New board, Old Discussion: Let's talk Karmic Balance

Considering Riot has been encouraging us to use the community boards, let's take this time for me to transition one of my older and longer threads here in hopes of sparking the discussion it has so the ancient voices can be heard... I am copy pasting most of it from my old thread in the means that my wall of text will be bothersome otherwise. So keep the complaints about old things to a minimum ok? Gratzie ciao

As one of the major voices in the days of the Karma rework, I personally have driven much issue with the rework, the way it was handled, and the factors that could have otherwise altered the case to warrant a more restrained rework then the "Karma in ult only" we have going for us now. I have spent a long time gathering research and opinions and have compiled the biggest complaints, praises, and otherwise key notes from the community I have found on the subject. Did I get everyone's opinion? Of course not I'm not omniscient you know. So if you have any additional information to give, either for or against the rework (I'm not picky I just like discussion that's more then "New Karma sux LOL" or "Old Karma was trash LOL") Feel free to contribute, but remember to be civil and not bash someone else for having an opinion you don't like

DISCLAIMER: Get ready to do the one thing forum members fear most... READ

** CHAPTER 1: Old Karma ** Now before we can discuss the new Karma, we gotta have a look at the old one. Can't compare without knowing the base model now can we?

Karma's original form original intent was to be an AP support or mid lane utility mage. Eventually as people played her she transitioned away from the support role and more or less fit the role of a front lines Utility Mage. Playstyles for her generally involved being an aggressive lane bully, then transitioning into late game as an initiation enhancer, turning that barreling Malphite, Shen, or Rammus into a death bomb.

Her skills were as follows:

Passive: Inner Flame- Karma gained bonus AP the less health she had. Pros: Excellent bait and switch tool, and a good way to even the odds against high range cons: not much counterplay Nekko's notes: Now this was Karma's iconic skill, it fit in line with her theme perfectly, in that when you bite Karma... Karma has a nasty habit of biting back. Now I will agree with the reds that having a berserker style skill on a ranged champion can add more power then warranted, especially against a melee opponent as you can stand far at range and hit you nasty hard without being able to prevent it. However the iconic "karmic balance" theme should be in her kit, possibly making it a temporary buff in response to damage. Granted that is just a top of the head idea... but you get the picture. It's also noteworthy to know this skill was actually bugged in that in order to get the maximum AP from the skill... You needed 0% HP, aka you're dead.

R(ultimate): Mantra- Karma enhances the next ability cast. Can store 2 charges pros: Stronger spells hoo sha cons: not a "real ultimate" Nekko's notes: Now most people would go Q W and E before R... but considering the importance of this spell to the kit, it's probably prudent to bring this skill up first. This version of Mantra tied in really well to how Karma's theme worked, namely the Taoist principle that all things in the universe exist in balance. It enhanced spells based off this theme in that her aggressive spells gained utility from mantra, and her utility spells gained aggression from her mantra, balancing the scales. In my opinion, this skill was great, it was perfect, and it should not have been touched at all and fully retained both what it does and how it goes through doing it.

Q: Heavenly Wave- Karma tosses an AoE cone in front of her, doing damage (mantra bonus: also did a base + %missing HP heal in addition to damage). pros: good damage, good wave clear, low CD cons: short range, weak visuals on heal, heal not too useful on high HP targets Nekko's notes: Nice fun little skill for you, think Mordekaiser's (hue) E in nature, actually if you ignore the mantra it's that skill exactly. The mantra heal was an amazing clutch play, saving both you and your teammates in a pinch. Not without flaws though, first off it being short range meant you were gonna get a pokin if you weren't careful, and secondly the heal was lackluster inn the visual department. Most people in the heat of battle don't even notice the heal and don't know it exists, leading to karma having to chase down her low health ally going "STOP I WANT TO HEAL YOU", I really like this skill, I do.

W: Spirit Bond- Karma ties a tether to target ally or enemy, speeding herself up, and speeding up a tethered ally, or slowing a tethered enemy. If someone touched the ribbon, it would damage them, and apply the speed modifier to them. (mantra bonus: double the speed modifiers) Pros: Speed boost plus slow? Booya Cons: damage unreliable, bad visuals, lackluster mantra effect Nekko's notes: Definately the weakest skill in her old kit... The ribbon effect was nice and all, but nobody knew the touch the ribbon thing, especially since there was little in the visual/audio indicators for people to notice much, kinda made it hard to make it a reliable skill

E: Soul Shield- A big ass shield... like Fiora's ass big (mantra bonus: damaged everyone around the shielded target for the strength of the shield.) Pros: It's a big ass shield, nuff said Cons: pretty mana hungry Nekko's notes: Ahhh shield bombs, everyone loved a shield bomb. With enough AP you could shield bomb as a pushing tool and be at the enemy tower in no time. Some people complained that it wasn't a good skill because there was no utility attached to the shield, like how Janna gives AD or Lulu gives MS with their shields. But you know what? It didn't need no fancy bells or whistles to be good. All the utility it needed was that it was a MASSIVE HONKIN SHIELD. The only shields tougher then Karma's was Shen's ult, and Janna's shield once you got 450+ AP. ** CHAPTER 2: Problems with the Old Kit**

Now if I said Karma was perfectly balanced and didn't need anything to have a good kit, I'd be a filthy filthy lier. She did have issues that needed to be addressed, and a rework was probably the best option, so I'll explain the issues and why they happened.

Mana Hungry: In early game, Karma ate through mana so hard that even Cho'gath would mutter "glutton" under his breath. This was her greatest weakness in lane as if she couldn't manage her skills right, she would OOM quickly and would be forced to b.

Stat stuffed: To maximize her effectiveness, Karma needed to build: AP, HP, MP, CD, AR, MR. That's a lot of stats and didn't leave her much room for flexible item builds. Max CDR was an absolute must.

Item Reliant: Karma needs a lot of stats, and a lot of stats means items, items means a lot of gold, and if Karma's going support that's gonna hurt her bad.

Mantra reliance: In order to do reliable damage, Karma needed to burn mantras, if she didn't have mantras, she was a minimal threat.

Burden of Knowledge: Karma didn't just need to know her own kit to be good, she had to hope her other teammates knew her skills as well and could capitalize on them. Nekko's notes: Ok I'm just gonna chime in here and stop being objective here (not that my side notes have been objective, but this issue became a major sore point for me.) The fact that it's called an "issue" for Karma's teammates to know how to play with her in what is called a team game is bollocks and you all know it! I find this being uses as an argument both silly and pretentious... Anyways back to objectivity.

Low Pick/Win rate: Self explanatory, though there were more issues then just a weak kit that factored into this.

** CHAPTER 3: New Karma**

Well you got Old Karma and her issues, let's see new Karma and her issues.

Passive: Gathering Fire- Whenever Karma hits a champion with a skill or AA, the CD of mantra is reduced by a couple seconds. Pros: promotes interactivity Cons: super ultra mega turbo ninja prefix binary Nekko's notes: Good lord this passive... Ugh I hate it so much. Why? Because it's binary that's why. Miss a Q? That's 2 second longer you gotta wait. W break to fast? That's 6 seconds CDR down the drain. Sure if you land all your skills and AA often you'll be dropping mantras like a boss. Miss a skill however and it punishes you unbelievably hard.

R (ultimate): Mantra- Karma enhances her next skill cast, stacks once Pros: see other mantra Cons: way too dependant on passive to be effective. Nekko's notes: Ok new mantra... Same as old on the cover. However that one stack is a problem. That one stack makes that Passive of hers be in its binary state, and in laning phase really locks you out of a lot of options that previous Karma had in spades with her 2 stacks.

Q:Inner Flame/Soulflare - Karma shoots a skillshot that creates an AoE explosion that slows once it hits a target. (mantra bonus: does more damage on impact, and leaves a little slow zone that detonates for more damage after a couple seconds) Pros: long range, spammable Cons: easy to avoid, bad risk/reward ratio, does not mesh with kit. Nekko's notes: Now I can forgive the W and the E changes, I'll even venture to say that W was better even then her old one. But this skill... This skill represents everything I hate about the Karma rework in one package. Karma's E and W are mid/short range, this skill is long range. Matter of fact, in laning phase if you're going up against a ranged opponent this is quite possibly the ONLY skill you will be using mantra on during the entire phase unless your opponent is dumb enough to dive on you. It is both your primary farming AND your harass tool, so in lane you get either farming or harass, never both, you can wave clear pretty well with it mantraed... but then you just blew a mantra to farm 3 ranged minions. The Mantra does good damage, but it's so easy to escape it's not funny. You know if this skill never existed, and the old Q was just left alone... Pretty sure the backlash on the rework would be severely diminished.

W: Focused Resolve/renewal- Karma links herself to an opposing champion, dealing damage over time and if the link is not broken during the duration, snares an opponent. (mantra bonus: does more damage on the DoT, and heals Karma for %HP lost) Pros: CC, decent damage, powerful heal Cons: unreliable, short range, easy to break, selfish Nekko's notes: Now I think this skill was a step in the right direction, gave the CC support Karma needed badly, and gave a bit of damage too. However it falls flat in that it's easy to break, making the snare kind of a weak CC. In the end it winds up boiling down to you only snare just to land your Q2, which as previously mentioned... I hate.

E: Inspire/Defiance- Karma shield's target ally and gives a 60% MS boost. (Mantra boost: Shield on target ally becomes stronger, and shields nearby allies for a smaller amount while damaging nearby enemies. Pros: Shield, MS, potentially very large AoE Cons: kinda weak, can never achieve 100% efficiency Nekko's notes: Now this change interested me, I know I said earlier that Old Karma's shield needed no utility other then being a thick slab of magical Karmic meat. But this was an interesting turn. I know it's bugged right now and that's why it's a bit weak, so I'll point out my efficiency issue instead. Now a shield is good for when you're in combat, and MS is good for when you're initiating/running away. It works for Lulu since she is a very hit and run champion, but Karma is more of an all inner now, so the E2 becomes hard to maximize output. I would advise either dumping the utility for straight shield strength, or putting a more useful all-in utility to it instead of MS. As an additional note though, it's worth mentioning that if you position your team right you can have one of the largest AoEs in the game, but that takes a lot of coordination, which is a fairy tale in solo queue. ** CHAPTER 4: What's wrong with the new kit**

Old Karma got it, new Karma's gonna get it too.

More Mantras, less options: Now the passive in theory gives you more chances to use Mantra, but her W2 and E2 are such niche skills that a good 90% of your mantras will be going to your Q, you won't be using W2 unless you're near death and your opponent is right next to you, and E2? That's a teamfight skill. The Shield bomb's there... But it's so impractical to use unless there's an ally around, so it's like the Shield bomb is more of a red herring.

Binary: Read my rage on the passive to understand.

It's all about Q: Inner flame is your zoning tool, harassing tool, primary damage tool, farming tool, brush checking tool, and your only long range skill. For laning phase using this skill isn't just your bread and butter, it's your meat, potatos, drink, side salad, dessert, and after dinner mint. Spamming Q all the time becomes incredibly boring.

Stat Stuffng: All those stats Old Karma needed? Well this one needs them too, and tanky stats even more so since she's quite squishy.

Squishy: Karma's weaker overall shield and lack of reliable heal means if she takes a hit it's going to hurt and bad, she can't block an assassin burst with her bubble like Old Karma, so she can get ripped up by assassins like Talon, Kass, Zed, or Kha'zix with ease while her older version forced them to take pause.

Item Reliant: Like Old Karma, she needs a lot of stats, and a lot of stats means items, items means a lot of gold, and if Karma's going support that's gonna hurt her bad.

Nekko's Notes: Selfish: For those of you who like Old Karma, you know she was Oprah levels of generous (YOU get a heal! YOU get a heal! EVERYONE gets a heal!) but New Karma... Kinda selfish, she hands out shields, but she wants the kills and she gets the heals. She snares to hit her Q2. It just feels like she's less team friendly then her old version. I tagged this under Nekko's notes cause it's pretty opinionated. ** CHAPTER 5: What went wrong?**

Well threads like this wouldn't keep cropping up unless something went wrong with the rework, I figure it would be best to address these.

Lack of Exposure: (Nekko's Notes: Ok pay attention here... if only one question is answered from this entire thread, just one, this is the question to answer. I cannot stress this enough about how important this detail is, and it is something that absolutely needs to be addressed.) One of the biggest factors that led to her low win/pick rate was the fact that during the entire 2 years of her existance, she got two free weeks... Just two. and no sales. This equates to severe lack of exposure, which as a complex to play champion is a death sentence to her rates. Most people will not buy a champion unless they can play them first, and if they don't get free weeks how the heck do they get to try them? No sales means you won't even get people wanting to risk the dive on her. With such a low exposure rate, this means others don't understand her, when others don't understand her, she suffers for it. If she got regular free weeks, it was highly speculated that if she was given a chance in the free week rotation she would have much higher scores.

Poor Communication: You know how most of the new Reworks have big discussion threads? Yeah Scarizard of course you do it was done for Rengar. Now Karma actually got very little communication in the time between release and rework. We got some tweets from Guinsoo but outside of that it was hard to get answers. When her thread was unveiled was basically the first we got to know of her kit, and by then it was too late to protest the changes. Things probably would have gone smoother with more communication as to what the community wanted from her kit. There were also some very poorly worded posts that kind of incensed the community. I'll chalk those up as mere miscommunications.

Lack of information: Now one point of contention that I noticed cite that not a single buff made it to the PBE for Karma, none. The problem with this is that you have a lot of angry fans, and we're given the information that nothing could be done without making her extremely OP. Now the problem with this information is that we didn't have math to back up that information. So the fans of Old Karma have a lot of trouble believing this statement when the knowledge we know is "take my word for it" and that the lead live developer at the time (Morello) has flatly stated in the past that he destested Karma's kit since day one. With that knowledge, even if the "couldn't survive past internal" is true, the fans are gonna have trouble believing it. ** FINAL CHAPTER: Proposed fixes**

ok this is all Nekko's notes here, but using all the information gained from the various threads I've compiled this proposed build.

Passive: Scrap and replace since it's too binary, now I'll let you a pass on the "berserk mechanic on a ranged" however I feel that the "hit me and you'll be sorry" feature of Old Karma should exist in her passive.

Q: Take Inner flame, tear it up, shred it to tiny pieces, and use it to line Ironstylus' cage. Inner Flame is toxic to Karma's kit. Bring the Old Q back, then narrow and lengthen the cone. Then add greater visual effect to the heal part so that

W: Considering I suggested getting Old Q back, W should not heal anymore, change the mechanics of the tether so that the break range is a decent amount longer then the cast rage so that it doesn't break as easily. Now for mantra, I would say since the heal is out, find a way to make it more threatening, how about reduce the dot damage, but add it so if the snare goes off, it does bonus damage, for mantra I would say make it so the snare pops in a small AoE snare that adds the snare damage.

E: Now I'm up in the air on this, I like the AoE shield, but I would prefer just having one thick shield too, I would say for this one, keep the AoE shield, but it would only distribute the bonus shield to those around the original target, letting you up the ratios on her so she does more damage and the shield bomb feels like an actual bomb. You can remove the bonus MS, add a different stat if you want, not needed though.

R: Without the passive, you can give mantra its 2 stack back.

Now yes this kit is overtuned, we can work with tuning it as the discussion commences. I understand alot of people want Old Karma back ** IMPORTANT NOTICE: This thread is meant for proper discussion only, I understand how a lot of you want Old Karma back, but for the time being simply stating "bring back old Karma" will not be constructive. I don't want to see any flaming, bashing, or insulting anybody. I do not care what color your name is, red, blue, green, purple, black or rainbow. This will NOT be tolerated in this thread.**

EDIT: Here's a link to the original thread, all 206 pages of it http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=48566817&posted=1#post48566817