Why Karthus feels hard to play.

Karthus is, lore-wise, one of the coolest characters ever. A man who forced himself through the power of his will to resist the primal urges of the undead and instead rise above all as a lich... he's just in general really awesome. However, when you play as this magnificent, sweet-tongued singer of death... it just doesn't feel right. http://champion.gg/champion/Karthus Sitting at a 47.59% win rate and a 0.75% pick rate, as well as a 0.03% ban rate (Probably a misclick while trying to choose Kalista), even his stats aren't anything to talk about. Sure, he's played in the LCS from time to time, but why is this magnanimously powerful lich of death so hard to play right now?

#1. Karthus doesn't fill a unique enough niche. In general, Karthus is a champion that needs to farm to hit his late game power surge, in which he can shred through teams with his E and his Q spam. However, even Cassiopeia does it better than him, able to be a lane bully and get free stats out of it regardless. Not to mention she can just spam poison fang. Not saying Cassiopeia is broken or whatnot, but it speaks volumes when she does Karthus's job in lane better than he does.

"But Mell, doesn't he have a global ultimate that can kill people?" I am aware of that, yes, that's half the reason I play Karthus. However, his ult is so strictly situational because of how little damage it does early on. You need your opponent to fill 4 requirements to use your ultimate:

1. Have at least 80-100 HP less than your ultimate's damage
2. Have pitiful amounts of MR
3. Not be regenerating health like a madman
4. Not have an ability or an ally that can shield them from the damage

On top of that, it's a 250 damage ability on a 300 second cooldown. It's unique, but it doesn't really contribute much unless his team deliberately sets up kills for him. Not to mention that if you Q during your passive form and still have enough time after the cast, you cannot ultimate until after the Q detonates. Leaving you limited time to ult. In general, it's a powerful ability on paper and a terrible ability in practice.

#2. Karthus has one of the most powerful yet difficult spells to utilize properly. Karthus's Q, Lay Waste, is the staple of his laning phase. Opponents will get tired of hearing the sound effect soon enough because of how much Karthus uses this to both farm and trade. However, both are effected because of how long it takes Defile to actually detonate. Avid players of Karthus would also notice that if it hits a single target, the Q is delayed by a fraction of a second. I'm not exactly sure if the damage goes off on time or not, but let's just assume it does and move on.

Defile never gains anything but a slight CD reduction and damage as you level it up. It would be a nice buff, since they decided to nerf the only way Karthus can slow down high mobility targets to hit them, if Q got a reduced delay over each level, maybe by .02 seconds or something. 0.5 seconds is way too long for something to detonate when trying to hit a target that can sidestep it with ease. Not to mention that it makes you STOP to cast the ability while you're already pretty darn slow against these assassins and engaging bruisers. With movement speed built into most of the AD items built nowadays, it's no wonder the mobility creep seems to have gotten worse.

#3. Karthus doesn't counter anyone, and cannot really carry games by himself. Karthus doesn't hard counter anybody. You'll see matchups like Talon VS Leblanc where Leblanc is at a disadvantage, but when somebody says that Karthus counters another champion, it means that he can actually farm in a lane against them. And I still don't get how he counters Leblanc, Faker.

As for not being able to carry games, he relies on his team extensively to help him survive and lock down targets for him to burst them down. Karthus has some of the most unreliable cast times in the game, having to wait a good 1.5-2 seconds just to get a good Q spam going. In general, Karthus relies on his team a lot, and that's okay and all, but the reason WHY he feels hard to play and overall pretty bad is because he cannot single-handedly carry a game like a Jax or an Ahri.

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In general, these are the reasons why Karthus feels bad to play at the moment. Feel free to comment, and let me know what Karthus build you enjoy playing! And here's a poll for the hell of it.