Why I LOVE Karthus

I've been playing Karthus quite a bit lately. I find him a ton of fun with the map pressure he can create without actually being there, while also being able to destroy his own lane quite hard if you can land the q. So, I figured, why not make a post talking about this undead masterpiece of a champion?

First, I'll run through his abilities, just in case you don't know what he does. He's older and has been out of the meta for a while, despite in my opinion being in a strong spot, so I'd be surprised if everyone who reads this knows exactly what his kit does.

Passive: Defy Death After dying, Karthus revives on the spot for the next 7 seconds, able to cast all of his abilities for 0 mana while being untargetable. If his E is learned, it's always on while he's undead. Pretty much, when you die, spam Q and then press R. Nothing can stop your ult channel, so you'll get it off guaranteed. I've missed some kills because i pressed Q for too long, though, and didn't have time to channel the ultimate afterwards. Your basic playstyle as Karthus is to kill yourself dropping the enemy team to within ult range, then pressing R and getting pentakills. Also, watch out for Graves, as his smokescreen will still block your vision while you're undead. Q: Lay Waste Karthus creates a delayed (0.5 second delay) blast at target location, dealing 40/60/80/100/120 (+30% AP) magic damage to all enemies in the area. If Lay Waste hits only one target, it deals double damage. W: Wall of Pain Create a wall at target location that slows enemies who pass through it. Plain and simple, use this to make sure your targets don't get away or have a harder time dodging your Q, especially before you get your Rylai's Crystal Scepter. E: Defile Insert Taric joke here. A bunch of souls will swirl around you, dealing 30/50/70/90/110 (+20% AP) magic damage to all nearby enemies and costing 30/42/54/66/78 mana per second to keep it running. When toggled off, it gives you 20/27/34/41/48 mana back per unit kill. This is why I recommend building Tear and RoA on Karthus. It costs a ton of mana to keep running, but if you can keep it running for an entire fight, you'll kill some things. R: Requiem After 3 seconds of channeling, deals 250/400/550 (+60% AP) magic damage to all living, targetable enemy champions. Insert noob's rage when they Zhonya's at the start of the channel only to come out of stasis 1/2 a second before the damage is dealt and die anyway.

For runes, I would recommend opting for a tankier page than I use, and some MPen could be useful too. I personally run magic AP reds and quints, magic resist blues, and armor yellows, but the page I would build if I built a Karthus-specific page would be magic pen reds, armor or scaling health yellows, 6 magic resist and 3 scaling CDR blues, and AP quints. For masteries, I've tried 18/12/0 and 12/18/0, getting Thunderlord's Decree, Deathfire Touch, and Stormraider's Surge, and I would recommend using Deathfire Touch over anything else for your keystone. Items, I go , then finish as my core items. Optional choices include and . For summoner's, I go and In lane, your basic attacks are slow and Q cost is fairly low, so you can, as long as you don't overdo it, use your Q to farm and try to poke your lane opponent. Farming with basic attacks on an early game Karthus especially is very difficult without positioning your Q to deal double to the minions, but he becomes a very strong pusher in the mid game because of his E and Q.

Mid game, pick a lane and push, looking for times you can help your team with your ultimate. Karthus is the type of mage that can literally 1v5 if he has enough damage. Don't be stupid, though, and group with your team if you feel you need to. With how you'll build, you'll probably be used as a combination DPS and frontliner in teamfights, so stick with your team or teleport in if you feel one might erupt. Use your ultimate if you can't help in any other way and it's safe to do so.

Late game, follow your team around. If you're fed, stand in the backline and kill any divers/assassins while throwing your Q into the enemy team, hitting their frontline for the double damage as much as you can. If you aren't particularly fed, stand with your frontlines and keep your ADC alive. I have had games where I got behind, but one of our teammates was ahead, and I dedicated myself to keeping them alive in fights and we won them. Even with your low scalings, you have decent DPS with all of your abilities dealing low amounts of damage every second. Your Q will chunk squishies, even when behind, so try to take out the enemy ADC with Q spam if you can hit them while your E field is basically Gandalf for your team behind you. After you die, you have 7 seconds of undeath to keep peeling and killing. When you're close to fading out of your undead form, press R and see how many kills you can pick up.

To deal with Karthus, you want people who can kill him without getting too close. Even when he's really far behind, he'll still do good damage and he should never care about dying, but still try to bully him early with a long ranged champion like Xerath to try to slow him down. You may not make him completely useless at any point in the game, but if he doesn't have Rylai's when the teamfight phase starts, he'll have a lot harder time letting his team carry him while he peels. Once he gets it, burst him, then run like hell. Get away from the Karthus ghost as fast as you can, even if it means running right into his team, because you don't want to be near that ghost while he's shooting you with his Q and E. His ult will let him contribute to a fight when you leave him, but it'll be a much weaker contribution than you standing in his E while he spams Q and then ults. That joke about killing yourself getting the entire enemy team low and then getting a pentakill is actually something Karthus does do and does well, so I don't care how many resources it takes to kill him, kill him as fast as possible and get away from the body before he deads you all while undead. Step away from the corpse, I repeat, step away from the corpse.