[Long Post] The real reason Karma is not going to receive any changes/reworks/updates anytime soon

I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss about Karma, who has been mentioned a few times by the player base ever since the Update team has expressed their interest in updating immobile mages by mid 2016. In the past, I've always talked about reverting the Karma changes and returning her old kit, but this thread will not be talking about that. I will still make comparisons from her old and new kit, but what I wanted to focus on is the actual reason why Karma is not going to be mentioned anytime soon, by the balance team, any competitive players or regular players. Ideally, you should leave this thread with the knowledge of understanding why Karma will not be changed anytime soon, the problems that she has, and how your part plays in her development.

It's going to be a long post, and I appreciated it if any discussion or feedbacks are phrased in a constructive manner. It'll be easier to understand what's going on currently if we had less users saying "bronzies post", "diehard Karma fans" and disrupting the mood. So to begin,

Let's take a look at Karma's role,

Where does she stand as a champion exactly? Well, Riot seems to categorize her as a Mage-Support. Overall players seems to generally think of her as a support, while half of the Karma players see her as a support, and another half as a mage. If you follow labels closely, Karma is a Mage first and support second. Of course labels don't mean a thing, but we can use it a guideline in designing. Basically, Karma is placed along the lines of AP mids like Orianna, Morgana, Zyra, she is supposed to function as an offensive-oriented mage, with off-spec of being able to support on bot lane when duty calls for it.

Over time, the meta in league has changed and caused a massive shift for certain champions. Mid lane mages are starting to see some supportive roles at bot lane, and have become a bot lane staple these days. Annie, Zyra, Morgana and Karma are examples of champions who have been affected by the change, and are now more valued in bot lane. How did this happen? Well... a simple way of putting it is League of Legends has become League of Mobility and over time, these niche AP Mid champions have gradually lost their authentic role and moved over to support. Another way of looking at it is that some of these champions offer high damage without any items, Morgana and Annie are two examples of champions who have high base damage and do well in bot lane, so mid lane can be given to champions with higher mobility - enter Ahri, Zed, Fizz, archetypes.

This is not to say that Annie, Zyra & Morgana are no longer viable mid lane. Sometimes, you'll see people using them in mid, but its not as often compared to bot. Orianna is the one exception to this, time after time, she has withstood the changes to mages and supports, and still holds her authentic mid lane role. She is the one exception of a classical mid mage, who has yet to be seen as a support by many.

Okay, enough about them. What does this have to do with Karma? First of all, I have mentioned Karma is a mage first and support second. This means ideally she should function a bit more like the rest of the mages, placing focus on being offensive oriented and taking up the task to support bot lane if no one else could.

**BUT, ** here's a funny thing, Karma is played more often as a support. People have compared Karma Mid to the likes of Lulu Mid, and to certain extent, you can compare Karma Mid to Nami Mid, Sona Mid and Soraka Mid. What do all of them have similarly? They are all categorized as Support first, Mages second. Basically, utility is a focal point in Karma mid, much like the rest of supports at mid lane. But didn't I just say that Karma is more offensive-oriented? That's true, I did. What y'all need to realize is that Riot had never once intended Karma to be a full time babysitter at bot lane.

The rework that Karma got was meant to make her a better champion overall, mostly with success in supporting but the team wanted to encourage Mid Karma too, so they kept damage as a part of her identity. When she was re-released, Karma suffered horribly at Mid because her kit didn't allow her to perform up-to par with the rest of the mages. As the meta entered in to the League of Mobility, Karma found her spot as a bot laner.

The key to realizing this now is that players have filled in the blank space regarding Karma's role in the game. While Riot was still trying to figure out where she truly belongs, the community had already put her at bot lane. This gave the balance team an easier time to manage her, you as the players had given the team shortcut work, so instead of focusing on her mage-y, offensive aspects, they pooled in their attention to Karma's utility, supportive aspects. Over time, the changes taken by Riot reflected that they were appeasing towards the support community who enjoys playing Karma bot while unconsciously realizing that they were gutting Mid Karma. But really, when you ask the team what they think about Karma. Frankly, neither of them have any idea about her, because no one is actively brainstorming about her either. Their general response is Karma is in a decent spot, how did they arrive to that conclusion? Because players gave them that conclusion, so the team followed along. Over time this leads to bigger problems occurring.

Karma's identity isn't well set, so what?

Because the team is still not sure about what or where Karma belongs exactly, but with other mid/top Karma complaining, they have decided to change every aspect of Karma's kit to appease to different Karma playstyles. RQ works for Mid lane players, RW works for Top lane players, RE works for support players, patch 5.10's changes were a step further to appease the players. On paper, the changes seemed great, but in practicality, it snowballed in to a serious problem - Karma was beginning to lose her identity and niche. She had a little bit of everything, but she no longer excelled in what she was meant to be, a Mage and a Support. At top lane, she doesn't the survivability of top laner... In mid lane, she lacked the damage/potentials that other mid laners brought... and in bot lane, she lacked the utilities that puts her on even terms with the rest of the supports.

This creates a stagnation for Karma, she doesn't move anywhere, her pick/ban/win rates are more or less similar. The community perceives it as "balanced" which in another way of putting it - "Karma is in a decent spot." What does decent mean in this context? She's not perfectly overshadowing others, she's not outdoing others, she's seen fair picks and plays. But does this mean Karma is really okay though? No. The ok/decent spot is actually just stagnation in disguise, which causes certain players to complain she has faults. On Riot's end, they have bigger problem to focus ie: Marksmen Update etc, and since the community still mistakes Karma's stagnation as a balanced/healthy, it inadvertently made Riot shove her aside in favor for more "important" problems. Again, this led to bigger problems, Karma players were beginning to feel tired of the way the team has been handling the Karma fanbase.

There's another reason Riot chose to pay less attention to her, and if you've understand my thoughts so far, then you'll likely get the answer correct. Riot STILL doesn't know what to do with her.

Okay, how does the rework come in to picture? How does it tie to her identity, role or niche for that matter!?

Back when Karma was reworked and the team shared their thought processes that went behind each changes, the team spoke heavily of her Mantra concept. All attention was pooled in to Mantra because the team felt that it was the most defining thing for Karma, they basically made her entire kit revolve around Mantra. This was a smart move by the rework team, but the work was poorly executed. What were the goals of Mantra's rework? They wanted to accentuate a champion whose unique identity is having her "ultimate" available at level 1, so they made all of her Mantra-ed abilities feel great, but had to nerf her base abilities greatly to compensate. There is a problem here, Mantra was not supposed to be designed like an ultimate. Bear with me, this gets confusing in awhile but if you can understand whatever I'm about to say next, then you've understood the big message of the post Basically, the team wanted to create Mantra-ed abilities to play like an ultimate, but at the same time, avoiding the act of designing it to be an ultimate.

So... if I were to take R->Q, Soulflare as an example, it is a heavy nuke with 785+150% ratio, but it lacks the width and detonation range of an ultimate, but the damage is great anyway, so who cares.

R->W, the ultimate feel to this was the self heal, but it is a self heal and not am aoe heal. The rework played it down that way because they didn't want you to feel like its an ultimate. It is a heal based on missing health so you'll feel great about using it.

R->E, the iconic ability we all know. Everything on paper looks good, 60% move speed and a spammable shield every 6 seconds, aoe shield in Mantra form. There was a problem with this ability, the buff durations and base values were downplayed greatly, so its not as impactful as one may think.

Are you getting the picture now? The team landed themselves in a hot spot, by designing an ability that feels like an ultimate, but without performing like an ultimate. Each of her Mantra-ed abilities all feel and look good on paper, but they perform subpar because none of them were meant to feel overly impactful. This was Riot's way of balancing her, so throughout the duration of playing Karma, you perform subpar with her. A very easy way of phrasing is Riot has made mantra feel like an ultimate, but didn't want it to perform like an ultimate. They accomplished this shifting around her utilities from one ability to another, and giving her soft CC like the snare or slow yet all during her rework, they explicitly stated they wanted it to feel like an ultimate. The players seemed to think Mantra was good, because it gave choices and options, but what it didn't provide enough was impact. So you have choices and options, but no matter how well you do with Karma, you are set to fail with Karma even if you did well with her, especially if your team performs horribly which brings to me another issue. The rework wanted to transform Karma in to an independent champion whose abilities don't rely on her champions, yet unfortunately, the problem still persists. This time, the problem becomes Karma, in the form of Mantra, which had a confusing identity of being an ultimate, yet not allowed to perform like an ultimate. What Karma had were choices, but she lacked reliability and potentials/impact.

The shift of abilities led to pretty inconsistent moments, I'll use E/RE as the example because it is the most obvious one. E had a haste and shield, but it couldn't be fully used as a beefy shield/full out initiation, Karma couldn't make her shield work properly, because the buff duration was short. Even when E was mantra-ed, it didn't qualify itself as a beefy shield, again like I said, the duration was short and the design of letting Mantra feel like an ultimate yet not allowing it to perform like one meant Karma couldn't do her job properly. She had a haste and a shield, she was not allowed to have a beefy shield or a super mega move speed, that was how R->E was downplayed/balanced. And in patch 5.10, the damage removal was the team's way of appeasing the support Karma crowd, without knowing they pushed her identity crisis in to a bigger hole. She had now lost a lot more reliability.

W has always been a weird case. It was a self heal and a root that mostly punished Karma for taking calculated risks. The crowd control was the biggest issue of W, a snare. Again, since Mantra isn't meant to perform like an ultimate, they can only up the snare duration and in exchange for that, W's bonus damage was taken away.

Q/RQ, is straightforward, I won't say much. It is just a nuke that doesn't operate like an ultimate. One of the reasons Karma has been shifted over to bot lane? Because RQ fares badly in the league of mobility and walls. Braum and Yasuo are examples of champions whose wall takes away the only offensive power she was. Mobility assassins like Zed have outplay/evasive potentials to dodge it.

What's all of this saying? Well, the summary of the Mantra argument is that Riot placed too much emphasis on making it feel like an ultimate, but the mantra-ed abilities couldn't perform like one. It was all a misled perception of Mantra, that was how the team intended to manage her rework. Mantra however functioned like an ultimate, it had semi-long cooldowns long enough for you to wonder why her base abilities feel weaker This was the second part of downplaying, Karma's base abilities' impacts were reduced to a point where they feel inferior compared to Mantra-ed ones. But even when Mantra-ed, they are not exactly that all great

The moral of designing? If Riot had learned to embrace Mantra as a two charge spell enhancer a.k.a making Karma a dual casting mage, her base and mantra-ed abilities could have been designed better and served the purpose that each abilities were meant to serve. What Old Mantra provided was reliability and potentials, but it lacked power. What New Mantra had was power, but lacked reliability and impact. What the team went for was a single charge, sort of ultimate-like ability, but it only appeared to be like an ultimate, it wasn't supposed to feel like one.

So Mantra is the culprit?

Yes Mantra is the culprit behind Karma's stagnation, difficult spot and Riot's cluelessness on dealing with her. It creates a tough situation for the team to balance her because any random changes will either make or break Karma and they are reluctant to do that it will put them in a difficult spot, so the only way they can manage her now is to play around with things like mana cost, cooldowns, ratio or base values, not change the effects or interaction of the abilities in and outside of Mantra form. Changing Karma would destroy their efforts and take a long time to rebuild what they made, and Riot doesn't want that right now.

Mantra, along with the its past changes has effectively destroyed Karma's identity to the point where she has an identity confusion. No one knows what she's supposed to be, but players fill up the blank space for her, they put her in the supportive role because that's where she excels at the moment, but not what she was fully intended to be.

This also goes back to the Immobile Mage update... is she considered for the update? Most likely not. She's not considered because she is a mage-support hybrid, not because she isn't immobile. The mage-support hybrid came from how you all viewed her, not how Riot viewed her. So this creates a dilemma about whether Karma is rightfully support or mage. Riot hasn't taken a solid stance on her role, I will quote this off FeralPony's ask fm towards a Karma question he replied months ago.

> She could be considered in the immobile mage camp, but she's kinda more of a mage/support hybrid. I don't think we'd need to do anything to her in the unique playing experience as she is already pretty unique to play as. Strategically though, why you'd select her in particular beyond if she's just really powerful atm though is a much tougher question I don't have a solid answer for. No idea if she'll be included in the update, but suggestions are always appreciated.

No one knows what Karma really is, as she doesn't fall in to any category. Karma fits in any team comp, but no one understands why she is picked? Initiation? High pressure poking? What? Currently, Karma has a little of everything, but she excels in none, this causes her to lack a solid identity. Why does FP think she's strong? Well, my guess is the FQC buffs and the presence of Windspeaker's Blessings keeps her viable. But when any of these gets nerfed, or Karma herself is, she's back to a bad spot. It doesn't say anything about Karma's success rate however, you are still doomed to fail in late game if your team sucks, even if you did well early-mid.

Here's what diehard Karma fans will tell you

I enjoy reading what the DKF (Diehard Karma Fans) writes when someone mentions Karma is faulty. Here are list of, sometimes convincing but for the most part not really convincing arguments.

• Karma is strong because she gets to go top/jungle/mid/bot, so strong that she doesn't perform well in her role because she goes everywhere
• Karma is the Queen of Peel because inserts very specific scenario and generalize it all scenarios. Karma is the only run who can outrun Udyr, therefore, Karma is Queen of Peel.
• Karma hits for 785+150%, therefore Karma is good in mid lane.
• Karma is good now because I play Karma at bot.

But no one wants to acknowledge the following....

• Karma has faults
• Karma's versatility is so wide that she's practically not doing anything well, she's not even excelling in her own roles of mage and support
• Karma lacks a solid identity
• Karma's Mantra is problematic

Why isn't Riot going to do anything with Karma?

• The community has given them a reason not to
• No one has realized that Riot is clueless with her
• Second reworks, any changes or updates is a long shot of work, and they don't want to go there.
• The players don't talk about it

What are they not realizing?

1. They were the culprits of the whole trouble
2. They have destroyed a champion's identity
3. Their obsession with making Mantra the focal point of her rework, instead of embracing it as a spell enhancer rendered their work bland and uninteresting.

I'm not going to complain about Karma's state in the game. To me, she is stagnant and she has faults. Compared to someone like Illaoi, she is far from being toxic, but she is certainly not in an acceptable state.

Why should you be concerned about this if you are a Karma player...

• Because there are people outside of the balance team who finds her unacceptable
• Because this identity crisis for Karma has been going on for a long time
• Because you have given Riot a reason not to care or pay attention
• Because you like her enough to care.
• Because Riot pays more attention to recently updated champions like Cassiopeia, Ryze and Azir only because that champion fanbase makes a deal out of it

This isn't a post to ask you to support Old Karma. It's a simple thread to explain to you why Riot isn't doing anything interesting or cool about her. And for you to understand that, you need to read the tl;dr.

**TL;DR, Riot isn't doing anything about her because they are clueless of her identity, Mantra is a culprit of her state of well being at the moment, **

There are some other things I didn't mention, but this should be the main points that I wanted to bring to attention. If you've read this far and understood everything, congratulations. Now you are able to understand the problem Riot has with Karma and provide a more convincing argument.

Regardless, thanks for reading.