User blog:Atmey/PBE Karma impressions

Theses are my own thoughts, you are free to disagree and comment, in fact I welcome it.

Passive

 * I don't think someone will disagree that it is a nerf, the old one gave more AP than a needlessly large rod, I don't think the new one is bad, but the huge cooldown on mantra makes 0.5~1 second irrelevant, especially if you can't spam abilities because of high mana costs.

Q

 * While it has smaller AoE than the old Q, it makes it up in range, but I could not help it but feel it is a reworked Jayce's Q. I feel it is still weak as the main damaging ability, look at Ahri's similar range and CD, more base damage, higher AP ratio and half of it is true damage, and most importantly the whole skillshot path is the AoE damage, not just the explosion. Yeah Karma got a slow on it, but with Rylai Ahri can have higher slow duration, with relatively same slow amount, scaling slow up to 35% was better.

W

 * Absolutely horrendous damage for a DoT, and the fact you have to stay in range makes it harder. Cass Q is spammable AoE with higher ratio, Malz' higher base and ratio and lower CD, both have secondary effects as well (MS buff, E reset, contagious), don't tell me because it is a snare, Morgana's snare has higher range, base and ratio as well plus it is instant. And the fact you can't use it on minions makes it even worse.

E

 * Decent shield, although weaker than the old one, the MS boost makes up for it.

R

 * With much higher cooldown and removal of charges, I expected her empowered abilities to be really good especially with her lower-than-average damaging abilities, I will compare it to other champion ults.

RQ

 * Jayce's EQ deals more damage, has higher range and lower CD, while Karma adds a decent slow, the AoE is too small to have an impact on a teamfight, other AoE slows even non-ults like mf's are more noticeable, while it has pretty good total damage, it is not the easiest ability to land, the person you hit can easily walk away from the second hit.

RW

 * The new heal amount is bad, 20% of missing health, it was decent when it restored a flat amount, and oh god the ratio, the old Karma had 1% for 50 AP for all in AoE, now 1% for 100AP for herself only?

RE

 * The base damage is very low as it scales only on R level, can't have the high base damage at early levels where it was the core of Karma's gameplay, not to mention the lower AP ratio. The MS boost is good, but it isn't exactly Shurlia's.

Other issues
She has high mana costs, old Karma can clear a wave with just 2 abilities while harassing the enemy (RE), new Karma about double the amount and harder to harass the enemy unless he is stand right next to the minion. Her mana costs are roughly the same, but now she needs to use abilities more often to get the same result. Lux, Morgana and Oriana have lower mana costs, even most of the supports.

The good things new Karma has
Let's not be all negative now, her role as solo is better mostly because of the range buff (AA and Q), fully reworked W, it was the weirdest ability she had and hard to fully utilize. Extra CC and easier to land, she had only a slow on her W, now she has the slow on Q and a snare on W. She didn't lost her MS buff, it was moved to shield, 2 in 1 buff, also her old RQ was easy to land, especially when your teammates run around and can land it on just one.

Overall
I understand the Q damage nerf (for the slow and range), maybe the W because her old one was much harder to fully utilize, but RE, especially early, was too much.

Suggestions

 * Make W castable on minions, with % missing health she won't be a nightmare to lane against, plus soloing blue and possible jungle potential, or if Riot plans to go back flat amount, 60~80% spellvamp while tethering would be interesting instead of flat heal, and maybe making it worthwhile to level W early.
 * Lower mana costs: W to cost 70 at all levels, it is leveled last anyway, E costs 60/65/70/75/80 and could put a small cost on R to compensate.
 * Either make her mantra abilities stronger or reduce it's cooldown so it Karma's utility will shine brighter and more often. (Not both, that could be OP)
 * Cooldown value of 40/35/30/25 would be great with the current passive
 * In case of how to buff her mantra:
 * Make Q travel further and faster, explosion AoE is larger too, and possibly pass through minions, I mean how many ults can be blocked by minions?
 * W: Buff AP ratio to at least double, increase the snare duration (0.5 sec), single target snare is hardly called and ult, or changing the CC type from snare to stun or suppress, Morgana's ult is a stun after a duration, has much higher base damage and ratio, plus it is an AoE.
 * More explosion damage rework base damage to something like 80~100% of the shield amount so it can scale with the shield level, and mantra levels for the extra shield amount buff from 30/70/110/150 to 40/85/130/175