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Karma

PandaMwonkMoo·4/9/2019, 2:07:23 PM·2 votes·2,042 views

Last season was my first real season of LoL, much less MOBAs in its entirety. On the path of support I struggled to find one that allowed me to provide assistance to my ADC that had enough power to hold my own. Then I was introduced to Karma. To date, she is my favorite champ to play. I like options and Karma has a lot of them. Too early to make this monologue exciting, so I'll just start listing stuff.

Things I Like

Her Q does decent damage. Mantra Q in early laning phase will almost always put the lane in your favor if your ADC manages to dodge roots. Her E helps ADCs dodge roots. Mantra E in team fights usually puts them in your favor, if your team doesn't focus the tank. Her Mantra W when enemy champs are rushing you or getting ganked helps keep you alive and, if played right, turn a fight. Since she has no real ult, early laning phase is usually in your favor.

Things I Don't Like

Getting my Mantra Q minion-blocked after I just spent two seconds having both bot champs throw everything at me cuz I actually threw a W. 2 seconds for a root as short as hers is ridiculous. It's missing health ratio for Mantra W is alright, but other Mantras are almost always more ideal. I wish her Mantra E did something else other than spread to champs and add movement speed. The animation deserves it. She has no ult so unless you went straight APC and have Gathering Storm, you're Mantra E-ing in every team fight after 25 minutes.

It's a jarring experience to fall in love with a champ and have someone show you videos of what they used to be cuz I feel cheated. Yeah I should have played this game in season 2 when everyone was trying to get me to play. Fine. I'll take ownership of that. But her new design is just confusing. Her outfit is ok, but her Traditional Karma skin was once her default so to go from the former to the latter doesn't make sense. I hate the floating things behind her. it makes her bulky for no reason and when it moves with her when she runs just doesn't look good. Her auto is small and unforgettable and it makes sense why so many players want the fans back. I don't understand her transition and I feel she suffered because of it.

Ideas I Have to Make Her Better

One of the main things I liked about her when I first started playing was her lore at the time. The way I took it, she was the physical manifestation of spiritual balance who ultimately shattered herself when she wiped out a thousand(?) people so she essentially became a recluse to bring herself back together. I thought it was cool cuz she was essentially a vessel for this godlike entity who, like most gods, made a bad call and humanity suffered for it but she made the conscious choice to learn from it. With the way her lore is set up now with Dahra being the new vessel for Karma, I was thinking that since she hasn't received a skin in a long time and she's supposedly in the works that her current skins would represent her former states throughout Ionia's history (Avatar comparisons, I get it) and would be applied to her gameplay.

On her gameplay, I guess I should just break it down

Passive- At level 6, Dahra will seek guidance and choose a course of action-

Power- She chooses her "Conqueror" and "Sun Goddess" incarnations. Her ult with them is Q only. Q burns threw minions and leaves scorched earth when it reaches max range or collides with a champion or large/epic monster. Can be recast . Circumference of second Q scales with AP in 100-150 point ratio. Wouldn't slow anymore for balance.

Resolve- She chooses her "Warden" and "Winter Wonder" incarnations. Her ult with them is W only. W links to an enemy champ, healing herself and STUNNING enemy champs for a time. Can be recast on ally champion. Health gained will be shared. STUN duration would be shorter than the root. Range on her W scales with Health in 400-500 point ratio.

Ingenuity- She chooses her "Lotus" and "Sakura" incarnations. Her ult with them is E only. E gives shields that overflow with energy and are surrounded by sinning fans to nearby champions, scaling with initial target and nearby champs. Enemy champs who make contact with the the shields are damaged and apply the same status effect for a time. E scales with Mana. We may not get fans for autos but I think spinning fans around the shields would be so nice, which is why I grouped them together.

After level 10 she can change her course of action at base. At 16, she can change her course of action in lane.

Everything stays the same. Minions blocking Qs, 2 second roots, and her shield should stay the same just to make laning phase more challenging before her 6 spike. I think the buffs on her ults make more impact so raising the cooldown to 70-100 would help balance her out, especially since CDR is something she'll have to focus at some point anyway due to her being an ability-based champ. Visually, get rid of the floating thing. If the idea was to make her more imposing, maybe when she activates her ult her hands radiates energy that arcs to where the floating thing was and concentrates into a ball of energy. That way her ult is more noticeable so it's kinda a visual nerf but I think most Karma players flash through R pretty quick to get to the next ability so it shouldn't hurt too bad. Her auto just needs to be something other than what it is now. I wish her style choices better, primarily in her default and Sakura. I think her green tattoos should only show up when she ults. Sakura is ok, but if it was a chroma it would probably be better (Karma just needs a chroma period).

I have no idea if any of this would work, but she has too much potential to be better.

2 Comments

Zerdun4/9/2019, 11:14:08 PM1 votes

What your proposing I believe is pretty unique but will run into some difficulties as a whole. By removing her current flexibility on R and instead changing it into something like a decided ultimate you sort of gib her playability unless you fudge her numbers everywhere. This is because current Karma literally has two damaging abilities (one being cc and healing which reduces the damage on it already) you would thusly force her to into Q incarnation first just to let her trade / poke / skirmish and be effective. I think that type of kit change would feel bad to current players for what can easily be perceived as little reward. (you gut the bombastic early q poke for what now? challenge? your nuts!) because of this your change feels like a band aid to her current problems

By making the changes you suggest I feel that while adding a 'skill' requirement of having foresight on what ability to empower when by hard locking R it will on the whole cause the player base to default to buffing her Q. The reason for this is that at all times damage is quite literally the best form of CC. The grey screen stops the enemy player in the team fight better than any root or snare can. Lets also not to forget that outside or RQ she currently has no other forms of decent burst damage.

This will quite literally force the Q to be the default unless her W and E incarnations stack in addition to Q. Which from what I am seeing see with your description of shifting them does not. If you want players to shift between these avatars you would have to make the W and E avatars instantly switch (which is pointless because that's what R already does) or have a cast time. (which again makes it feel like your trying to break her current flexibility without giving her anything for it) The flexibility that she has now is all incorporated into her current power budget and when you add limitations you would also free up power space that if left unfilled would just tank Karma's win % (bad).

If she isnt given real damage outside of her Q the other incarnations would in turn have to be more overbearing than the Q avatar is. This would in turn make players want to avoid taking the avatar Q to begin with. Which is counterproductive to what your trying to do. Give karma high and low points while maintaining some variance for skill. That is in turn kinda really bad by design and would most likely feel like complete garbage when you play with it. Instead, I believe the best route to 'fixing' Karma is just simply altering her base kit in a few minor ways like this example.

Q : no change outside of increase base damage and snare removal RQ : area skill shot (remove delayed damage pop and snare, add delayed healing to those standing in area) W : same as current with increased root duration + damage RW : Target friendly, increase move speed of tethered and grant one of the following : clear roots/snares or tenacity E : shield no comments obviously RE : buffed shield with increased duration that when expires or breaks explodes for damage R : CD evaluated (most likely reduced) due to current passive being changes because its garbage and dosnt function with whole kit Passive : change to make auto attacks grant buff that buffs the next ability cast (stacks can only be consumed 1 at a time if it stacks). This would reward karma players who do more than poke with a random q and burn RQ on CD plus be unique in that champions currently get spell blade effects (ability then empowers auto) where this would be the opposite (who loves flavor)

Something like this mockup would in turn give karma more definition in what she does because it removes all of the blanket abilities she currently has. I mean come on she literally has a reverie and a locket built into her kit currently (RE). How in the hell is that a good / balanced idea? Something like this mockup would in turn limit her ability to add generic help and will force her to target who she wants to give what. This increases skill requirements and trim quite a bit of excess fat her kit clearly has that makes her currently so damn generic. It would also give her more weaknesses as a whole since she has 1 CC ability (w) that you can chose to use as a get out of jail free card. While also allowing her to be more offensive instead of a shield bot come team fights