Lets take a moment to RIP the RIP maker

So lets take a quick moment to give glory where it belongs. Played back in Season 1 and Season 2 because he was very strong and had a very good ulti.

Fast Forward dashes later and new items later.

Lets take a moment to analyse what I see as inherent weaknesses for Karthus.

1: Dashes; Reason= Q is a delayed damage action. E is only reliable but takes too much mana in the early game. W doesn't do anything because it is generally the last skill that most people Max.

2: Items; Reason= You have Steraks for tanks that need to build tank for AD champions because is a joke, Maw because magic shield, Edge of Night (the channel is shorter than the channel for karthus's ulti) Rylia's Nerf, Needing to build a Tear, etc.

3: Ulti cancelling interactions; Reason= Kindred Ulti, Taric Ulti, Tryndamere Ulti (to be fair this is fair), Kayle ulti(Still fair), Zilean Ulti(super fair), Edge of Night, Bard Ulti (pretty fair), Zhonya's (Fair), Maw, Steraks, Magic Resist, etc.

Just saying that I'm pretty sure karthus is only played into good match ups in any of the higher elos. I doubt that I will see Karthus picked into a Zed or LeBlanc or Xerath.

I've been talking about Karthus for a while and there are some really easy fixes to him to make him viable.

Passive- Add in champions within 300 units of karthus take 10% true damage + have their armor and magic resist cut by 15/25/35 Q instant cast (no delay) when E is active. Everything else is still the same. So it is punishing and rewarding for karthus to instantly Use Q. W (Wall of Pain, doesn't do damage, so why is it called wall of pain?) - Make it like Taliyah, whenever a champion dashes through it (and include blink) Deal damage, and have it for each time they blink/dash through it. Making it a tool for him to deal with assassins etc. Obv Cooldown would have to be raised. E have the cost of the E scale per 1.5 seconds of it being active and also slows karthus from 5% per second up to a max of 15% after 4.5 seconds. R Increase the cooldown by 10-20 seconds per rank, have it hit through any invincibility that are not single target. Its pretty funny to be called the death singer when everything counters it.

I am slightly tired but I felt like this should again be reminded to @meddler that karthus is a champion that actually needs some loving, and shouldn't be a counter pick only champion in solo queue.