Karma has been a top tier support for a while in the current meta. Her strong harass in the laning phase paired with a powerful speed-up and shield have made her a strong all-around support.

She has also been picked a few times in the midlane in the past few weeks. In this article, we’ll take a quick look at those instances in which she was picked in the midlane.

Itemization

Every Karma mid opts to take Athene’s Unholy Grail as the first item. Athene’s was changed significantly on patch 7.12, something we will discuss a bit later, but it was picked mainly for its impressive stats and synergy with shields. Statwise, Athene’s gave mana regeneration, 20% cooldown reduction, and magic resist alongside a small amount of ability power. It also included a powerful passive which turned damage dealt into a small heal when an ally was shielded or healed. This had obvious synergy with Karma’s E, which offers a shield and speed boost. With Athene’s, it also turned into a small heal. Karma can easily stack up the charges due to her low cooldown Q which can basically be spammed.

From there, there are basically two builds that Karma Mids took. The first was the more supportive build that we see by Faker in Game 2 of SKT vs Afreeca Freecs. This involved getting an Ardent Censer, which gives bonus movement speed, buffs all shields by 10%, an attack speed bonus to any shielded ally, and mini life steal bonus (technically, it grants a flat amount of health per attack on hit rather than working like life steal). This path utilizes Karma’s incredible utility through spamming multiple shields and speed boosts while also boosting a team’s damage and survivability.

SKT paired this build with Bang’s Xayah, who got incredibly powerful in the late game. In theory, this would help Xayah get through the mid game, where she is not as powerful. It also helped to buff the AD Jungle and Top in Blank’s Lee Sin and Untara’s Jarvan. Giving them a small attack speed bonus, while not as impactful as on a marksman, certainly does not hurt.

The other build path was a more damage oriented build, which skips the Ardent Censer in favor of a Luden’s Echo. We saw TSM's Bjergsen as well as Team Dignitas’ Keane opt for this build. Luden’s Echo provides significantly more ability power and bonus movement speed. This build actually gives more raw shield value than the Ardent Censer build, though not by much. At two items (Athene's + Ardent Censer), Faker had 120 AP while Bjergsen and Keane's two items (Athene's + Luden's) had 180. A maxed out E, with 120AP and the Ardent Censer bonus gives a 253 damage shield ({170 base + [120AP x 0.5 scaling]} x 8% buff) whereas with 180 AP it gives a 260 damage shield (170 base + [180AP x 0.5 scaling]). A 7 damage difference is quite minimal so the Ardent Censer path emphasizes the extra passives on the item over raw shield value. However, as the game scales later, the Luden’s Echo path offers more raw shield value due to the increased AP. Both TSM and Team Dignitas may have viewed raw shield value as well as increased damage to be more important for their respective team compositions.

From there, the item paths converged with Rabadon’s Deathcap, Void Staff and a Liandry’s Torment. Each item boosts Karma’s damage significantly as well as buffing her shields.

Strengths

Karma’s main strength comes from her ability to simultaneously shield allies and boost their movement speed. Shield have been incredibly powerful in the meta, and the ability to shield multiple members gives Karma a huge tool to use in teamfights. While this does consumer her Mantra charges, she can quickly regain them by landing Q’s on grouped up enemies thanks to her passive which reduces the cooldown on mantra when damaging enemies both with auto attacks and abilities. The shield is incredibly powerful on its own, but the movement speed is also a significant boost to any team composition. It allows for teams to chase enemies, kite in teamfights, or disengage from bad fights. Speeding up specific champions can also significantly boost their effectiveness. For example, Team Dignitas picked Rengar alongside their Karma mid. Speeding up a stealthed Rengar can allow him to easily reach the backline and target the carries. It also allows Karma to more easily snare targets by shielding herself when tethered to an enemy by her W. This is especially powerful early on to catch up to enemies during ganks.

Look at that shield on Bang!

Her shielding strength and movement speed buffs are the reason why she is most often picked as a support. But Karma’s damage cannot be overlooked. In the match between Team Dignitas and Team EnVyUs, Keane’s Karma did the second most damage in the game beating out both AD carries and the opposing midlaner. Even with Faker’s more supportive build, Karma did almost as much damage as Xayah at 33k damage in the 45 minute game.

Zyra was at full health...

This damage comes from her high scaling and high base damage on her Q as well as the boost she gets from the Mantra Q. The Mantra Q serves two important functions. First, it boosts her damage by adding an additional 30% AP scaling, as well as a detonation area which does a lot of damage if it lands. We usually don’t see the detonation damage go off, but it is devastating when it does. Secondly, the Mantra increases the hitbox of the Q. This allows more targets to be hit by it, and consequently deal more damage. As a support, Karma can abuse the high base damages in lane to bully out opposing laners in the early game. A well-aimed Mantra on top of the shield to reduce damage taken in a trade can tip a lane greatly in the Karma’s favor. However, this damage tends to fall off in the later stages of the game as support due to having less gold and less items focused on Ability Power. However in the midlane, Karma can get more gold and invest in AP items which provides an insane amount of damage. The items she usually goes for are also comparatively cheaper to other AP midlane builds (Morellonomicon costs 2900 gold vs Athene’s costing only 2100).

The Future of Karma Mid

With Patch 7.12, there were two changes that directly affect Karma as well as the items she tends to build. Karma’s E was hit by lowering the base shield value as well as lowering the shield on secondary shield targets through her Mantra E by 20%. This is definitely a nerf, but it may be offset by the changes to Athene’s Unholy Grail. Athene’s cooldown reduction and ability power was reduced, while the mana regeneration was buffed (20% → 10%, 40 → 30, 75% → 100% respectively). In addition, it now grants 5 Ability Power for every bonus 25% mana regeneration.

These changes are definitely interesting. From the get go, the ability power reduction is essentially negligible as you gain 20 ability power from its new passive applied to the mana regeneration it already provides. This change makes the Ardent Censer path more powerful as well. Ardent Censer gives an extra 50% mana regeneration which means a bonus 10 AP. This shrinks the AP difference between the two paths slightly, which might tip the Ardent Censer to be the preferred item.

The lowered cooldown reduction however, might be a little more painful. Losing 10% cooldown reduction is somewhat significant as Karmas did not build any cooldown reduction items after the Athene’s and Ardent Censer. For a champion whose strength comes from the ability to spam shields and a low cooldown poke tool, cooldown reduction is an incredibly valuable stat. This might mean that Karma Mids add a Morellonomicon to their build path. The cooldown reduction gives them the same cooldown reduction as before the nerf at 30% thanks to the 20% given by Morellonomicon. However, having to build both a Morellonomicon and an Athene’s and/or Ardent Censer makes the build path pretty awkward. This might also mean the Karma Support becomes strong again as they itemize more cooldown reduction than midlane Karmas do.

It will be interesting to see if Karma mid or support will become more popular with the new changes in the coming weeks of competitive League of Legends. It is certainly possible that the changes destroy Karma mid and relegate her only to support, or even out of the meta entirely. However, it seems that these changes might make a more AP focused Karma to be strong.

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