.. I read their motivation and I can understand Ivern being stronger vs his competition because his itemization is getting buffed. But what about Karma, what should make her stronger than other enchanters, who are getting buffed too? And, again, a champion getting nerfed for an item being forced into that build path.
What about midlane AP Karma (her original intended gameplay)? What about toplane tanky karma (not so diffuse but has been a thing)?
Karma has been overpowered for a while, imo it took them far too long to nerf her, the fact shes finally getting it is a blessing, shes essentially been pick or ban in every elo above bronze/silver for the past 4-5 patches, maybe longer, her shields are too big and have very little room for counterplay
Riot sorta wants to sweep her under the rug as a midlaner. They're probably going to rework her kit again into something 150% different again. Turn her into the Ryze of mage/supports. I'll admit that a battle mage that also doubles as a support could be a bit difficult to balance, but seeing how they manged to balance a lot more crazier concepts and how much the community has done to try and give them ideas of ways it could in fact be balance, Riot is more just lazy than 'Waiting for a good moment'.
The W damage only doing one tick, her RE no longer scaling with E and absolutely no solo lane buffs in the past 3 seasons lead up to this shield nerfs as the final nail in the coffin for her. We'll have to wait until the end of the season when she is no longer picked in LCS or something for them to finally revert her back to 5.10 when her play % was at a somewhat good standpoint. I doubt we'll see her getting buffed anytime soon with the assassin/tank killer meta currently going out in full force.
I believe the nerfs to her shield is to lessen the overall impact of her potential 5-man shield. It hits support Karma more than mid Karma as AP builds usually would want to RQ instead of RE anyways.
