Karma Rework Idea

Pretty cool suggestion, but the biggest beef I have with Karma, in general, is her wasted passive ability. It should be part of her ultimate, not an individual spell. Giving her a brand new, suitable passive would make her much better and open up many opportunities for her as a character.

Pretty B.C. cool.

Good idea, my only issue is that with a slow on her W and E now, while still maintaining the movement speed boost on her E, it will essentially be impossible to escape her root on her W unless you waste your flash, or your support lands a root/stun. Karma's biggest issue, and why Riot refrains from buffing her is because she can already easily gain lane dominance by simply poking the enemy with empowered Q, which at level one, can half health somebody. I feel that this would only increase her lane dominance, making it even more unfair to fight her in lane.

Otherwise, good work.

How about no ?

It's an interesting concept, but I think there's a few issues with some of the changes.

I play Karma a lot, particularly in solo lanes, and if her W was to have a slow added on to it, combined with any speed from her E will essentially guarantee a root followed by an empowered Q unless the opponent has a dash, teleport, or hard cc. This will only be offset slightly by the lowered base damage on Q.

Then there's your proposed changes to her E. Changing the empowered shield to no longer apply to nearby allies takes away one of her few unique traits, to apply a huge team-wide shield to protect them from assassins, Karthus ults, or other hard hitting damage sources. While I do agree that it can be oppressive to play against late game, it should be rebalanced or reduced, not removed. Additionally, reducing the speed from 60% (at rank 5) down to 20% is a huge drop in both her mobility in fights and for roaming, as well as a her ability to empower an ally to engage.

As for the Backfire idea, I think it a cool idea to put on a champion, but it would make Karma's solo lane too oppressive again. With her current kit, I'm able to bully most midlaners into never being able to pick up a lead, and adding an additional damage source would make it even harder for others to trade. Any time an enemy goes in for a trade they not only have to try to avoid fighting when Karma's Mantra is available, but with this change would also have to go in after a shield wears off or else they risk taking damage for even a stray auto or aoe spell. (I'm assuming it only applies once per cast or once per enemy, otherwise full AP Karma will be able to shred an enemy that attacks many times in succession, or pop a shield on a Galio right before they get a 4-5 man taunt).

Honestly I love backfire as an idea and it fits Karma's lore better than the aoe shield, but the aoe shield is so core to her teamfighting utility now that it would be a huge change to do (and the loss of an aoe shield might gut support karma's late game role{Which I'm fine with but others and riot probably wouldn't be})

There's other minor points and suggestions I have if you'd like to hear them, as well as potential clashes with current lore, but I feel I've probably written too much already.