Commenting on Current Karma Changes (7.1)

A new year, a new season, a new patch, a new Karma?

Well, I guess not. Not many things have changed, but I am more interested in Riot's commentary on her. As some Karma mains have noted, communication about her issues are rare and as a community we are often left in the dark about what Riot plans for a champion in the future, how they currently see them, etc.

So, let's inspect what they wrote about Karma in the most recent patch 7.1

For almost a year, Karma’s enjoyed a slow build-up into becoming the go-to generalist support among League’s top players. This stems from a change made all the way back in 6.6, where we aimed to give her scaling a little more ‘oomph’ so Karma could feel appropriately rewarded for a strong performance. We’re happy with her scaling, but amping up Karma’s base shield in the very same patch led to a massive performance bump that few of her peers could step to. In light of her dominant laning strengths, we’re reverting Karma’s base shield to its previous effectiveness while keeping her growth throughout the game intact.

I remember patch 6.6 very vividly. The Karma community was mostly confused about all the buffs. This was the 4th of 4 straight number buffs in 7 months. I highligthed my worries publicly back then, but still had hopes that my predictions were wrong. My predictions being, that buffing her numbers instead of addressing her issues would lead to problems.

Put shortly: If a champion is kinda good at everything and you keep buffing them, of course they will become better at everything than most champions. As the Karma community kept asking for more direction to her kit and identity, Riot ignored it and just kept pushing her into the meta. Creating a very oppressive and boring presence, instead of an interesting champion, and stealing the show from other enchanters (poor Lulu).

For what it's worth I hope that Karma's rise in popularity brought her issues to the light of day, but I am also very inclined to say "We kinda told you so"

http://i.imgur.com/UNSopqd.png

Quickly addressing the change to Focused Resolve, Karma’s tether actually ticked for damage more often than similar spells. This meant that your natural counterplay (running away) was less effective than it should have been, since Karma would usually get most of the damage before breaking anyways. It’s important to note that while the overall damage of Focused Resolve is staying the same, losing one tick does interfere with her passive’s interaction with Mantra’s cooldown. We still think it’s an appropriate power-down for the Enlightened One paired with the hit to her shield, but we’ll be watching to make sure she doesn’t drop too far as a result.

Now this is where it gets confusing. Let's split this up, shall we?

Karma’s tether actually ticked for damage more often than similar spells.

And this is a problem why? I mean it's one of the few things keeping it from being a straight up copy from LeBlanc's/Morgana's tether, so I thought this was fine.

This meant that your natural counterplay (running away) was less effective than it should have been, since Karma would usually get most of the damage before breaking anyways

Quite the contrary. In my experience it either broke immediately (because you started casting at max range and someone left your range before the tether formed), someone would dash/blink aways immediately (taking only 1 tick) or someone didn't have mobility (and take all 3 ticks).

To my experience it happened really rarely, that the enemy:

• DIDN'T have a mobility spell they immediately used
• DID have a better speed buff than Karma that they used to counter Karma's E
• DID this to successfully break the tether after 1s, but before 2s

This means that those changes:

• slightly BUFF Karmas damage against anyone using a mobility spell to instantly break it (from 33% to 50%)
• keep the damage the SAME against anyone being unable to escape her (from 100% to 100%)
• slightly NERF the damage against anyone in those niche cases (from 66% to 50%)

I am not really complaining about this part, their assesment just seems wrong and it confuses me. How did they decide that this happened so often it was a problem? And how is "running away" an accepted counterplay to a champion that has a slow and a speed buff built into the kit? To me it would make sense if she ticked EVEN MORE OFTEN, to show a clear difference between breaking the tether early or late. But please, if you think I am wrong here, share your experience in the comments!

EDIT: Thinking about it; they probably wanted to syncronize the damage of W and the heal of RW, to make what happens more intuitive. But this would have been a better argument than what Riot presented here.

losing one tick does interfere with her passive’s interaction with Mantra’s cooldown

So you are aware of this "stealth" nerf to her passive - and in turn - her ultimate. I am just wondering.... why? Back in 5.10 you buffed her passive to make her scale better, this indirectly nerfs it again. Which could make sense, because under perfect conditions Karma can currently mantra Q TWICE in 3 seconds. Which is slightly ridiculous. I mean yes, under "perfect conditions" there are quite a few ridiculous champions out there, but still.

http://orig15.deviantart.net/fc0e/f/2012/184/f/2/league_of_legends___chibi_karma_by_tonnelee-d55v9b4.jpg

You know what?

I would have preferred you guys would have left in the shieldbomb instead of starting this buff-nerf nonsense on her. I don't understand why you removed a core mechanic from a champion anyways, to just give her a numbers buff. It makes no sense to me. I mean, I am very impressed with your balancing skills, Riot, but watching you guys keeping Karma from being either an insignificant no-one or an oppressive generalist feels like watching my little brother balance on a knife's edge. It looks very impressive but hurts watching.

So, can't we instead convince my little brother to quit the circus try to give Karma a well deserved niche as a battlemage/enchanter? Something she was, could be and should be? Something that is unclaimed to this day and could enrichen LoL while also making Karma more easy to handle? Isn't that something we all could profit from?

If you agree, please upvote and comment, so we can show Riot we care. If you disagree, please explain, so I can increase my understanding of Karma and her community.

Thanks :D!