Problems with Karma and Possible Solutions

Incoming Wall of Text.

Karma, The Enlightened One

Karma’s kit suffers from a lack of strong, unique identity outside of Mantra. Her abilities have a lot of counterplay to them and she doesn’t offer as much damage as mages or utility as supports leaving her feeling lackluster. For a champion who is said to have a strong connection to the spirit realm it doesn’t resonant or show in her kit. Overall the damage and utility she offers donesn’t match up to what other mages and support offer which leaves her behind and how similar her abilities are to other champions leaves her feeling samey.

Experience with the Champion

I have played Karma since before her 2013 rework which had me super excited to see her become a true paragon of Ionia. After the rework I began to main her as a flex pick going top, mid, support, and even jungle at times on the Rift.

At times I felt she needed love and in patch 5.10 when she got a large amount of tweaks and buffs I was excited. But now with time and experience playing other champions, her core flaws have become very noticeable to me and how she is outclassed. I don’t think she’s a lost cause but she could use more in her kit to help differentiate herself and give more options.

The Problem Explained

Karma has a well-designed kit but suffers from not having as much damage as most mages or utility as most supports, leaving her wishy-washy. Her kit also suffers something of an identity crisis because all of her non-empowered abilities are easily compared to other champions (Q with Lulu, W with Leblanc, E with any Support with a shield).

Her only source of consistent damage is Inner Flame (Q) which is reliable poke but she can’t hit the backline with it. Not being able to hit the backline means she can’t use her powerful Soulflare burst on priority targets because she gets easily walled out by tanks. This puts her behind other mages who have 2-3 spell rotations outside of their ultimate, most of which can hit the backline. As an ability, Inner Flame is perfectly fine, the problem is that Karma has no consistent damage outside of it.

Focused Resolve (W) has problems with its skewed risk/reward and being very easy to counterplay. Mobility is so present on most champions that it’s not very difficult to break the tether even with Karma’s other tools. In a team fight it’s very unreliable because it puts Karma in a very dangerous position for a rather mediocre reward. This overall makes the ability very defensive in application outside of laning phase and heavily limits Karma’s play making with her main crowd control tool.

Renewal suffers similar problems as the non-empowered version. The potent heal is good for turning a duel but just like the base ability it puts Karma in too risky of a position for a delayed crowd control that can be broken easily. While the long root duration is nice on paper, it’s still a delayed crowd control effect that leaves Karma extremely vulnerable to CC and being killed before the root even finishes making the ability way too reliant on team coordination.

Gameplay and visually, the ability doesn’t feel empowered either. Both Soulflare and Defiance have strong visual indicators while Renewal doesn’t outside of the healing. The ability doesn’t feel rewarding either because the other 2 empowered abilities can affect entire teams while Renewal is purely singe target. In the end this leaves Renewal easily the worst and least used empowered ability since the reward is so much weaker than the other two options.

Overall Karma’s over reliance on Inner Flame to do consistent damage and her W being very unreliable and delayed crowd control keeps her from having more proactive play making options. In her current state she is effectively Lulu 2.0 only she has less utility and stronger damage that is easily blocked.

Solution

Being a game design student myself I’m not going to propose something ridiculous like a full scale rework because of how asset and time intensive that is. Instead I believe Karma simply needs more added to her kit and some tweaks to make her a stronger all-around champion on the level of Orianna and such.

Karma is said to be in touch with the spirit realm but it doesn’t reflect anywhere in her kit which will be addressed. My solution is to improve upon her passive and W while leaving the rest of her kit as is.

Passive

Gathering Fire > Gathering Spirit

(In addition to the current passive)

After casting a spell, Karma empowers her next basic attack with spiritual energy and summons 2 spirit dragons that orbit her for up to 5 seconds. Karma’s next basic attack will deal bonus magic damage followed by the spirit dragons dealing true damage to enemies they pass through towards the target.

Bonus Magic Damage: 20/60/100/140 (+30% AP)

True Damage for Each Dragon: 10/30/50/70 (+20% AP)

Total True Damage: 20/60/100/140 (+40% AP)

**Total Mixed Damage: ** 40-280 (+70% AP)

Static Cooldown: 7/6/5/4 Seconds

This fixes the issue of Karma’s connection to the spirit realm by letting her summon spiritual manifestations of her Mantle of Decorum. This also adds a second consistent damage source she needs in her kit and encourages players to weave more auto attacks between spells to refresh Mantra and play Karma in a more combo-oriented spell weaver style. Making the entire ability scale with Mantra’s rank also gives more concrete feedback to the player that something constant has improved on Karma.

The damage isn’t strong at early levels since she’s already a strong lane bully but scales well enough that it becomes strong mid-late game. The true damage on the spirit dragons is meant to give more impact to their presence, piercing the spirit of Karma’s enemies, and letting her fair better against tanks. The overall damage output is intended to scale so that it’s no stronger than an Ahri Q so Karma isn’t overwhelming. The static cooldown is set so she can use it around the same time Q comes back up but needs to wait a pinch longer so she isn’t spamming true damage too often.

W

Focused Resolve

Karma forms a tether between herself and target champion or monster. On an ally she shares healing and bonuses with them, enemy champions who pass through the tether are dealt magic damage and rooted. On an enemy or monster it does magic damage over 2 seconds and slowing them by 25%, if the tether doesn’t break they are rooted for a short time.

Renewal

Focused Resolve heals Karma for 20% (+1% per 100 AP) missing health, deals bonus magic damage and stuns enemy champions.

Targetting an ally heals them for the same amount.

Targetting an enemy or monster stuns them while the tether persists. If it doesn’t break or the target dies, Karma is healed again for 20% (+1% per 100 AP) missing health and a harmless wave emits from the target’s location, rooting nearby enemy champions for a short time.

**Bonus Magic Damage:**  25/50/75/100

**AoE Root Duration: ** .75/1/1.25/1.5 Seconds

With the way Karma’s current tether functions I feel bringing back the “clothesline” gameplay from her pre-rework tether would be a good way to set her apart from others. The idea is that she’s connecting her spirit to her ally’s, uniting and affecting them as one for a short time. This also fits Karma’s empathic personality and allows her to function a support pillar thematically. With how prevalent mobility is in the game it wouldn’t be difficult for allies to dash behind and enemy to tag them with the root for an unusual but rewarding teamwork play. It also opens up more interesting plays on Karma’s part because she can link to an ally and use Defiance to power shield the both of them before charging in or escaping.

For Renewal while the idea of a long root sounds good on paper, in practice it really didn’t solve many of the problems the ability had. Instead the root upgrades to a stun using the same scaling duration and the ability does a lesser amount of bonus magic damage in exchange for stronger crowd control. When tagging an ally, Renewal becomes a powerful clutch heal and stronger teamwork tool if you pick a tank or highly mobile ally as your buddy in spirit. On an enemy it gives Karma a proactive playmaking tool for starting a fight with an immediate and delayed reward that gives it the same level of impact as her other empowered abilities.

Fun Plays o Stick on someone before they dive in, rooting anyone in between you two o Tag ally > Inspire to run around enemy team o Inspire/Flash > Renewal > Zhonya’s > Wait > AoE Root o Renewal > Inspire > Kite > AoE Lockdown o Clutch heal a teammate then turn a fight

The Goal of These Changes The idea behind these changes was to make Karma’s spiritual connection more noticeable and integrated into her gameplay while also giving her options she lacks. As a mage and support her specialty would be in turning fights through spiritual empowerment be it on her own or with her team. These changes also set Karma further apart from her biggest comparison, Lulu, by making her function as a powerful source of damage and empowerment for her team. Asset and time wise this wouldn’t be too intensive as Karma would just need a particle and animations for the spirit dragons and the pulse after targetting an enemy with Renewal.

These are just my personal ideas of how Karma could be improved without a massive overhaul or rework to her kit. Feel free to discuss or even critique my ideas (so long as it’s constructive)! Also go ahead an bring up your own ideas and why they would work, just don’t claim that old Karma should come back since it’s clear Riot doesn’t intend to do that.