User blog comment:Typhron/Karma's Problems./@comment-23469541-20130925084427

I felt like I found a lot of success playing old karma in ranked, but as far as designs, there's many changes to go but keep the playstyle 'similar' to the old kit and still work.

Passive. There's so many changes to this, could make it a team Mp5 aura (like heimer does Hp5) which would of helped her mana issues and also made her the only person other than soraka to affect teammate mana. Just a thought, but there's many others along this line.

Heavenly wave. Could of done a lot of things to try changing it. Thin out and lengthen the cone to make her less of a melee mage, but then reduce her armor. Make the heal instead AoE circle with the strongest focus of it being whomever is hit by the cone (with the overall healing potential lesser than it used to be) and possibly removing the % heal instead for the flat heal amount, except dependant on where karma's facing. (damage still being a cone, just the heal is circle and like stated with stronger healing to allies within the cone. This would eliminate some of that 'hard to aim'.) Or, to make it play like karma but with HIGHLY less skillcap, turn it into something like Sona's Q/W, except make the Cone damage the same, but the mantra version sends certain amounts of 'healing waves' depending on rank to heal a single target or multiple targets with the heal doing something like... if it hits the same champion, first wave does 100% of the heal, second does 75% of the heal, third 33%, etc. Or make both the damage and heal work like priority seeking waves to nearby enemies so you didn't necessarily need to make it a 'hard' skillshot.

Spirit bond. Drop the mantra bonus, like you said, it made it hard to see if it was 20% or 40%. Instead change the mantra bonus to something like added stats to karma and teammate or reduced stats to the enemy it was bonded to when mantra'd. there's many easy indications to suggest this. Like a glowing green aura on Karma and teammate while a purple on the enemy if it's mantra'd. Direct indication. Then make the bond do what it does now when you're close to breaking it, go from white to red depending on how close they are to breaking it. I think this alone would of solved many issues with the skill. Also, because some people hate that you 'must' use it for damage for it's max potential, why not remove the damage to clotheslining and play around to see if it works better to say... make it do a DoT to an enemy it's attached to, and half a DoT to enemy's that are ran through for a similar duration while it was while it's attached. Or drop damage in general in exchange for making the skill more efficient (cheaper on mana, faster to cast, longer range to break, added armor/magic resist when mantra'd) it'd see general direction if it wasn't wasting a lot of it's 'points' on the ability for how much damage it dealt. Or hey, instead of that, I like the idea of a double click on spirit bond (cc/pull in) Attach it to ally or enemy, double click it, and it pulls them slightly closer to you, that way it works like Lulu's CC. can help an ally or CC the enemy just briefly. Wouldn't be strong CC, but an interrupt/small placement movement.

Soul Shield. Not a lot that needed to be changed about this ability. But why not add the old passive to this? The lower the target's health when you shield them (not karma, but the cast upon target) the stronger the shield's shield strength is and when mantra'd the AoE damage. From here, you can then play with adding or changing it to say "mantra version does a small spread shield to allies as well." and by that, it'd have to be VERRRy small. or 'mantra version while damaging, also shields for an extra amount. Either set extra amount or maybe a bit extra depending on how many enemy champions were hit by the damage. And last, you could also change something with the mantra system. Keep it two charges, but unlike it was before, you could then play around with possibly 'double dipping'. What I mean is, if you have two stacks of mantra, you can hit it twice really fast to up the effect of an ability rather than using it for two abilities for lesser effect RR+Q: Make it do damage/healing and AoE knockback for wasting the extra mantra charge. Or stronger heal, or larger area of effect. RR+W: The idea on what to do here coudl be numerous. Stun the target cast upon,  massively buff the armor/magic resist of the person you placed it upon, make the tether's clothesline stun enemies that run through it, etc. RR+E: Make it add even more to shield, or add a knockback AoE or knock up AoE or add more damage, spread shield's also do damage, etc. There's just a lot you could do to this.

This system then means karma's 'ult' would of been on a 48 second CD, but it has a flaw and a pro. Flaw: for an 'ult' you still have to use the base spell to use it rather than it being a standalone ultimate. Pro: maybe you used an ultimate early in a team fight by double clicking, fight's still going but you only have 1 mantra charge but maybe that'd be enough to turn the tide so you'd rather use it now than wait for the ability to double tap.

Sure, it would of made karma far more complex to play, but I'm hoping I showed that there WERE ways to use old karma and with tweaks make her work.