Is Karma a Mage or Support Now?

She seems confused, which makes me confused.

She has this massive amount of scaling that you can't really work with if you go full support. And somehow, even with the scaling you fall off HARD in the later half of the mid game. i.e. a 700 AP Karma can do a W+RQ combo for 2,725 damage, but this still tends to come off badly, her W has a 90% AP ratio and 260 base damage, that is a LOT, but you hardly ever see their health going down when using this ability.

Her shield has a lower base and scaling than Janna's shield while providing an arguably worse additional effect in the form of the speed buff. She makes up for this by having a 2 second lower cooldown and a lower mana cost. But the low base combined with the low AP ratio has me wondering if they are basically screaming "ULT THIS" in your ear, since it literally more than doubles the shield, makes 50% of the final shield AoE (everyone gets MORE shield than the base shield provides) and provides a mini-Sivir ult. But at that point this thing has a 110% scaling + 440 base for the main target. Again, it's telling you to build AP. But as soon as you ult this thing, you lose a gigantic chunk of your AP's worth in that you can't ult your Q. The Ult of your Q is literally half your damage. I'm serious, with 700AP, the ult of your Q is 1,105. Your W and non-ult Q together is 1,362. You gained a shield, lost half your damage.

That's fine, recharge your ult. But they removed the ability for the shield to recharge the ult. As far as I can tell they didn't even do this intentionally. They just removed the shield's damage to buff the shield part and didn't consider that she lost any recharge, let alone the possibility of 15 seconds reduced cooldown immediately after a shield.

You'll notice I have not mentioned the ulted W. You give up either a large AoE shield or half your damage to gain... up to 1.25 seconds extra root on one target and a self heal. It's awful. You use this when running away from a solitary enemy, maybe.

So she has abilities that demand AP regardless of her position, but she also loses a lot of protection or a lot of damage depending on her choices. She needs a ton of MPen for her damage to remain relevant into the late game, which is even more different from a normal "AP Support" build, and using this Pen to deal damage means your just lost out on a big shield, which no one wants to lose.

Oh, and just for the sake of asking, why is her tether break range on her W the exact same range as it's cast range? This increases for the ult, but not the base ability? Is this intended, is it a bug? If the enemy is running away and you are chasing, they can actually break this in the moment she stops to cast it.

Few suggestions:

• More tether range on W
• Give the shield a way to recharge her ult (Reduce cooldown when the shield absorbs X damage? This would reward her using the ult version when more people are getting hit. The base shield could do the same, but obviously, single target, so less possible cooldown)
• Give her R+W a useful effect, and remember it's competing with HALF her damage and a mega shield.
• Maybe allow her to use W on allies like you used to. This would give her two support and two offense abilities. Much more Ying and Yang.
• Q is pretty much fine. Big damage on the ult, but only if they stay in it.
• Let her deactivate her ult, the same way Heimerdinger can. If it times out or she deactivates, it just gives it back. I can't see why she can't have this.