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I do wish Riot would be tackling Sona/Karma/Lulu/Nami first

Dunal·1/24/2016, 11:50:06 AM·5 votes·1,175 views

I almost never have a reason to pick one of them over another. Only exception I can think of is choosing Lulu/Karma against Leona/Blitz because they are better at surviving burst/all-ins. Or if I'm early roaming more I'll go Nami/Karma. That's really it.

They all bring very similar things to their team and also play very similarly too (poke early and then be a utility bot later).

People complain about Soraka or Janna but at least they are uniquely amazing at the one thing they should be doing (healing and peel respectively). Only reason to pick the others is because they are general all-around utility bots with no clear purpose other than to just exist and be useful. Karma especially fits that description so much it hurts.

And yeah, I like bringing this up. =S

**EDIT: **I would personally:

Lulu: Buff her ult but remove the option to use it on herself. Possibly make her the "I'll make anyone a tank" pick. Make the ally effect on W contribute to that as well.

Nami: Give her powerful bonuses in the river. Make her the queen at contesting Dragon or Baron. But maybe overall a bit weaker outside of that.

Sona: Buff her E to ridiculous levels so that she's the 'movement speed' support. Remove the AP scaling but increase the base values to ludicrous levels. Tweak the other aspects of her kit as necessary.

Karma: I honestly would have no idea what the f*** to do with her at this point. And Karma players seem to love complaining about any changes made to her anyway. She's a fun, balanced champ but has zero identity. And people still can't even figure out what lane she's best in or should be in. Which would be a cool thing about her if she was unique... but it's not. Her contribution to her team is summed up by "She's useful to have around I suppose" as one guy said to me once.

Perhaps give Karma an entirely new niche such as buffing her team's damage output as well as contributing with her own (After all her name is Karma, which would indicate inflicting pain on others in some kind). Enemies hit by Q take increased damage from allies. When broken by an enemy champion, Karma's shield now provides a buff that increases damage dealt. Enemies rooted by Karma converts 20% of all damage received by allies (not Karma herself) to true damage. Things like that.

(Don't take these ideas overly serious -- they're just ideas after-all)

@Meddler or Repertoir will these champions be looked at, at any point?

8 Comments

Evenstar1/24/2016, 1:31:55 PM3 votes

This is the 18th thread that's surface for the week in regarding to a post that asks about Karma or discusses about her. Unfortunately, the moment the team sees Karma's name, they'll ignore her.

Anu3isII1/24/2016, 5:19:23 PM3 votes

In my opinion, Karma tends to be much more enjoyable in a solo lane. I don't know why, but she just feels better when she gets more gold/exp and doesn't have to snowball to be effective. The only reason you would play her as a support would be to poke your enemies hard and to be relatively safer (in terms of escaping/running away).

About Sona, she had a powerful identity in her auras before her rework, and Riot wanted to make them more "active". The big thing about her is that her abilities are much stronger when her team groups, and she is one of the few champions that can offer utility to her whole team. The only problem she has is that her E is not effective at all, and feels like a bad joke when you look at other MS buffs...

About Lulu... Her Pix kinda makes a huge difference, and her defensive abilities are very good at protecting an ally. Her poke is mediocre at best, and I don't really find her as good as a Janna from many points of view. But if you are able to build AP, her W becomes monstrous and your shield+ult kinda makes your ADC a deadly machine!

As for Nami, she is the most generalist support you can ever have. The only things that would make me choose her over the other champions you mentioned are her bubble(Q) and her potentially powerful heals(W). Difficult to land/use, but deadly in some cases. Her passive becomes noticeable when she gets some AP, and her ult is "meh" compared to Sona's.

delonix1/24/2016, 1:05:05 PM1 votes

Well, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

As far as your actual ideas for changes go, I don't think they're really in-line with what Riot has been doing with the reworks. You should try to identify things like champion identity, iconic abilities, and strategic niche and focus on that when rebuilding champions. To be fair, it looks like you tried to figure out what made the champions unique, but couldn't come up with anything.

To me, these four champions have some fairly unique mechanics in their kits. Karma starts with her R and uses it to empower her other abilities. Lulu has to choose whether to cast her abilities on allies or enemies. Sona has her auras. Nami is like the mirror of Janna; Nami uses heals instead of shields and Nami has engage tools instead of disengage tools.

They also have decently well defined strategic niches. Karma and Sona have a lot of overlap here, as they are both strong poke supports in the early game who transition to teamfight utility supports. Lulu is basically the "protect the puppy" support, although she often gets played in other lanes. Nami is a strong engage support, but plays much differently than the other engage supports like Leona and Thresh.

Miraweave1/24/2016, 5:03:24 PM1 votes

Well, Karma's honestly a more effective mid or top laner than support.

Lulu was the poke/peel support until they gutted her.

Sona's the high damage high scaling "support" who's only kind of a support because her kit's reliant on her ratios and she needs AP.

Nami is a fish.

IxtaliKing1/24/2016, 6:31:35 PM1 votes

Riot needs to treat Karma a little more like Orianna, she's a mage who offers utility. I strongly believe if they were to bring back Karma's fans (even if just one), her shield bomb and ally tethering on W with a new effect, Karma players in general would be satisfied.

qetzel1/26/2016, 5:14:58 PM1 votes

This is only a little necro... Sorry.

I don't think that niches need to be as deep as you do. You don't want champions to be too shoehorned. You need a reason to pick them, but if it is so great that you feel pushed into a certain playstyle, that is not good. If the champion is too good at what they do then it can cause frustration for the opponents as their options become very limited. If the champion is locked out of what they want to do (by bad communication or good enemy play) then the player can feel useless, which is not good design.

It may halp if I run you through how I see these champions.

Well. Riot haven't balanced Lulu around support for a while. They are trying to keep her viable - Frostfang changes - but not trying to make it her major role. She is a mid laner now, so is slightly different. Even so, nobody enables their allies like Lulu does. Nobody. If you want to buff your teammates, Lulu is the champion to pick.

You pick Nami for reengage - the bubble and the ultimate aren't great offensively, but they are good for turning an enemy engage into an ace for your team. She splits teams beautifully.

Karma you pick for ealry-mid game skirmishes - her Q does very good damage early and her mini Sivir ultimate helps map movement and rotations. In fact, her last mini-rework boosted this sort of play - if you want a roaming death ball in the support role, Karma is your gal

Sona... Not sure really. She could do with some power neutral changes, but how you'd do that without further pissing off her players on the Boards I don't know...

Little differences that are big enough to be noticed.

Now, perhaps reworks could improve upon that - it isn't perfect (for example Nami's heal doesn't fit and takes up a lot of her power budget, Karma is stuck looking like old Karma - almost two half champions (funny because of her duality thing) but it isn't quite as bad as the mages.