Karma is in a bad place, let's fix that!

Long Post warning! Microsoft Word tells me it’s over 1500 words long

Let me preface this by saying Rito is way too busy doing marksmen and AD item changes to make any serious changes to other champions right now; however that doesn't mean we can't get the ball rolling. Also, while I’ve done some research into old Karma (a champion released far beyond her time), all of my firsthand experience is on “relaunch” Karma. Still though, here are my thoughts on bringing Karma up to scratch, combining the new and old to make one cohesive kit. Please note that it would be absolutely resource intensive to make all the changes I’m proposing below at once, I just want to open up some good old-fashioned discussion.

https://youtu.be/clMEu39Iydc Here’s the release Karma champion spotlight, watching it could help give you some context, but I’ve done my best to summarize old and current Karma below.

TL;DR/DW I’ve only played post rework Karma so I don’t have first-hand experience with pre-rework karma

Passive “Gathering Fire” reduces the cooldown on “R-Mantra”. Her old passive would increase her AP by an amount based on her missing health. While her new passive is not especially exciting, her old passive was just a big ball of stats (a passive style I’m not a fan of). Beyond that I feel that the spirit of that power (a heal that increases based on missing health) is somewhat preserved through the Mantra-W, a power I want to see increased.

TL;DR The passive is pretty okay in my opinion, we just need to touch up some other areas so that Mantra actually feels powerful.

Q-Inner Flame and Heavenly Wave. Karma’s old Q was a conic AOE spell, with the Mantra Q also healing allies in the cone. Some of Rito’s older champions really enjoyed small AOE heals (Ezreal’s W used to heal allies too). While I like the mechanics of a cone spell, at this point in time changing her Q back to a cone would take way too many resources (art, sound effects, yeesh) and I personally like the longer range missile. At any rate, this is a nice spell that could maybe use a better AP ratio, or more damage from the first hit of its Mantra version. I’m also partial to a version of Mantra where each rank in your ultimate increases the power of your empowered spells in a non-numbers fashion. Specifically each rank of R should increase the explosion radius of Q and its secondary detonation field, OR decrease the delay before Q explodes. Beyond that, my suggestion is to move the slow down/speed up effects from Q and E back onto W so we should remove the slow from Q.

**TL;DR Changing Q to a cone may take too many resources to realistically pull off, this spell could possibly use more damage. Also move the slow back to W **

R- Mantra. The release Karma Mantra didn’t level up and Karma’s QWE had 6 ranks like Jayce’s current ultimate and skills. It also held 2 charges instead of 1. I think it was way ahead of its time when it came out, and it’s one spell that I think should be dialed back towards its original style a bit.

1. I think we should keep the cooldown at 45 at rank 1, reduce it’s cooldown to something like 30 at rank 2, and instead of lowering the cooldown we should add a charge at ranks 3 and 4. This would make the late game Karma actually useful with a cycle through Mantra Q, Mantra W, and Mantra E.
2. If we made Karma’s skill set up similar to Jayce’s setup we could tie the power up bonuses to ranking the basic skills up instead of the ultimate. I think we’d get a negative trade-off with this set up, unless we mega-boosted all the mantra effects.
3. Each rank of R-Mantra (beyond the free one at level 1) increases the effective power of the Mantra version of the spells. Each rank increases Q’s explosion radius range OR decreases the secondary explosion delay, increases W’s leash range, and increases E’s burst range. That also ties into the offensive version of her “E” that I have proposed below.
4. Casting R could also cast the Mantra’d version of the spells on their own cooldown (think Rengar’s ferocity enhanced spells).

TL;DR A bunch of functional changes but ultimately the same spell. Add a charge system back to Mantra’s level 11/16 level ups. I propose an idea where we increase Mantra’s “effectiveness” without increasing raw numbers”

E-Inspire/Defiance and Soul Shield. This spell didn’t change a lot from release to relaunch. The movement speed bonus was new, but functionally very little changed until they got rid of Defiance’s AOE damage in patch 5.10. Moreover, losing the damage on her shield shoved her poor mage/poor support kit further into the niche of “mage that doesn’t do any damage” and “support that nobody wants to play”. I like the AOE shield, and I completely agree that an AOE shield shouldn’t have AOE damage attached to it. So here comes one of my favorite Riot sayings: Meaningful Choices. Do you want to shield your team mates for this fight? Or do you want to explode your enemies?

1. Remove the speed boost from E, we’re going to move it back to W
2. **Inspire/Defiance can now be targeted on enemies. It does single target damage but can be Mantra’d to do AOE damage. Meaningful choices: do I want to hurt my foes or shield my allies? This will also bring a new source of damage for refreshing Mantra’s cooldown.
3. With the Mantra bringing a “non-numbers” buff to empowered spells, the AOE “burst zone” should have a bigger radius for both the defensive shield and offensive damage zones.

TL;DR Make E capable of targeting/damaging enemies. Mantra E used offensively damages enemies in a burst, while Mantra E used on allies is still a shield, but no movespeed. This gives the spell “Meaningful choices”.

W-Focused Resolve/Renewal and Spirit Bond. **This is a spell that I think should be reverted mostly to its old functionality. **A spell way ahead of its time: Karma creates a tether between herself and another unit (or ward). Any “allied anchors” are sped up and any “enemy anchors” are slowed down. The tether also damages and slows any enemies hit by the beam, while speeding up allies. The Mantra’d version doubles the speed up and slow down on allies and enemies, while rooting the primary target (if it’s an enemy). The leash lasts for 5 seconds. I love the original incarnation of this spell and its potential application in a teamfight. It, like most of Karma’s old spells, was considered far too confusing to keep around. I agree with that assessment: Karma was confusing and incredibly far ahead of her time in a lot of the mechanics she employed. However, the atmosphere has changed significantly. Nowadays we have champions like Bard, who play with very unique spells with very unique rules. We have champions that have 2 part passives or an active and a passive component on spells. I believe that Karma was too confusing on release, due to how new the game was and how different her mechanics were; but I no longer believe that is the case.

1. Mantra-W leash range increases with ranks in R
2. Add a heal that scales with target’s missing health to this rehashed Spirit Bond. Have the heal be a heal over time that affects all friendly targets between Karma and her “anchor”. The missing health scaling on the heal is important as it is the only “spiritual preservation” of old Karma’s passive. This would also enable her to be a good team-fighter and a better support. Leash a front line ally (or enemy) and move to the back of the pack to try to heal and speed up your front liners. Or tether it to a juggernaut and help each other slow down and engage a team (Karma would probably die in this scenario, but it could be a worthwhile tradeoff if the slows are strong enough).
3. Move the root from something that happens all the time to something that only happens when you use the Mantra-W; and only on the primary target. The doubled speed boost/slow still occurs to all enemies affected by the beam.

TL;DR Revert this spell most of the way back to its release functionality as the game’s landscape has changed significantly since release. The tether heals friendly units based on their missing health. The tether is something Karma’s allies will love and Karma’s enemies will strive to avoid.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my Karma re-rework suggestions. I believe she is in a very poor place right now and I think we can fix that. I believe we should move the slow/speed up from Q and E to W, making that the ultimate “support karma” spell. Multiple charges on Mantra will give Karma some of that late game effectiveness that she sorely lacks right now, while making a damaging version of E will both help Karma’s passive and give Karma a meaningful choice beyond “Oh we’re fighting, I guess I should shield now?”