So I was looking at Karma's old kit

Bârd·Oct 12, 2015·7 votes·631 views

and that kit seems like an interesting part of league, more so than the current "pewpewpew" playstyle she currently has.

Not entirely sure why they got rid of it, she seems like she was pretty damn good.

10 Comments

TNHA BaritoneOct 12, 20153 votes

The old 1 was fun The new 1 is easier ro balence.

The Bearded BardOct 12, 20152 votes

It wasn't as awful as non-karma players make it out to be, and it was pretty fun, but it was pretty gimmicky, and not nearly as good as it is now.

As a semi-Karma main now and then, the current one is a definite improvement.

Sire HippingtonOct 12, 20152 votes

She mostly was ahead of her time. back then, there weren't any skills that directly interacted with teammates beyond shield/heal/buff. makeing proper use of her W was hard to do for the majority of the players back then, and they desided to change her because she's to reliant on coordination with teammates, which by now certainly wouldn't be a reason for them. Another problem of old karma was that she didn't offer much coutnerplay for her opponent, her Q and the mandra E were both instant aoe, so unavoidable if you are in range. Her 'ult' and the 6ranks on her basic skills also were disliked by most of the community.

I loved playing her, and while some changes would certainly have been needed, giving her a full sion-level relaunch, so prettymuch releasing a new champ and deleting the old, was unnecesary and one of the saddest days in the history of league.

HentRexOct 12, 20151 votes

Her animations were really awful too. Spilling out past were the effect actually hit.

OverpoweredSoapOct 12, 20151 votes

Her passive was bugged, so that didn't help.

Anyways, I honestly think that her main problem was the fact no one played her, therefore, no one knew what her kit did, so when she WAS played, people on her team didn't know how to work with her. She was pretty reliant on her teammates knowing what she did to do well, otherwise she had to put herself in damage to do damage, and while her passive kind of gave her that idea, she was a bit too squishy to pull off, especially against bursty assassins.

Her kit also had a shit ton of stuff in it, I would almost swear she was made by CertainlyT, but she lacked mobility and hard cc, so no.

IxtaliKingOct 12, 20151 votes

I never had the chance to try the old Karma, but from what I've seen it did look quite interesting. I just really miss her shield bomb tbh...

Sightless66Oct 12, 20151 votes

It was kind of interesting on paper, but it tended to fail in execution. There were a few significant problems. The W was a huge one. Her W's effectiveness was almost entirely dependent on your teammate, particularly since they were usually the one responsible for passing it across the enemy team. I can't tell you the number of times I used my W at the perfect time to get a nuke across the entire enemy team and my idiot teammate tunnel visioned someone, and I couldn't pass it across the enemies myself without getting out of position. It was really frustrating to use. I like skills that interact with my teammates, but it gets annoying when I'm reliant on them to make my skill work even at a baseline level and I don't have any means to encourage or force them to help.

Then there was her E, and if you ever played a melee mid against her, you know how bullshit that E was. She could drop a mantra-E on the minion you wanted to last hit and hit you for a huge chunk of undodgable damage. You usually couldn't even go on her afterwards because you'd just give her an opening to mantra-E you again as soon as her shield came off of CD. Her Q could be similarly annoying because it was just an instant AoE nuke. Melee champions could deal with her, but only because she was a very underpowered champion. They took advantage of her numerical weakness, not any openings in her kit. However, if you weren't melee, she really couldn't deal with you unless you completely disrespected her and let her walk right next to you. Because of that, a lot of her matchups ended up being extremely binary, which necessitated her being balanced around not being oppressive to the champions she was good against.

There were more design problems on top of that. I think she could have been made to fit the game with a LOT of work, and that would have been cool and it would have been nice for the people who mained her before, but I don't really regret seeing her go. I kind of liked her, but if I'm honest, she really had a lot of fundamental problems. I like the new one a lot more.

Fitz n The FoolOct 12, 20151 votes

LOL, these posts above...

Old Karma was a boss in terms of damage and utility. A huge nuke that also HEALED your teammates and a huge shield that did crazy damage.

The ONLY problem with old Karma was that back in season 2, supports had VERY low income. Karma was a champion that required a lot of AP items in order to be useful. She was a great laner, but people thought you were trolling back then (whereas nowdays you can pick anything top or mid). So they reworked her into something that does not require as much gold to be useful....but then they went and made supports gain more gold. Her old kit would be so much better than her new one right now with the current income supports can get. The only better spell she has now is her W, because her old W was weird.

Kitten of EvilOct 12, 20151 votes

It was a really flavorful and interesting kit -- every skill had some aspect of offense and defense/yin and yang. Q was an AOE cone of damage, when mantra'ed it healed in an AOE. W was a link between an ally or enemy, which hasted allies and damaged enemies it cut through (though not the enemy it was linked to -- this was kind of counterintuitive) E was a shield, when mantra'ed it dealt AOE damage around her. Passive was increasing AP based on her % of missing health.

I was just sad they removed her mantra E damage, I always felt like that was her most flavorful skill. So her Q no longer has a "healing" aspect, and her E no longer has a damaging aspect. Meh.

But as other people said, her kit required a lot of coordination, because her W was easily her most damaging skill, and teammates never knew how to use it because she was rarely played. New Karma is way more reliable as a poke/kite mage.

SouL1essOct 12, 20151 votes

Riot made up reasons to delete Karma. That's pretty much it. They didn't like her kit so they decided to remove her from the game.

I still remember when they say that 6-skill-point systems are problematic and they are not good for champion kits, but then they give it to Jayce anyways.

One thing that Riot has, above everything else, is consistency. /s