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Karma Rework Suggestion

iSeaSalt··6 votes·736 views

I recently bought Karma, and I've realised she's really fun to play. However, I've also noticed that she's really lacking compared to other supports, such as Lulu and Sona. I know, she's different, she has another playstle and blah blah blah. After scrolling the boards to search for some Karma related discussions, I came up with a great idea about her W (perhaps a bit broken...?)

Rework: Enemy champions who pass throuh the tether (W) will also be "chained" to Karma. When the champion the spell was actually cast on gets rooted, the remaining affected ones also gets rooted at the same time. It sounds a bit complicated, I'll describe an example:

I cast my W on enemy Ezreal. The tether will last 2 seconds before he gets rooted. After one second, enemy Sona accidently passes through the tether, which results in her also getting "chained" to me. When two seconds has expired Ezreal AND Sona gets rooted. Of course both can break the link by moving too far away, but if you're good at positioning, it won't happen (unless they flash away of course). Now you get it?

This rework will allow her to use more of her slow/speed boost potential. She can for example W an enemy champion and then thanks to her speed boost shield/slowing skillshot, catch up to two other enemy champions, which results in locking down 3 enemy champions instead of one. This ability can be a bit of op in teamfights because Karma is potentially capable of rooting the entire enemy team for 3.25 seconds after only 2 seconds, but I think she deserves to be capable of doing so because she's not THAT op otherwise. This rework would thereby strengthen her teamfight potential (or 1v5 potential haha), which is something she really lacks (except for that AoE shield, but I personally think it's boring to be a shield bot in teamfights).

PLEASE give me your opinions! I'd really appreciate that! And if you got other awesome rework suggestions for Karma, comment! I promise I'll read through everything :)

14 Comments

IxtaliKing3 votes

I think keeping the 3.25s root is a bad idea. Firstly, Karma was never supposed to be a lockdown champ, Riot giving her that bonus was a mistake to begin with. Secondly, she has nothing in her kit to take advantage of it making her even more team dependant than she already was.

I could support the idea of her having a potential AoE root on her RW tether, but at no more than 0.75s and that would be mostly be for the feeling of weight/power it gives.

Applying this change whilst leaving the rest Karma as it is wouldn't be good for her, and changing Karma to accommodate this change would alienate newer Karma players as well as further alienating older Karma players.

So while I agree with your idea of putting some power into W, I think we need to find of way of doing this which is satisfying for Karma players and fair for her enemies. A 3.25s single target root is bad enough as it is, but as an AoE that would be incredibly obnoxious. Imagine being that Sona in your example getting touched by the tether and having effectively 1 second to escape before being afk'd by a 3.25s super root... Don't know about you but I'd certainly faceplant my keyboard lol

iSeaSalt1 votes

I understand, thank you for changing My mind hahaha. I've got a few questions though.

  1. You say that Karma isn't a lock down / cc support, then what kind of support is she then?
  2. Whatever you answered the first question, what could strengthen her in that role without making her alienating/broken. because I feel whatever role she even has, Karma is a bit lacking overall.
  3. If riot doesn't rework her and we have to play her as she is, do you have any tips to play her? Like really complicated tips so that when I play her people will be like: woah, well that's a pro karma right over there!
IxtaliKing1 votes

I understand, thank you for changing My mind hahaha. I've got a few questions though.

Sure :)

  1. You say that Karma isn't a lock down / cc support, then what kind of support is she then?

Karma has always been more about dealing damage whilst healing and shielding, with minimal CC, before her rework she could only slow. Her rework introduced a root to her kit, but loosely held onto some aspects of Karma keeping the shield bomb until 5.10, but only giving her a self heal on her RW.

  1. Whatever you answered the first question, what could strengthen her in that role without making her alienating/broken. because I feel whatever role she even has, Karma is a bit lacking overall.

I believe a few things could be done improve Karma overall in both her roles:

  • Making RQ a ground targeted projectile (think Lux E). Improves her mid laning by giving her better wave management and target selection. The improved target selection would benefit support Karma as she could use it as a control tool at all points in the game.

  • Giving RW an ally function. Being able to heal an ally with RW would add another layer of decision making to Karma that would be really benefial to her. If you wanted an AoE root on Karma, this would be the place to put it; on the allied tether. For example I always propose giving Karma a flat 1.5s root on her W and reverting the bonus root back to bonus damage, from here we could enemies who touch the tether take 50% of the total damage and root. But that would only be on the ally cast, enemy cast would remain entirely single.

  • Returning her shield bomb. It was a flexible ability which had an optimal use and lesser uses, as well as having a place in every lane she is played. Unlike the current version which isn't used in any lane aside from bot until possibly late game.

  1. If riot doesn't rework her and we have to play her as she is, do you have any tips to play her? Like really complicated tips so that when I play her people will be like: woah, well that's a pro karma right over there!

If you're playing her mid, RQ the caster minions 1st thing when they get to lane, then Q them again to kill them when it's off CD. She can push quite hard at lvl 1, so it's best to take advantage of that. As a support literally all you do is poke and shield your ADC.

One of Karma's biggest problems is her lack of depth and skill expression, there really isn't much that anyone will notice except perfectly predicting your Qs every time or buffering RW for a perfect clutch heal to bait. The difference between a new Karma and a vet all depends on their overall experience at the game, meaning a 1st time Diamond Karma could out play a Silver Karma main simply due to game knowledge.

alekzu3 votes

Giving this mechanic on her RW and also the ability to interact with her allies, where they get healed by passing trough the tether, would be probably better imo.

I like that her ordinary W hurts enemies and when you RW it has a defensive mechanic which heals her. But it's a very selfish ability. So instead of having that boring extra root which Karma can't make use of she can have a tether that interacts with other champions, allies and enemies alike. It's just that imo Karma is lacking AOE presence in teamfights other than her RE and that is the reason why you become shieldbot. Because you are not usefull if you W only 1 target or RQ 1-2 or if lucky 3 targets mostly.

Expanding your idea: enemies passing trough the tether take dmg once(half in comparison to the main target)and get rooted for half the duration after the tether ends meanwhile allies get healed once(again half healing in comparison to Karma). This also allows Riot to give back her shield bomb. And all this would enforce a choice:

  • mega dmg from RE or less dmg from RW but with CC?
  • permanent heal from RW or timed shield from RE but also movement speed for re-positioning?
Final Spark Lux2 votes

Hmm lets see. Longest snare in the game turned into an AoE snare dependent on positioning, which is covered because she has 60% movespeed buff. No thanks.

(Yes, it actually is the longest snare in the game, sitting at just over 3 seconds with mantra'd W at max rank for both the snare and mantra)

iSeaSalt1 votes

if you'd keep the AoE root concept, what would you do to balance her then?

Final Spark Lux1 votes

I'm not sure I'd even keep the AoE root concept. Just sounds like it could potentially bring way too much power. It would basically be a morg ult, but it would land faster (on secondary targets) and be harder to break because you have the MS from your shield. I personally don't think she needs any changes. She's good at what she does, and that's blocking a metric ton of damage on a single target, decently shielding everyone else around, speeding them up etc.

I think if you want to be locking down a bunch of people, you should give morg a try. She's about to be godlike again with the changes to the runes coming up. She'll be able to proc new stormraiders while building support. It's gonna be amazing

iSeaSalt1 votes

Morgana isn't my thing. I prefer Karma and Lulu for some fucking reason lol. But thank you for giving me your opinion, it actually changed my mind :)

Death by Glamour2 votes

Tbh most karma players would have been happy if when she was first reworked only her her passive W and R were changed.

Also bring back the fans...

inplane2 votes

Maybe change the Snare towards whoever is caught in between the link to a Heavy Slow and it would be better balance-wise. Her W definitely needs something other than being the Easy Leblanc E.

Lõyalty1 votes

I honestly would prefer this over her current w. So many more opportunities to use it.

Chaos Milk Tea1 votes

Does every new chain get counted separately? If I chain ezreal and then sona but ezreal breaks his chain, is sonas broken automatically too?

if it does it should slow on contact instead to reduce the desparity between the max success and max faliure scenarios.

iSeaSalt1 votes

a very interesting idea, and not too op either. i got an idea: i w ezreal, he gets slowed like 50% as long as the link remains. sona passes the tether, she gets chained to me too and gets a 50% slow. but what do you think will happen when the tether expires? a root will be too op because then you got aoe root plus aoe slow, which is not a good idea. you got any suggestions?

Linhardt1 votes

This reminds me of the old Karma. " Karma creates a tether between herself and a target ally or a target enemy for up to 5 seconds, breaking if the target becomes stealthed. Affected allies gain bonus movement speed while affected enemies are slowed and take magic damage." Basically, Karma used to create a tether between herself and a target ally, enemy or even ward. It only dealt damage if the enemy walked through the tether, not the tether target, which made the ability really bad. I disagree with this suggestion only because it doesn't seem useful and as you said, a bit broken due to the duration of the root, though it seems interesting.

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