Everyone loves a flex pick. You can choose a champion and your opposition has the difficulty of guessing where you’re going to go. This influences their choices, often stops a direct counter pick, and makes your life easier. Over the past year we have seen high levels of Lulu play, Annie, and Morgana, and all three are still used on occasion in the right team comp and against the right team comp. Now, there’s a new addition to this champ pool: Karma.

What’s new (and why):

Karma’s tweaks were long overdue. Occasionally picked in the mid lane, she fell away from both roles a long time ago because, for all she had high levels of damage early thanks to her combo of Mantra + Inner Flame (Q), she struggled against strong wave-clear. Opponents could still keep on top of their farm whilst dodging skill shots, which is generally frustrating but in solo queue often leads to disharmony in the team.

A good opponent can shove their wave up and pin the Karma back, stopping her from shielding up and ‘hit and run’ poking with the movement speed buff. This gives Karma two options; take a risk and step forward to be aggressive anyway or sit back passive and wait for an opportunity.

Photo courtesy of lolchromas.com

The problem with playing passively was that your power spike would eventually diminish over time. The new changes now reward Karma for making it to late game; succeed early and you can exploit the ludicrously short cooldowns later on.

Passive: Gathering Fire

The new changes see Karma’s passive – Gathering Fire – scale up with the amount of cooldown reduced onto her ult, Mantra. This means that as she levels up, more time is deducted from her Mantra cooldown by landing basic attacks and spell hits. This changes from a flat 2 seconds for spell hits to 2, 2.5, and 3, and a flat 1 second for basic attacks to 1, 1.25, and 1.5.

Q: Inner Flame/Soulflare

This is a skillshot and projectile ability. This ability was not subject of the latest tweaks. It has a 0.6 AP ratio and administers a slow on the enemy it hits.

Damn full build karma Q does 2.1k damage if the full thing hits thats pretty rediculous

— saintvicious (@LolStvicious) May 28, 2015

@SkumbagKrepo ya with ludens and 700ish ap

— saintvicious (@LolStvicious) May 28, 2015

W: Focused Resolve/Renewal

Focused Resolve can now be used on monsters, opening Karma up to be used in the jungle by those who are mischievous, but it has lost its previous bonus damage. It also has a higher AP ration to make this experience more successful, but also to reward brave approaches to root an opposing champion.

Renewal, the Mantra boosted version, has an increased cast range and heals Karma for 20% of her missing health when cast – plus an additional 1% onto this total per 100 AP she has. Late game this could be in the region of 4-8%. It also extends the root duration marginally.

E: Inspire/Defiance

Inspire has been given a decreasing cooldown as you level up and a cheaper mana cost, with slightly reduced shielding so as not to be too imbalanced. The shield prevents 80 – 200 damage, with 50% of your AP adding onto this total. As you level up the bonus movement speed given by the shield will improve from 40 to 60%.

Defiance is a flat 60% movement speed bonus when cast, it no longer deals any damage, and no longer protects against a specified amount of damage. Instead it increases the base shield on the initial target by a large amount and gives those teammates around a shield equivalent to 50% of the primary target’s shield.

R: Mantra

Mantra is Karma’s empowerment. It is available from level one and can increase at 6, 11, and 16. It gives Karma 8 seconds to use an ability and gain a bonus/additional effects. Mantra hasn’t been changed, but the cooldown was already quite fair at 45 seconds starting, and decreasing to 36. This, with 40% cooldown reduction, will see Karma’s Mantra available every 14.4 seconds. Now factor in the passive reductions and… yeah, you can activate Mantra every few seconds in reality late game.

Mantra has no cast time, it doesn’t interrupt her casting other skills, the cast doesn’t affect cooldowns on other abilities, and Mantra is on cooldown from the activation, not from the use of an ability. One bonus on top of this is that Mantra can be used under crowd control because it has no effect on its own.

Why should Karma be used?

Karma was meta in the past along with Sivir when it was very successful to run at people with the massive speed boost. You cast Defiance, you charge in. The enemy is usually dead and objectives are yours to take unopposed. Sivir is still in use, and doing this tactic, and other supports are using Talisman of Ascension/Righteous Glory to do the same thing, so with the changes to the shielding Karma can do the same but with even more benefit to the team.

Ardent Censer and Talisman of Ascension have both been buffed recently, so this gives even more excuse to utilise a support Karma because of how many speed boosts she can offer and the shield damage bonuses, but mid lane Karma can do this with more of an offensive bias rather than being a team buff dispatcher. You’ll still get cooldown reduction (Unholy Grail or Morellonomicon) and what you lose in terms of defensive building you gain with items like Zhonya’s Hourglass and Luden’s Echo for damage mitigation, movement speed, and poke potential. The SaintVicious tweets higher up show just how strong the Soulflare is when Karma has built up!

An additional point is that Karma’s W working on monsters now means she can do even more damage to dragon and Baron. That speed boost to get in or out of the pit could be the difference between so many objectives…

Is this it for Karma changes?

Not likely. Karma will be picked up slowly but surely by pro teams and in solo queue off the back of this (or perhaps if they take too long then solo queue will act first). The increased play time will help Riot’s dev team decide how to tweak Karma some more because, in their words, she is: “On our radar as an opportunity to improve” aka more changes and tweaks are to come.

Get used to Karma, get good on her, and be ready to capitalise on her when she eventually strides into the meta.

Bored of League? Play some Ark!