So I've been playing more and more Karma lately, and it's really fun and has been going really well. I don't know if it's just a coincidence, or I'm just really bad, or people don't know how to play against her, but for some reason I've been doing really well with her and I'm confused as to why she's not meta other than not having much kill potential early on (imo). What do you guys think?
Karma is actually regarded as a very strong champion in Dominion for several reasons.
Her base numbers are actually pretty good. Q does upwards of 260 + .6 at max rank on a 5 or 6 second cool down ramping up to a huge base (higher than max rank Nid spear) if you catch them in both the initial and secondary AoE with a 1.5 ratio. W provides both great damage and sustain when mantra is used at a total of 560 base + 1.2 with a 20+20% missing hp heal.
This is combined with her team fight utility on her shield makes her a solid champion. SR just hasn't really caught on yet.
I think Karma is a tad underrated. With her mantra, her E at rank one provides a teamwide 60% MS buff. That is ENORMOUS and an incredible skill to have at levels 1-3. Her kit overall has less kill potential than other area denial/lockdown champions (Anivia, Syndra, etc) but you trade this for some very good sustained damage and a fair amount of surviability. A Karma building even a little health will be able to take an impressive amount of punishment as long as she uses her shield and mantra W.
Part of the reason I think she's underrated is because people are still trying to figure out her place. She has mid-lane potential but not as good flat-out killing power. She has support potential but not much in the way of hard CC. (Everything she does to you can still let her attack you). Hell, I've seen Karma jungle through the fact that she can quickly close the gap and easily lock down a target for damage.
Someone just needs to show her at her best and maybe then people will accept that she's extremely strong.
The reason why karma doesn't see much play is because there are so many characters that do her job better. Want to zone someone? Ziggs Gragas and Anivia do that exceptionally, yet all of their kill potential is about 3px higher than Karma due to her Q not being too strong unless you ult with it. I just think she has too much going on, and I miss old karma :/
I went from silver 5 to plat 1 playing almost exclusively karma in the last month... as support.
..but she's really weak shhhhhhh
As someone who went on a Karma binge for like 2 months straight... she's good in lane but she falls off super hard lategame. Q2 stops chunking people if they have any defensive items at all. And she usually gets interrupted when trying to heal in teamfights and her teamwide shield can be very situational since the shield part gets blown up in a second and the speedboost is where all the power is at, making it situational.
Dominion's usually more about dueling/skirmishes so you don't have the teamfight issues, so I've enjoyed her slightly more there.
Her problem is that she's solid on paper, but in practice something about...just doesn't work as well as it should be working.
Just semi high-jacking this thread since it's related to Karma, and I love Karma, but I found out I'm building karma completely "wrong" (read as different from most). Basically, I simply rush the chalice and then Spirit Visage/Sunfire Cape (based on matchup), and build super tanky with capped CDR. This allows me to have very decent AoE damage, shield on an ally of my choice, and 50% missing hp healed every so often (somewhere around 6-10s in teamfights).
I sometimes forgo Sunfire cape for an abyssal scepter if I'm mid, or precede that with philo/ss if I'm supporting, but otherwise, it seems to be a build where I can actually either grant massive utility to my team or split push and outduel nearly everyone...
Thoughts on why it'd be better/worse than a normal AP build (apart from the fact that people don't understand that even though karma has "no ult" she still can burst you down, and that yo ucan get free kills from those stupid people).
She's good at providing constant utility (there's a reason why she's considered one of the greatest kite champs in the game currently), but as far as damage dealing, you're going to have to consider other available options before her. She still relies on positioning that unless you're fighting out in the open, most of your damage will be negated by factors such as minions or other enemy champs (yes I'm referring to her Q).
I put together my thoughts on this topic in the non-Beta forums. Warning, it is a long post :P
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?p=47694612#post47694612
