I recently picked up playing Karthus and I've been having a blast so far. One thing I've noticed is that his Q does crazy amounts of dmg and his all in is nearly impossible to outplay at level 2 without summoners.
With the nerfs to Cassiopeia I'm afraid that soon he will be looked at and nerfed. Which would make him completely unviable.
Riot pls don't make him any more dead!
Sir Fuzzi1 votesNerfed? No, no... he suffers against mobility and anything that can outrange him can basically put him out for the laning phase. He has no closer, he has no CC and he has no forward-dump burst and his damage is almost entirely sustained which means if he can only trickle it in, he's going to suffer bad. Rylai's gives him great sticking power, but his slow is gawky and can be worked around. It also won't stop something that's gotten away in the same way some harder CC could. If he gets nerfed, he'll fall out of the game completely. It's bad enough that both AP and AD now have items that can completely ignore his (180 sec cooldown) ult.
If anything, I'd wait for new runes; if they're going to change oddballs like Karthus who aren't strict meta slaves right now, they'll do it when new runes are out and affecting them. I'd guess meta champs get brushed up and along right now as well as outliers who are under/overperforming egregiously, but they probably don't want to rebalance for these runes, then release S8 runes, and then rebalance for those.
In the mean, enjoy Karthus! You may experience difficulties later in higher-ranked/placed games where mobility-intensive champs tend to be more popular as concurrent with the general meta.
Bishasaurus Flex1 votesYeah Ive only really had trouble against Yasuo. When he comes in I turn my E on and he backs off then I get a free Q. I had one Yasuo last night keep coming in when I toggled it off, then I'd just toggle it back on lol. The only champs that would outrange him are Lux, Syndra (stun and W only), Orianna-ish, Azir, Zed (only when he throws his shruiken thingies), maybe I'm missing some champs. His slow is kinda bleh but you're guaranteed to hit a Q or 2, it's good to stop ganks as well. Idk I'm bad and only got to Gold 5 on my main account before it was banned (RIP).
The new runes, from what I've seen, have a lot of movement speed boosts and could help him out in the mobility department. There was another one that I saw that pretty much gave champs a free Hexdrinker shield which kinda has me scared for all burst Mages.
Like you said I guess we will have to see. I've see Bbobbo play Karthus and it's insane how good he is with his Q's.
BobaFlautist1 votesHe's not "too strong" but a good Karthus can be a terror, especially if he runs exhaust.