Karthus is Terrible (Former Karthus Main)

Back in Season 3 I started to main Karthus towards the 3rd part of the ranked season. I played with + Revive and went double scaling items ( + every game). It was fantastic fun to play. Every matchup was exciting because you had a chance to outplay counters or outright stomp other mages if they didn't respect your damage and pushed far down the lane.

Since then, every season has made it worse and worse for Karthus players. The VU nerfed his Q by making the particle match the hitbox. Riot got rid of Revive. They've changed the items for mid laners over and over again since S3 and CDR is an overly abundant stat, making champs that counter Karthus only better at out-trading him. Riot reworked the "immobile mage" class across the board, except for Karthus. This in the same season they nerfed his only form of CC/utility. Arguably one of the highest skill cap champions in the game doesn't work. I used to reach 800-1000 AP in games consistently if I got to full build, depending on Dragon/Baron buffs. The same builds now yield far less and the somewhat quicker pace of games this season makes a double scaling build unrealistic at best. That is compounded by the fact that you absolutely need post W nerf.

The core issue here is most ADCs have more utility than Karthus. He still can do plenty of damage, but that's his only contribution to a team comp. He has no mobility or immunity or hard CC built into his kit, so his damage needs to be powerful...and it isn't. The Q is where most of my issues lay. It is, at its core, a great ability. It's also the majority of his damage. When a champ is only good at doing damage, why is it ridiculously hard to land a Q on a careful opponent at level 1 when they don't even have ? So you have to wait for them to lock into an animation to land it in most cases or settle for the half damage if you harass them while they are in their minion wave. The issue there is Karthus is also locked into the animation. 's Q is a similar ability in function, but she's able to move while casting. has a similar Q but the delay is a tenth of a second shorter and she gets a movespeed buff for hitting an enemy champ with it. Both of these champs also have slows and stuns in their kits and are still able to put out just as much damage. An opponent needs to really miscalculate something or opt into a really bad fight to die to Karthus, whereas most carries with a lead can force the issue.

Yeah you can pick up free kills from anywhere on the map if you have ult and get through the channel, but it has such a long cooldown on a champ that doesn't really build CDR and a massive mana cost as well.

I haven't experimented that much with new items this season just because playing him is so unrewarding in a lot of cases. Maybe I'm missing out on something, but I doubt it. Even if you "found the way" to get Karthus functional in this season, you're still likely much better off playing another mage to start with. Since when did this become more beautiful than this ?

**TLDR ** is trash and it isn't getting any better because Riot spends more time reworking over and over.