Is there any chance you add a Top Karma guide? I love this any way, good job on it! :)

gg

I think your guide is limited to a specific type of Karma player, and you might want to expand that.

I support, Mid, and Jungle Karma, and although I am not Platinum, I do generally play Karma like one (I juggle Udyr, Sion, Karma, Sona, Janna, Morgana, Nami, Evelynn, Taliyah, Ahri, and a few others, which slows my elo down)

I find there are 3 major considerations to scaling karma:

1) Ability to survive prolonged fights and stack HP. Your guide is heavily based toward glass cannon, and not so much toward survivability. I would argue you can do both, and help a team far more, because not only can you rush cooldown items faster, you can heal more, and survive strong encounters like a fed Yi. Even though karma has an innate heal in W, a Rod of Ages can make prolonged fights with her downright miserable, and goes VERY well in a build where most of your CDR is in runes rather than items (I have a 10%/20%/30% CDR page and a move speed one for support)

I also sometimes fight a Iceborn Guantlet or Lich bane is fundamental when not just running a lane clear game. It's part of why I can run jungle and still get a 55-60% win rate with a 52% kill contribution. Both pair well with her passive and low cdr kit, and allow her to clear the new 6.25 Jungle fast enough to be a legitimate jungler. I can kill a drake almost as fast with Karma as I can with Shyvana.

The reason I mention Iceborn is it really becomes effective when trying to secure a running tether, has a very low cost, and when you run the armor masteries in the Resolve page, it gives her huge survivability (usually long enough to proc your root on an ulting fed yi, and heal/get away while your team hopefully mops him up). It also helps vs runners like Hecarim.

2) Move speed is godly. As support I often Adent Censor/Tracker Echo(Luden's Echo)/Lich bane with karma just to cycle Q's and get out safe vs almost any encounter. It's especially nice vs a run speed based champ like Udyr who also when fed may kill you before your tether can activate, or a Lee sin who never misses and must be outrun. I do often overcap move speed when building this, but that helps when someone else is move speed capped and you are playing a who can slow/run the most game (Nasus for example with his immense wither).

The reason I bring up Tracker Echo is, in a previous season on what used to be my primary account, I had a 63% win rate in about 800 karma games per season, and I often chose Smite as support vs pokes rather than exhaust, because vs a poke team exhaust isn't reliably ranged. It saves a mage support about 1200g and one item slot in exchange for a little HP loss on the Sightstone and a little damage from a Luden's. As a support that gold is a huge godsend. And, on Karma whose best use is roaming and aggressively supporting teammates, the jungle mana regen is also nice. I also like the gold reduction and rebuild on the current Rylai's, especially vs Garen/Rammus.

3) Tank Karma often averages more damage over the course of a game, more versatility in helping a team, and far less deaths. Spirit Visage turns the tether into an effective up to 80% heal, considering the damage you take over its duration. It means not dying to Syndras or other nuke champs who usually mean 1 shot deaths to karma, or assassinations like Zed. on CDR builds, I also like Randuin's, especially vs Yasuo/Yi, because it has everything a Karma needs to control a zone.

4) Jungle Karma. It's viable, and even at high elos. It's one of the strongest anti gank junglers, and after about 2600-3600g, she's competitive with any jungler. Furthermore, she can spend far less time in the jungle to affect relative gank levels, because her job isn't to kill; it's to help laners secure kills. I cannot stress how important that is; junglers usually put viable carries behind by taking the kills. If a jungler can ensure kills but not steal them, the rate of win is far greater than feeding one great jungler.

That being said, I have another item I add when jungling: Many of the times I add a Nashors. Jungling doesn't reset her passive,so attack speed is an effective between cooldown momentum gainer, and Nashor's has decent AP, CDR, and couples well with the attack speed passive, especially when you have a good sustain build that allows her to have prolonged fights, like versus a Rammus or other tank which normally out-endures Karma.

(Before you lolking and discover I'm currently only SV in season 7, I was gold last season, and like I said, I toggle many champs rather than specializing. I also had about 28 games in a row in S7 where I got stuck with either BV walk-in feeders of the 1 per 50 seconds type, or intentional feeders. As those have filtered out, I won like 21 of my last 25 games, and am progressing quickly back to gold. I just started the jungling karma, but I'm willing to wager I can get to Platinum based on how it compares to my other junglers (which are generally gold jungling champs, not ones that seem to do well in low elo where teams are unreliable)

I never use Ruby, in preference for builds that either use Tracker echo, Frostqueen, or Talisman of Ascension for Armor/double team move speed boosts. When I tracker echo, I average 32 wards/game. When I don't I average 14. I find teams do better when they are forced not to make risky plays in jungle but stick to visible fights, and I find that over-reliance on ruby leads to risk taking teammates.

I do NOT like Redemption on Nami or Karma. It should be exclusively a Soraka item or a nonbarrier/heal based support item. Karma scales well enough in aoe damage, and barrier sustain that a 0 AP item with a relatively long cooldown that adversely affects champs when its only positive stat is the 10% (now redundant with Censor's passive because both are 10% UNIQUE) heal/shield, the 10% CDR (heavily overabundant on mages!) and the HP. I'd rather have a Spirit Visage or a RoA on both of these champs, simply because they are situationally more powerful when you have a Censor. Nami's heal can actually go positive per bounce if you stack AP, so I don't know why any nami would even bother with a redemption.

I NEVER run anything but Ruby Sightstone. It comes in at 800 gold less (making up for the lack of gold generation) more health and more importantly 20% reduced cooldowns on your Redemption and Locket.

Hello there!
I got some questions to Karma mid. I got about 100'000 mastery points on her and I'm Silver V.
- Health or Armor Seals?
- When I go all in, I start with my W and follow up with my E to get in range. Is it worth to wait with your R/Q until the W stunned the target bc of the 2.5% increased damage to stunned targets from your masteries?
- What do you think about getting a rylais crystal scepter as second or third item?
- Is it worth when you lost the laning phase hard but the rest of your team did well, to stop going AP mage and instead go for more support items like a mikael's or ardent censer?
- About when do you start to roam?
- How the hell do you get a S on Karma mid? I got stats like 25/2/16 and I still only get an A+.
Thank you :)

Great guide. It helped me a lot.
As I saw this needa explod, I thought, that that wouldent be possible but as I played I oneshotted everyone, it was very funny.

(Sorry for the bad grammar and spelling :)

Nice Guide :)

I really like how in-depth this guide is. I also like how this guide gives you information on mid lane and support karma builds.

TY, Great guide! Maybe, it needs more notes about support build (when going Grail, when Banner) and gameplay discription, but even now it helped me to get some free IP :) Thanks again!