This thread has two purposes:
First, I'm trying out this Community Beta thing. Read a few of the sticky threads, but couldn't tell if this carries over posts from the main forums?
Second, since search seems to suggest the answer to my first question is "No", I thought I would cross-post a thread I added over there on my current thoughts about Karma's balance in Live: http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=47694612#post47694612
I'd prefer to respond to your post here instead of on GD, because I looove getting notifications.
So, first off, to establish myself as someone who knows karma: https://i.imgur.com/QDyM0oW.png
I've played karma in literally every lane, every role, and most combinations thereof, many of them in ranked. (note: those ~100 games in the screenshot are only ranked; I probably have more than that many normals on her)
find me games where Karma is on the winning team in an official Competitive match...
Ok. Here's the important play.
, in that order, then situational)I think karma is in a pretty good place right now. I've never had a problem shoving lane (I'll often use a level 1 ult-q to fastpush - ult and 1-2 autos clears the caster minions at lvl 1) or getting shoved, and if the opponent is silly enough to stay next to their minions, ever, you can harass them while pushing the lane.
Karma's a huge lane bully who is very strong up until people are getting ~their 5th item. This is because it's hard for her to hit the backline, and when tanks get their 5th item, they cross a threshold of being damn hard to kill. Of course, by that point adcs are starting to reach their hyper scaling point, so you can usually just fall back into a secondary support role of peeling for your adc and giving them huge shields. Except, you can also do a lot of damage and clean up very well.
In regards to gapclosers or hard cc being a counter to karma, I find that's only true if the enemy has multiple gapclosers or hard cc. If they have hard cc, you just keep your distance and harass with q until you can win an all-in. If they have a gapcloser, you shield the damage from it and run away, while rooting them in place, and now you've basically reset your positioning with respect to them.
In regards to NEEDING to hit her ults, and that she's been out for a while so people should know her skills: It's totally true that missing any of her ults is a huge setback, and it's part of the reason that she is so hard to pick up; I probably didn't get decent with her until ~50 games with her, and I still haven't mastered her. Again, this is around her ult, which is very hard to make best use of - you have to decide which of 3 effects would be more useful in a given situation, and it needs to be a split second decision. And then you need to decide who to use that ult on!
I'd be curious to hear your elaborate more on "karma being good as long as the enemy plays her way".
Now, you'll notice I've been talking about her as a mid (or top); that's because this is what I feel her strongest role is, right now. As a support, she has good and bad matchups, but can do fairly well in all of them. In bad matchups, she can just max shield and use it to help her adc farm and survive engagements; play a passive lane. In a good matchup (I'm looking at you, annie), she maxes q and harasses the shit out of her opponents until they're afraid to come forward :D
The only area I could see her getting a buff is maybe a slight (5-10%?) AP ratio increase on her q, or making her e's movespeed scale with AP.
If you want to add me in game, I"ll happily play games with you and show you how good she is :D
