck with them. It's pretty fun.
KARMA 4 LIFE
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Reading this thread makes me wonder why the fuck people think karma is bad . . .
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There's a heck of a lot of AP champions that nobody plays any more but are really underrated. At the very least Xerath, Orianna, Swain, Annie, Zilean. It's not a surprise that nobody wants to pick up Karma who hasn't been FoTM at any point. You'd need to just take a liking to her and get really good at her as a top player to make her FoTM. it doesn't mean you shouldn't try herself yourself.
She's got a lot of potential and a good karma can do so much better than a bad karma as well.
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i hate when someone wants to play karma and ppl start raging and telling the guy to support. It's rude, simple minded and flat out wrong. The only thing that kinda bothers me is that you cant play her on purple team nearly as well.
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Karma is pretty good imo. With her shield she can pretty much out trade anyone at mid. If Riot buffed her at all, people would play her and see how good she is. If Riot gave her 3 karma max instead of 2, that would be sooo win too.
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On February 17 2012 09:46 clickrush wrote: i hate when someone wants to play karma and ppl start raging and telling the guy to support. It's rude, simple minded and flat out wrong. The only thing that kinda bothers me is that you cant play her on purple team nearly as well.
Apparently people really like playing karma on SEA. I had a karma support (I was AD kennen :3) in a normal today. She ended up carrying - somehow got two quadras in the last two teamfights and turned around the game lol.
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On February 17 2012 09:08 Slayer91 wrote: There's a heck of a lot of AP champions that nobody plays any more but are really underrated. At the very least Xerath, Orianna, Swain, Annie, Zilean. It's not a surprise that nobody wants to pick up Karma who hasn't been FoTM at any point. You'd need to just take a liking to her and get really good at her as a top player to make her FoTM. it doesn't mean you shouldn't try herself yourself.
She's got a lot of potential and a good karma can do so much better than a bad karma as well.
Well, Xerath is kind of boring. I really love Orianna, but the reward for learning her is not big enough (why bother playing orianna, when you can play sion mouse only at the same effectiveness). Swain is dependent on farm and at the same time bad at farming and also very blue dependent. He is ridiculous when fed and with perma blue buff though. Annie is just meh, too dependent on flash for her combo. Zilean is a ridiculous douche in lane, ungankable post-6, but he needs blue and can't really carry a game on his own. Zileans use depends on a hyper carry and was really popular with pre-nerf Vayne. Without a Vayne to resurrect, Zilean isn't as strong.
And nobody will say anything bad when you pick one of these champs, people know that those champs aren't bad, they just don't know it about Karma.
Anyway, I'm about to pick her up as one of the last champs for my ap mid collection (or malzahar, but he is boring). She seems like a champ I'd get RoA on, but I don't know how her mana works out, so I can't really tell right now.
But why would you get morellos over dfg? I realize she is more supporty later in the game, a bit like Zilean, but dfg should allow you to 100-0 squishies when the opportunity arises, or just chunk that high hp bruiser at the start of a teamfight.
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id wait, they are remaking her and it sounds like they want to make her more supporty so i doubt theyd do what they are talking about (mantra Q knockback so i guess baseline heal? and w improvements) without tearing her ratios to shreds.
p.s. kill lanes bot with a melee that jumps on enemies are hilarious fun if you can convince people to change it up a bit.
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Well, since support is my 2nd favorite role and there are so many choices for ap mid that I already barely play, I wouldn't really mind.
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I just bought Karma today and had a lot of fun playing her mid. Everyone thinks I'm trolling but auto-lock in normals is too op. Thankfully I carried those games.
I really hope they don't change Karma to a support :/ They would have to revamp the passive and change the utility effects of all of her spells, because right now only the shield feels supporty.
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On February 17 2012 09:46 clickrush wrote: The only thing that kinda bothers me is that you cant play her on purple team nearly as well.
What's the problem?
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On February 17 2012 18:41 [NoiSe] wrote: I just bought Karma today and had a lot of fun playing her mid. Everyone thinks I'm trolling but auto-lock in normals is too op. Thankfully I carried those games.
I really hope they don't change Karma to a support :/ They would have to revamp the passive and change the utility effects of all of her spells, because right now only the shield feels supporty. Yea, I'm going to flip shit if they make her into a support.
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Ok this guide just prompted me to buy her. Sounds a challenging and fun champ to play - I'll let you know how I get on
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On February 17 2012 18:46 Alaric wrote:Show nested quote +On February 17 2012 09:46 clickrush wrote: The only thing that kinda bothers me is that you cant play her on purple team nearly as well. What's the problem?
I'd say purpleside blue being too far from top lane.
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...but you should be going mid. long lanes are rough for Karma, too hard to run from gap closers.
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True, but I've been in more than one game when in the first 5 seconds of champ selection, all 4 other members of the team wrote "me mid". Guess I should get some ELO to be able to mid Karma more than once every two weeks :/
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From the ask phreak thread on EUNE - a person asked him what is guinsoo looking at in his karma tweak. Phreak's response - ''only thing I'll say is this - mantra'd abilities should feel like half-ultimates.''
From the sound of it, doesn't seem like they're forcing her into the no CS support role. I really hope that's true cuz I'm picking up her this week.
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Oh wait, manta Q and E didn't already feel like half ultimates? huh.......
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On February 18 2012 04:51 anmolsinghmzn2009 wrote: From the ask phreak thread on EUNE - a person asked him what is guinsoo looking at in his karma tweak. Phreak's response - ''only thing I'll say is this - mantra'd abilities should feel like half-ultimates.''
From the sound of it, doesn't seem like they're forcing her into the no CS support role. I really hope that's true cuz I'm picking up her this week.
This makes me so happy. I just hope it's not something like they buff the heal on mantra Q or something -.-
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If she had three mantra / Faster Mantra regen, she would be very playable imo.
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Both of those run the risk of breaking her in lane. She's already an abusive laner, so they have to be careful.
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On February 18 2012 06:29 Mogwai wrote: Both of those run the risk of breaking her in lane. She's already an abusive laner, so they have to be careful.
would she be broken if she got lower mantra CD on higher (after laneing) levels?
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On February 18 2012 06:57 clickrush wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 06:29 Mogwai wrote: Both of those run the risk of breaking her in lane. She's already an abusive laner, so they have to be careful. would she be broken if she got lower mantra CD on higher (after laneing) levels? ...she already does?
or do you mean even lower than the 30/25/20 setup they have now? If you drop her lategame mantra CD to 15, uhh, I dunno, guess that helps a little, but like, late game isn't the problem. The problem with Karma is that W is a weird skill that rarely makes sense to level and that the community is a bunch of tards, neither of which is easily fixable.
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Guinsoo has said on twitter "the biggest change karma players should feel is the inability to cast w on enemies" and "she should be competing with sona" and "doing first playtest, mantra q will be knockback"
(all these are from memory so don't sue me because they aren't verbatim)
Coronach (her original designer I believe?) said "Numerically, we want to improve her in such a way that doesn't make her overbearing to lane against in the scenarios in which she's already good, but makes her a viable pick in common rotation like Soraka, Janna, Sona, and Taric" sauce: http://clgaming.net/redtracker/topic/27797/?u=39&p=1
iunno, i hope I am wrong, but while he also said they weren't trying to shoehorn her into 0 cs, it seems like that's the way this remake is heading to me, which would sadden me.
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On February 18 2012 08:07 dogmatix wrote:Guinsoo has said on twitter "the biggest change karma players should feel is the inability to cast w on enemies" and "she should be competing with sona" and "doing first playtest, mantra q will be knockback" (all these are from memory so don't sue me because they aren't verbatim) Coronach (her original designer I believe?) said "Numerically, we want to improve her in such a way that doesn't make her overbearing to lane against in the scenarios in which she's already good, but makes her a viable pick in common rotation like Soraka, Janna, Sona, and Taric" sauce: http://clgaming.net/redtracker/topic/27797/?u=39&p=1iunno, i hope I am wrong, but while he also said they weren't trying to shoehorn her into 0 cs, it seems like that's the way this remake is heading to me, which would sadden me. fuck support karma, god, what a fucking terrible idea to try to make that a viable thing.
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Mantra W is the only thing that needs to be better and I don't even know what you would do to make it better. It doesn't even really fit her "duality" theme, apart from hasting allies vs slowing enemies which, oh, only FIFTY OTHER CHAMPS have. Just completely change W. It's not particularly interesting, it's super awkward, and it's not particularly rewarding. You never "land a gamechanging w", you just click on someone fat and stupid and watch them run faster.
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On February 18 2012 11:23 Mogwai wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 08:07 dogmatix wrote:Guinsoo has said on twitter "the biggest change karma players should feel is the inability to cast w on enemies" and "she should be competing with sona" and "doing first playtest, mantra q will be knockback" (all these are from memory so don't sue me because they aren't verbatim) Coronach (her original designer I believe?) said "Numerically, we want to improve her in such a way that doesn't make her overbearing to lane against in the scenarios in which she's already good, but makes her a viable pick in common rotation like Soraka, Janna, Sona, and Taric" sauce: http://clgaming.net/redtracker/topic/27797/?u=39&p=1iunno, i hope I am wrong, but while he also said they weren't trying to shoehorn her into 0 cs, it seems like that's the way this remake is heading to me, which would sadden me. fuck support karma, god, what a fucking terrible idea to try to make that a viable thing.
I don't even know what they want to do lol. On one hand they say ''guinsoo's changes are not to force her into the 0CS meta'' then in the next sentence he compares her to sona, taric etc. So freaking dumb.
Also all the dumb people on the official forums saying she's supposed to be a support <.<
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So I've been playing a bit of Karma today, and I've found that though she may not be super strong, she is super fun.
Having your bruiser dive into their team, and you R+E on him and then R+Q, just hammering their entire team while shielding & healing your bruiser. Just too much fun.
Her W is a bit meh though. No point using mantra on it, the extra slow is not that helpful.
Definitely my new go-to AP mid.
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Karma:
Heavenly Wave Range increased to 500 instead of 400 Fixed a bug where heavenly wave fires in the wrong direction Cooldown increased to 7 seconds instead of 6. Base heal reduced to 30/50/70/85/105/120 instead of 35/55/75/95/115/135 Increased damage to 90/125/165/200/240/270 instead of 70/110/150/190/230/270 AP ratio changed to 0.5 instead of 0.6
Mantra stack time reduced to 25/20/15 seconds from 30/25/20 according to the translated French patch notes (http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=1864334)
So, slightly longer cooldown and maybe 50 less damage late game on fans... versus 100 more range and slightly higher base damage. Oh, and a little buff in the form of nine second CD mantras late game. NEW OP FOTM.
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I believe the source for those changes was discredited.
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lol, that's fake, 100%
1. Wave's current Range is already 650 2. Riot wouldn't do 30/50/70/85/105/120 as the base heal numbers since it goes up by 20/20/15/20/15. They do even increments by level, and if they didn't, they would have the increase go up with levels, not down. Those numbers just don't make any sense.
People need to stop assuming that poorly made fake patch notes are real.
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So I finally got around to playing karma for a few games. Mostly in dominion (where she is actually quite good) and a few in normals.
I don't have any comments on balance or how good she is because I haven't played her in a competitive game, but I do have a few ideas for changes they could make:
Q: keep this the same
W: I really like this ability in theory, because it makes her a strong kiter and allows for a lot of cool positional play. Keeping that in mind I think it should give the movement modifier to karma as well as the tether. It would allow to apply the damage portion a lot easier.
For the mantra portion, I would make the tether apply an MR/AR(not AoE, just the target itself) buff to allies and reduction to enemies. This would help 0 cs karma a whole lot while not breaking solo karma. It would give a possible reason to level w as well.
E: I think this skill is good as is, however, the cooldown is quite long. I would love to see it changed to be a 3 second shield on an 8 second cooldown (rather than 5/10 as it is now). This would give the shield less uptime but allow for more applications in a teamfight. This change probably isn't needed and would very easily make her OP, but I think it would be more fun just because she does have long cooldowns for a champ with only three active abilities.
Anyway, just throwing thoughts out there. I think the W change would go a long way to allowing her to be either a 0 cs support or an ap carry.
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W already gives you the MS modifier.
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Is there any particular reason why Morello's is suggested over Deathfire Grasp? I understand the benefit of getting Morellos when you aren't expecting blue buff is based mainly on the CDR/MP5 benefits, but do you feel the statistical downgrade for DFG is significant enough to look past the active?
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On April 19 2012 03:58 TheHumanSensation wrote: Is there any particular reason why Morello's is suggested over Deathfire Grasp? I understand the benefit of getting Morellos when you aren't expecting blue buff is based mainly on the CDR/MP5 benefits, but do you feel the statistical downgrade for DFG is significant enough to look past the active? I do think that the downgrade is sufficient to look past the active, but I also hate going that item route anyway, so take it with a grain of salt. Both those items fall well outside of the items I want to be building on Karma, so my decision on which to suggest should you have to play without blue buffs all game is somewhat arbitrary.
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Been playing karma for a while now and loving it. Got a question though.. Can someone do a jungle karma guide?
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On June 14 2012 13:32 MindBreaker wrote: Been playing karma for a while now and loving it. Got a question though.. Can someone do a jungle karma guide?
Don't jungle Karma?
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On April 19 2012 03:58 TheHumanSensation wrote: Is there any particular reason why Morello's is suggested over Deathfire Grasp? I understand the benefit of getting Morellos when you aren't expecting blue buff is based mainly on the CDR/MP5 benefits, but do you feel the statistical downgrade for DFG is significant enough to look past the active?
If you are not a bursty AP caster, DFG's active is pretty useless.
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I have been playing Support Karma for some time now, and it's pretty hard and shitty, especially if the lane partner isn't familiar with her and dodging the heal. But I fucking like it (and fuck the other supports). I needed some time now to figure out a good build and think that this one is pretty good.
Philostone (starting with mana part and wards) boots (mercury's or CD boots, depends on.) Rush Deathcap fuck yeah Depending on the enemy team -abyssal -shurelyas (or just kindlegem) -frozen heart (or just glacial) then RoA
obviously steal some creep from the carry, because you are not an ordinary support. So end build: Shurelya's, mercury's (because you have sold CD boots, FH and Shurelya's give enough CD), abyssal, FH, Abyssal, RoA (or Rylai's which has good/bad synergy with w) Oh well RoA at the end is pretty bad obviously, but it makes Karma tankier, and.. well actually didn't come to super lategame where full build was possible.
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you are doing your team a disservice playing as a "support" and then rushing a 3.6K gold item after 1 gold/10 item. stop it.
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United States47024 Posts
I'd hardly call it "rushing" when you're buying Deathcap off support gold, lol.
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deathcap @ 40 minutes is standard
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On July 31 2012 08:06 Sufficiency wrote: RoA *last item*? -_- gotta get that like 70 minute roa off 1 gp5 and no farm man, after youve bought all your other items.
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After actually buying her and playing her for a bit in the mid lane (I can't believe I spent IP for her instead of Kassadin), I think she is a good farmer but she poses absolutely no threat whatsoever to the opposing laner (your only meaningful poke is your mantra'ed E, but that has high cooldown), making it the biggest farm lane ever. Unfortunately Karma does not scale that well, so this kind of farm lane does not help Karma's team unless she is against LeBlanc or something like that who has a relatively weaker late game and does not shove very well. Also Karma's roam is piss poor.
I think her sub-40 win rate confirms my analysis.
I think dropping her cooldown on her R by another 5 seconds will make her an incredible mid-laner.
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Among other things, Barrier, Twin Shadows, Seraph's Embrace, new Locket, and current state of the game are all pretty favorable to Karma right now. Just try to pick into a phys damage dealer and start wreckin'. Karma doesn't lose too many lanes top, and now she doesn't have to worry about lv 2 ganks nearly as much.
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Karma's pretty decent at the moment. I don't understand win rates anymore. I might try her out some more but her win rate... so low >.< it scares me.
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On February 07 2013 09:50 obesechicken13 wrote: Karma's pretty decent at the moment. I don't understand win rates anymore. I might try her out some more but her win rate... so low >.< it scares me. She's often picked to troll.
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I've been tempted to pick Karma plenty of times, but you just know that if things go south you're going to be hauled up for trolling with a troll champ.
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I've been playing Karma bot lane a little bit with Leona as a support. Its a pretty deadly kill lane and a lot of fun to play. Since Leona is a diving champ its perfect for Karma's mantra shield blast followed up by a Q. A mantra'd spirit bond is also great in a 2v2 lane where you can really benefit from both speed/slow as well as the damage (where in a solo lane that skill is very difficult to utilize).
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It seems like if people die to that, they would have died to Leona+anything... I can't see how it's better in any way than the TROLLS thread's Leona+Annie, for example. But I can see several ways in which it's worse.
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On March 04 2013 22:44 sylverfyre wrote: It seems like if people die to that, they would have died to Leona+anything... I can't see how it's better in any way than the TROLLS thread's Leona+Annie, for example. But I can see several ways in which it's worse.
From levels 3-5 Karma has significantly more burst damage then Annie for starters. The biggest advantage however is that a Karma - Leona bot lane is a hell of a lot safer then one with Annie. With a shield, a heal and a fairly significant speed boost if mantra'd they will be extremely difficult to gank.
Karma is a bit of a conundrum I feel like. To get the most use out of her you need an ally to utilize spirit bond. Solo lanes make it difficult to land the damage portion of spirit bond because people are generally behind their minions while a coordinated ally, especially one who can dive can position themselves properly. On the other hand she makes for a poor support because all of her abilities rely on ap scaling with limited cc. Therefore she works best with a tanky support who can dive in and does not require farm.
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Does anyone know what stage her rework is in? I remember a while agko it was announced they had to retart or redo some of their changes, I'm kind of out of the loop so any info is nice.
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They recently did a red post in Taiwan showing the current model in development, although it was quickly taken down, so it's not a 100% official source. either way, they are fairly on time and it won't be too long, I'm sure.
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Vancouver14381 Posts
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I look forward to seeing what happens. Karma's kinda fun right now, but just has so little killing power.
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My initial thoughts are that she feels like a twisted fate type champion, very strong sustained damage and utility through a fight, but super vulnerable if caught hard. She loses the global team support and utility but gets stronger focused power.
She also feels like a similar champ in terms of build, I can certainly see a lot of lichbane/zhonyas/twin shadows etc on her, similarly to TF.
Her combos are deceptively strong, particularly R>W>E that does a shitload of damage and keeps you up through someone attempting to finish you off while making sure you get the root into Q combo terrifyingly well.
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As sad as I am about this utter butchery of one of my favorite characters (WHY YOU STUPID RUN AND NO DIGNIFIED STRIDE) it seems that Q (WHY YOU GENERIC COMBO BURST MAGE NOW?) doesn't trigger tower aggro currently (WHERE IS MY FREE 50-100000 AP, WHERE IS MY 12 SEC CD MANTRA THAT HOLDS 2 CHARGES).
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I think he's referring to your combo being a mantra'd w followed by e, not skilling w over q or e. The mantra heal from w is the same regardless of level, which I think is it's most important point since q is the same damage on a much lower cooldown.
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Karma definitely doesn't feel like Karma anymore. The old playstyle revolved largely around being a lane bully with incredible shove and the ability to win the small jungle skirmishes these two things enable.
Now she's kind of a homogenized utility caster, which I guess is fine. The niche is already well-occupied, though. I can't see anything she brings to the table that Lux/Orianna (and to a lesser extent, Morganna) don't, and they have plenty that Karma doesn't. She "only" has the one skillshot, so I could see arguing for her reliability, but she's still heavily skillshot-reliant. Am I missing something? Is there a compelling reason to run Karma over Lux other than you like the Mantra gimmick?
The Mantra gimmick also feels significantly more shallow to me now, but that may just be because I haven't played with it enough.
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i just cant believe they got rid of her passive, i mean wtf. Much fun was had with that passive and now its boring.
If they just gave her current W (without the mantra heal) to her old kit it wouldve been awesome
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Really? I felt like her old passive was boring as fuck. ~30ish AP at mid health levels, 100 if you got really low and you're high level really isn't all that much. Her new passive is actually interactive and rewards harass.
I really like the new mantra (levels up to 4) and the fact that it REALLY influences her abilities, rather than only significantly influencing the ability you leveled up. Also her powercurve is no longer awful because of needing level 11 to get what most people get at level 9, and other people having a real ultimate that really turned the tides of a fight, which the only thing you could say the old ulti did is a low health mantra shield (mantra shield still feels really good, even if you level shield late.)
We were having some pretty good success with karma support, maxing shield first. AOE shield+speed boost is really good in teamfights, her CC/damage is pretty solid. There were a few times that i was like 'wtf free shurelias thats so good' especially on retreat.
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I really miss the old Karma as well. She feels like a completely different hero now. They could have kept old Karma and released this new hero (with some tweaks) as some other Ionian princess or whatever. Without going into whether the old one or new one is stronger, the new Karma just doesn't have the same feel to me.
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I liked the old q better, but I think the change in other skills is good. e is really strong with the massive speed boost and w is pretty strong too in small skirmishes.
I think the ultimate (hue) problem is that she just doesn't have enough damage in a prolonged teamfight though. you want to open with RE pretty much every time and if mantra does come up again then you probably want RW for the heal. RQ, although a pretty decent combo coupled with w snare in a 1v1, just doesn't have the same oomph in a 5v5.
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Her old passive was boring, sure, but it was really powerful. Her new passive is boring and basically her ult.
Old mantra was like casting two regular skills at once. New mantra is like... almost casting an ult instead of a skill. Old Karma: two charges of two-for-one skill casts, 12 sec cooldown on each New Karma: one charge of ult-instead-of-skill, 24 sec cooldown reduced by hitting champions with things
I guess if you want another [nuke cc utility] burst caster then new karma is great.
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I never played old Karma, but I find the redesign to be a hell of a lot of fun. Mantra'd abilities just feel powerful, and your lane is pretty strong because of it.
I felt strongest with a Faerie Charm/4 health pot/2 mana pot/Ward start, got Chalice - Boots - Grail - Sorc - DC - whatever, can really nuke people down quick. RoA also felt pretty good, less damage tho.
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New Karma's closest analogy IMO is Lulu. I'm not a fan, but idk, I'll probably play a game of support Karma here and there. Really don't think she can succeed mid at reasonably high levels of play.
EDIT: holy shit, thank god I'm no longer an Invested Terran, Defiler all the way baybee.
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On April 01 2013 04:13 Requizen wrote: I never played old Karma, but I find the redesign to be a hell of a lot of fun. Mantra'd abilities just feel powerful, and your lane is pretty strong because of it.
I felt strongest with a Faerie Charm/4 health pot/2 mana pot/Ward start, got Chalice - Boots - Grail - Sorc - DC - whatever, can really nuke people down quick. RoA also felt pretty good, less damage tho.
Any reason for chalice over Tear? I'm still kinda new.
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On April 02 2013 03:34 whiteguycash wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2013 04:13 Requizen wrote: I never played old Karma, but I find the redesign to be a hell of a lot of fun. Mantra'd abilities just feel powerful, and your lane is pretty strong because of it.
I felt strongest with a Faerie Charm/4 health pot/2 mana pot/Ward start, got Chalice - Boots - Grail - Sorc - DC - whatever, can really nuke people down quick. RoA also felt pretty good, less damage tho. Any reason for chalice over Tear? I'm still kinda new. I personally just don't think she can stack Tear fast enough, and she also wants a lot of CDR to get more shields and slows out, as well as get more Mantras. Tear probably works, but I just like the stats on Grail more and you don't really need both.
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Only reason to do tear on Karma was because Muramana was bugged with her W, but now that that's fixed... stick to chalice.
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On April 02 2013 03:34 whiteguycash wrote:Show nested quote +On April 01 2013 04:13 Requizen wrote: I never played old Karma, but I find the redesign to be a hell of a lot of fun. Mantra'd abilities just feel powerful, and your lane is pretty strong because of it.
I felt strongest with a Faerie Charm/4 health pot/2 mana pot/Ward start, got Chalice - Boots - Grail - Sorc - DC - whatever, can really nuke people down quick. RoA also felt pretty good, less damage tho. Any reason for chalice over Tear? I'm still kinda new.
1. She has no super low cooldown abilities to allow her to stack tear really fast.
2. She loves CDR, which you get from Athenes which chalice builds into. Hitting enemies with skills reduces your mantra... which gives more skills, CDR makes more skills... self synergy
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Do people still think she should be run as a support? I've not really seen her be effective as support; it seems like her new kit is more designed to go mid. She doesn't have an ally-targeted heal any more, but her AP ratios seem pretty decent: 0.6 on each of Q and W, increasing to 1.5 (total) and 1.2 with mantra.
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Morellonomicon seems also a good choice on her, doesn't it ? CDR + Mana regen.
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Yep, also solid. People like the early chalice build up of Athenes and the MR is quite nice for karma as she does get closer sometimes and it boosts the effectiveness of her shields/healing vs magic damage.
Morello's has a very odd build path where you want the mana regen but get none of it until the item is done. But it pretty cheap and good, obv especially vs healing.
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Well after about 5 games, you need max CDR. No questions. She seems to play really spammy, especially lategame, you just want to firing shit off everywhere reducing that mantra, then using it asap.
Liandries seems a very strong pickup as well with your constant harass and slow if there is alot of health going around, after you have established your CDR with athenes and blue or CDR boots even if you cant get blue, , then Dcap or Zhonyas/void
A bveil I think would make a good defensive item for her, you can get out of anything if you can survive the burst.
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Sufficiency #1 at having multiple tabs open.
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On April 03 2013 05:09 sob3k wrote: Well after about 5 games, you need max CDR. No questions. She seems to play really spammy, especially lategame, you just want to firing shit off everywhere reducing that mantra, then using it asap.
Liandries seems a very strong pickup as well with your constant harass and slow if there is alot of health going around, after you have established your CDR with athenes and blue or CDR boots even if you cant get blue, , then Dcap or Zhonyas/void
A bveil I think would make a good defensive item for her, you can get out of anything if you can survive the burst.
Just some math on the effect of CDR. This is theorycraft, and these numbers are not going to correspond to any real situation, but they're an attempt to quantify the CDR synergy people have talked about.
Assumptions:
--You're level 18 --You're using all your skills on cooldown plus 1 second (probably realistic during the course of a single extended teamfight/poke-duel, since the relevant question is "how likely am I to get to use Mantra twice?" --You're hitting at least one champion with Q 75% of the time, and obviously W hits every time
Calculating the Mantra timer assuming this reduction, we get:
No CDR: 32.5 seconds 10% CDR: 28.5 seconds 20% CDR: 24.6 seconds 30% CDR: 20.7 seconds 40% CDR: 18.0 seconds
If we don't assume the 1 second delay between a skill coming off cooldown and its use, we instead get: 00% CDR: 31.2 seconds 10% CDR: 27.1 seconds 20% CDR: 23.2 seconds 30% CDR: 19.3 seconds 40% CDR: 15.5 seconds
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Rofl, quick, edit it to say something about karma.
Trying karma out i feel she may be a stronger top laner than mid. She can abuse the fuck out of melee with the slow and tether them if they try to make any agressive move, plus constant autos which make mantra relentless. I like totally destroyed two dariuses. She deals with the long lane well too, you can easily walk out of ganks with the shield/speed and either mantra q for the massive slow or w to keep your health up and stop one of them.
Mid she can get a bit range abused if people are good about not leaving q's open.
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Does her W still proc Muramana 6 times? If so, isn't that core <.<
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On April 03 2013 07:05 Shikyo wrote: Does her W still proc Muramana 6 times? If so, isn't that core <.<
No, it was hotfixed
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Well I played her some more and am much better, I like her, she has massive utility and I can see her getting tourney play absolutely with her teamfighting and ganking power.
Her mid laning is her weakest aspect, but its extremely safe if you want it to be and she supports ganks unbelievably well (speed self, leash, snare, mantra Q, dead as shit). She can escape and survive a ton of stuff. Teamfighting her mantra E is ludicrously good for engage, disengage, and just giving your whole fuckin team a fat shield, the AOE is stupidly big. You should basically always mantra E first in teamfights, as if you don't your E wont do any damage, so after a full rotation you do much less unless you can get 5 people in a full Q or guarantee a great pick. Then I just skirt and peel/ toss constant shit in and auto, you easily get two+ mantras with 40% CDR as you need them. The amount of CC you spray is stupid, if they don't have a ton of gap closers its absolutely brutal. Mantra W is incredibly situational dueling skill, I've used it like 3 times, its good in those though.
I have been going 21-0-9 standard caster, R>Q>W>E with one point in E early because mantra bonus scales independant of skill level, so you need all skills.
Itemswise
doublefairy pots usually chalice boots Athenes Sorcs/CDR boots if I cant get a single goddamn blue Liandries (this is really strong on her, if everyone is squishy then skip) Dcap/Zhonyas depending on if I'm getting dived, I'm gonna try Dcap and Bveil too, which seems like it would be strong Void If I got past void I would get either Bveil or Lichbane depending on situation
Its working very well, the main lane combo is spamming Q all the time after chalice, if you see an opening Q if you can, E self for speed, W, snare, MantraQ so you get direct hit and land whole thing and can disengage. If you pay attention to their CD's you can outtrade people quite badly. Latehame remember that hitting people with skills reduces mantra, so spam the shit out of everything. If anyone comes within W range I W them even if they will break it immediately etc. Its worth it (obv not if you are at risk of getting jumped, but you'll probably be fine with shield and Q even for escape).
I really wish her Q had like 25 more range...I miss people so much by like a millimeter.
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On the topic of Mantra W, it's incredible at lvl 1. Run to enemy, Mantra W. At lvl 2 with EW it's even better. Karma's early harrass might be some of the best.
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On April 03 2013 14:54 Shikyo wrote: On the topic of Mantra W, it's incredible at lvl 1. Run to enemy, Mantra W. At lvl 2 with EW it's even better. Karma's early harrass might be some of the best.
Q is still better if you can hit them with it, the awkward part o f mantra W is it only heals for 25% missing health, so it heals for like nothing if you are at 75% health. Its only real use is if you need guaranteed damage and dont want to chance missing with Q, or if you are really low in a 1v1, or if you are running from one person and very low.
I do still want to try FAT AS(s) TANK KARMA, my new theorycrafted build
Max CDR Stack Mogs Spirit Visage Mantra W every CD Wits/Nashors/malady/rageblade for mad autoing reducing mantra CD to 0
result: mad deeps/CC and volibear passive every 8 seconds
dude if you get runaans does it count for 3 autos reduction to mantra timer?
EDIT: Disclaimer: this build doesn't work at all lol. The thing is if you get any damage then you have too low health so that 25% of missing over 2 seconds isn't enough to save you from just dying, and if you get enough health then you do absolutely nothing and nobody cares if you dont die. You can win lanes with weaker sustain but its pretty shit, and if you end up against nunu or chogath (lol , first lane opponent I faced was nunu who opened consume....fuck you) or something you are fucked. Also getting any AP is just really weak because you dont have time to Q and auto at the same time. Its just not good.
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I haven't been able to play for a couple of weeks but have been looking forward to trying the new Karma. I checked her stats on Lolking though, and she still has by far the lowest win rate, currently at 36%. Is this really reflective of her new strength?
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On April 03 2013 18:57 GolemMadness wrote: I haven't been able to play for a couple of weeks but have been looking forward to trying the new Karma. I checked her stats on Lolking though, and she still has by far the lowest win rate, currently at 36%. Is this really reflective of her new strength?
She def doesn't feel weak to me, she feels solid and I have a strong inkling she could be very overpowered in organized play.
She does play a bit strangely, took me like 5 games to get the hang of things and isn't a low skill champ at all
I would guess her abysmal winrate right after remake is due to a few things:
1. She plays nothing like old karma, old karma players tried this and failed. 2. People bought her and player her badly and lost due to inexperience because she isn't easily abusable, the nub rush effect 3. people tried to play her support, which is weak and not her forte after remake, and also did shittily
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On April 03 2013 06:00 entropius wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 05:09 sob3k wrote: Well after about 5 games, you need max CDR. No questions. She seems to play really spammy, especially lategame, you just want to firing shit off everywhere reducing that mantra, then using it asap.
Liandries seems a very strong pickup as well with your constant harass and slow if there is alot of health going around, after you have established your CDR with athenes and blue or CDR boots even if you cant get blue, , then Dcap or Zhonyas/void
A bveil I think would make a good defensive item for her, you can get out of anything if you can survive the burst. Just some math on the effect of CDR. This is theorycraft, and these numbers are not going to correspond to any real situation, but they're an attempt to quantify the CDR synergy people have talked about. Assumptions: --You're level 18 --You're using all your skills on cooldown plus 1 second (probably realistic during the course of a single extended teamfight/poke-duel, since the relevant question is "how likely am I to get to use Mantra twice?" --You're hitting at least one champion with Q 75% of the time, and obviously W hits every time Calculating the Mantra timer assuming this reduction, we get: No CDR: 32.5 seconds 10% CDR: 28.5 seconds 20% CDR: 24.6 seconds 30% CDR: 20.7 seconds 40% CDR: 18.0 seconds If we don't assume the 1 second delay between a skill coming off cooldown and its use, we instead get: 00% CDR: 31.2 seconds 10% CDR: 27.1 seconds 20% CDR: 23.2 seconds 30% CDR: 19.3 seconds 40% CDR: 15.5 seconds Note that the passive affects double should you hit 2 champions with Q. So if you throw your Q into a group and hit 2 or 3 people, it can POTENTIALLY come off cooldown even faster. Still, that's pretty likely that you get to use mantra twice in a fight. Or just use it on Q in a poke war, I guess, and it will likely come back up by the time you need to RE in a blown out fight.
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On April 03 2013 22:03 sylverfyre wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 06:00 entropius wrote:On April 03 2013 05:09 sob3k wrote: Well after about 5 games, you need max CDR. No questions. She seems to play really spammy, especially lategame, you just want to firing shit off everywhere reducing that mantra, then using it asap.
Liandries seems a very strong pickup as well with your constant harass and slow if there is alot of health going around, after you have established your CDR with athenes and blue or CDR boots even if you cant get blue, , then Dcap or Zhonyas/void
A bveil I think would make a good defensive item for her, you can get out of anything if you can survive the burst. Just some math on the effect of CDR. This is theorycraft, and these numbers are not going to correspond to any real situation, but they're an attempt to quantify the CDR synergy people have talked about. Assumptions: --You're level 18 --You're using all your skills on cooldown plus 1 second (probably realistic during the course of a single extended teamfight/poke-duel, since the relevant question is "how likely am I to get to use Mantra twice?" --You're hitting at least one champion with Q 75% of the time, and obviously W hits every time Calculating the Mantra timer assuming this reduction, we get: No CDR: 32.5 seconds 10% CDR: 28.5 seconds 20% CDR: 24.6 seconds 30% CDR: 20.7 seconds 40% CDR: 18.0 seconds If we don't assume the 1 second delay between a skill coming off cooldown and its use, we instead get: 00% CDR: 31.2 seconds 10% CDR: 27.1 seconds 20% CDR: 23.2 seconds 30% CDR: 19.3 seconds 40% CDR: 15.5 seconds Note that the passive affects double should you hit 2 champions with Q. So if you throw your Q into a group and hit 2 or 3 people, it can POTENTIALLY come off cooldown even faster. Still, that's pretty likely that you get to use mantra twice in a fight. Or just use it on Q in a poke war, I guess, and it will likely come back up by the time you need to RE in a blown out fight.
the wiki says you only get one reduction per spell, doesn't matter how many you hit
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On April 03 2013 16:03 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On April 03 2013 14:54 Shikyo wrote: On the topic of Mantra W, it's incredible at lvl 1. Run to enemy, Mantra W. At lvl 2 with EW it's even better. Karma's early harrass might be some of the best. Q is still better if you can hit them with it, the awkward part o f mantra W is it only heals for 25% missing health, so it heals for like nothing if you are at 75% health. Its only real use is if you need guaranteed damage and dont want to chance missing with Q, or if you are really low in a 1v1, or if you are running from one person and very low. I do still want to try FAT AS(s) TANK KARMA, my new theorycrafted build Max CDR Stack Mogs Spirit Visage Mantra W every CD Wits/Nashors/malady/rageblade for mad autoing reducing mantra CD to 0 result: mad deeps/CC and volibear passive every 8 seconds dude if you get runaans does it count for 3 autos reduction to mantra timer? EDIT: Disclaimer: this build doesn't work at all lol. The thing is if you get any damage then you have too low health so that 25% of missing over 2 seconds isn't enough to save you from just dying, and if you get enough health then you do absolutely nothing and nobody cares if you dont die. You can win lanes with weaker sustain but its pretty shit, and if you end up against nunu or chogath (lol , first lane opponent I faced was nunu who opened consume....fuck you) or something you are fucked. Also getting any AP is just really weak because you dont have time to Q and auto at the same time. Its just not good. At lvl 1? Mantra Q only deals 85(+.9) damage, the detonation like never hits without W. In fact, I see no reason for them to even get hit by the standard Q at lvl 1. Mantra'd W deals 135(+1.2) at level 1.
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her primary stats currently seem to be cdr manareg ap and ehp with cdr as the most important.
kind of like old karma with the difference that new karma scales additionally with hp (not only with resistances) and her new passive lets her scale better with cdr and less with %ap/resistances.
these changes are interesting and probably lets her scale harder with items while making early-mid build paths a bit more flexible.
her additional CC makes her just generally more useful. and scales better with more cdr as well.
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So after trying her top, I figured that there is an obnoxious thing with her: you need at least 3 Qs to clear a wave fast. She needs a lot of AP to oneshot mage creeps, etc... Am I doing it wrong ? Like I should be using mantra'ed E or smth ?
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On April 04 2013 00:45 -Zoda- wrote: So after trying her top, I figured that there is an obnoxious thing with her: you need at least 3 Qs to clear a wave fast. She needs a lot of AP to oneshot mage creeps, etc... Am I doing it wrong ? Like I should be using mantra'ed E or smth ? Yeah... I've noticed this too. With W and E providing zero waveclear, that's a problem. Mantra-Q would be more effective than Mantra-E for this, though.
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Yeah we can't use W on minions that's dumb. I guess they don't want her to have too good sustain through mantra'ed W, but it could have allowed her to jungle a bit maybe without it being very good in the jungle since mantra CD is not refreshed on creeps.
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What do you guys think of getting nashor's on her?
When I first saw her passive, I was thinking she was basically an AP Xin, where cooldown is pretty important. Athene's and/or Morello's seems almost mandatory, but I keep feeling like her auto's lowering cool down could be worth investing in.
~dPoon
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On April 04 2013 04:26 dpoon wrote: What do you guys think of getting nashor's on her?
When I first saw her passive, I was thinking she was basically an AP Xin, where cooldown is pretty important. Athene's and/or Morello's seems almost mandatory, but I keep feeling like her auto's lowering cool down could be worth investing in.
~dPoon
I tried it, its pretty bad. Not worth getting that much AS if your autos do nothing, better to get manaregen and ap and cdr and just hit then with safer skills. If you have a safe opportunity to auto you take it, building AS would be a lategame thing after you went tanky or something.
I see you are new here, do not sign your posts. It says your name at the top for a reason.
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On April 04 2013 04:33 sob3k wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 04 2013 04:26 dpoon wrote: What do you guys think of getting nashor's on her?
When I first saw her passive, I was thinking she was basically an AP Xin, where cooldown is pretty important. Athene's and/or Morello's seems almost mandatory, but I keep feeling like her auto's lowering cool down could be worth investing in.
~dPoon I tried it, its pretty bad. Not worth getting that much AS if your autos do nothing, better to get manaregen and ap and cdr and just hit then with safer skills. If you have a safe opportunity to auto you take it, building AS would be a lategame thing after you went tanky or something.
Would you say that it's more of a mechanic for the laning phase then? Now that I think about it, it doesn't really matter how many skills or autos you drop in a team fight, you'll only really get one mantra (unless it's a VERY prolonged one).
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Karma's win rate hasn't really improved post remake according to lolking. Which is sad. Everyone seems really excited about her.
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On April 04 2013 08:09 dpoon wrote:Show nested quote +On April 04 2013 04:33 sob3k wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On April 04 2013 04:26 dpoon wrote: What do you guys think of getting nashor's on her?
When I first saw her passive, I was thinking she was basically an AP Xin, where cooldown is pretty important. Athene's and/or Morello's seems almost mandatory, but I keep feeling like her auto's lowering cool down could be worth investing in.
~dPoon I tried it, its pretty bad. Not worth getting that much AS if your autos do nothing, better to get manaregen and ap and cdr and just hit then with safer skills. If you have a safe opportunity to auto you take it, building AS would be a lategame thing after you went tanky or something. Would you say that it's more of a mechanic for the laning phase then? Now that I think about it, it doesn't really matter how many skills or autos you drop in a team fight, you'll only really get one mantra (unless it's a VERY prolonged one).
With max CDR you should definitely get at least two mantras if not three in a teamfight, the CD should be around 20 seconds or less if you get some autos. Karma is also really good at stretching out teamfights and cleaning up.
autos will have much more of an effect lategame as you will have more cdr, your mantra cd will be lower, and they have scaling effect: they only take off .5 seconds earlygame of a 45 second CD compared to lategame where they take 1 second off of a 27 second mantra CD.
Basically its bad because investing in 50% AS doesn't give you 50% more autos in lane, you will only get maybe 1 or 2 more in every safe time to auto, which is 1 second off of that long mantra timer for most of laning. Much better to get stats that boost her skills which also have the advantage of actually doing damage. Also they dont aggro the creep wave and make your lane push, and they help you escape ganks.
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Germany1297 Posts
The sad thing is, she is (still) not really viable as a support, since she heavily relies on AP items and needs farm for that. She lacks the util that a taric, leona, sona bring to the table that just does not need AP to work. I think this really affects the winrate a lot since people try to support with her and if they dont win early, they will lose in teamfights because karma (without items) does little damage and even less util.
As an AP mid is she is actually viable but not en par with most other mid champions, which is why I think the Karma relaunch hype will be over pretty soon. I liked her, but you simply cannot afford to play her right now.
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On April 05 2013 18:18 Chosi wrote: The sad thing is, she is (still) not really viable as a support, since she heavily relies on AP items and needs farm for that. She lacks the util that a taric, leona, sona bring to the table that just does not need AP to work. I think this really affects the winrate a lot since people try to support with her and if they dont win early, they will lose in teamfights because karma (without items) does little damage and even less util.
As an AP mid is she is actually viable but not en par with most other mid champions, which is why I think the Karma relaunch hype will be over pretty soon. I liked her, but you simply cannot afford to play her right now.
She feels just as strong to me as any other mid, and can be played completely safely in any matchup, she doesnt have a bad one. But I have been playing her top a lot, where she just absolutely shits on melee champs with tether and slows/haste.
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On April 06 2013 03:20 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2013 18:18 Chosi wrote: The sad thing is, she is (still) not really viable as a support, since she heavily relies on AP items and needs farm for that. She lacks the util that a taric, leona, sona bring to the table that just does not need AP to work. I think this really affects the winrate a lot since people try to support with her and if they dont win early, they will lose in teamfights because karma (without items) does little damage and even less util.
As an AP mid is she is actually viable but not en par with most other mid champions, which is why I think the Karma relaunch hype will be over pretty soon. I liked her, but you simply cannot afford to play her right now. She feels just as strong to me as any other mid, and can be played completely safely in any matchup, she doesnt have a bad one. But I have been playing her top a lot, where she just absolutely shits on melee champs with tether and slows/haste.
But there is no reason to play her because Janna/Lux/Morgana/Ori are so much better.
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On April 06 2013 05:04 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2013 03:20 sob3k wrote:On April 05 2013 18:18 Chosi wrote: The sad thing is, she is (still) not really viable as a support, since she heavily relies on AP items and needs farm for that. She lacks the util that a taric, leona, sona bring to the table that just does not need AP to work. I think this really affects the winrate a lot since people try to support with her and if they dont win early, they will lose in teamfights because karma (without items) does little damage and even less util.
As an AP mid is she is actually viable but not en par with most other mid champions, which is why I think the Karma relaunch hype will be over pretty soon. I liked her, but you simply cannot afford to play her right now. She feels just as strong to me as any other mid, and can be played completely safely in any matchup, she doesnt have a bad one. But I have been playing her top a lot, where she just absolutely shits on melee champs with tether and slows/haste. But there is no reason to play her because Janna/Lux/Morgana/Ori are so much better. Also because she's way better mid anyway.
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On April 06 2013 05:04 Sufficiency wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2013 03:20 sob3k wrote:On April 05 2013 18:18 Chosi wrote: The sad thing is, she is (still) not really viable as a support, since she heavily relies on AP items and needs farm for that. She lacks the util that a taric, leona, sona bring to the table that just does not need AP to work. I think this really affects the winrate a lot since people try to support with her and if they dont win early, they will lose in teamfights because karma (without items) does little damage and even less util.
As an AP mid is she is actually viable but not en par with most other mid champions, which is why I think the Karma relaunch hype will be over pretty soon. I liked her, but you simply cannot afford to play her right now. She feels just as strong to me as any other mid, and can be played completely safely in any matchup, she doesnt have a bad one. But I have been playing her top a lot, where she just absolutely shits on melee champs with tether and slows/haste. But there is no reason to play her because Janna/Lux/Morgana/Ori are so much better.
I totally disagree, she has completely different role than lux, who is to instagib snipe squishies and have great waveclear
She is utility damage like ori/janna/morg much more similar sure, but IMO she is stronger than morg due to her CD's and very similar to orianna, janna is so incredibly niche if you just want that waveclear, but in a straight up fight karma does way more damage. It think she is really good. The thing about her is she doesn't have to wait for big CD's like morg, and she is very comparable to orianna but even harder to jump on and catch. You trade the damage and teamfight ult for mantra E full team shield and haste, plus another mantra skill of your choice basically. I've been basically spamming karma and doing really really well. I agree her support is not strong, mid and top I feel she is top tier or at the very least at about a perfect power level.
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So I've been starting to spam karma games and I am enjoying her but still struggling a little bit with her.
What runes do you use on her? I'm doing standard AP quints, MP reds, armor yellow, mres blue. One thing which is frustrating on her is that the Q doesn't clear out caster minions one hit until much later. I'm stuck leaving them so low after a Q for a long time. But oh well .
When in a 1v1 mid-game do you usually mantra Q then W, or Q then mantra W?
It's awesome how fast mantra comes back when you are in team fights though (as long as I don't get burst and killed).
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On April 09 2013 14:52 Aezo- wrote:So I've been starting to spam karma games and I am enjoying her but still struggling a little bit with her. What runes do you use on her? I'm doing standard AP quints, MP reds, armor yellow, mres blue. One thing which is frustrating on her is that the Q doesn't clear out caster minions one hit until much later. I'm stuck leaving them so low after a Q for a long time. But oh well . When in a 1v1 mid-game do you usually mantra Q then W, or Q then mantra W? It's awesome how fast mantra comes back when you are in team fights though (as long as I don't get burst and killed).
Those runes are fine, I use scaling regen yellows vs a lot of ap mids so I can spam more, but thats just preference. I love mana.
The combo for aggression usually is land a good Q/and or E self (shield self anyway if you are gonna take any damage), haste in, W , proc snare/Mantra Q so they eat the whole thing. Auto as much as possible. The thing is to do this when they have important skills on CD.
the trick to better cs when you leave shit at a sliver is to hit them each once then use the skill, dont use the skill then miss cs because they are at 1hp and you cant auto them before they get sniped by caster minions.
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I've found rushing lichbane really helps her. The movespeed and proc with her spammable spells really bring her into line with other APs, and her kiting kit means you can actually use it quite a bit. Even straight sheen is a pretty solid item since you want to auto people a fair bit for the mantra cooldown.
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I've found rushing lichbane really helps her. The movespeed and proc with her spammable spells really bring her into line with other APs, and her kiting kit means you can actually use it quite a bit. Even straight sheen is a pretty solid item since you want to auto people a fair bit for the mantra cooldown.
Interesting. Never thought about that, but at the same time you want to have max cdr as soon as possible to reduce mantra charges, right? I really dont have that many games on her, but I was finding that without cdr you were..... slightly sub-par to every support-mage in the game. Ill try it after morellos or rushing it with cdr blues+9/0/21 and see how it goes though.
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Karma is crazy good with Voli and Udyr that speed boost is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to strong.
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How's Karma after the patch? Is she actually starting to become decent?
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On May 01 2013 17:45 GolemMadness wrote: How's Karma after the patch? Is she actually starting to become decent? No. She used to be decent. Now she's bland and generic. (still mad about rework grumble grumble)
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been playing around with karma mid for a few games.
I've been thinking that in order for her to do well, the team comp needs to work around her. In the sense that double ap, hyper carry for the adc. I've been trying Lich bane morellos and twins on her and i'm liking it. Though I don't know how much i really need twins. I find the cdr a must, and I really like the lich bane passive to help boost her dps. I also feel the team comp needs to be balanced around her as well. I think she excels with a double ap team, cc focused jungler, and a hyper adc. (she would also do well in a poke comp if done properly, since she has great utility in her mantra shield )
idk i'd like to mess around with her more.
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Uhhh. Its a shame she can't stack tear. I really want to try some tankier Karma builds, but doing a tanky mage build without getting ROA and Seraph's is so dumb.
Thus, Athene IMO is core to the core. And getting 40% CDR is prolly #1 priority anyways,
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New buffed as fuck Karma
R>Q>W>E with a point in E early to allow for mantra E if needed. In dangerous lanes you can max E and be safe. Opening W and entering lane into immediate mantraW is pretty good if you can do it safely.
Karma general play:
1. Dont save mantra like an ult. Use it and get another charge. 2. Spam skills and auto a ton, it reduces mantra Cd. W in particular procs passive 3 times, so use it every opportunity. 3. Get CDR for more mantra and constant CC/speed 4. In teamfights kite a ton and peel for your DPS
Karma Strengths: No long Cd's Fast as fuck (dodging/roaming) Boatloads of CC and team utility Great vs melee bruisers (they can't gapclose) Scary ganks
Karma Weaknesses Super gap closing Assassins Not stunning waveclear Poor Range Less damage than low utility mids
Items: You need mana to spam constantly and CDR. If you are saving spells and conserving mana you aren't getting as much mantra as you could and you aren't playing her to her full capabilities.
For mana you need Athenes and/or Morellos (if you can get a lot of blue)
Once you are set up to spam: Dcap Liandrys Lichbane Abyssal Void later Zhonyas/defenseive shit situationally
all good items depending on situation
Bad items Nashors. Autoing this much is dangerous and it gives no mana, your autos do no damage and are only good for reducing mantra...but spells also reduce mantra and actually do damage and are safe to spam. Go with spells. I tried this trust me.
In lane: 1. Use standard combo: Eself, W, mantraQ as snare procs 2. Use shield speed to juke skillshots like a ninja 3. Force enemy out of lane and roam as much as possible, spam E whenever traveling 4. If minons survive Q with low hp: hit then BEFORE Qing, not after 5. Back your jungler up on counterjungling, your CC guarantees a kill if you catch someone, and if he gets caught you can easily get him out with shield speed and maybe a Q
In Teamfights: 1. Mantra E is almost always best 1st thing. To engage or right after engage, gives your team like 78969087extra health+speed+plus damage like as big as amumu ult. 2. Kite and peel, auto as much as safely possible, more mantra E and Q 3. Win game
Ideally you want a team consisting of Karma/Jayce/Orianna/sivir/Galio, for maximum teamwide zoom zoom potential
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On July 06 2013 12:38 Ryuu314 wrote: Why do you max w over e?
Shield gets 40 health and 5% Ms a level, tether gets 50 dmg, increases the root duration and reduces the CD. I'll max E>W if I need to use it, but most of the time I use E mostly to dodge skillshots, not facetank them, and the base MS works well for that. Most of the time in lane I prefer to deal more damage and have more CC. Her survivability and escape is is already very good with just 1 in shield. Plus the lower Cd and duration on tether is a defensive asset as well. In addition tether procs passive mantra reduction 3 times (once per tic), so the lower its CD, the more I can spam it and the more mantra I get.
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What runes/mastries you using? Currently Im using MPen/AR/MR or MR/LVL/AP + 21/0/9 or 9/0/21 (10% CDR). The awkward thing for me is usually choosing whether I want to buy Athenes + Morellos, especially if top.
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On July 06 2013 14:50 cLutZ wrote: What runes/mastries you using? Currently Im using MPen/AR/MR or MR/LVL/AP + 21/0/9 or 9/0/21 (10% CDR). The awkward thing for me is usually choosing whether I want to buy Athenes + Morellos, especially if top.
Mpen/AR/MR 21/0/9, you could probably use any masteries and it would be fine.
yeah its really awkward for top. You dont want to waste the cash on MR on athenes, but in my experience morellos isn't enough mana unless you are blue side and can take blue. Maybe chalice into morellos and then finish it later? I mostly have been going mid lately.
the only MUs I've had trouble with on her was a Xin top who I dominated early but he just kept building damage and eventually could just burst me, and Diana with the strong sustained damage and double gap closer. Zed and akali are also pretty scary but I think you could be safe, you just are not gonna come out with kills.
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On July 06 2013 13:28 sob3k wrote:Shield gets 40 health and 5% Ms a level, tether gets 50 dmg, increases the root duration and reduces the CD. I'll max E>W if I need to use it, but most of the time I use E mostly to dodge skillshots, not facetank them, and the base MS works well for that. Most of the time in lane I prefer to deal more damage and have more CC. Her survivability and escape is is already very good with just 1 in shield. Plus the lower Cd and duration on tether is a defensive asset as well. In addition tether procs passive mantra reduction 3 times (once per tic), so the lower its CD, the more I can spam it and the more mantra I get.
I feel like you're sacrificing a crapton of teamfight utility by maxing W over E. That's 160 Health across the entire team you're sacrificing for 200 damage (which isn't guaranteed) to a single target, not to mention that you'll be able to cast it at least twice if not three times in a fight. The benefits of W are non-trivial, but compared to the team-wide survivability from E I can't imagine maxing it second unless I was on a team with zero teamwork.
It's basically like Xerath W vs E, except more complicated.
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On July 06 2013 15:33 Seuss wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 13:28 sob3k wrote:On July 06 2013 12:38 Ryuu314 wrote: Why do you max w over e? Shield gets 40 health and 5% Ms a level, tether gets 50 dmg, increases the root duration and reduces the CD. I'll max E>W if I need to use it, but most of the time I use E mostly to dodge skillshots, not facetank them, and the base MS works well for that. Most of the time in lane I prefer to deal more damage and have more CC. Her survivability and escape is is already very good with just 1 in shield. Plus the lower Cd and duration on tether is a defensive asset as well. In addition tether procs passive mantra reduction 3 times (once per tic), so the lower its CD, the more I can spam it and the more mantra I get. I feel like you're sacrificing a crapton of teamfight utility by maxing W over E. That's 160 Health across the entire team you're sacrificing for 200 damage (which isn't guaranteed) to a single target, not to mention that you'll be able to cast it at least twice if not three times in a fight. The benefits of W are non-trivial, but compared to the team-wide survivability from E I can't imagine maxing it second unless I was on a team with zero teamwork. It's basically like Xerath W vs E, except more complicated.
I'm playing soloque....so yeah. Also secondary allies only get half of your shield value, so you are only missing a bit more than 80hp comparing a completely maxed W with a level one E.
If you dont max W in lane you are basically saying you are going to turn it into a farm lane, you will never get a kill with one skill (Q). I don't really want that at all on Karma, as her scaling isn't stellar and neither is her waveclear. I want to force people out of lane and roam to create an advantage. Most of the big formal 5v5 soloque teamfights where E is really great happen quite late anyway, so for many of them its gonna be even less of a difference in shield. Personally i'd def trade a bit of shield for the opportunity for lane aggression, especially in solo when I'm confident in being a better midlaner.
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Regarding runes/masteries, I found 9/0/21 with MS/Mpen/Ar/MR much better than the offensive 21/0/9 with AP/Mpen/Ar/Mr.
Karma is really a utility based champions, and even though she deals a lot of damage, I don't like the last points in the offensive tree.
As well, I feel like Rabadon is a bit too much on her. She's a low-range fighter champion, and investing 3300g in a full-offensive item seems way too much to me.
My end build is generally : Athene/Liandry/Zhonya/GA then I adapt, maybe then buy a deatchap, but I don't see me buying it earlier.
DC sure offers damage and a bigger shield, but with an early Zhonya you can dive way deeper in teamfights and tank for your AD instead of simply spamming E on him.
EDIT : on the subject of W vs E maxing, I'm with Monte. W max is pretty cheesy and selfish, and you don't need it to kill people. If you max E, ofc you'll deal less damage, but you can also tank more of it. So you can just trade with W/Q, stay full life, and then trade again. You won't 100% people, but you'll still be a big threat 1v1.
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On July 06 2013 16:19 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 15:33 Seuss wrote:On July 06 2013 13:28 sob3k wrote:On July 06 2013 12:38 Ryuu314 wrote: Why do you max w over e? Shield gets 40 health and 5% Ms a level, tether gets 50 dmg, increases the root duration and reduces the CD. I'll max E>W if I need to use it, but most of the time I use E mostly to dodge skillshots, not facetank them, and the base MS works well for that. Most of the time in lane I prefer to deal more damage and have more CC. Her survivability and escape is is already very good with just 1 in shield. Plus the lower Cd and duration on tether is a defensive asset as well. In addition tether procs passive mantra reduction 3 times (once per tic), so the lower its CD, the more I can spam it and the more mantra I get. I feel like you're sacrificing a crapton of teamfight utility by maxing W over E. That's 160 Health across the entire team you're sacrificing for 200 damage (which isn't guaranteed) to a single target, not to mention that you'll be able to cast it at least twice if not three times in a fight. The benefits of W are non-trivial, but compared to the team-wide survivability from E I can't imagine maxing it second unless I was on a team with zero teamwork. It's basically like Xerath W vs E, except more complicated. I'm playing soloque....so yeah. Also secondary allies only get half of your shield value, so you are only missing a bit more than 80hp comparing a completely maxed W with a level one E. If you dont max W in lane you are basically saying you are going to turn it into a farm lane, you will never get a kill with one skill (Q). I don't really want that at all on Karma, as her scaling isn't stellar and neither is her waveclear. I want to force people out of lane and roam to create an advantage. Most of the big formal 5v5 soloque teamfights where E is really great happen quite late anyway, so for many of them its gonna be even less of a difference in shield. Personally i'd def trade a bit of shield for the opportunity for lane aggression, especially in solo when I'm confident in being a better midlaner.
It may "only" be 80 Health for secondary targets, but that's still 480 Health across your team per Mantra'd E, which also scales with your allies' defenses. Again, I don't really blame you if your team isn't grouping at all, but in arranged play I would never max W second.
As a tangent, I have no idea why you think Karma has bad waveclear. Mantra Q->Q will basically clear every wave, and if you have Blue then Mantra will be back by time either the next wave arrives or you arrive at a side lane. Whenever I play against an opponent who I'm unable to kill or who is simply not worth the effort anymore I just quickly clear waves and roam like crazy.
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United States1332 Posts
any other karma players here? I dont know if im trippin or what... but it seems like sometimes ill hit people directly with q and it will register as a miss
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So is this jungle thing for real?
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On July 29 2013 06:20 cLutZ wrote: So is this jungle thing for real?
I think you can bet that if it's successful in professional play, it can be successful on an amateur level.
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It wasn't successful in pro play.
Basically she is slow as shit but has good utility and ganks, I think Leona or Blitz etc jungle is probably stronger if you want that. Or Morgana.
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hurray karma is no viable !!!! And she is extremely strong, she is i think one the best support with annie/taric
she loose vs sustain like sona/soraka and hard engage(point clik) like annie (skill matchup but at 6 just stay safe) but she win vs so much other support and has extremely good damage. Your lane feels safe also with your shield All around a very good champ
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So after being in a rut for a while, I've had a bunch of success the last couple days after picking up Karma in solo lanes. I've been hewing largely to the advice on this thread, but I've focused on maxing CDR very fast with Ionian boots + either Athene's or Morello's. I'm not sure I like a penetration based build path when so much of what she brings to the table isn't raw damage, but setting up teammates. She absolutely excels in early 2v2/3v3 skirmishes with junglers involved. She's very hard to gank, and her bait potential is so insane.
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