@Riot Balance/Update Team - Karma Has No Decision Making

Choices. This is the topic of discussion in this thread. Karma, in a twisted sense, has no choices . . . . but choices . . . . in a way? Karma has three basic abilities and three empowered abilities. To use empowered abilities you have to use a mantra to do it and use basic abilities to lower the cooldown on them. When Karma's R is up she has to choose when to use a specific empowered ability. To do a decent amount of damage early game, Karma would use her Q empowered ability. To heal herself up or thwart a gank attempt, Karma would use her empowered E. To provide a massive shield and speed boost to allies and herself, Karma would use her empowered E. When Karma's empowered abilities and R are on cooldown, she can only use basic abilities and needs to attack enemies to lower the CD on them.

Before Karma had a mantra system that held charges and would allow her to use more than one empowered ability at a time. At the price of some power on Karma's empowered abilities, her empowered abilities provided her with the choices to adapt to certain situations and combo into another if need be. Right now Karma can only do one thing with one empowered ability and have to wait for it off of cooldown to do something.

Karma's basic ability on Q and empowered Q had to be altered so much over the years that all of Karma's power lies in just that one ability. They had to add a CC effect to her basic ability and empowered ability to make it useful. The empowered Q is blocked by the first target it hits and really doesn't fit a support/battlemage hybrid playstyle Karma is supposed to. Her damage falls off so hard that there is absolutely no point in playing Karma as a mage past level 6, because all of her power is in just one ability and empowered ability. She needs more damage options through-out her kit.

Karma's W is a complete waste of space and hardly ever used . . . . in the right circumstance. Before Karma had a fun tether function with CC. Now it is just a greedy ability that is used to heal herself in sticky situations. There is absolutely no tether ally function and the ability itself is not very unique. The ability is just a Morgana R with a heal or a LaBlanc tether. It was much more interesting pre-rework.

Karma's E and empowered E are not unique and is what she uses mostly now. The ability is an Iron Locket of Solari active with a steroid. What is so unique about that? Before she would just shield a target and do damage . . . . while also providing a movement speed buff to nearby allies. This ability was called Shield Bomb. It was removed by Ricklessabandon years ago in a pathetic attempt at giving Karma a purpose. Instead of working the ability and balancing it, Shield Bomb was taken away and replaced with an unoriginal empowered E that provides a mass shield to allies. There is absolutely no decision making at all with Karma's empowered E because no matter who you use the shield on, everyone gets a movement speed boost and half of the amount of damage mitigation her target does. Before Karma had to choose to shield a specific player while also providing some use to her nearby allies. Granted Shield Bomb was way too strong with minion shielding and no counter play. It didn't need to be thrown away for an unoriginal empowered E with no decision making at all.

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Karma needs to go back to her roots. She needs her archetype restored and not another shield buff. The only time Karma is ever strong and useful in this game is when one of her empowered abilities is stronger than the other. There is evidence of this through-out the years and everyone knows it. Look at her win and playrates. Every time Riot has buffed an empowered ability and then nerfed it, Karma drops very low and is considered the worst in the roles she is supposed to be played in. The issue is she has completely no damage options in her kit besides her Q and empowered Q and she doesn't have enough decision making in her kit. What current Karma lacks is the decision making and adaptability old Karma had with her empowered abilities and mantra system. Old Karma was a solid battlemage because a battlemage is supposed to draw out battles and win because they can survive fights while also doing decent damage. I'm not doing that at all with current Karma because of her damage options, lack of decision making, and mantra system.

Karma needs power stripped from all of her empowered abilities and more damage options in all parts of her kit. Karma's mantra system needs to be gutted and her old charge system, or something similar to it, needs to be put back on her so she can have the adaptability and decision making a true battlemage and Enlightened one needs. Karma's empowered Q needs to be completely reimagined to fit a battlemage and not have all of that power funneled into it and be blocked by half of the things in the game. Karma's W needs another use . . . an ally tether function or something . . . . Karma's empowered E needs to have the mass shielding COMPLETELY removed. When we look at other champions with shield abilities, they have to choose who they use their shield on and it required decent decision making. I also propose bringing back Shield Bomb, but only having it proc damage and become Shield Bomb when Karma uses it on herself. This would require Karma to choose to play as a support and shield an ally or go into the brink of battle and be the battlemage she is meant to be. The empowered E movement speed buff has always been the thing that was the most useful on her empowered E before the mass shield was added. There is completely no decision making in her current empowered E and adding shield enhancing items to make it stronger promotes her using that one ability itself. Having the ability to mass shield all allies is not unique in the game and quite frankly probably too strong on a champion. It's unique to Iron Locket Solari because it requires decision making to use the active and not be able to practically spam it like Karma can. Everyone can use the active on Iron Locket of Solari and that is the way it should be, but Karma shouldn't be able to, in a sense, do it twice.