Random Karthus nerf, what

what the hell is this, karthus already has tons of counter play if he does wall you, either you're playing the one of the 50+ champions with a blink/dash, or you go shit on him with your burst.

karthus is not even strong right now, only mains can do well with him and his win rate is not high because there is too much counter play to him.

(You could link to the announcement; Riot's is a bit easier to navigate than S@20's copy-paste of it. Anyways...)

As was alluded to in the patch notes with the comment "Another huge beneficiary of preseason, Karthus’s...." Karthus received some indirect buffs, particularly the buff to Rod of Ages. I estimate that this was a nerf to bring him down a bit without hitting anything that would be that severe. Wall of Pain has a 40 / 50 / 60 / 70 / 80% slow (that decays) that lasts for 5 whole seconds; 5 seconds is a long time in a fight so it was in a good spot and should still be fine.

I can't estimate the future that well here; we would have to try and find a legitimate Karthus main to answer whether or not it really was too "oppressive" which might be a bit hard as it seems like the only individual I'd ever played against as Karthus in the last 6 months was Karthus Bot.

This is as stupid as that time when they randomly nerfed his E ratio

They keep nerfing random shit like karthus, trundle, but keep yasuo, tamh and champs who are a problem untouched, fucking baffles me

I'm glad this thread didn't die out instantly

As someone that has mained Karthus for multiple seasons, he has been pretty under the radar for a long time. Steady and stable, and trying his best to keep up with a disgusting mobility/assassin progression.

Seeing his face as I scrolled through the patch notes was pretty random and surprising, and seeing that his one form of utility/protection was nerfed was not fun. As one of the least mobile champions in the entire game, having our one form of disengage/engage hit really stings.

I mean we'll still bombard people with damage and blow the world up, but it stings man :(

He didn't "need" the nerf, but it's not like it's the end of the world either. What this means is that your W is worse for extended fights/trades where you are trying to catch up to people, but is still usable as an anti-initiation/gank tool.

A decay on his slow isn't really much of a nerf

Next patch they will change his ult to heal the opposing team instead of hurting them.

He got nerfed for the same reason brand anivia and swain and malzahr got nerfed because of roa buff and dft. what bothers me is that all those champions are not even popular, or nowhere near as oppressive as vayne, yasuo , jax , and Mundo atm. Yet riot decided to nerf the unpopular champions while not even thinking about touching the holy and sacred yhT is vayne the most popular champion in in the game

Still waiting on that buff to make his ult quotes global.

..... I considered him currently "off-meta" the way it was lol RIP Karthus... maybe we'll see you in some future patch down the road

must be hard for those tanky champs with loads of cc to actually stick to people

Maybe read what Riot already wrote...

They probably saw a huge spike in his winrate this patch, looked into it, found his slow was too reliable, and nerfed it. Perfectly reasonable.

Just because the masses didn't abuse it yet doesn't mean it didn't need a nerf.

Because his late game is oppressive

I don't think you have actually fought a 6 item Karthus in a while. If he kills you, he wins. If you kill him, he wins.

I'm silver II, so take this with a grain of salt, but I think that the preseason made Karthus quite strong. (I also have level 5 Mastery on Karthus, but take that with a grain of salt too since I have level 5 with a lot of champions.) His weak early game was improved slightly, his midgame power spike became much stronger, and his incredible lategame teamfighting potential became even better. Why? Rod of Ages got buffed, and that was generally a core item on him unless he got ahead in lane and decided to rush Rylai's instead. This is partly what made his midgame power spike greater, but the real buff that improved his performance during all parts of the game was the addition of Deathfire Touch. He has an incredibly high uptime for it due to his spammable Lay Waste and his toggleable Defile, and so he can be more of a threat in the early game and be even more ridiculous of a threat lategame. While I'm sad to say it, Karthus needed some nerfs to tone down his insane synergy with Deathfire Touch (and to a much lesser extent Rod of Ages), and I'm with Riot on the nerf. It won't allow Karthus to apply his sustained damage as easily, and this will decrease the incredible duration of Deathfire Touch that Karthus was once able to put out. Karthus is an unpopular champion, but being unpopular has no bearing on whether a champion needs a nerf or not. He became too strong with the preseason patch, and they nerfed him.

Because apparently he benefits too much from the ROA buff.

Wat

Now he can rest in piece.

While I agree that Karthus didn't needed a nerf, at the same time he kind of needed this to be buffed. Can you imagine a buffed Karthus that slowed you by that much for that long, getting almost guaranteed Qs, and having almost nothing you can do about it?

Basically, if Karthus mains want buffs, that change kind of needed to be.

Maybe for the new AP jungling item, possibly

Karthus has always had an above average winrate in solo Q (like Anivia, Malz) so I guess they're trying to address this. That said, this nerf is extremely small seeing as any good Karthus player will build Rylais as a 2nd/3rd item (or 1st if you don't count a lone tear).