Concerns about Karthus, from a self proclaimed Karthus Main

Intro I started playing league around the time Yasuo was on the page. I do not remember how long after i started playing but my introduction to was from outside of league Warning Extreme and crude humor. From this It brought my attention that there was a champion who could ult everyone on the map at once. From there I started to save points to buy him. I instantly learned that I sucked at playing . He also received a VU along with which made landing Q's easy, but also made them extremely easy for the enemy to avoid. Fast forward a few seasons and I came to realize I'm decent at , but he has to many counters against his ult and during his laning phase. had (probably still does) a low pick rate and a low ban rate (not any more +15% from time of writing) to the point I never had to worry about picking him. I even used his lack of popularity to my advantage from laners not knowing the range or damage from my abilites to ulting other lanes who just barely made it out of a bad engage. I used to take him into rank early this season, but the amount of damage, the amount of counters, I quickly stopped playing him. According to websites i have about 40% win rate in rank with him. Towards the middle/end of the season I stopped playing rank since I knew I could not get into Plat, so I spammed normal draft and Karthus as well. I tried following builds that had a high win rate, but they didn't fit my play style, so i mix and matched until I built one I liked, now according to the league client i have +60% win rate on Karthus Mid.

Karthus Gaining Attention From Riot There has been a history of Riot nerfing a champion because of an interaction that had with an item ( and red smite comes to mind) only then to change the item and not revert the champions to a previous state. Other times if they nerf the items instead of the few champions who can abuse them ( and almost every new jungle item) And because Karthus has an outed and what many see as "OP" kit, I fear that he will get nerf first before any changes to Dark Harvest or any other rune he has a strong interaction with.

Dark Harvest OP, Nerf Karthus Let me get this out of the way, I have tried Dark Harvest on Karthus. It can be strong, but not on his ult. Dark Harvest early game has very weak damage and Karthus, unless fed, does not deal enough damage for his ult to be a threat.When late game rolls around, he has enough damage to carry in some cases. This was true before dark harvest. Unlike most champions Karthus can stack dark harvest from 5 potential people with the push of a button. Laners have to get either the enemy lane opponent or the enemy jungler below half health to get going, meanwhile Karthus can just have other people do the work and ult to get a stack, kill or no kill he becomes stronger. Then ,because of runes, his ult gets a sudo shorter cooldown per assist that he gets. Another thing that might surprise people, Dark Harvest is not the best on his ult. Sure the one target below 50% has a higher chance of dying which helps, but Dark Harvest is way more dangerous on his E or Q. E seems obvious, a burst of damage that can reset when Karthus is dead so in team fights he becomes a death sentence for those fighting around him. His Q seems to have an unintentional interaction, When a target gets hit alone they get double the damage. So normally if they get hit above 50% in a crowd, DH does not proc. If they are alone, the first Q procs, checks to see if they are alone and triggers again for the double damage. This does proc DH making his Q nuke people for more damage than what they thought it would do.

Surprisingly Dark Harvest is not the strongest Rune on Karthus. Most sites say it's Aery but I say it's predator. Dark Harvest is a problem, it makes the skill floor for Karthus lower, this combined with the gold he can get early and the extended laning phase, this late game champion can receive a power spike around 20 minutes into the game instead of 30 now. He has a higher ban rate now because people don't want/know how to deal with him (hint for ad players helps you survive his ult in the early stages ). The other problem is that people who know how to play him (all 12 of us) use this lowered skill floor to get stronger faster making his current win rate overall about 55% at the time of writing this. Now back to what i wrote in the beginning, Dark Harvest is not the strongest Rune on Karthus, I would say it's Predator. How does a rune that gives you movement speed strong on a champion with no ms boost or dashes? Predator gives Karthus around +400-600 ap damage on his ult (to one target or all I don't know) which predator also states gives you +25% ap on your next ability which essentially is another death cap. I have easily done an average of 1.5k damage on my ult, the funny thing is that's how I start the fight. I ult and the enemy team either backs, loses the fight, or has to use spell shields/ hourglass before the fight starts.

Get on with it Karhus over the years has not changed. Heck they even nerfed his W so he really hasn't received any direct boost. I do not think that now that Karthus is gaining attention and strong (due to runes and items) that he should get nerfed. Why should he get punished for making it to late game and dealing a lot of damage when people like Nasus, Vayne, Jax, or Irelia are allowed to stay strong as a reward for playing right and surviving. If you nerf Karthus Riot you know you are going to eventually just nerf the items and not revert any of his changes. And it's not like Karthus does not have any counters, every new champion released now has a way to survive his ult, and his laning phase/AA is difficult for him and easy to abuse by the enemy. If Karthus was not a problem before Dark Haverst (IE Aery being a higher winrate before pre-season and Predator damage not causing major concern) then please fix/ change the runes before you change him.