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Why the Current Karma Changes on the PBE are Good

Sugar Momma··16 votes·1,550 views

This is coming from a Karma main who's played over 300 games with Karma this season and who knows this champion very well.

I know a lot of people are nervous/apprehensive over the proposed changes to Karma on the PBE. This post is meant to look at these changes objectively and explain why they are actually going to help Karma quite a bit.

Karma is a wonderful champion, but she has issues at the moment as a support. She doesn't have enough utility scaling to justify picking her over similar champs like Janna , Sona , or Lulu .I love my mid Karma and top Karma (which are fine atm), but I've been missing my support Karma. The changes on the PBE not only help support Karma but don't change mid/top Karma.

The change to her R-W is in addition to the healing component; it is not being removed. Basically instead of her R-W doing bonus damage, it now roots for longer. Honestly, this is more in line with the spirit of the skill. R-W was always a bait skill. Now you can bait even harder with the longer root ON TOP of the heal.

The shield on her R-E is going to be enormous. On live it's about as strong as locket, with a lot of AP, a bit stronger. Now, she will be giving close to a Janna shield to the entire team...

The loss of dmg on her R-E is offset by the buffs to her passive late game. Not sure how the numbers will work out, but everything looks fine. Honestly, sometimes you don't even damage any enemies with R-E because you use it to engage (much like item 3069 ).

Two things affect solo lane Karma here. The loss of dmg on her R-E affects her because she loses the wave clear from it. However, she can still wave clear just fine with her Q and R-Q (which thank god are being left untouched).

Although she lost this wave clear, her W is getting its AP ratio buffed to 0.9 from 0.6. This means her MAIN damage combo (and the main damage combo for support Karma), Q - W - RQ is being buffed by 0.3 AP ratio, which is huge!! That'd be like if Lux's ult went from a 0.7 AP ratio to a 1.0 AP ratio...You'd be able to tell the difference.

I'm sure some of the numbers will still get tweaked. Also shout out to the W change to affect monsters!! Loving that.

17 Comments

aquaticwonder6 votes

Karma Jungle incoming! summoner 11

These are the best iterations of the changes that have been presented.

The issue with the previous changes were the removal of damage without adequate compensation to the rest of her kit. The buff to W allows for her to have sufficient damage to solo lane.

Also, I just wanted to say that I am really excited for the new support Karma and I am really excited for the RE mega shield.

Sugar Momma1 votes

Karma jungle 4 life

Karma summoner 11

Brotha2 votes

Only thing that sucks about this is she is going to receive a LOT of attention, people will spam her and then she will get the gutting the community was crying against.

I love Karma, she's my only AP toplaner I can play well, and midlane she's my answer for Zed/Talon/Leblanc/Diana/Akali if we need ap. She is my disengage support as well as my poke support. She is the support I take if I am not confident my midlaner will be useful or if my adc is inexperienced.

I was really nervous about these changes considering she's a pretty important part of my personal champion pool, this thread relieved some of the stress.

Sugar Momma2 votes

Glad I could help explain it! Riot hasn't been doing the best job of that unfortunately...

I don't think she will get that much attention tbh. This isn't a full-on rework or something, and her kit is pretty binary in that either you like it or you don't.

Partholonian1 votes

{quoted}

Only thing that sucks about this is she is going to receive a LOT of attention, people will spam her and then she will get the gutting the community was crying against.

Only if the people spamming her have a 60% winrate. Which I doubt they will.

Rinky Dinky1 votes

I dont feel like that will happen.

Gragas and Sejuani are a prime example. I expected them to be gutted, but alas, riot has not gave them a beating with the morello nerfinomicon just yet. Well, not a fatal one at least.

They instead look to buff other champions or items, or nerf certain items.

Earl Eulrich1 votes

She has a lot of Issues, she just doesn´t scale that well as a Sololaner currently - and they just amplify that further by taking away the dmg from w/e mantra. You need to deal some dmg in order to be a viable mage later on in the game, with these changes she just adds less utility than Lulu and less dmg - and has the less frightening laningphase to play against anyway. So i don´t see how this will ever help her out, besides as a non-competitive support. Shoehorning her into one role is really not the path they should go down - or if they want to do that, they should just (re-)release old Karma as a new Champ.

Sugar Momma4 votes

She's not being shoehorned into one role.

She actually scales VERY well as a solo laner at the moment. Once you played Karma with 600+ AP come back and tell me how hard it is for the enemy team to do anything ;)

Earl Eulrich1 votes

Her damage is already too focused into the mantra-q currently, which is rather easy to block with a solid frontline. Yea, if they just let you poke it´s solid, and if you get a good mantra into the backline it´s rather massive - but there are already some picks that do both things better than her (e.g. Lulu and Lux) currently, and this changes will only make the situation worse.

Sugar Momma2 votes

Karma is not meant to nuke the backline though, although she certainly is capable of it.

Not every mage is supposed to 100 - 0 squishies. To play mid/top Karma effectively, you should help peel for your adc most of the time honestly. The amount of dmg you do combined with your utility make it very hard for your carries to die, especially if you have another support.

The Loveless1 votes

Not meant to? Says who?

jmonster1291 votes

[{quoted}](name=Don Eulrich,realm=EUW,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=Qi3Eiijm,comment-id=000100000000,timestamp=2015-05-18T22:14:50.120+0000)

Her damage is already too focused into the mantra-q currently, which is rather easy to block with a solid frontline. Yea, if they just let you poke it´s solid, and if you get a good mantra into the backline it´s rather massive - but there are already some picks that do both things better than her (e.g. Lulu and Lux) currently, and this changes will only make the situation worse.

yeah, it is very easy to cockblock, which is why current karma can sometimes benefit from using her RE to try and hit the backline, although this isn't all that easy to pull off either, the thing with current karma is that you really feel dependent on that 1 mantra use, like you really have to make that ONE R count

newer karma gives you a bit more to work with, whereas if you can't land an RQ to hit the backline, then casting RE is a great option while you wait for that vulnerability, it'll grant a massive shield to everyone on your team with a speed buff, and with the buffs to her passive, you can fire off Qs and snare someone with a w to get another mantra back up rather quickly

Drukyul1 votes

Scarizard may have been a dick with the rework, but at least they kept some semblance of the shield bomb. Fuck these changes.

A Miss Fortune1 votes

Glad you cleared it up, I was intending to buy Karma really soon as a mid laner. She seems really strong as a mid laner and obviously was made to be one despite her mainly being played as a support? I thought these were direct nerfs to her mid lane viability while buffs to her support utility.

Anyways, good thing to know that these seem more like buffs at the moment than nerfs, still hoping to buy Karma in the next few days as a mid laner since my only ones I enjoy are Viktor, Cassiopeia, and Lulu.

Sugar Momma1 votes

I'd highly recommend Karma as a mid laner!! She takes a while to learn well (you won't win the majority of your first 20 or so games with her mid) but she is very rewarding and helps you on other champions a lot.

I'd say these changes neither buff nor nerf mid Karma but they definitely buff support Karma!

Rinky Dinky1 votes

Don't forget! Karma jungle is on its way~!

The healing from W is still intact as far as we know, as everytime the changlist is released, the disclaimer reads: **This is to be compared to live. Previous changes were reverted **

jmonster1291 votes

yeah I'm really tired of hearing so many negative complaints about the changes especially when they sound so good and they haven't even had a chance to play with the changes

(especially how so many karma players see them as a nerf when its really a huge buff)

like lategame RE is gonna be ridiculous, as support or even more so as mid karma, like the shields are gonna be huge and negate so much damage,

Current mid Karma's RE doesn't have much use outside of wave clearing, yeah, sure you could use it to try and hit the back line of the enemy team, but you need something to cast RE on and the range isn't that great without good team coordination/positioning, now it seems like if you can't land an RQ to the enemy squishes, using RE to protect your team until you have an opening actually makes sense since its actually a good ability now, not to mention the passive buffs <3

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