Karma is TOO balanced. It's hurting her.

FistOfSharkiesha··6 votes·928 views

Disclaimer: I'm a Karma main and she's my favorite champion in the game. I'm saying this not because I want her buffed or nerfed, but because I want her to have her own identity.

I never thought I would say this about a champion but Karma is too balanced. She is the least toxic, least over/underpowered champion in the game. However, this is sort of an issue... Because of her kit, she has only 2 forms of damage that don't scale too well with her AP, and her shield is a joke. The MS buff is nice but look at most other support's shields and most of their ap ratios are even better for it.

So this puts Karma in an awkward spot. You'll find that because she is equally poke, mobility and peel that she doesn't excel anywhere. Put her top lane mid or support and she'll do basically the same thing and hardly change the game. She just lacks an identity. Janna has better peel, a waaaaaaaay better shield, and she has access to an ultimate in itself rather than an R that buffs another ability slightly. Sona has poke and buffs. Morganna has a much longer snare, a better shield, and a far better ultimate. Lulu has better peel, about equal poke, and better buffs. Karma is just decent at everything. Regardless of what people say, I also think she has very low reward for her skill cap. Her Q seems to have an even smaller hitbox than Morganna's Q, it has a very small explosion radius and doesn't even explode if it doesn't hit something, and you pretty much have to waste your shield to get the snare from her W.

Can we just give her some identity? She needs either higher base damage lower ratios or higher ratios lower base damage. Right now she is just too balanced. Perhaps even changing her passive or cooldowns would be helpful. It's just hard to pinpoint a particular weakness on her other than pointing out the fact that she's not really strong at anything.

13 Comments

Fitz n The Fool3 votes

2 options:

  1. Revert her to old Karma -or-
  2. Give her 2 charges on her R
FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

I'd like her to have charges on her R and to also have a useful passive. Her passive is completely useless as support.

Ale non è male2 votes

The problem of Karma isn't that she is too balanced, is that empowered W is useless in a fight (and standard W is barely better) and 90% of the time you would need both his empowered Q and E in a battle but you can only pick once to use and thus you has to probably keep it for Q, which make you very weak in giving protection to allies while letting you just become an empowered Q spammer which make you not much useful for all Mantra CD when you miss it. Side note, this making Karma a Q spammer also make her at risk of being OoM in the crucial moment of a fight

Karma should have 3 different empowered abilities that should all feel worthy to situationally use, but this isn't just the case right now, and so Karma ends up falling hard in late game, so that you haven't assured a big enough advantage early to mid game you are completely fu***d and you'll lose the game

jmonster1292 votes

yeah, its evident that she is a product of riot's early experience with large scale reworks

she'd either need a new passive, or some buffs to it, like assists and kills giving her additional CD reduction on ult, maybe at the cost of having mantra have a longer cooldown

or give mantra multiple charges, and have her actually have to get a point at level 6 to get her mantra and then get an additional mantra slot the second time she puts a point in her R, and the third point improves her the empowered abilities so her late game mantras will be more effective

but yeah, she still has the old problem of lacking direction, sort of jack of all trades, but not a master of any,

her mantra abilities are very strong early, but pretty lackluster late

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

I think the issue is most people don't understand that mantra has very real tradeoffs. A slight buff for another ability every 40 seconds. That's almost the cooldown of several ultimates with huge impacts on the game. Her passive is worthless as support.

So this leaves her with 2 forms of meh damage with meh ap ratios. 1 form of potential crowd control if you manage to root them which usually means wasting your shield to keep up with them. That's it. That's her kit. It's fun, it's balanced, but she needs more.

Rebonack1 votes

Oh god please don't.

Karma is literally the worst champion to lane against, especially if you're melee anything.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

Howso? Her Q doesn't go through minions making it extremely easy to dodge. She loses all of her power if she throws a W at you. She has no power spike and actually severely falls behind at level 6. For a champion with an innate ultimate, she is never powerful enough to offset her lategame lack of power. You have to be stupid to all in a Karma at level 2 or 3 but from there she's easy to deal with.

The issue I have is that other champions do what she does better. Leblanc has a snare and a shit ton of burst damage as support (yes it works). Nidalee has crazy poke. Nearly every support has a better shield/buff. Why do you have a problem with Karma?

SmokingPuffin2 votes

Karma is very good against melee because W is amazing targeted kiting and RW is amazing emergency healing. Bruisers hate her.

FERViD RAGE1 votes

The biggest issue with her kit, is that she does a massive amount of damage every like 30 seconds compared to every other burst champion's 10-15 seconds. She relies on her Mantra'd Q way too often, her leash does like no fucking damage, and her shield is garbage compared to lulu's.

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

This is exactly my issue. Her Q does pathetic damage for such a difficult skillshot and if you waste your shield so you can leave your leash on them long enough to root them (for a pathetic amount of time) you've done poor damage and have used your entire kit. Miss a mantra'd Q and you're a sitting duck. This is especially bad as support, where you don't make use of your passive. She needs her passive reworked most of all I think, but like someone else suggested, giving 1 of her abilities 2 charges would be amazing.

ModKnightsKemplar1 votes

I think her identity is more as a support mid. I think of her competition as Lulu and Ori, because they are mids that you choose to support a hyper-carry bot lane, or possibly an adc and carry top lane.

Not disagreeing with you at all, just asking you if you've considered this perspective. Thoughts?

FistOfSharkiesha1 votes

I included that in the OP. She can even be a top laner and although its stupid she can be a decent jungler. My problem with her is that other champs do everything she does better. Lulu and Morgana are most comparable to her and they have similar AP ratios but better shields and an ultimate.

The Bard Dog1 votes

karma is a god. you go from hard bursting early/mid to hard supporting late. her shield is not useless and an r shield gives a massive move speed boost, and shields your team to boot. land your q's and you dont have to worry about mantra cd, and r+w is meant to heal you if you're low. and good at isolating targets to kill.

she's all around strong in every facet of the game.

not to mention she's damn near ungankable.

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