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Idea for a Karma Rework

MrFluffyPuffy··4 votes·568 views

Just an idea so her gameplay has more of the Karma theme.

Passive (Karma):

If Karma receives a heal/shield or any other buff, then Karma´s shields and heals are stronger for this ally. Last for 1 minute with a 30 seconds cooldown for this ally. The strength of the heal/shield buff (Karma) is dependent on the strength of the buff she receives. If she received a base stat buff, then her heals/shields are 2.5% stronger; if she get a shield, then her heals/shields are 5% stronger; if she receives a heal, then her heals/shields are 7.5% stronger. If allies use the passive, then it gets stronger -> +0.5% for one usage (up to 3 times/ 1.5%: 2.5->4%;5%->6.5%;7.5%->9%)(only for the ally who used the passive).

If Karma receives any damage or debuff from an enemy, then her abilities have additional effects for this enemy and she deals more damage per autoattack to this enemy. Lasts for 30 seconds with a 15 second cooldown. The effects are stronger if enemies had this passive already (stacking up to 3 times).

Q (Inner flame): Karma sends forth a ball of spirit energy that explodes and deals x magic damage upon hitting an enemy unit. Passiv (Karma): If the ball of spirit hits an enemy with the passive on, then a cataclysm gets created which deals x magic damage after a short delay.

W: Marks an ally/herself or an enemy.

Ally: The mark activates itself, if the ally gets 3 times damage from enemies. The mark heals the ally for 25% of the highest damage taken (from those 3 damage parts).

Enemies: The mark activates itself, if the enemy deals 3 times damage to the first champion, which he dealt damage to after receiving the mark. The mark deals x magic damage. The mark also activates itself, if the enemy kills the allied champion with one autoattack/skill, while the allied champion had 1000 or more health points. Passive (Karma): If the passive was activated, then she deals additional x damage to this enemy. This effect can only be used once per usage of the passive.

E: Karma gives herself or an ally a shield. Passive: If an enemy deals damage to the shield, then allies in x range also get a shield. Passive (Karma): If an enemy with the passive deals damage to the shield, then the shield explode after x seconds dealing x magic damage to all enemies in x range.

R: Karma says a curse, which let all damage and debuffs affect their provenance (-> If an allied/enemy Sejuani uses her ultimate and hit an enemy with it, then she also gets the slow/stun and the damage). Karma cast the spell for 2.5 seconds and is rooted while she cast it. The screen of every player is blurred golden. The spell lasts for 5 seconds.

11 Comments

TheHappyReaperz1 votes

Why?

478571 votes

Why not ?

TheHappyReaperz1 votes

Karma's in a pretty good spot right now.

SilverSquid2 votes

I respectfullly disagree

TheHappyReaperz1 votes

Enlighten me, what is bad about Karma? I don't play her, but playing with and against her, she seems pretty balanced.

SilverSquid2 votes

The fact that she is balanced is probably one of the only things speaking for her.

She had a rushed and uninspired rework, her charstory is bland, she has unfinished animations, her dance stolen from shen, she lacks a lot of gameplay depth. She is hard to learn and easy to master, the exact opposite of good design. She has no unique mechanics, she does not contribute to the richness of LoL (even though she has the potential), she is boring to watch (LCS) and boring to play against. And as long as you don't enjoy lobbing random hadoukens at enemies that are equally frustrating to hit, but sometimes also seem unfair to dodge for enemies, or you enjoy playing shieldbot.... there isn't much left for her in high level play.

She also falls off due to her mantra, a balance problem that Riot tried to adress multiple times and failed. Her playstyles and scalings are all over the place, but not in a good way; no matter what build you choose you always have to neglect one part of her kit. Her old self, her backstory, her fans and her kit suggest her being a battlemage, but Riot didn't manage to nail it down... and instead introduced disruptor and artillery-mage qualities on top of what she already had, watering her identity down.

Also her community is divided, both due to the failed reworks and the different playstyles. She lacks visual identity and obviously her character isn't interesting enough to inspire good skins. You might have noticed that champions with strong, relatable or straight up odd character are favoured for high quality skins.

And even Meddler, as I have quoted frequently, considers her "bland".

I could go on for a bit, but I think you get the picture. Please note, that I really do like Karma, and I mained her for 2 seasons. However, this is the very reason I understand her issues. And keep adressing them.

MrFluffyPuffy1 votes

What do you think of my idea?

To make things clear I don´t know or can´t remember old Karma (I began to play the game with end of season 3 or preseason 4 and didn´t found much where I looked about old Karma) + also I´m not an ultimate, creative, genius champion designer -> I just had a few ideas about mechanics for her that would fit her theme better than her current mechanics (current one: you either are a poke-mage who destroys only and give good shields or only a support who tries to save hers allies <-> my idea: you are a mage who punish enemies for being evil to her or a support who reward allies for being good to her)

Problems I see in this idea: Q: -Almost no change and doesn´t feel right to this theme somehow. +But it gives her a skill which makes her more active in lane (trying to poke the enemies)

  • Good counterplay opportunities (you can dodge it; shield/heal)

W: -Useless if the ally dies within those 3 damage parts -No counterplay (if you don´t want that the enemy get healed then you need to wait for the mark to vanish; if you don´t want to get damage from it then you need to attack either another enemy or wait til it vanish) -Not much interaction with the enemy -Not that interesting +Fits her theme better than the old W (to the part with the counterplay and interaction-> I think it´s ok since there are some other champs who have the same style, for example Janna and Soraka and as long as it isn´t unhealthy and not to much boring and there are other champs which bring diversity in the game I think it´s ok)

R: -probably either to strong or to weak -slow down/ brake fights -> boring because no one does something/ they pull back from the fight (out of the sight of viewers)

  • hard to master but is for sure really strong if you master it
  • interesting (at least in the first few games) because there isn´t such an ability yet (out of the sight of players) +everyone need to think about their next steps to do the best out of the situation (they could wait til they ult is over but that would be wasted time) (champions with lifesteal have a better situation -> do I really need to explain this :P) (after rethinking about the ultimate it definitely should have a range and shouldn´t be global xD)
SilverSquid2 votes

Hey there, fellow Karma fan. Generally I like the direction you went. I thoroughly enjoy the idea of Karma being a battlemage/enchanter that controls the battlefield by manipulating damage and her only crowd control being "threatening return damage". When talking about specific ideas I am less inclined to give this rework much of a chance. The spells are too complicated at times to pass Riot's design standards and some are just impractical (like that 1 out of 3 thing).

Overall your rework idea seems to be more creative than my first one. But also - not surprisingly - very far from Karma's original iteration. When I do reworks I try to include something for the Old Karma fans and something for New Karma fans. Taking the best of both worlds is my goal. Put shortly; people loved Old Karma for her fanweapons, duality-mantra, double mantra charges, shieldbomb, tether mechanic and baity-bursty-nature. People like New Karma for her better visuals, impactful mantra, more reliable team inpact and better designed basic Q & E.

I think duality is probably the thing you neglected the most in this rework. And with duality I don't mean "Things could go A or B", but instead "This spell has the opposite effects A and Z and I need to make use of both sides at the same time, or sacrifice half the power for flexibility". This makes both for a nice learning curve and a very wisdom focused gameplay (that your enemy can partake in). Also duality rocks. Think about Ana's grenade from Overwatch.

Another gamedesign thing, if you are interested; Forcing a choice upon your enemy takes a lot of agency out of Karma's hand. Even if she can decide WHEN she forces those decisions, the enemy will - in a best case scenario - always use the more profitable version. This makes mastering Karma very hard, the higher you climb, but can be used to abuse newbies who don't understand Karma yet. Put differently; you put the burden of knowledge on OTHERS and take away skillchecks from Karma. This can work, but it must be used cautiously or you risk making your champion become unviable. Zarya from Overwatch is probably a good thing here. She forces enemies to decide whether to break the shield and grant her damage potential or avoid it alltogether. However, a skilled Zarya will always find ways to charge herself up. So you force decisions, can still show skill, while giving your enemy real options. Really neat!

I didn't get into the specific skills yet and I talked already way too much. I hope all of this helps you a bit. I am thankful to you for caring so much about Karma and trying your best to help her out. Really, I appreciate every voice trying to contribute in their personal way. Have my upvote and a big Thank you!

MrFluffyPuffy1 votes

Thank you for your review.

Handy Sandy 1 votes

ult is broken tho, basically an exhaust that will insta kill burst mages/assassins

MrFluffyPuffy1 votes

Exhaust? Do you know what the ult does and what an exhaust do? You can't compare those two abilities. Also it won't insta kill anyone except a Veigar or Nasus with many stacks.

Also she has a 2.5 seconds delay on it which means that assassines or burst mages would already have done most of their damage.

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