My hope for 2018: Make Karthus Meta Again! (pref not pick/ban tho :P)
Like many before me, I have seen Riots new video on 2018 and some of the stuff they plan to do, which I think is great and all, but I'm hoping for one thing in particular. I'd like to see Karthus rise in popularity to at least some of the standard champs in the game, whilst not being Pick/Ban so I can at least play him still lol. I will note that I'm slightly basing this on a comment from a couple days ago on one of Meddler's QGPT posts that Maple Nectar responded about Karthus and that it's something that could be talked about with the Gameplay team.
That being said, I would like to go over some of Karthus's Core identities in terms of Gameplay, and try to find the playstyles that maybe should be removed should he get reworked a bit. (I'm not thinking too much, mostly some number tweaks/ kit adjustments)
When talking about Karthus's Gameplay identies, here are what I find are his most distinguished features:
- He's considered a Battlemage, so he has no Hard CC, and his E has a somewhat short-ish range
- He's a Hypercarry, so while he has a weaker early game than most, he's a late game MONSTER
- He's a Teamfight GOD
- He's the Undisputed KING of AoE damge
Along side these features, he's got some other, maybe not so well known features about him
- He's an exceptional 1v1 duelist for a mage
- He's got one of the best Level 2-3 spikes in the game
- 3 of his 4 abilities have low AP ratios, so he can actually go Tank and still do some decent damage.
Unfortunately ever since Season 8 started, things have been going downhill for ol' Karthus because of both the loss of DFT and Magic Pen runes, and while Riot has tried to rectify this with adding .15% to the ratio of his ult, I feel that maybe it wasn't exactly the right way to go to help him out here. In that Comment back in Meddler's QGPT, it was said that the changes over the years has negatively affected Karthus's Skill-cap, to where his only decent method of play is a suicide Ult bot, which I don't think should be his main gameplay niche, it should be his last resort tactic if all else fails. Because of this, some people feel he has become too boring to play, with some of Karthus's biggest One-tricks leaving him to play some other champions. Before Season 8 hit, Karthus was sitting pretty at about 52% Win-rate according to Champion.GG, but as of writing this post, he's down to 49.71% Win-rate, which is even after Riot buffed his ult.
I'd love to see Riot change Karthus so he can be fun to play again and back up to where he's supposed to be, and here's a couple suggestions I've both heard other players say, and some stuff I've come up with:
*Revert the Wall Buff, give it the Grounded debuff so Karthus can be better suited against assassins, have it so hitting Isolated Q's on the affected Target refresh the slow for 1.5 seconds, or change the MR shred to an increase in %Magic Damge or something along the lines (not say All of these choices, just one is good :P)
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Increase the Tick speed on E, but have it do the same damage overall (think what Riot did with Singed basically)
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Have the Delay on Q decrease with CDR so at max CDR (including Runes), a Q will have a .65 second delay instead of 1 second
As for the ult, I'm actually kinda fine with it being the Cooldown that it is, since it IS a global nuke after all. BUT, my personal idea, (and take this with a grain of salt of doubt or whatever) is to lower the damage of the ult and add an execution threshhold similar to Urgot's new ult. Also feel free to reduce the Ratio buff to before that happened just for consistency.
All I would like for 2018 is for Karthus to get back in his Rightful throne as the premier DPS Mage in League. So please everyone lets
#Make Karthus Meta Again Also a new skin this year for him wouldn't go amiss ;P
Meddler QGPT comment source: https://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/developer-corner/5AwuwIFf-quick-gameplay-thoughts-january-16?comment=00280000
