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Karthus Gameplay Update

Balgorode·10/26/2016, 4:59:13 AM·2 votes·728 views

Now, I am not a Karthus main so I don't have too much experience with him, nor with these boards. :P

But playing Karthus, as a no mobility mage, with long cast times, is just really hard. I mean even my best timed ults are usually wasted, whether it be zhonyas, spell shields or the dreaded Soraka, Karthus just can't catch I break, so I propose rito give him a gameplay update, at least a minor one. So I'm just gonna jump right in, I hope my ideas sound reasonable!

Passive: Well it is actually pretty okay as it gives you a chance to ult or pick up a kill to make even trades.

Q Lay Waste: Karthus has a fairly okay Q, though it can be easy to dodge most of the time, but then I thought, maybe this could be useful in his kit, hear me out. What if Karthus were to send out a small, slow moving blasts in a line, just a regular old skill shot. The idea being that the damage is high, and cooldown low, but it quite slow and easy to dodge. So Karthus in lane might not be too strong, but in a teamfight he goes full raid boss as the enemies must watch out for the constant waves of death moving around. It would also make farming easy if you hit the whole wave just as it comes.

W Wall of Pain: With this ability, I wanted to continue the theme of slow abilities forcing your opponent to not have time to stand still. So I decided the ability only needed some minor tweaking. So right now all it does is appear instantly to slow and lower mr, thats great, but doesn't provide quite enough counterplay and reward. So my idea is that it starts tiny, then expands into the large wall we know and love. Maybe also giving a better effect then lowering mr, maybe increasing the damage they take from his Q for the duration of the slow?

E Defile: I didn't really have an idea for an entirely new ability for this, so the idea was, it would be the same, but do more damage/true damage to those who escape death, which I shall explain in his ult.

R Requiem: Okay, this is it, the thing that is WAY to easy to avoid! Now for this the idea is short and simple, when his ult is about to deal lethal damage, it marks the target, if the target survives the damage, the mark stays till they die, death will find them! Beyond that I'm not sure what the mark does, maybe it does something like what I said for his E, in which his E did more damage to the target marked for death. I'm not 100% sure.

Anyway that's my idea, this isn't some super long well thought out thing made by some Karthus main, I just thought this while looking at Karthus art, if you have any ideas, please, share them in the comments, let Riot know our favourite Deathsinger needs some love!

3 Comments

Strawberrycocoa10/26/2016, 5:10:56 AM1 votes

As someone who plays a lot of Karthus, I'm fine with how his gameplay is currently. All the counters to his ult are kind of necessary since it's a map wide point-click spell. It's too strong NOT to have hefty counterplay options.

I've always considered relying on your ult to secure your kills, or suicideing with your passive, to be Karthus's weakest strategies. An in-your-face barrage of sustained damage from Q's and an active E is much more effective than diving to your death just to score a free Ult.

What i want is for him to get a buff to his innate durability (like, treat him as a Fighter or a Juggernaut for the purposes of base and per level HP Armor and MR, not Ranged) to help him out with his in-your-face with the swirling void of doom and exploding Skittle spam combat style. Really push him towards being an AP Fighter, not someone who stays at safe ranges and just drops Q's from the backline without doing anything else.