Hello and welcome - happy to have you here visiting my little guide! My name is Allison, and I am a Karma enthusiast and often find myself one tricking her for months at a time. I am currently working on grinding a million mastery points, and decided to make a guide to outline some of my observations and thinking about the champion for other Karma fans!

I began playing League a while back on a friend's recommendation, and started out playing ADC. Unhappy with the role, I jumped to support and played a few different champs (Yuumi, Lux, Leona) for a long while. For the longest time I actually didn't even bother purchasing Karma even when expanding my support pool because I didn't think I would enjoy her. She just didn't appeal to me! I rarely ever saw Karma in my games, and I generally just didn't bother with her. Once I had rounded out my champion pool I decided to play her on a whim because my Soraka pick was banned and I instantly fell in love. I love the flexibilty and utlity that she provides in every game, so she never really gets old! I have been playing her ever since, almost exclusively as support. I hope through this guide I can bring some of the joy of playing Karma to others. :)

PROS ✶ Easy enough for beginners ✶ Really high level of skill expression ✶ Great early game - ultimate at level 1 ✶ Very mobile for an enchanter support ✶ Some of the best shields in the game ✶ Really good peel/protect potential ✶ Ultimate gives lots of options There are so many wonderful things about Karma! Besides being very fun to play, she is indeed very beginner friendly. But don't underestimate her! Karma has a very high amount of skill expression because she has so many options. Her Mantra (R) really forces you to think on your feet because unlike other ultimates, Karma's has three forms each of which augments one of her basic abilities. She is a great early game bully with some very nice enchanter peel potential late game.

CONS ✶ Squishy enchanter ✶ Reliant on teammates ✶ Range isn't great without Mantra ✶ Need a good early game ✶ Outscaled by other enchanters ✶ Can become shield-bot No champion has it all, including Karma! Karma has a great early game as a lane bully, but falls off late-game . Karma does get outscaled by other enchanters . You aren't useless, but will definitely feel less impact on your poke damamage late . You are squishy , and the 12.1x update makes your sustain just a bit worse. You really need a good early game on Karma or you will get steamrolled. Your range isn't fanastic without Mantra , so if you miss an ultimate you're easy to punish.

Below I will try to archive all of the knowledge I have gathered about Karma, and while there will be a little discussion of things like tank Karma, this guide is focusd strictly on support Karma. This guide isn't complete, and certainly much of it is a matter of opinion. But in most cases, I've tried to include the justifications for all of my choices! I also tried to make this guide friendly to all levels of League knowledge, from brand new players to the more seasoned, so some information may seem a little basic but remember, we all start somewhere!

I'm always open to and would love to hear other's opinions and thoughts on Karma, the build, and my Karma Philosophy! :)

Before getting into things, I wanted to briefly touch on my mindset for playing Karma because it greatly influences all of the decision I make from build to positioning to spell rotations. In my perspective, Karma should always be putting her team before herself. What does this mean? In general, you should be playing in a way that is extremely protective of your ADC. This doesn't mean play passively or that you shouldn't be fighting, nor should you be constantly glued to your carry's side. What does this mean in practice then? Karma is a champion with lots of options. A great way to think about how to play Karma is to think about your ultimate, Mantra. For beginner Karma players (including myself for a long time), using things like a Mantra Q in a teamfight to get a bit of burst damage seems great. Mantra Q is such a satisfying ability to land, especially on multiple targets. You might even snipe a kill! This is all great and can be very helpful to your team, but you need to be constantly making sure that you are peeling for your carry. Sometimes, a Mantra E to keep your team alive is more important than getting a kill with a Mantra Q. Oftentimes I will do things like flash + E in front of my fed ADC to block things like a Jinx ultimate, a Zoe Q, so on. This may seem counterintuitive to the whole idea of "don't die", a crucial part of League. But remember, you are a support, and sometimes you are going to have to make sacrifices to keep your team going. This isn't to say you aren't important, but sometimes the best thing you can do for you 10/0 Draven isn't to just shield him, but to physically put yourself between him and lethal damage. Don't int, but don't be afraid to protect your team at all costs. You won't always die doing this, and in fact after a while you'll get comfortable enough with your own health bar and shield power to judge if something is actually lethal, and you can be mindful not to feed in the course of saving someone. But overall, sure, it might feel good to live through a Jhin R, but consider who on your team is outputting damage, who is making plays, and who has bounties. It's okay to die for the greater good. Karma support is, in general, not a flashy position. You will not be sniping triple kills like a Lux or Brand, nor will you be hitting huge knockups like a Lulu ult or Janna Q. It's entirely possible to get some great trick shots on Karma of course, and you better believe I have a folder of funny Mantra Q kills and W dive outplays. But generally speaking, in teamfights and even smaller skirmishes, you are not likely to be the one walking away with the multikill insane outplay. Karma's support is generally in the form of massive shields and unparalleled peeling ability. This does not mean it is any less valuable than a Leona Solar Flare or a Seraphine Encore. Karma is all about knowing who and how to protect and using this to carry your team to victory. And if you're lucky, by late game you will get to enjoy the satisfaction of watching the carry you protected and raised dominating the Rift with ease. Above all else, selflessness is the key to Karma.

SORCERY

Sorcery is going to be your most common rune path to take on Karma, as is the case with most enchanter supports. Below I outline the potential for Resolve tree, but you should mostly always be looking to go Sorcery. As far as keystones, there is nothing better on Karma than Arcane Comet. This is because it adds a great deal to your early game when Karma is the strongest. You really want to be focusing on snowballing your lane and forcing the enemy to take bad backs, and the extra damage on comet is excellent for that. Summon Aery is also an option on Karma, but I find that with her shield and high early game damage output it simply is not as helpful.

Nimbus Cloak is my favorite to go here on Karma, though many use Manaflow Band. Both are fine options, but I find that I do not have any mana issues on Karma so Manaflow is a bit unnecessary. Nimbus cloak on the other hand allows you to get away with cheeky RQs and make quick escape.

Transcendence is a wonderful rune on Karma! It has exactly what we are looking to scale throughout the game: Ability Haste! You'll gain 10 free Ability Haste just for playing the game, and after level 11 will get Ability Haste on cooldowns. This is a wonderful rune on Karma, and I would always make sure to pick this if you are going sorcery.

Scorch is the best on Karma particularly because it lends itself towards our goal of snowballing early. This rune allows your Mantra Q to sting just a little bit more in lane, which is critical in the early lane to force the enemy out of lane. The other options here don't offer much for Karma, so I wouldn't really bother going any of the others. Gathering Storm doesn't help you much because even with it, you will be outscaled and on Karma you should be focusing Ability Haste and not AP.

Rune shards on Karma are pretty simple, and are almost always the same every game. It can be tempting to go Ability Haste, but in order to make sure that you have a decent early game it is usually better to go double Adaptive Force shards. You'll get enough Ability Haste throughout the game, and early game without extra AP will feel notably weaker. I will usually go armor as my final shard unless the enemy team is very AP heavy in which case I will go for some Magic Resist.

RESOLVE

While sorcery is almost always going to be your go-to on Karma, I also think that the resolve tree major path is great on Karma! That said, you should only ever go Guardian as it is the only really viable choice here. That said, Guardian is great because it gives you a little more peel and protection for your carry particularly in the early game. This can be great against lane bullies. I usually go Guardian if I have a weaker/squishier early game ADC, such as a Senna or an ADC who needs to be closer to the action like a Draven or Nilah. But most often, I tend to take this rune into matchups where I am just not entirely certain I'll be able to output enough damage early for Arcane Comet to really shine.

Font of Life is an excellent rune for Karma because her Q both Mantra and basic apply a slow and proc this runes conditions. This can provide a little more sustainability in the early game which can be critical if you are against a very poke heavy comp and you find yourself often getting pushed out of lane. This rune can help keep your ADC up for longer. The other two runes offer little for support Karma.

Bone Plating is my go-to here because it allows Karma to take more risky Mantra Qs in lane. This is because you have to worry a little bit less about the enemy team hitting you back because you will be taking reduced damage. Still be careful because you are not quite tanky enough to sustain through being hard CCed, but it will allow you to take a few hits of poke damage without much concern.

Revitalize is the best option here on Karma because it augments her sheilds a considerable amount. I personally do not feel that any of the other options are worth it to take on Karma because you really want to be doing all you can to empower your shields. These will be what carry you through the late game so it is very important that we do everything we can to make them as strong as possible.

Rune shards on Karma are pretty simple, and are almost always the same every game. It can be tempting to go Ability Haste, but in order to make sure that you have a decent early game it is usually better to go double Adaptive Force shards. You'll get enough Ability Haste throughout the game, and early game without extra AP will feel notably weaker. I will usually go armor as my final shard unless the enemy team is very AP heavy in which case I will go for some Magic Resist.

SUMMONER SPELLS ✶ FLASH ✶ is an absolute must on Karma. While some champs with a speed-up like Karma's Inspire can get away with no flash, you will regret not having it on her. Inspire is not a dash, a blink, or any of the other cheeky moves that lets you get away with no flash. Flash is critical not just for saving yourself - you can not only use flash to jump in and finish off a kill with a Mantra Q, but you can also flash to body-block or shield your carry. This is a must in every single game. ✶ EXHAUST ✶ is the best summoner spell on Karma, in my opinion. I understand why people prefer ignite - it can definitely help snowball a game early! But in my experience, Exhaust is better for a number of reasons. For one, it slows down an enemy and lessens their damage to allow for you to actually land a W. This can be excellent for setting up ganks from your jungler or to handle one from the enemy. Exhaust also helps you keep relevancy in the late game because you can be peeling much harder for your carry than you could with Ignite. ✶ IGNITE ✶ is often what is recommended on Karma. You will be in range to ignite most anyone in a fight except perhaps a skittish support like a Soraka or Sona. You can easily clean up fights with Ignite and it is overall a great spell. I take it when the enemy team has some champs that may otherwise get away from a fight on low HP either because their mobility or the support pick or if I am confident I can crush a lane matchup. Just be mindful that your team doesn't have too many Ignites. ✶ HEAL ✶ is fine. It does what it says on the tin, and can be helpful for getting your carry out of a sticky situation. That said, there are much better options than heal for Karma, so unless you feel really very strongly that it is going to help you in a game, I'd skip it. If your ADC does not go the typical Heal/Flash, I usually ask if they want heal and if they aren't concerned over it, I'll take Exhuast. ✶ BARRIER ✶ , like Heal, is very situational. It is (at least in my opinion) a bit selfish to take on Karma as it doesn't benefit anyone but yourself. Sure, you likely won't die which is great for the team, but it is better to take peeling tools like Exhuast. Not to mention you have a shield that is pretty strong and comes up quite often. ✶ CLEANSE ✶ is another spell that I personally don't care for on Karma. I find that it is better suited on carries, because on support Karma you should be focused on helping your teammates with your summs and abilities more so than worrying about yourself. That said, I will VERY rarely take cleanse if its a really CC heavy, funky matchup I don't feel comfortable with, like a Lux + Viegar bot. Even then, you're team is probably still better served with an Exhaust, Ignite, or even Heal.

PASSIVE ABILITY

Gathering Fire "Karma reduces Mantra's current cooldown by 5 seconds for every enemy champion she damages with an ability." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Karma reduces Mantra's current cooldown by 5 seconds..." --> To understand this ability, let's start with what Mantra even is! Mantra, Karma's ultimate, is very special! Not only do you get this ability at level 1, but it also augments all of your other abilites. Mantra does nothing on its own, and instead you must pick between one of your three basic abilites to augment. Below, I go over each augement and tips on how to use them! Her passive allows her to reduce the cooldown on her ultimate, which means that you can be casting more augmented (read: more powerful!) versions of your abilities more often. ✶ "...for every enemy champion she damages..." --> This is a very interesting and under-used part of Karma's passive! People often forget that you can get double the cooldown if you hit two enemies at once with your Mantra ability. This means that if you hit both bot laners with a Mantra Q, you would recieve 10 entire seconds of cooldown, and even more if you are able to double proc off the ability (more on this later!) ✶ "... with an ability." --> Karma has two damaging abilities: her Q and her W. This means that either of these are able to work with your passive and reduce your ultimate cooldown. Very importantly, this portion of the passive was changed in patch 11.16, so if you are returning to Karma please be aware that her cooldown is no longer reduced with basic attacks like it used to be! ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ Karma gets her Mantra ultimate at level one. Your passive allows you to reduce the cooldown of your ultimate, which means you can be using it much more frequently. A five second cooldown is a big deal, and you can stack the reduction. ✶ Only your damaging abilties can be used to reduce your Mantra cooldown. This means you will be relying on your Q and W abilities. ✶ Using your Mantra reduces your Mantra, provided you hit. Manta abilties can proc twice, providing a total of 10 second cooldowns. This plus your un-Mantra-ed ability means a total of 15 seconds of cooldown on your ultimate if you land every component. You can see this double-proc in action in the video below. ✶ All three of the Mantra versions of Karma's basic abilities (Soulflare, Renewal, and Defiance) all scale with Mantra's rank. This means you should still be leveling up your Ultimate at 6 - don't try to go for a sneaky extra Q rank or you will definitely regret it! ✶ Since patch 11.16 Karma's basic attacks no longer reduce her Mantra cooldown. Her passive now procs only on abilities! ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Showing off the Mantra cooldown combo. First, an R+Q showing the start and end cooldown, followed by R+W also showing the double proc! Make sure to watch the R timer as abilties hit :) ✶ Ruined Karma, event exlusive Cursed chroma ✶

Q

Inner Flame ✶ | Range: 950 | Cooldown: 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 | Cost: 95 | ✶ "Karma fires a blast of energy, dealing * 70 / 120 / 170 / 220 / 270 (+40% of ability power) * magic damage to the first target hit and surrounding enemies, and slowing them by 35% for 1.5 seconds." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Karma fires a blast of energy " --> Karma's Q is a straight line skillshot with an okay range. That said, this skillshot is a little tricky to land, especially when you're just starting out on the champion. It's a thin, sometimes tough to hit skillshot. But I'll go over a few tips and tricks to land and make the most of this ability below! ✶ "...dealing * 70 / 120 / 170 / 220 / 270 (+40% of ability power) * magic damage... " --> Poor Karma does not have the greatest AP ratios in the world, and this ability being her main damage should really exemplify the need for the transtion to the enchanter playstyle discussed in The Karma Transition. Just be aware that this ability scales off of AP! ✶ "... to the first target hit and surrounding enemies... " --> This is one of the little details that separates decent Karmas from the great ones. Karma's Q is not a single target ability, but rather has a small zone that will splash damage onto nearby enemies. This means that there is a chance of being able to hit mutliple enemies without even needing your mantra! ✶ "... and slowing them by 35% for 1.5 seconds. " --> This is another neat trick on Karma's abilities that I think is often overlooked in her kit by casual players. Most people are aware that the Mantra version of this ability has a slow on it, but you should not forget that even the regular verson will get you a brief slow - this can get you out of some sticky situations! ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ Karma's basic Q has a little slow on it, which means that it can be great for quick getaways. You do not need your Mantra to get this effect. I often like to turn on a pursuing enemy and throw out a Q to slow them and dissuade a chase. This is often enough to frighten away your foes and to get your teammates and yourself to safety. ✶ Against champions with things like spellshields, windwalls, etc., it can be very helpful to use your basic Q to bait before hitting a Mantra Q. To pull this off, you will need to put on your best acting skills! This means you should run up with as much confidence as you would with a full Mantra Q. Be aggressive! Wait for the ability then throw out your Q. Even if you don't hit, you now still have a window of opportunity. I love using this trick against people like Braum, Morgana, Samira, etc. because your Q cooldown is shorter than whatever ability they would use to negate your damage. ✶ The best tip on Karma's Q is to use the splash damage to your advantage. This is a critical skill if you want to keep up damage and support item stacking in difficult lanes. Sometimes, it can be very hard to walk up and W for poke, and good players will usually hide in minion waves to avoid Karma's RQ combo. But we can use these minions to our advantage! Hitting a Q onto a back minion wave will splash the damage onto nearby enemies. Just be careful you aren't stealing farm doing this or your ADC will definitely be upset! ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma Q, Inner Flame. Showing off the basic ability and how it can splash onto your enemies! ✶ Darkstar Karma, Rose Quartz chroma ✶

W

Focused Resolve ✶| Range: 675 | Cooldown: 12 | Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 |✶ "Karma tethers herself to a champion or jungle monster, dealing 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+45% of ability power) magic damage and revealing them for 2 seconds. If the tether remains unbroken, the target takes the same amount of damage again and is rooted for 1.4 / 1.55 / 1.7 / 1.85 / 2 seconds." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Karma tethers herself to a champion or jungle monster..." --> Karma creates a link between herself and an enemy. What is important here is that this also works for jungle camps! Don't get too far ahead of yourself though - jungle Karma isn't some secret pro strat. It's bad. So what benefit does the jungle monsters part of this ability have? Well, this actually gives Karma a bit of priority when it comes to helping take objectives like dragon, herald, and baron. You can approach these objectives with a much lower health than other supports may be comfortable with because with the Mantra bonus on your W (discussed below) you can get health back from these camps! ✶ "...dealing 40 / 65 / 90 / 115 / 140 (+45% of ability power) magic damage..." --> Unforunately, the damage on this ability is nothing to write home about. But that's okay, because the point of this ability isn't damage but rather utlity. But just be aware that this scales with AP. ✶ "...and revealing them for 2 seconds..." --> This is as great little bonus on this ability. Revealing an enemy is super helpful, especially in bot lane ganks where the enemy laner will often run to the bushes to drop out of vision so they can't be auto-attacked and abilites are harder to land. A reveal can be very helpful at keeping them in vision for those last few attacks. Remember, an enemy is immediately revealed when the W is cast. You do NOT need to complete the duration of the W to get this reveal bonus. ✶ "If the tether remains unbroken, the target takes the same amount of damage again..." --> Karma's W actuially procs damage twice, once on cast and once if the enemy doesn't break the tether. When you cast this ability, a small zone indicator will appear. Both Karma and the target can break the tether by walking too far from the zone. ✶ "...and is rooted for 1.4 / 1.55 / 1.7 / 1.85 / 2 seconds." --> Here is the real utlity on Karma's W! This ability is not hard CC, but it is good CC! A root is always useful, and can be great for setting up ganks. It's a bit harder to land than some other CC because the enemy can walk out of the zone, but it pairs wonderfully with Exhaust. This is almost a sure-fire way to get the enemy ADCs flash at least! ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ Your W procs is one of two skills that do damage and can therefore reduce your Mantra. Keep this in mind when your Mantra is on cooldown ✶ W can be somewhat difficult to use when poking in lane because it is unlikely the enemy ADC or support will just stand still and let you root them. But that said, you can still use your W for poke! Simply walk up, hit W, and then feel free to back off. This will not only do damage, but also reduces your Mantra cooldown and procs your Spellthief's Edge. That's practically a free 20 gold! ✶ Make sure that you are paying attention to the indicator on your W zone. It is not the best CC in the world, but as mentioned it can be paired with an exhaust to easily lock down an enemy, or at very least force out their summoner spells. A Flash + Exhaust + W can be a really good gank set-up! ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma W, Focused Resolve. Showing off the basic ability and and the range/what happens when the second proc does and does not hit. ✶ Tranquility Dragon Karma, Amethyst Chroma ✶

E

Inspire ✶| Range: 800 | Cooldown: 10 / 9.5 / 9 / 8.5 / 8 | Cost: 50 / 55 / 60 / 65 / 70 |✶ "Karma applies a shield (80/120/160/200/240 + 45% AP) on herself or a target allied champion for 2.5 seconds, which grants 40% bonus movement speed for 1.5 seconds." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Karma applies a shield (80/120/160/200/240 + 45% AP)... " --> Karma creates a shield that scales with AP. This skill will be your bread and butter on Karma, as it is really what makes her such a great support and helps her stay relevant in the late game. The AP scaling on this ability is nothing to write home about, and doesn't relly justify going an extremely AP focused build. Instead, we will always focus on Ability Haste. More on this in the Itemization tab! ✶ "...on herself or target allied champion for 2.5 seconds..." --> Like all supports in League, Karma's shield can be used to protect herself or her allies. Personally, I don't use the self-cast and instead prefer to just mouse over myself as I am definitely someone who tries to do micro-movements, meaning my mouse cursor is always pretty close to my champ. But not everyone prefers playing this way, so if you would like to self-cast, LOL has a nice hotkey for doing so. Just press the Alt key! ✶ "which grants 40% bonus movement speed for 1.5 seconds." --> This is Karma's signature move. There is a reason she is called a speed demon, and this is it! Karma's shields offer some serious speed boosts to yourself or your teammates (both, with Mantra!) for a pretty decent amount of time. 40% movement speed is massive, especially for the very immobile and the extremely. A Kayn or Hecarim with a Karma E is nearly unstoppable, and a quick speed boost can save a slow-poke ADC in a pinch. I personally think that the movement speed on Karma's shield makes it the absolute best enchanter shield in the entire game. ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ If you want to self-cast Karma's shield (or any self-castable spell in League), just hit the 'Alt' key in combination with your desired spell. ✶ Don't be afraid to use your E to get back to lane quickly! I would usually advise against Mantra + E to get you and your ADC to lane early because the high Mantra cooldown, but you should be using your E to boost yourself back to lane. 40% movement speed is nothing to sneeze at, so make sure that you use it! Don't AFK on your way back to lane! Usually I'd focus on using it on your ADC if you recalled together. A Karma E speed-up can be the difference between getting the crashing wave and losing a ton of gold to the greedy tower! ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma E, Inspire, Showing off the basic ability and the movement speed bonus granted. ✶ Odyssey Karma, Aquamarine chroma ✶

RQ

Soulflare | Bonus Damage: 40 / 100 / 160 / 220(+ 30% AP) | Detonation Damage: 35 / 140 / 245 / 350(+ 60% AP) | " Inner Flame deals increased damage, and fires a larger blast that also explodes at maximum range. The explosion creates a field for 1.5 seconds that slows enemies within by 50%, which reptures to deal magic damage." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ " Inner Flame deals increased damage... " --> At a very basic level, your Mantra Q serves to increase the damage on your basic Q ability. That said, this damage only scales 30% with AP, so it still is likely to fall off quite hard late game. ✶ "...and fires a larger blast that also explodes at maximum range. " --> When your Mantra Q reaches the end of its range OR hits an enemy unit it will explode into a circular blast zone. Just be aware that this ability does not go through minions. Any enemy unit will cause the RQ to explode, which includes things like Shaco boxes, Heimerdinger turrets, and Zyra plants. Just try to keep all of this in mind when lining up your shots! ✶ "The explosion creates a field for 1.5 seconds that slows enemies within by 50%... " --> Once RQ is fired and has exploded, the circular blast zone on the ground will stick around for a second and half. What is really cool here is the slow ability, which can be amazing for damage or peel. Even just clipping the very edge of someone's character model with the zone will cause the slow to proc. See tips and tricks for more information on how to get the most out of this! ✶ "...which reptures to deal magic damage. " --> I know what you are thinking - "Allison, you keep saying Karma has not-so-great AP ratios but this scales 60%! How can you say that's bad?" 60% is a pretty decent AP ratio, but I'm afraid that this is harder to proc than you think. It is amazingly rare that an enemy will hang around in your lingering blast radius zone long enough to take the detonation damage. Without CC, it is nearly impossible. The slow, while super helpful, is not really enough. 1.5 secconds is a long time, and almost all your enemies will be smart enough to leave before you can hit that sweet, sweet 60% scaling damage proc. ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ It's very important to always be mindful that Karma's Q (both Mantra and basic) is stopped by any enemy unit. This means that if you fire a Mantra Q and it clips a minion, a Shaco box, a Zyra plant or so on that it will explode on impact. You need to be careful where you are aiming or you may lose your entire Mantra on one silly little minion! ✶ This is a great ability to shoot over walls! It has a very large imapct area, and pretty decent burst for finishing off really low enemies. It can also go over wall for sneaky poke. For example, when I'm on blue side I love waiting for the enemy to push in then shoot a Mantra Q over the wall near tri-bush to get in a great poke! (A little more on this in the early game section!) ✶ One of the best ways to use Mantra Q is for peel. Because of the AOE slow, this can be a great ability for deterring a chase of enemies. To do this, simply turn back to whoever is chasing you and fire your Mantra. Even if it doesn't hit, this will still create a slow zone that will hopefully give you time to run, or to turn and fight! ✶ Remember, RQ procs twice - once when it reaches the end of its range and once after 1.5 seconds. These both count as a proc to lower your Mantra cooldown. So if you manage to catch one person in both the initial impact and the detonation, 10 seconds of Mantra will be refunded. ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma RQ, showing off the explosion and detonation zone. I promise I missed the last one on purpose ;) ✶ Conquerer Karma ✶

RW

Renewal | Root Duration Increase: 0.5 / 0.75 / 1 / 1.25 | " Focused Resolve's root duration is increased. Karma heals for 17%(+1& per 100AP) of her missing health once on-cast, and once again once the tether lasts its full duration or the target dies while tethered." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Focused Resolve's root duration is increased." --> This part of the Mantra ability gives the root on Karma's W a small boost, from a half second to a full 1.25. Notably, this number does not scale! So no matter how much AP you have, your root duration increase will not increase. Only leveling up your Mantra will increase this number. ✶ "Karma heals for 17%(+1& per 100AP) of her missing health..." --> Karma has a very small amount of healing in her kit, which was recently nerfed with the Season 12 durability patch. That said, don't underestimate how much this ability can do for you! A well timed Mantra Q can absolutely save your life in a pinch. People underestimate how much healing you can get out of this. On top of that and your mobility with items like Battlesong and your E speed up, this healing can be critical to making a clean getaway! ✶ "...once on-cast, and once again once the tether lasts its full duration or the target dies while tethered." --> Karma's Mantra W procs twice, once immediately when it is cast and once when the duration ends. This can also happen if your target dies during the time that you are using the RW ability. This means that if your enemy keeps engaged with you, you will get to heal up twice! This is a nice little burst of durability that can often times keep you alive in a skirmish. ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ RW is my favorite ability for dives. I always like to say that if you're going to dive a Karma, she is going to take someone with her. How does this work? Essentially, you want to wait patiently for the diver to get in turret range - don't get spooked and fire out an RQ! Once they have dived you, RW them as quickly as possible and shield yourself (or your carry). This leaves the enemy with a choice: stay under tower and get rooted and probably die for a kill, or just leave you be. Rooting an enemy under tower and leaning the tower to do your dirty work is a great anti-dive move. Of course, this won't work on champions who have dashes up, but it is still very helpful to even out dives at the very least. ✶ RW is not only a great anti-dive tool, but it is also very helpful for ganks. Don't be afraid to walk into range with the ganker and put an RW on them. Much like diving, this leaves them with a choice of staying in range and getting rooted or backing off to break the tether. This can be enough time for you to speed up yourself or your carry to make a getaway. This won't always work, but it is a good peel option especially when paired with a slow from a Q. ✶ In small skirmishes, it can be very hard to get the second proc on your W. But that doesn't mean you should be scared to use the Mantra version, because the healing is often very helpful! The tether zone is not huge and pretty easy to break but don't be afraid to go for the Mantra W when you are in a small fight and need a little boost to come out on top! It is much easier to get the double proc during chaotic teamfights, but typically you want to save your Mantra for your shielding during full team brawls. ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma RW, showing off the range and the healing proc on the start and end of the spell. ✶ Winter Wonder Karma ✶

RE

Defiance | Primary Bonus Shield: | Detonation Damage: 35 / 140 / 245 / 350(+ 60% | " Inspire's shield is increased. Inspire spreads to surrounding allied champs at 30% effectiveness. Secondary targets recieve 12% bonus movement speed." ✶ ✶ ✶ ✶ "Inspire's shield is increased." --> This is a pretty straightforward buff to your E, giving a much stronger shield to the ally on which you apply it. But be aware, the increased shield strength is only for the ally you click on when you Mantra spell is cast! This can also be cast on yourself, but that is usually not the best option as your carry or other teammate will likely benefit more. In the video below I show off how the stronger shield looks when selecting different teammates and yourself! ✶ "Inspire spreads to surrounding allied champs at 30% effectiveness. " --> This right here is what makes Karma such an amazing teamfight support. Being able to shield your entire team is massive! The shield will only be 30% effective, but do not underestimate how much of a boon this can be for your team, especially once you've started building items that buff your shield. ✶ "Secondary targets recieve 12% bonus movement speed. " --> How amazing this peeling tool is! Not only can you give everyone on your team a shield to block a significant chunk of damage, but you can also speed everyone up! This is excellent in combination with Battlesong to either get on top of the enemy and destory them quickly, or to make a grand escape from a poor situation. ✶ Ability Tips & Tricks ✶ Be very mindful about who you are targeting with your Defiance. It is easy when you first start playing Karma to shield yourself on instinct and let anyone around you take a bonus shield. But the difference between primary target shield and secondary targets is pretty massive, so make sure that you are still thinking about who really needs the shield and movement speed the absolute most, not just defaulting to yourself or anyone near you. This can be tough in hectic teamfights, but just take some time to practice mindfulness in using Defiance! ✶ Don't be afraid to use Defiance to get around the map. Using a quick RE to get you and your ADC up river for a fight breaking out mid is a perfectly valid way to use this skill. That said, just be aware of your timer and if you are going into a fight without a Mantra available. That said, by mid game you should have enough Ability Haste to be able to use Mantra pretty often. This also works for rushing back to lane, but be careful using this too early or you may find yourself arriving to lane with a great RQ setup but with Mantra on cooldown! ✶ I've said it before and I'll say it again - Defiance is your main teamfight ability. It should be what you are spamming in every single teamfight. Do not fall prey to the obvious desire to RQ for damage, because doing damage is not your job on Karma. You should always be looking for shield opportunites first, cheeky RQs second! ✶ ✶ ✶ Play Video Karma RE, showing off the multiple shields - notice that the champion clicked on is the main target and recieves a much larger shield! ✶ Order of the Lotus Karma ✶

Shurelya's Battlesong is a great choice on Karma, even after the 13.10 midseason support item changes. Ultimately, not a whole lot was changed on Shurelya's, but its impotant to undersatnd the nuances as Karma now has some competition for her mythic pick with the new Echoes of Helia (see below!)
Obviously, Shurelya's is fantstic on Karma because it gives a huge amount of movement speed. Because Karma builds a lot of cooldown reduction, we will have our shield (E) up very frequently. This means we have very consistent way to boost our allies' movement speed, as well as our own. The active on Shurleya's is huge for teamfights, but don't be afraid to use it to escape as well! The cooldown is not massive, and because Karma lacks healing your ability to grant speed is one of the best peeling tools you have. Notably, the movement speed passive was decreased by 5% (25%->20%) in 13.10, but the item is still a powerhouse for Karma.

So why is Shurelya's not longer the go-to every game bread and butter pick for Karma anymore? Well, for one, Echoes of Helia is incredibly stong for laning particularly. But what is also important to remember is that MANY support legendaries have been adjusted to include an Aether Wisp, which grants movement speed. Legendaries that are excellent on Karma such as Staff of Flowing Water and Ardent Censer now grant 5% movement speed, but remember this speed it just for you. When deciding your mythic, make sure to consider how immobile your team is. Always remember that as an enchanter, you should be buying items responsively to the needs of your team. This includes your mythic! I know this sounds a bit like basic, but its easy to get into the habit of following op.gg or even a guide like this without thinking about why you are buying these items.

✶Things to consider when buying/using:

Moonstone Renewer Karma is unfortuantely now a dead build. This used to be my favorite item to purchase on her simply for the fun of it, but with the 13.10 adjustment to the item it is simply not viable on Karma. Echoes of Helia is just a better Moonstone for Karma, and I struggle to imagine any situation where you would ever go this item on Karma. Karma can technically use the new Moonstone as the Starlit Grace passive applies to both healing and shielding allies, but Karma gets so much more value from the damage and more skirmish-y style of Echoes. Additionally, because of you should really be focusing on Mantra E late game, the chain shielding isn't really necessary. Also, be aware that Starlit Grace DOES NOT APPLY to whoever cast the heal or shield. The chain does not include you. Overall, Moonstone can offer a nice buff, but not nice enough in most cases to justify filling up your mythic slot.
Things to consider when buying/using:

Echoes of Helia is the new support mythic, and it is the spiritual successor to Athene's Unholy Grail. This item is a powerhouse on Karma, particularly in the early-mid game. Essentially, this item rewards supports who can output damage while also healing/shielding. This is perfect for our early game mage support Karma playstyle, and certainly does not fall off too hard late game. This item is wonderful on Karma, but do be aware that it disables the Harmony passive on Redemption and Mikael's. Your play pattern with EoH is really to focus on those Qs (not just Mantra Q!) as well as weaving in W's and shielding your carry to constatnly be converting those 2 stored Soul Shards into healing.

Things to consider when buying/using:

Locket of the Iron Solari is an interesting mythic on Karma! Up front I will admit I do not have much experience running this item on Karma myself, but I have seen people run it before and have tried it at least a handful of times. Locket is a good item all around, and is helpful for full team utlity. In my opinion, this item really isn't too helpful on Karma as you already have a near full team shield (provided your team doesn't run in 4 different directions as soon as you get ready to Mantra E!). Locket is good for teaming with a team with extremely high damage output. It will also make you a little more tanky. Still, I feel like this mythic just isn't great on Karma.

Things to consider when buying/using:
Luden's Tempest is a mage mythic. I personally would never purchase Luden's Tempest on support Karma for a number of reasons. For one, Luden's is much more expensive than Moonstone and Battlesong. 700 gold more! This is totally fine if you are playing mid-lane, where you are farming minions. But support Karma is not exactly swimming in gold, even if you are farming your Shard of True Ice with ease. The second reason Luden's isn't a great pick is because doing damage just is not your job on support Karma. It feels great to hit a massive Mantra Q with a damage item in your pocket, but this item is against the Karma Transition (discussed below). You will fall off late game, particularly in terms of damage. By mid-late game, you are an enchanter, and you get almost no value out of Luden's outside of maybe padding your KDA a bit. This item is a skip on support Karma.

Things to consider when buying/using:

Chemtech Putrifier is hands down the best legendary item on Karma. Even if the enemy team doesn't have insane levels of healing, it is still likley that they have enough to warrant a purchase. Usually, I will build this item if even two of the enemy have healing, which, in modern league, is almost every game. Even on the 12.1x durability patch, it is still worth it. But the grevious wounds is not the only reason that Chemtech is appealing on Karma. Sometimes, people will go Staff of Flowing Water or Ardent Censer as their second item because it directly buffs team damage output. But what these builds neglect to consider is that the name of the game on Karma is ability haste. Karma's AP ratios are fine, but nothing to write home about. When thinking about scaling on Karma, you should be look at Ability Haste, not Ability Power . And Chemtech Putrifer offeres 20 Ability Haste! This is higher than any other standard enchater legendary, all of which are at 15 Ability Haste. Unless you are in a very specific situation, you should almost always look to pick up Chemtech Putrifier right after your Mythic.

Sometimes, I buy the Oblivion Orb before finishing my mythic against matchups like Yuumi or Soraka. But make sure that you finish the item, because the full item of Chemtech is leaps and bounds more powerful than the orb alone. Just remember, Chemtech Putrifier only procs when you shield someone other than yourself, but it gives both you and your partner the grevious wounds effect. So in line with our Karma philosophy, always be focused on buffing someone else, not yourself! Unforunately, Chemtech Putrifer doesn't offer heal/shield power, so we will have to pick that up somewhere else!

I know what you’re probably thinking – a whole section just on boots, Allison? Well, yes, because I wanted to have a space to talk just a little bit about how amazing and important boots are on Karma. So important that is sometimes better to finish your tier two boots on Karma before your entire mythic. This is because Karma is all about speed as well as Ability Haste, and since we are most often going to go Ionian Boots of Lucidity it is easy to get some quick and cheap Ability Haste. That said, you have a few different options of boots and I want to give some perspective on when options besides Ionian Boots are viable.
Ionian Boots of Lucidity will almost always be the boots you want to go on Karma for a couple of reasons. For one, these provide a good boost of Ability Haste for relatively cheap. On top of that, this item gives summoner spell haste, which is an interesting stat! This means that the cooldown on our summoner spells (Flash and Exhaust/Ignite) is going to be shorter! This is not a massive change, but it can definitely help with peel for both yourself and your carry. Summoner spells are powerful tools, so being able to cast them more is always a plus! Ionian Boots are fantastic on Karma, and as mentioned above it can sometimes be useful to finish this before your entire mythic because for Karma, boots can be their own power spike.

Mercury's Treads These are a specific case type of boots. Movement speed in very important to Karma, especially in a teamfight. That said, this is not more important than Ability Haste. So why would you ever go Mercury Treads over Ionian Boots? In some cases, the enemy team’s CC can be much too oppressive for you to be effective on Karma. It is critical that you are casting your shields as often as possible in a teamfight, but if you are getting CCed and dying too quickly then the Ability Haste is pointless! So, if you are facing down a team with very scary CC consider going Mercury Treads and focusing on picking up some higher Ability Haste items later on.

Plated Steelcaps are used for essentially the same reason that Mercury’s Treads are, but for teams with a heavy emphasis on physical damage. This is great if the enemy team for some reason goes all AD because it will simply give you ridiculous durability in fights. This is because, like in the case of Mercury’s Treads, having Ability Haste will get you no where if you are melted in a fight before you can even cast your abilities! This is definitely a pocket pick, so make sure to carefully consider the relative strength of the enemy team and their damage output before picking this over Lucidity Boots.

Sorcerer's Shoes are not bad on Karma but are really only if you plan to play her mid-lane. They are great for giving magic penetration, but they do little to actually help support Karma. These boots are similar to building Luden’s: they are built for mage Karma, and you are not playing mage Karma (or if you are, this might not be the best itemization guide for you!). Support Karma’s job is to support, and Sorcerer’s Boots are intended to increase your damage which is not where we are putting our focus in this role. While this pick will not necessarily get you pinged by your team, it is really not quite as good as your other options.

The number one rule to remember for any early game is of course that the game begins as soon as you load in, not when minions or jungle camps spawn. Make sure that you grab your Spellthief's Edge and two Health Potions to start and get out there without wasting time! Remember, always order your Doordash before you queue!

One of my favorite things to do when there is no invade activity happening is to try to land a cheeky Mantra Q before getting to lane. On red side, this usually means going into the dragon pit and throwing a Mantra Q into the tribush or behind the enemy red. On the blue side, just a quick Mantra over the wall into the enemy blue can get you some free damage and money. Just make sure you bring an ally along to proc your spellthief's edge!

This quick start is extra important on Karma, because we have surprisingly good tools for invades. What do I mean by this? Well, remember that Karma is unique in that she starts the game with her ultimate! You do not quite have the skill at invades as an engage like Blitzcrank or Pyke, however your Mantra Q can be very good at creating a large are of crowd control with the slow ability. Just remember that you only want to encourage an invade on Karma if your team has someone else with a very strong invade skillset because while Karma can definitely be a great support during these endeavors, she will rarely be able to get value out of invade without some extra firepower backing her up!

If your team is looking to invade, your positioning should obviously be with them! But to get a bit more specifically, you want to stick close to your ADC, usually a bit in front of them because if things go poorly, it is better you bite the bullet than them -this will be better in the long run and it will protect from early game mental boom! If you are aware of the enemy positioning (say, if you saw them move into pixel brush in the river) don’t be afraid to take a step up and hit a Mantra Q! Be mindful of good early engagers, but in general you should be safe throwing out your RQ which then gives your team options, and their team choices.

Because your RQ will slow the enemies down, hitting a group of them will force the enemy into an unfavorable position. They will have reduced movement and take a good chunk of damage, meaning that they will either need to quickly look to return damage or flee. This also gives your team the option to jump on the slowed enemies and look for a pick or to walk away if the team’s counter-engage is looking a bit scary.

If an invade does go poorly, my best advice is to take a second to just breathe, stretch and refocus. It happens to everyone occasionally. But because Karma is such an early game snowballing champion you absolutely cannot afford to get tilted early. If that means you need to mute all for that game, do it. It's not worth getting upset with your team and losing your biggest window of opportunity on Karma.

One of the most important parts of the early game is making sure that you take the correct abilities! Karma has very little flexibility in her ability leveling, so it is critical that you get it correct. Below, I've gone over each ability and some thoughts on starting/leveling it.

That said, here is some notes about ability leveling: In almost every game you will always want to go Q->E->W, leveling your ultimate whenever possible. I have seen people who are new to Karma sometimes skip leveling their ultimate at level 6 because Karma already has her ult, after all! But this is quite possibly one of the biggest mistakes you could make on Karma because your Mantra abilities scale with Mantra rank, not the rank of the ability being augmented. Always put a point into your Mantra whenever any other champion would be leveling their ult!

✶ Inner Flame (Q) is almost always what you will want to start on Karma. It is best in lane early and is very helpful for invades as previously discussed. This is also the best for helping with leashing, though I would never recommend using your RQ to help leash- just a regular Q is enough! This is because at the start of the game your Mantra cooldown is 40 seconds with no cooldown available until your Q comes back up. So what does this mean? It will take you less the 40 seconds to walk to lane, and you want to start bombarding the enemy with RQs as much as possible. Additionally, it’s good to have the full force of the ability available if the enemy is waiting for you on the way to lane.

✶ Focused Resolve (W) is the absolutely worst start on Karma, and I would never recommend it. The only time I have ever started W was an accident and it was not a very fun experience! This ability offers very little on its own and really needs to be used in combination with others to be useful. It can be good to get a bit of extra poke in lane but it is less effective than Q and is very dangerous without an E to defend yourself or make a fast escape.

✶ Inspire (E) is very rarely the correct choice for first spell, but it can be helpful in niche cases. Say, for example, your team is invaded on and you are caught by surprise. A Mantra E can be helpful to get your teammates out of that sticky situation relatively unscathed, but this is only for very rare instance. You will be better off starting Q in almost every game.[/indent]

So now that we’re leveled and completed our leashing, its time to hit the lane and start snowballing your ADC! But before beginning, I want to point out that there is no one single “correct” way to play a lane, because winning lane can be achieved in a number of ways. I tend to play a fairly aggressive Karma which can be hard if you are just starting out on her! But don’t be discouraged – just like any champion the more you play the more comfortable you will become pushing the limits of what said champion will do. That said, there are a few things to practice for each skill that will accelerate your Karma gameplay. Since you will not be using your Mantra as much early game, I want to specifically focus specifically on getting value out of the unempowered, basic versions of each of Karma's abilties.



One of the biggest differences in people who play Karma often and those who don’t is their ability to hit unempowered Qs consistently. This is not particularly difficult once you get the hang of it, but it is a relatively skinny skill shot that will take some time to get comfortable with. Once you’re more comfortable with the range you can begin practicing slightly more difficult techniques, such as using minions to hit enemies with Qs splash damage (without stealing CS and making your ADC cry, of course!)

I think the biggest problem I see with W is that people just don’t use it! It is common for people to hold their W to land a great root, but think about the value you are missing out on. Assuming you are safe from a surprise gank because of your stellar map awareness, what value do you get from holding W? Karma’s W is very difficult to engage a fight with, especially if you are at the point in lane where both ADCs are focused more on farming than fighting. You could be using these windows of opportunity to get value from your W, especially when the enemy support has already used their cooldowns trying to poke or engage. When the lane is relatively frozen, I often like to go up and W the enemy ADC while they are trying to last hit. Why is this worth it? A couple of reasons: for one, it will grant you gold for your support quest, which is already a huge win. But more than that, it forces the enemy ADC to make a choice between autoing you in response and last-hitting minions. Remember, you want to be doing all you can to help your ADC get ahead, and that includes messing up your enemy’s farm! Every little bit counts, and you get a nice bit of gold for your effort.

Your shield is one of the trickiest abilities to get the hang of, not because it is tricky to hit (it’s a shield, after all!) but because it is one of the most decision-making intensive parts of Karma’s kit. In lane early game you will not really be using RE unless you and your ADC as in danger and need to get out fast or need a boost to push you to victory in a skirmish. For the most part, you will be poking with RQ, leaving you with only one shield. This means you will have 2 key decisions in every skirmish, poke, and so on. The first decision will be to shield before or after the engage. This means that, for example, if your Draven wants to go in and do a bit of damage, you can either boost him to get in quickly and block some of the initial retaliation damage, or you can save your E for after to speed him away and discourage a counter engage or to protect from retaliatory damage. Both of these have their own benefits and drawbacks, and it is important to be thinking about them. The other important decision will always be who to shield in a fight. This is usually an easy answer in a 2v2 – shield whoever is in more danger. But it becomes more difficult when you add in your jungler or midlaner for example, and even more complicated when you factor in the shield before or after decision. There is much more thought that goes behind Karma’s shield than most people realize because of the speed up and its immense flexibility!


If you are looking for a quick and dirty of Karma's role in lane, it is boiled down in the simplist terms to harrassment. You want to be constantly harrassing the enemy bot lane with as many Mantra Qs and Ws as you can. Your damage output is very high compared to many supports in the early game. For this reason, Karma in the early game plays more like a mage than your typical enchanter support. Karma wants to be aggressive and bully lane, so try to focus on doing that while minimizing danger to yourself and your ADC using your shields and Exhaust.

In general, I like to focus very hard on maintaining brush control in lane when I’m playing Karma. This can apply a lot of pressure to the enemy because an early RQ does a lot of damage and can really mess up the enemy ADC’s farming focus. This will also force the enemy support to either step up and contest or play much safer. Be careful against champions like Pyke who can very easily contest your brush dominance, but for the most part you should be able to hold the brush throughout most of the lane.

Just like with any other support, you want to make sure that you are always parallel or even a little ahead of your ADC in lane. A lot of people talk poorly about enchanters because the stereotype that they play ridiculously far back and just cast their buffing spells from safety. But this is just silly – any good support will be playing further up and in line with the ADC regardless of the champions class. Even some engage supports sit AFK behind their tower sometimes! It is all a matter of understanding and being comfortable in the lane, and as you grow more comfortable playing a squishier champion close up you’ll only continue to improve.

One other important note about positioning on Karma is that you need to be very aware of where the minions are in the lane when you plan on hitting a Mantra Q poke. There is nothing in the world more frustrating than lining up what you think is going to be a perfect Mantra Q only to have a minion pulled towards you and block the entire shot. Just try your best to be aware of the wave positioning when going for a Mantra.

Though I’ll talk more about warding later on, I want to quickly touch on Karma’s ability to zone off parts of the lane to deny vision. Say, for example, the enemy support is moving to ward tribush and you really don’t want to allow them vision in that area. What can you do before resorting to an all-out skirmish for vision control? It’s a great idea to throw out a Mantra Q onto the ground besides the tribush where the enemy would have to move to place their ward to prevent them from stepping forward. This may scare them off, and if it doesn’t it will give your ADC time to join you to fight for control while they are waiting out your Mantra zone (or if they choose to step in it, you’ve laid down a good amount of damage to hopefully turn the skirmish favorably to you.) If you are not in any kind of immediate danger, never give up prime vision locations for free! Try to contest, even if it is just a bit of harassment.


When it comes to early game objectives, Karma is wonderful for helping secure first dragon. This is because of your ability to help your ADC push the lane with your Q ability, as well as your ability to chunk out the enemy team to a point that they cannot safely contest. When it comes to actually taking dragon, rift, etc., make sure to position yourself so you are close enough to your team to be safe but also far out enough that anyone on the enemy team wanting to contest the objective will run the risk of being hit with your W and turned on by your team. You can use your Mantra Q to burn through objectives faster, but I’d always recommend letting your other teammates handle the damage while you save Mantra in case a fight does break out. This is of course dependent on your knowledge of the enemy jungler’s location, so don’t feel like you can never use Mantra on objectives. Just try to be mindful of the potential worst case scenario at all times and prepare to handle it.

As far as ganks go, it is quite similar to taking objectives. You have a lot of utility, and you should be using that to peel for your ADC and keep them safe from the enemy jungler. In my experience, it is often better to physically place yourself between the ganking jungler and your ADC, using your W, exhaust and Q slow to dissuade a chase while speeding up yourself and your carry with Mantra E. Ganking is highly situational, but the general rule of thumb is to ask yourself: Can my ally escape alone? What tools can I use to dissuade the enemy from fighting, and which enemy is the biggest threat I should be targeting? Once the enemy has been debuffed with my abilities, do we win if we turn and fight?

Running through this checklist in your head will not always guarantee that you stay safe from a gank, but it will at very least help guide your decision making in terms of ability use to give you a better chance of winning the engage. Sometimes, your ADC will die. Sometimes you will die. And it will be your fault sometimes, and other times it won’t! The most important thing to remember for dealing with ganks on any champion is to keep a level head both during and after. Sometimes it can be frustrating to have your ADC throw away your amazing peel and still get themselves killed, but pointing it out them in chat and starting a fight with your own team will definitely make winning fights against the enemy infinitely harder.

The general gist of the early game on Karma is that you want to harass as much as possible. You start the game as more of a mage than anything because of your very intense harass from your Mantra Q and your W poke. You should really be focusing on winning the lane and trying to set the enemy ADC as far behind as possible. Karma is an amazing early game champ and she has the ability to snowball lanes easily. Make sure that you are being smart about the trades you take and how you utilize your E. Warding is absolutely critical in the early game, especially prior to neutral objectives. In early game skirmishes, it is okay to focus on trying to output damage with your Mantra Q, just be sure you save peeling abilities for your allies. In the next section I will discuss the mid-game transition from a mage playstyle to an enchanter support style.

Time for the long awaited discussion of the Karma Transition! I’ve said many times throughout this guide that Karma is a very unique champion, and it is not just because of her kit’s inherent versatility. What makes Karma really special is the fact that while only being one champion she plays as two completely different classes on champion throughout the course of the game.
In the early game section, I talked a lot about how your job is to being firing our RQs often and to be harassing the enemy to chunk them out of lane. Karma’s early game damage is incredibly significant when compared to other supports, and you should be focusing on using this to your advantage to snowball a lane. But what happens after laning phase is over?

The unfortunate truth about Karma is that she falls off. In my threats section I discuss in more detail why champions like Yuumi and Sona are a pain for Karma late game because they outscale her insanely well. Even champions like Janna can outscale a Karma when it gets to late game. So does this mean we give up as soon as the game starts to drag on? Of course not! It simply means that we must adjust our playstyle to keep playing to Karma’s strengths as they evolve throughout the game.
In early game, your focus should be on damage output and snowballing, but late game your job is to peel and protect. I will discuss this in a little more detail in the Late Game section below, but it is so critical to understand that you will have to adjust your playstyle as the game stretches on. This is why buying damage items on Karma support is often such a bad idea – early, your Mantra Q feels very powerful and out damages a lot of other support abilities. But your damage will fall off late game, both because you lack the money to go full AP like a midlaner and because it really leaves your team out to dry late game. Karma is a very diverse champion who can play many roles (mid, top, support and sometimes even APC!) but in order for this to work you must A) be very accurate and skillful with using the entirety of your kit with unforgiving accuracy and B) have enough money to support this playstyle! This just is not realistic for support. So what can we do?

The very core of the Karma Transition concept can be easily simplified by thinking about what ability we want to Mantra. In the early game, it is almost always going to be Q because you are all about chunking and harassing. Late game, it is our job to take full advantage of the support items and our peel ability to keep our teammates with better damage output up and alive through the use of Mantra E. Of course, this concept is more complicated in practice, but this is the very boiled down version of what I mean when I discuss this idea.

You will still be using Mantra Q after the transition, but as teams begin having all out brawls as opposed to small lane skirmishes you will need to begin considering focusing on peel instead of damage. Remember, your Mantra Q may lay down some nice damage, but will chunking one or two targets be more useful in a fight than giving your hypercarry Vayne a massive shield and speed boost while also protecting your other teammates? The answer is usually no. We want to do everything in our power to keep our teammates up and outputting damage. While it may not get you an exciting pentakill montage, never underestimate the power of a well placed Mantra E to win a teamfight or even an entire game.

Of course, there will not be a big blinking indicator on screen that says “Time to transition!”. This is something you simply have to become comfortable with as you play Karma more. My best tip for getting a hang of this transition is to look at the relative sizes of fights as the game progresses. In a 2v2 lane skirmish, your damage can be hugely significant. But as the game goes on an fights start to go beyond 2v2s you may want to consider putting your focus on peel and using Mantra E to not only get the best use of your ultimate but also to utilize Karma’s amazing ability to proc support items like Staff of Flowing Water and Battlesong.

So, we’ve officially made our transition from early game mage Karma to late game enchanter support. In my personal opinion, this is the hardest part of any game on Karma. In general, you want to rush to end games as quickly as possible when playing this champion but of course that will not always be possible. The main focus here is going to be keeping our team up and fighting for as long as possible so that we can win out large teamfights and take objectives. Below I will go over some important late game responsibilities that will help you stay relevant despite Karma’s natural late game fall off.

Every support should be focusing on warding throughout the game of course, but having exceptional vision control in the late game can help make up for some of the gaps in Karma’s utility late game. Karma is very good at keeping vision control because of your natural speediness and ability to get away from any enemies who may be lurking in the bush you want to ward!

In late game, I would advise putting as much emphasis as possible on keeping your wards fresh and relevant because outside of teamfight peel this is the most value that you can offer your team. This is why I often like to go Vigilant Wardstone as my final item. Make sure that you are taking every opportunity possible to refresh and reset your wards – remember, your enemy is on the move which means your wards should be too!

It is critical that you are there first to get to objectives so that you can set up the best wards possible as well as clearing any enemy wards that may already be placed. Early warding around objectives can lead to making extremely valuable picks and makes winning teamfights over objectives easier. Additionally, having vision on the enemy jungler is extremely important to prevent a potential steal, so you want to make sure that you are present first and able to place to optimal wards to watch for all potential pathing options.

Finally, don’t forget the value of de-warding. Just like Karma is great at placing wards because of her movement speed shield she is also great at dewarding for the same reason! After activating your Oracle Lens you can use your shield to cover more area. This is even more efficient if you bring an ally along who can help destroy the wards while you keep moving to search for more.

Towards the late game there will be a lot more emphasis on teamfighting, which means you’ll have to make sure that you are making the transition into an enchanter-style support at this point. Your main goal in every teamfight is to keep your carries alive and fighting so that they may output as much damage as possible. This means that its all about using your shields and other utility to give the absolute best peel possible. A good tip here to remember is that your RE shield gives the most benefit to whoever is the initial target. So, make sure that you’re not just defaulting to placing the shield on yourself or whoever is closest to you at the time the ability becomes available. Be mindful about who you are focusing on! In addition to your RE, you should be looking to use your W to peel the most important targets. This ability can be very useful in catching immobile carries, or to slow down a very tanky target with repeated casts so your teammates can burn through their health bar. The best way to identify major targets besides simply looking at the scoreboard is assessing who (if anyone) is left alive after a teamfight as well as who seems to be doing the most to prevent your carries from carrying!

Before discussing the specifics of warding for blue and red side, I wanted to reiterate some of the things I have mentioned before about warding on Karma. Because of her ability to self-peel Karma has an easier time placing wards deeply without the need of an ally in case things go poorly. Of course, it is always better to ward with an ally, but Karma is a little safer than most because of her utility.

In general, if you are caught warding alone you should turn and immediately retreat. In some cases, you may feel confident you can win a 1v1 but take account of where you are before picking a fight. Are you deep in enemy territory? Do you have vision on the other members of the enemy team? Can my team get to me and back me up if I need them quickly? If you are unaware of the positioning of the enemy it is entirely possible, they are right behind the person you were going to fight, quickly turning your 1v1 to a potential ambush. I am not saying you can never 1v1 because Karma can hold her own in a duel, only that it is very rarely worth dying to get vision on enemy jungle entrances or camps. Always have an escape plan before going to ward alone.

When you are looking to retreat from a warding mission, the first rule of thumb is not to panic. Unless you are in immediate danger of being hard CCed or one shot, you most likely do not need to immediately flash. Instead, try to immediately run away by casting an RQ to create a zone of slowing while speeding yourself up with E. If they do chase, immediately place a W on the closest enemy to force them to either slow their pursuit of risk being rooted. If they are able to catch up to you, this is a great place to use QW to gain back some health and to once again root the enemy so you can E away.

But what if you are caught warding with an ally? The same general strategy as above applies but instead of going for an RQ try to hit the first enemy with an unempowered Q and use Mantra E on yourself and your ally, placing the main shield on whoever is in most danger of being caught. Even if you do not hit the Q there is a chance that the enemy may try to dodge it, slowing them down. If you do hit, remember that even unempowered Q slows. The same W principle applies here as it did for being caught out alone. If you have a Battlesong, never be afraid to use it for disengage in these situations.
Dewarding

Karma is a champion who is uniquely good at getting the most use out of an Oracle Lens because of her speed boost shield. To perform dewarding most efficiently you will want to have an ally come along so they can kill the wards for you. This will let you speed boost yourself to cover the most ground possible. One very important part of dewarding is not to do it aimlessly. What do I mean by this? When you are looking to deward try to have a plan in place before hitting your lens. Think about where your enemy may have wards. Where would you ward if you were the enemy support at that moment? What areas would be your top priority? Check those places first. This also gives you a chance to plan your pathing efficiently and not waste time running around in places that people rarely ward, or checking areas that are already covered by a control ward. If you are with someone else and you hit your lens at the same time make sure you separate enough to get use of the full range of both lenses.

These maps should provide a general idea of the best spots to ward for various situations whether you are on red or blue side. Remember, you want to really be focusing on getting vision on those neutral objectives before the enemy team so always try to give yourself enough time to sweep and lay down fresh wards before fights over objectives break out.



✶ Enemy Jungler Pathing ✶ Arguably the most important thing to keep an eye out for. This is because in most cases the enemy jungler will be doing the majority of ganking, but it is more than seeing the jungler when they are right next to your lane. Your jungler pathing wards should try to be informative for your entire team, especially your own jungler. What do I mean by this? Taking a look at the blue side example you can see one of the ward spots is located between the enemy blue camp and the gromp. This is my favorite ward spot because it not only tells me when the jungle camps are up but also tells me which direction the jungler is clearing, if they are doing full clears, etc. This is all very valuable information to keep up your entire team’s map awareness and will help you anticipate ganks in every lane long before they happen.

✶ Preparing for Dragon ✶ These are the best wards for preparing for dragon depending on which side you are playing. All of these spots are great for keeping vision around the objectives to prevent being overwhelmed by the enemy and forced into an unfavorable fight as well as to prevent potential steals.

✶ Midlaner Gank Pathing ✶ Besides the enemy jungler your second biggest concern is going to be the enemy midlaner in most games. The importance of these wards will vary based on who the enemy midlaner is and their playstyle. Some champions are excellent at roaming, such as assassins and other highly mobile champs. Others, such as mages, may have a bit of a harder time roaming to bot. That said, never assume that your midlaner simply won’t gank because of the champion they are playing. Any champion can pull off great ganks so never let your guard or your vision score down!

✶ Situational Wards ✶ These are just a few examples of situational wards, such as wards that may be used if your jungler is worried about getting their camps stolen. One great example of situational wards is any time that the enemy has a Kindred. You should always be trying to keep visions on any marked camps.

✶ Support Lane Control ✶ These are very basic wards that can be used to keep brush control in lane. I generally tend to avoid these because they are usually less value than those further out, however they can be very helpful against hook champions like Blitzcrank, Pyke and Thresh as well as those with CC like Morgana who can contest brush well.

When it comes time for Baron you want to make sure that you are always early enough to lay down some optimal wards and to give your teammates time to do the same. There are more wards on this map than you can play yourself and are only a suggestion of some of the best locations to ward pre-Baron. Since you can't ward them all try to make sure you are focusing on covering as many possible enemy pathing options as possible.

Below I have outlined my general thoughts on each typical bot-lane matchup. Please be aware that these are all based on my experiences playing Karma into these matchups, and everyone struggles with different champions and matchups! That said, I tried to incorporate not only my experience but that of other Karma players I have seen as well as her overall general win-rate against various champions.

Each champion has been categorized by my overall sense of difficulty of the matchup. These three broad categories include Simple, Average, and Difficult. Of course there is not accounting for the relative skill-level of the player piloting your matchup champion, but I have tried my best to compare each champion's kit to Karma's strengths and weaknesses and provided a short list of suggestions of what to look out for and how to use Karma's kit to the best of its ability to answer the threat of the enemy laner. If there are any matchups here that I missed, let me know and I'd be happy to add them!

Finally, I think it is important to cover my top 3 Karma champion ban recommentations. Obviously, this is just my opinion but these champs tend to cause the most trouble for Karma and will make the game significanly more difficult if you are facing them for reasons outlined under their champion tab below. These are not the only difficult matchups nor are they necessarily unwinnable, these are just the most common anti-Karma picks that I see and have struggled with in my journey to learn Karma. So, without further ado, my top three ban picks on Karma:

SIMPLE Alistar ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ I find Alistar to be a relatively easy matchup for Karma. He can be a very power all-in champion, but Karma should be able to play the lane without much trouble due to her superior poke and her ability to quickly get away. ✶ How to Play ✶ When playing against Alistar your number one priority is to poke. Compared to some engage champions like Blitzcrank, Alistar does not exert anywhere near the amount of pressure onto a Karma. He also does not hold bush presence as well as many of these champs which means that you should absolutely be taking advantage and sending constant harrass from the safety of the brush with your Q. Ideally, you should be able to chunk him down with your poke early game, though this will become harder as the game continues. Really look for an early game snowball against Alistar while he is still a little weak. He has some sustain with his passive Triumphant Roar but it is rarely enough to keep up with Karma's poke. Don't be afraid to W him when he seems to be hovering for an engage. I would always make sure to save your E for his engage and try to use it very conservatively when it comes to getting poke in. The last thing you want when he hits an Trample + Pulverize combo on your ADC is to be caught without a shield. Finally, use Mantra Q to check bushses if you are suspicious he may be hiding to hit a hex-flash combo.

AVERAGE Ashe ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Ashe support is similar to Karma in that it is mostly about being incredibly annoying in lane and constantly laying down poke damage. It is difficult to say for sure who wins this one, because both Karma and Ashe are great at poke but in different ways. Ashe support tends to spam Volley for a barrage of small chip damage, whereas Karma looks for large chunking opportunities with her RQ. This matchup is incredibly winnable and just requires you to be mindful of postioning. ✶ How to Play ✶ In this matchup you need to be hyper-aware of wave positioning because both you and Ashe have your poke negated by minion block. That said, it is much more devastating for Karma to lose RQ to a minion than it is for Ashe Volley to get blocked by wave simply because of the nature of their poke styles. So long as you keep a close eye on the wave and only step out to fire your skillshots you should be safe from most of her poke. I would highly recommend buying a Mikael's in the matchup as the stun on Ashe's ultimate Enchanted Crystal Arrow is one of her main strengths as a support. As soon as she hits 6 it is likely she will begin looking to target you or your ADC. One final thing to keep in mind is that against an Ashe you want to be very careful to save your E in order to escape unfavorable fights. Because Ashe's passive Frost Shot she slows with every attack, making retreats trickier.

AVERAGE Bard ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Bard is a very annoying support and excels at roaming and keeping control over the map. This an area that Karma can't really match because despite being fast her ganking is not anywhere near as effective as Bard's. That being said, it is entirely possible to win against a Bard by focusing hard on your macro and map awareness. ✶ How to Play ✶ When playing against a Bard the number one rule is to always tell your teammates when he is missing from lane. It is incredibly important that you have an awareness of where he is at all times or he absolutely will go pick on your other lanes resulting in an upset team and a fed enemy. Another important thing to be aware of is your positioning in lane. Be very careful not to stand too close to walls or his Cosmic Binding will definitely stun leaving you incredibly vulnerable. Take advantage of his absences to hard push for kills on the enemy ADC and to disrupt their farming. Warding is extremely important against Bard because he can use his Magical Journey to set up unexpected gank angles for his team.

SIMPLE BLITZCRANK ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Blitzcrank is always a scary matchup just because of his ability to pull someone wildly out of position which often leads to a quick death. That said, Blitzcrank is not as bad for Karma as many other champions because of your solid brush checking ability with your RQ and the spped boost from E to avoid the worst of his kit. Like with any hook-engage type of champion you want to really focus on minion wave positioning and try to use it to your advantage as much as possible. ✶ How to Play ✶ Blitzcrank's most iconic ability Rocket Grab is what gives him the most value in lane. This is an ability to demands respect because even a single hit hook can completely turn a lane. This means that you will need to be much more mindful in your RQ poke timings in lane or you will find yourself severly punished. Always make sure to speed away from Blitzcrank if he activates his own speed boost Overdrive as it is very common for Blitzcrank to use this ability to quikcly run in and hit a hook before his enemy has time to flee. Thankfully, quick escapes are one of Karma's strong suits! Using your shield to flee is also helpful in case someone is pulled as it will block the initial damage from the hook. In lane you were very rarely be able to keep brush control over a Blitzcrank, so you will have to be hyperaware when it comes to tracking which bush he is in and play around the minion wave. You can ward brushes that he seems to favor, but try to never waste all of your wards on the in-lane bushses or you will be incredibly vulnerable to ganks. One more incredibly important thing to be aware of is the way that Blitzcrank's ultimate Static Field works. Most people are aware that it does damage and silences, but if you are less familiar with this champion it is easy to miss that his ult also destroys his enemies' shields! This means that in a teamfight you want to try to wait until after Blitzcrank has ulted to use your full Mantra E. This will allow you to get the most value from your own ult while negating some of the most painful parts of his. Don't be afraid to use E in a teamfight with Blitzcrank, but try to be mindful of whether he has used Static Field before devoting your Mantra to shields. On the subject of shields, it is critical to remember Blitzcrank's passive Mana Barrier gives him a shield based on his mana when he is at low health. This means that you should be careful approaching a 1v1 with Blitzcrank because he may get a massive shield that can turn your duel unfavorably!

SIMPLE Brand ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Brand is a support who plays like a mage the entirety of the game because he lacks much in terms of support beyond raw damage output. His stun can be quite devastating, but is about as support-like as his kit gets. This means that as the game goes on your goals and playstyles will become very different and we can us that to our advantage. ✶ How to Play ✶ As I’ve stated before, Karma begins the game by playing like a mage. This means that we are putting out decent chunks of damage and really trying to push and snowball our lane. Brand is the same way. Throughout lane he will spend most of his time trying to force you our using his Pillar of Flame while we will focus on Mantra Q. One upside of Karma in this instance is that we have a shield and can negate some of the damage whereas Brand lacks this ability. That said, Brand’s CC from his passive Blaze and Sear is superior to Karma’s, being as it is a stun and not just a root. So, what can we do to win this game? Almost every single Brand support will be looking to purchase a mage item, specifically Liandry's Torment. But Liandry’s is an expensive item for a support, putting him in a 700-gold gap compared to standard support items. Karma wants to abuse this advantage because early game is where we shine whereas Brand scales insanely into the late game as he gains more damage items. We want to focus all our attention in this matchup on denying him any opportunity for gold. I always recommend trying to push in lanes with a Brand support because this not only makes things harder for his ADC but also gives him less room to navigate and poke to gain gold through his support quest. You of course want to be careful about pushing too much, but the goal against Brand (and any mage support) is to deny them as much as possible in the early game. Another important note here is that you absolutely want to try to maintain brush control over Brand by RQing into bushes, forcing him out. This will make it much harder for him to land his poke abilities which is almost all that he will be focusing on in lane. You can ward bushes here, but I would only recommend this if the Brand is being very aggressive about keeping brush dominance and he is actually getting value from staying hidden. Brand likes to focus on staying alive long enough in teamfights to do damage to his allies through his very powerful ultimate and other combos whereas Karma wants to keep her teammates alive to do the damage for her. Against a Brand you must ALWAYS save your RE for his ultimate, Pyroclasm. This ultimate is so devastating that it can single-handedly win teamfights, even when Brand is playing on a support budget. Your RE is the absolute best tool against this as it can provide a shield that can eat a great deal of the damage from his ultimate. Because Pyroclasm can bounce to up to 5 enemies it means we should be saving our Mantra E to protect our entire team instead of just shielding our carry from the damage. Into the matchup I would always recommend going Moonstone Renewer because of Brand’s intense DOT/burn. There are exceptions to this rule if your team is particularly immobile and needs to boost, but in general Moonstone is the superior choice here as every cast of your shield will not only help block some of his damage but will also heal your team to sustain longer in very high damage fights.

SIMPLE Braum ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Braum is one of the easiest matchups for Karma because you are able to abuse him and his long cooldowns throughout the entire game. Playing against a Braum comes down to mind games, as his shield can be a pain for your team but has a ridiculously long cooldown. This should be a matchup that Karma easily dominates. ✶ How to Play ✶ Against Braum early you want to be doing as much as possible to harass him in lane. Braum is a champion who really wants to go all in as much as he can simply because his strength is in his engage. The return poke on Braum from his Winter's Bite is extremely poor compared to Karma’s Q, even in its unempowered form. The range is also not the best so you should be able to avoid it relatively easy if Braum is using it to poke. Commonly, Braum will save his shield, Unbreakable, for when you attempt an RQ during lane. That said, you can easily use this to your advantage! I said before that Karma vs Braum lane is all about mind games and this is exactly what I mean. You know that Braum is going to save his E to block your powerful poke so you will have to try to bait this out. How do you do this? One of the best ways is to try to create a common ‘trading pattern’ of running up by placing your E on yourself and using Mantra Q on the ADC or Braum himself. It is very likely that he will block this attack, which is just fine. The next time that you attempt this poke, use an unempowered Q instead. Try to bait out the Braum shield by playing aggressively. If he uses his E you now have 16 seconds (when his E is rank 1) to land a Mantra Q or to even look for an all in. Remember, even if Braum does block your RQ your Q will be up before his E. Use this to your advantage to poke him down and to refresh Mantra cooldown. Braum is great to practice your unempowered Q aiming on! One important aspect of Braum to keep an eye on his passive Concussive Blows stacking. At 4 stacks, the target will be stunned which can be major trouble! Thankfully, Karma’s E is excellent at speeding someone away if they are his passive target or to negate the damage during the CC should 4 shots land. Just make sure you are extra careful if Braum is paired up with an ADC who can get 4 stacks very quickly such as a Lucian. Your E is also very effective against his ultimate Glacial Fissure because you can speed out of it and re-engage once your team is safely out of the slowing zone. With any champion with heavy slows such as Braum I highly recommend always going Shurelya's Battlesong so that you can negate their CC.

DIFFICULT Janna ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Janna is a tricky matchup to classify because in the end, whether you win or lose comes down a great deal to your teamwork. Karma absolutely stomps Janna in the early game with her ability to do massive chunk damage and to play very aggressively. Especially pre-six it is difficult for Janna to answer extremely aggressive Karma play. That said, Janna will outscale Karma by the late game and this is where most Karma players will fall behind and lose to her. This is definitely one of Karma's toughest matchups because once you are outside of laning phase it is difficult to outpace here if you have not stomped lane. ✶ How to Play ✶ Much like Karma, Janna excels at offering shields and buffs to her allies, including free movement speed for her allies moving near her thanks to her passive Tailwind. That said, Karma’s speed up is much more effective especially in the early game before either champion has a Shurelya's Battlesong in their bag. This means that we can take advantage in the early game by playing very aggressively and attempting to snowball the game. There are some matchups that Karma can sustain against just fine in the late game, but against a Janna you want to focus on doing everything you can to win the game quickly. One of the most effective ways to beat a Janna is to take full advantage of your ability to snowball and be a lane bully. In order to end the game quickly it is best to play for early objectives, stacking the odds in our favor so that we can dominate before the late game hits. This means that we want to hyper-focus on being incredibly aggressive. One of the best ways to do this is to wait for Janna to try to poke with her Howling Gale. These should be very easy to avoid early game using your speed up. This is another matchup where brush dominance is critical because you want to ensure that Janna is not hiding her tornados in bushes as this can make it much harder to dodge them. Because of her amazing anti-engage kit, I like to try to focus on getting Janna out of lane by poke her down instead of her ADC where appropriate. Obviously if the enemy ADC is crushing yours while you focus Janna, change your focus. But getting Janna out of lane makes getting a pick much more probable because her ADC will not have the disengage from Howling Gale or the slow from her W, Zephyr. Additionally, Janna makes pushing towers a bit more difficult because her shield Eye of the Storm can be used to shield towers as well as allies! It is not impossible, but keep this in mind if you are playing it a little dangerous trying to get in just one more auto for plate. If your ADC is not meshing well with this playstyle and prefers to take the lane slowly, ROAM! Go to the midlane and look for picks or to simply help your midlaner force the enemy out of lane to get plates. My advise here is that if you are able to force the enemy out of lane, hit the tower enough time to get your support item procs and then leave in time for your midlaner to receive all of the gold from the plate. It may seem silly to give up all that gold to your midlaner but remember, we want to win the game very quickly and putting gold onto a potential carry will be more valuable than on ourselves in this case. This is not a hard and fast rule of course and it comes down mainly to the health of the tower, your midlaner, and whether or not you have knowledge of the enemy jungler location. If you are going to leave your midlaner to take plate alone always try to drop a ward for them to stay safe. You can’t stop a teammate from overstaying, but you can give them the tools they need to know when to back up. Against a Janna, I would recommend taking Ignite. Though I usually prefer Exhaust because of its peel and pick potential with Karma’s W, Janna has such excellent disengage that it can be hard to chase and get in the last few bits of damage needed to finish a kill. Ignite can help close the gap and ensure the absolutely critical early game snowball needed to win this matchup. Always go going Shurelya's Battlesong - she will likely have one as well and it is critical that we are able to keep up and catch picks. This item gives us the movement we need to combat Janna's excellent disengage.

SIMPLE LEONA ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Karma really excels against engage champions that she can abuse in lane, and that is exactly what Leona is. You can get away with a lot against a Leona, more so than hook engage champions. Leona is tanky, but in the early game you can shut her down quite easily before she begins stacking resistances. We really want to take advantage of our long range poke in this matchup, as well as punish her engages with our own CC. ✶ How to Play ✶ Against Leona, Karma wants to really focus on using her long range RQ ability to poke her down in lane. Leona is all about the stuns, which means that we want to stay away from her. Leona is infamous for her level 2 all in because it is at level 2 that she unlocks her most basic combo: Zenith Blade + Shield of Daybreak. This means that once we hit level 2 Karma will need to respect Leona’s E range, but that does not mean that you should stop playing aggressively. Remember, Karma is all about the early game snowball and you can’t let yourself be afraid of her stun and lose the best part of Karma’s game! Thankfully, using Karma’s E speed it can be quite simply to poke Leona down without fear of being engaged on. That said, the most critical thing to remember against Leona is that her Zenith Blade is not stopped by minions! This means that we cannot hide in the wave to keep us safe as she will simply engage you there. This puts Karma at a serious disadvantage since her Q is halted by minions. So, what can you do? Stay out of the wave! In many matchups, Karma wants to play around the enemy wave to stay safe from poke without having to waste her E, only stepping out when you want to go for a poke. But here, it is better to stay in the bushes. Against Leona, it is not incredibly difficult to keep brush dominance. You outrange her considerably, which means that it is easier for you to keep control by throwing an RQ or a Q into a bush where Leona is lurking. Just be mindful you are playing at the very edge of her range to avoid getting engaged on. Additionally, be careful at level 6 because if you have been being a pest in the same brush all lane it is possible that she may use her ult Solar Flare in the bush to stun/slow you. All that said, everyone gets caught by a Leona occasionally. It’s simply how the game works! If you or your ADC are engaged on, you have two options. If the Leona is on top of you, place your W on her and aim to burn down the enemy ADC while Leona is rooted and can’t protect them. If Leona hits your ADC, W the enemy ADC if possible to hold them in place and stop them from getting too close to burn your ADC down. This means the enemy ADC will either have to back up or risk being rooted and stuck in your ADCs range once the Leona stun on them wears off. Of course, things will not always pan out and who you W will vary greatly based on who the enemy ADC is, but this method will generally at very least give you and your ADC enough sustainability and time to wait out Leona’s CC and either escape or turn the skirmish in your favor.

AVERAGE Lulu ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Lulu is a pretty annoying champion to play against. Everyone has had their great play thwarted by a well timed polymorph, and her shield is also pretty solid! Lulu excels at peeling, which is an area that Karma is strong in. Karma is not as strong as Lulu in this area, but she can make up for this with her ability to play aggressively in lane and put Lulu behind enough that she lacks the items and tools needed to use her entire peeling potential. ✶ How to Play ✶ Remember, in the early game/laning phase you will be playing Karma like a mage and not like an enchanter support. This means that in the early game, your focus should be applying very intense pressure to the lane through a barrage of RQ, Q, and W poke. Thankfully, Lulu cannot hold brush dominance easily over a Karma because of Karma’s significant early chunk damage. Lulu may use her ability Help, Pix! to gain true sight on you and do a bit of damage, but this is actually great for Karma because it means that Lulu cannot use her E as a shield until the cooldown is back up. So the gameplan against a Lulu is to play the bushes and to be chunking down her ADC as much as possible. That said, it can be difficult to get to Lulu’s ADC through her shield Help, Pix!. The best way to get around this (or around any shield champion) is to periodically change who you are targeting. Though it is never a good idea to be changing targets with ever ability, it can be helpful to occasionally throw out a surprise RQ at Lulu when you have been spending the lane focusing on her ADC. This will require Lulu to either shield herself or leave herself wide open to a considerable amount of damage. Take advantage of this window to Q and W whoever did not receive the shield. One of the most important things to know about Lulu is how her Whimsy works, particularly the polymorph portion. Polymorph can be an absolutely brutal ability, and it is critical that you are aware that you cannot use Mikael's Blessing if you have been polymorphed. This is because polymorph silences, meaning that you cannot use the item. Polymorph on the correct target can turn a fight with ease, so try to keep an eye out for Lulu using Whimsy to speed up her ally. This ability has a very long cooldown and can be a good window of opportunity to get an upper hand in a fight. All that being said, I recommend Exhaust into Lulu. Ignite can be helpful, but I really prefer Exhaust in this case because her W ability not only gives movement speed but also attack speed. Being able to Exhaust an enemy while Lulu has no polymorph available puts you at a huge advantage. Finally, keep an eye on Lulu’s ult Wild Growth if you are looking to go in and finish off an enemy. It is possible that she will wait until you get close enough so that her ally gets a knock-up on you as well as a massive boost of health that they can use to turn the fight and get a pick on you instead!

SIMPLE Lux ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Personally, I find Lux vs Karma to be a very matchup because it comes down very heavily to skill. Because both champions rely so heavily on skillshots for the majority of their damage it means that you will have to outsmart and out-position if you want to win this matchup. That said, Karma has a great early game advantage over Lux who tends to be much more mana-hungry and needs more items to be effective. In my experience, this is a very easy matchup for Karma to win if you are mindful about using your speed up to avoid her combos. ✶ How to Play ✶ In the early game, you want to look at this matchup as being a mage vs mage matchup. Lux has a much weaker early game than Karma and you will want to take advantage of that as much as possible. Remember, in the early game you want to play Karma as a lane bully and Lux is quite easy to bully. Lux tends to be incredibly mana-hungry early because she spends almost the entirety of the lane using Lucent Singularity to poke, usually in combination with Light Binding once it is available to her. There are a few key aspects of Lux’s abilities that will inform how you want to position in lane. Debatably Lux’s most critical ability Light Binding roots the first two enemy units hit. Note that this is enemy units not enemy champions. This means that if Lux hits a minion wave, the minions will be rooted and not the champions standing behind them! This is great, because it means we can duck behind minions to avoid getting hit. But it also means that it is possible for Lux to root both you and your ADC. So you will need to be very careful about where you are standing in the lane. All that being said, it is not necessarily a good idea to stand behind minions the entire game because Lux’s main poking ability Lucent Singularity is not interrupted by minions. It does hit minions, but it is not blocked by them. This gives you a few interesting options, because if you do stay in the minion wave it will be detrimental to the enemy ADC’s farming pattern. That said, you also want to make sure that you are poking out of the wave enough to hit your RQ and Qs properly. Be sure to use your E to shield and speed yourself out of Lux’s damage zone. One more important note about Lux’s damage ability is that her auto-attacks can actually do a pretty decent amount of damage because of her passive Illumination. When you are hit with one of Lux’s abilities you will be marked and her next attack will do extra damage. Make sure that you are careful if you plan to engage while being marked by her passive! Overall your strategy in lane should be the same as most other matchups in which you will RQ as much as possible. I’d advise being a little more conservative with using your W to poke as Lux can punish this very well with a well placed root. Make sure that you are using your E shield speed up to help your ADC avoid being rooted. Because of the timing, if they do get rooted the shield will help negate some of the burst. Focus on bullying her in lane so that she cannot get her item quickly, as this is a huge powerspike for Lux. The typical build for Lux is Luden's Tempest, which is an expensive mage item. This means she will need 700 more gold to reach her mythic power spike than a typical support and you should take advantage of this and her mana intensive spells. Lux will fight you for brush control, and you should do everything you can to keep dominance over her because a Lux being able to cast from a bush is incredibly difficult to keep up with! Keeping bush dominance is without a doubt the hardest part of this matchup but is winnable with well placed RQs and a good lane ward. In the late game, Lux will be totally focused on doing damage and making picks while Karma will transition to being a more supportive champion. Use this to your advantage! Lux’s shield, Prismatic Barrier pales in comparison to Karma’s, especially once you are applying buffs/debuffs with your support items. Focus on hard peeling to deny Lux her kills. A final note about Lux is that you want to be very careful to ward around objectives because she can steal them using her ultimate, Final Spark. Try to make sure you are always warding behind dragon/baron pit to make sure she cannot snipe the objective from here.

SIMPLE Miss Fortune ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Miss Fortune support has become popular again recently, so I thought it would be a good idea to cover the Karma vs MF matchup! Support MF is all about her long range Make it Rain poke and usually builds off of AP, specifically Liandry’s Anguish. That said, the damage on Make it Rain is not amazing, especially not early game which is where Karma excels. Additionally, MF is extremely mana-hungry at the start of the game which creates an even bigger opportunity for Karma to abuse this pick. Honestly, this is a very easy matchup for Karma – you are both lane bullies, but Karma just does it better! ✶ How to Play ✶ As I mentioned, support MF tends to focus on using her Make it Rain to lay down poke damage, although her Double Up can also be effective poke. This means that as Karma you generally want to stay away from the wave against Miss Fortune because her double up most typically is bounced off a minion onto her target, doing extra damage thanks to her passive Love Tap. Since Make it Rain is not blocked by minions, there is little value in hiding in minions against the matchup. For the most part you will want to maintain brush dominance. Without a doubt Miss Fortune will use Make It Rain to try to clear you from the brush, but this does little damage to you especially before she is able to get a solid AP item. Feel free to just use your shield to keep your brush dominance. One more important note about Make It Rain is that it does slow enemies within the zone, so make sure to use your shield to speed out if she is trying to slow you down for a chase. So in lane, really try to focus on landing those RQs as much as possible. Both Miss Fortune and Karma are lane bullies (they have fantastic synergy when MF is playing ADC!) but Karma is able to do it just a bit better. Make sure that you are using your E to negate her retaliatory damage as she can hit quite hard with her autos and her Double Up. Don’t underestimate her damage simply because she is on support but also don’t be scared of her! Support Miss Fortune will most likely be going for a Liandry’s Anguish, a fairly pricey mage item. Liandry’s is 700 gold more than most standard support items and is a huge power-spike for support Miss Fortune. You want to focus on doing everything you can to really slow down her making that extra 700 gold so that you can maintain a mythic/item lead over her as long as possible, giving you more time to snowball the lane. Despite this, Miss Fortune is pretty immobile, especially because Strut requires her to not be attacked to stack up movement speed. Use this to your advantage. If she has recently used her Double Up, try to look for a nice W to hold her in place and gun her down. You can also do this after Make It Rain, but you want to be very careful about you and your ADC being hit by Double Up on an engage. Miss Fortune’s ultimate, Bullet Time can lay down some seriously devastating damage. Since it applies in a cone and is not a targeting ability, it is entirely possible for her to kill both you and your ADC with one ability! A Miss Fortune support will often require you to start playing like an enchanter a bit earlier, using your shields to negate her damage and slow. Your RE will be critical to escaping her ultimate with your life. Not only will your shield negate the damage but it will also allow you to run out of the damage zone faster. Feel free to W Miss Fortune while she is ulting as it requires her to remain absolutely stationary to get all of the value from it. This is a great way to turn this engage around on her. Make sure that you are always warding behind objectives against Miss Fortune! Like someone like Lux, MF can steal objectives over walls if you are not careful!

SIMPLE Morgana ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Morgana should really be no trouble for Karma, especially if the Morgana is choosing to go a more mage-style build. Personally, Morgana vs Karma is the matchup in which I have my highest winrate, and I really love playing against Morgana because it is a super dynamic, exciting lane. In the late game, you will not feel the Karma fall off as hard against Morgana as you do against enchanter supports. This is a super fun lane that requires you to really focus on your shielding skills! ✶ How to Play ✶ Morgana is most iconic for her Dark Binding into Tormented Shadow combination, but the great news is that Karma can very easily counter this combination with her fantastic shield. As mentioned above, this matchup requires a lot of critical thinking and decision making when it comes to your shielding, both in terms of targeting and priority. The way in which you shield will be greatly informed by both your ADCs skill and the Morgana’s trading patterns. But before getting into discussions of thwarting Morgana’s basic trading combination, I want to discuss her Tormented Shadow in more depth. This is a fantastic skill because it is a very quick cast and is difficult to avoid because of it. And on top of that, this ability can heal her because of her passive, Soul Siphon! So overall, just an excellent ability. This is how most Morgana’s will poke in lane, even if they cannot manage to land the root. This means that it can be really difficult to keep up with Morgana in terms of your support item quest, so you will have to really work hard and use your W to poke in lane. It is not enough to wait for Mantra Qs, or even to use unempowered Qs. Going back to the general Q+W Morgana combination, make sure that you use your shield to help your ADC avoid the root so they are not stuck sitting in her puddle of shame taking damage. Your shield will help negate some of this damage even if they do get caught! You can even use it to speed your team out of her of the range of her ult Soul Shackles . Overall, your shield is an excellent counter to Morgana’s combinations. And what about Morgana’s Black Shield? This shield is infamously annoying because it can block magic damage and stops CC until it is broken. Well, for Karma this really isn’t that important. Karma does have CC on her W, but because it is already such soft CC it is not anywhere near as punishing as it would be more a support like Thresh who can have their entire engage ruined by the shield. That being said, it is still best to try to cast your W while this is down. You can also use your W to bait this out so that a teammate with stronger CC can hit. In lane, try to maintain brush dominance over Morgana. This is critical for two reasons: for one, if you are able to see the animation of her Tormented Shadow cast it is much easier to E and avoid. Keep brush dominance also means that it’s much harder for her to land roots because you will have much more time to react to them.

AVERAGE Nami ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Nami is a tough matchup to categorize. It is not exactly difficult, but Nami is in a very good spot right now because of her amazing ability to synergize with champions like Lucian. Being that she is in a very strong spot at the moment I would be very careful playing into the matchup. Nami is a very decent support on her own, but be extra careful if she is playing with one of the ADCs who can really take full advantage of her skillset and her Electrocute build. ✶ How to Play ✶ As I mentioned, Nami can be a tricky matchup, but in the early game it should be easier to bully her and punish mispositioning. Nami is very squishy especially in the early game and you want to take advantage of that as much as possible. That being said, it is a little trickier to get picks against her because her Ebb and Flow ability can both heal her allies and damage her enemies, often with a single cast! That said, the ability is on a rather long cooldown to begin and can eat up mana quite quickly. Still, you will want to rush Chemtech Putrifier as fast as possible. Even an Oblivion Orb will be significant in reducing Nami’s early sustain. What you really want to be looking for in lane is Nami misuing her Aqua Prison. This bubble is one of Nami’s main pick-making abilities because of its excellent CC. When this ability hits it will suspend the target in the air, leaving them incredibly vulnerable for a few seconds. Obviously this means that if possible you want to use your E to run away from her cast zone. This will become easier with practice, especially once you become more familiar with the cast time. Nami’s bubble actually takes a total of 0.99 seconds to actually land which is a window of opportunity for you to speed yourself or your ADC out of its indicator zone. Just beware of Nami comboing her ultimate Tidal Wave to knock you up and then land a bubble to hold you in place. But much like Ebb and Flow, Nami’s ultimate does have a small window for you to escape unscathed while she is casting, around 0.5 seconds. Don’t be afraid to use any tools at your disposal including Shurelya's Battlesong to speed away from this combo. Nami’s E ability, Tidecaller's Blessing is really what makes her so great, especially at the moment when paired with someone like Lucian. This ability allows for Nami or an ally to gain extra magic damage and a brief slow on their next three basic attacks or abilities. This ability works amazing with the Electrocute rune, and she will often place this ability on her ADC to proc the electrocute damage which can be deadly. Always keep an eye out for Nami using the ability at inopportune times, such as to speed herself up or if her ADC wastes it farming. This is a great time to look to get aggressive because it has an 11 second cooldown and is one of Nami’s biggest contribution to skirmishes. Ultimate in land against Nami you want to do what Karma does best: keep brush control and poke out the enemy laners. Keep brush control against a Nami is relatively easy, because her main ability to pressure you out is her Aqua Prison. Getting caught by this ability is incredibly dangerous, but also entirely possible to avoid with careful timing and a well placed speed boost. If she begins warding bushes make sure to clear those wards before taking up the brush again.

DIFFICULT Nautilus ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ My general thoughts on Nautilus vs Karma is that you should rarely see this matchup. Why is that? Because if you want to play Karma, you should be banning Nautilus almost every game! Nautilus is one of the must brutal matchups for Karma simple because he does not care at all about your poke and his engage leaves you with very few options to respond. He is definitely in my top three ban recommendations for Karma. ✶ How to Play ✶ Nautilus lane is going to be exceptionally difficult, but not unwinnable. You will absolutely want to go Ignite into this matchup because your main goal here is going to be getting around Nautilus and his CC to his ADC. Exhaust can be helpful here but since your pick potential is going to be more limited to the ADC it is often better to have Ignite. What do I mean about your pick potential being limited? Well, the biggest problem with Nautilus is that he counters Karma’s greatest strength in lane, which is her insane poking ability. Nautilus is so incredibly tanky, especially with his shield Titan's Wrath. He cares very little about your RQs and can brush off tanking several of them to the face without much concern once he’s got a tank item or two. So then, what can we do if Nautilus happens to slip through the cracks of champion select? First thing is to remember that any matchup is winnable, no matter who you are playing! Understanding a few key things about Nautilus’ kit will make it much easier for you to walk away with a win against this ultra-tanky super-engager. Firstly, his hook Dredge Line will hit the first enemy it comes into contact with, including minions. That said, Nautilus has an infamously odd hitbox, and I won’t go over the varying hitboxes for minions/terrain/champions here. Instead, what you need to know is that your best bet is to play around the minion wave here as you would with any other hook engage champion. When Dredge Line is up you will have to play much more carefully lest you be pulled in. What makes someone like Nautilus so much harder than say a Leona, who is also tanky and able to engage? Well, Leona puts herself into a much more vulnerable position when she engages. She is the one who changes her positioning, not her target. Nautilus’ Dredge Line pulls you towards him while he moves to you, hitting in the middle. This means not only are you CCed but you are also pulled out of position. This will make it harder for your ADC to reach you and fight in time. Because Karma is so squishy being pulled from position is very often a death sentence. What’s worse is that once you are pulled to Nautilus he can use his passive Staggering Blow to root you in place. This is an exceptionally dangerous combination. If you are caught out by a Nautilus alone or with his ADC a little far away, I’d recommend going for an RW. Your RQ does very little against him here, and it is unlikely if you are the one pulled that your ADC will need a shield right away. This will allow you to root Nautilus to create a window for escape while also healing you up to make said escape a bit easier. As I alluded to earlier, I’ve found the most success playing against Nautilus by simply not playing against him. I don’t just mean banning him either! You want to really put your effort on chunking down his ADC so that if Nautilus does hit a hook his lane partner will be already be at relatively low health should a fight break out. This means that if a fight breaks out in lane you should also try to never target Nautilus because you will do very little to him. If your ADC is insistent on trying to burn him down do what you can to help but know that in most cases against Nautilus your RE will be more useful than RQ because you will be doing very little damage to him

AVERAGE Pantheon ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Pantheon can sometimes be a brutal pick for Karma because it requires very fast decision making due to the nature of his engage. It is critical that you do not use the wrong form of Mantra against him because his kit allows him to get in and get a kill very quickly, often leaving you with the opportunity for only one Mantra before the skirmish is over. His roam potential is better than Karma’s, so in these cases we want to make sure that we are hard stomping our lane while also keeping a careful eye on his location to help our team. ✶ How to Play ✶ One of the most basic aspects to keep an eye on when you’re playing against Pantheon is his passive Mortal Will stacking because it will make him even more deadly when he has hit full stacks. This will be a good indicator of when it is best to try to play more aggressively against Pantheon and when you should back off and take it slow with RQs from the bush. Keeping bush control over a Pantheon is very difficult because of the amazing stun on his W, Shield Vault. This will be the ability that really gives you the most trouble in lane because it is such an oppressive ability that can 100 to 0 you once he has a few items in his bag. So what can we do to counter this on Karma? I find that one of the best methods to thwart a Pantheon all in is to RW when he begins to approach you for an engage. Shield Vault is an amazing ability but it does not have the greatest range which means that Pantheon will need to get rather close to use this stun. This requires some practice, because the target range on your W is 675 while Pantheon’s W has a range of 600. This means you have 75 range on him and you will have to use that to your advantage. The most important thing to remember is that RW is your best combination on his engages because of the typical Pantheon trading pattern, but this is only true if you are the target of his attack. Otherwise, a normal W is great so you can save your Mantra for shielding. Pantheon’s most basic engage is a combination of his Shield Vault into Aegis Assault. Aegis Assault makes Pantheon temporarily involunerable which means there is no point in trying to save an RQ for when he goes in. You could save this RQ for after Aegis Assault has run out, but RW is still usually a better option because you will want to stay as healthy as possibly to turn the engage back around on him once he has already used two of his spells. Aegis Assault has a 22 second cooldown at level one, and Shield Vault beings at 13 seconds. This means that after an engage from Pantheon you have a massive window of opportunity to punish him if he was not able to get a pick. As I mentioned, keeping brush control over a Pantheon is difficult but not impossible. One of the best ways to do this is to place a ward in the bush ahead of the one where you are spending your time RQing, or where he is hanging out for most of the lane. Because the range of Pantheon’s abilities are not stellar, you should be safe for the most part using this method. Finally, you will want to keep a close eye on when Pantheon is gone from lane. His roam potential far surpasses Karma’s due in part to his ultimate, Grand Starfall which allows him to travel extremely far across the map and surprise your ally with a barrage of CC and lethality. You are responsible for keeping an eye on your laner, so make sure you are always pinging when he is gone and when his ult has been used. One final note about his ultimate is that if Pantheon chooses to ult into his own lane, you can thwart his initial landing though it is a bit of a difficult technique. To do this, you will need to be very comfortable with the range of your RQ, because you will want to throw it out in such a way that the blast zone left behind after the initial impact is covering the indicator for his landing. This will land him in the slow and will also explode not long after he arrives, laying down some pretty significant damage. All that said, this is a difficult technique that requires some practice but is a great way to discourage a chase and engage!

DIFFICULT Pyke ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Pyke can be a very tough matchup, and currently has one of the highest winrates against Karma. I used to almost perma-ban Pyke in my Karma games because I just found him so annoying, but I no longer struggle against him anywhere near as much as I did and actually think it’s a pretty decent matchup. The key here is to take it slow and try to win not by aggression but by outsmarting the Pyke. ✶ How to Play ✶ The first and most important thing to know about playing against a Pyke is that you almost never want to bother using your W on him. Even if he is at low health, it is extremely likely that he will just use his Phantom Undertow or his Ghostwater Dive to escape. Pyke is extremely mobile and can escape Karma’s W without much of a second thought. The only time that you want to use this is when these abilities are down. When it comes to lanes against Pyke most of his pressure comes from his Bone Skewer which can pull you out of position and towards him to hit a Phantom Undertow combo to leave you stunned and in a bad spot in lane. Frankly, the best way to counter a Pyke is to listen. Turn up your game volume! Pyke’s wind up on Bone Skewer is almost comically loud, which means you should always be aware of when he is going to throw it out. Pyke’s Ghostwater Dive also has two indicators, one which will appear at on the base of enemy champions he is near and another ridiculously loud auditory cue. This will be vastly helpful in knowing when Pyke is going to engage. When he does plan to engage, make sure that you use your E on whoever is further towards the enemy side and has the indicator under their champion. This will give them more speed to avoid the incoming Bone Skewer and will block the initial damage should they get hit. When playing against a Pyke you should always take Ignite because of his ability to regenerate health using Gift of the Drowned Ones. Since we want to really focus on early game snowballing on Karma you should be looking to poke him out with RQ and finish him off with an Ignite. Force him to waste his Ghostwater Dive to regenerate his health using his passive by keeping a constant barrage of damage on him. Importantly, Pyke’s Bone Skewer cannot go through minions, so play around the wave to your advantage! Keeping brush control over a Pyke is difficult but critical. An unseen Pyke is a dangerous Pyke. Don’t be afraid to use your RQ to check that bushes are clear before entering. Typically, in lane you will want to place one ward in the bush ahead of the one you are camping so as to make sure that Pyke does not sneak into it and pull you into one of his devastating combinations. Pyke excels at roaming because of his incredible speed and stealth. You absolutely must ping when he is gone from your lane and warn your team any time you see him headed in any direction that is not bot lane. The final note about Pyke is all about his ultimate, Death from Below. When Pyke hits someone with his ultimate he gets a reset and can use it again, which will be indicated next to his health bar. Not only that, but his kill also grants gold to his allies who helped with the kill! This can be devastating in a teamfights and means that you have to be incredibly careful about your positioning. What’s really important here is that your E shield will not stop an enemy from being executed as the shield is not calculated into the execute threshold. So instead you will want to use E to help your ally speed out of the X zone of Pyke’s ult. Use your Shurelya's Battlesong and RE to quickly scatter and make it difficult for him to get a reset.

AVERAGE Rakan ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Rakan is an annoying pick against Karma, but it is definitely winnable. The most important thing to be aware of in this matchup is that for all intents and purposes you want to ignore Rakan as much as possible. Karma hates high mobility champions, and Rakan personifies this. Because of Rakan’s ridiculously high mobility it will be very difficult to hit him with your RQ, so you will instead want to make sure you are putting all of your focus exclusively onto his ADC. This matchup is annoying but very winnable. ✶ How to Play ✶ As mentioned, your main goal against a Rakan is to ignore him as much as possible. That said, you can get in some free and easy poke on him whenever he walks up to the wave to get a minion for his support item. This can be done in one of two ways. The first is using your Q to either hit him directly or to bounce the splash damage from hitting the wave, doing damage to him in the process. I’d avoid ever using RQ into a wave like this because it will likely be detrimental to your ADCs farming rhythm which can be devastating for a lane’s success. On the subject of RQs, try to never aim them at Rakan. This is for two reasons, the first of which is just his natural tankiness. While Rakan is not a tank in the traditional sense he does build tank items and becomes rather beefy later in the game. But the real reason you don’t want to use your Mantra Q on Rakan is because he has so many ways to avoid it. Because of his high mobility thanks to Grand Entrance and Battle Dance it is extremely difficult to hit Rakan. The same idea applies for using your W on him. That said, you can still use your W to harass him in lane and get some free ticks on your support item. Just be very careful that if you do plan on doing this that you have your E ready in case you need to run away from a surprise engage. If he does turn to engage on you, do not be afraid to turn and RQ his ADC. This will likely get him to activate Battle Dance to help shield his carry, giving you a few seconds to flee. If he continues to pursue, you may use your W again to root him. Rakan’s Grand Entrance has a 16 second cooldown at rank 1, making it longer than your W cooldown. Try to use that small window to root him briefly in place so you can back up to a more favorable positioning. Holding brush control is critical here and should not be too difficult. Rakan lacks any poke outside of his Gleaming Quill so it will not be easy for him to keep you out of the brush consistently, allowing you to camp and send out your barrage of RQs. Just be careful if he does begin to approach the bush as he may attempt to engage you with Grand Entrance. In that case, throw out a Q if you can or place a W on him. If he continues towards you he will be in the W range and will be rooted after the duration, giving you a chance to back up to a safer spot. Finally, always go Shurelya's Battlesong against Rakan because he will likely be purchasing one too! Rakan’s ultimate, The Quickness synergizes amazingly well with the mythic’s speed up and we want to make sure we have as much mobility as possible to escape Rakan’s incredibly quick engages. This means that if the Rakan hits his Battlesong fishing for an ult, you should consider hitting yours too as well as an RE. Not only will with give your team incredibly movement speed but it will also provide shielding in case Rakan does manage to charm any of them.

DIFFICULT RELL ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Rell is another tanky champion who limits Karma’s early game potential. This matchup is ultimately pretty even, and will come down to your ability to punish her when she is dismounted and slow. Your shields are a great way to counter her ultimate. If you are able to keep brush control this lane should be quite easy for Karma to handle. ✶ How to Play ✶ Rell versus Karma lanes are difficult on Karma because Rell is mostly unbothered by your poke after a few levels and an item or two. Much like in the case of other tanky champions like Nautilus you will want to put all of your attention onto Rell’s ADC. Don’t bother with using RQ on her if you can avoid it unless she is already chunked or if she is severely behind on getting her tank items. Try to get little pokes off using your unempowered Q when she steps up to the wave to proc her support item. Rell’s greatest strengths are here tankiness and her CC combinations, but it should be noted that she does have some major weaknesses. The most basic Rell combination is Ferromancy - Crash Down into Full Tilt. These two abilities together allow Rell to jump down onto an enemy and stun anyone near her, her bound ally, or the line between them. This can be a devastating combination because Karma is very squishy and weak when it comes to being hard CCed. That said, when Rell uses her Crash Down she will lose her steed, instead receiving a shield. She also has incredibly bad movement speed in this form. This is exactly what you will want to use to your advantage, but the way you deal with it will change depending on whether or not Rell managed to catch you with her combination. If she hit you, you will want to RW to get some of your health back while also rooting her in place so you can your ADC can burn her down. Because of her insanely bad move speed in this form it is much easier to catch her with a W and keep her in place to be punished for engaging. But you need to be incredibly careful here! After 11 seconds being dismounted Rell will get her Ferromancy cooldown refreshed, this time as Ferromancy: Mount Up. When she gets this ability back up she will recall her steed, and her next basic attack will cause her to flip her target over her, stunning them and doing bonus damage. This means that while you do have a window of opportunity to punish Rell you need to be incredibly careful because if the skirmish goes on for too long she will have the chance to punish you for punishing her! Try to keep a close eye on Rell’s movement patterns here. If she has been attempting to retreat and suddenly seems to be playing very boldly and in your face while dismounted she is likely close to being able to turn things on their head by mounting up again. Rell’s ultimate, Magnet Storm will pull all enemies in a zone towards her, forcing them to move alongside her as she moves for a brief period. Your best bet here is to W Rell while using your RE to try to reduce the incoming damage from the enemy engage. Mikael's Blessing is an amazing item against Rell but please be aware that it CANNOT cleanse her Ultimate. Because “Pull” is a form of Airborne it is one of the CC types that Mikael’s cannot cleanse. That being said, it is excellent to combat the stuns that she will likely pair with her ultimate. Thankfully because Rell is such an engage heavy champion once she has hit her combination you will have a little bit of breathing room following in which she is forced to sit out her long cooldowns, offering not much more than her tankiness. Try to use this to your advantage by chasing down her carry while she is unable to help them.

SIMPLE Renata Glasc ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Renata is an easy matchup, but her ultimate is so incredibly powerful that it is difficult for Karma to answer. Outside of her ultimate, Karma should be able to outclass her in most areas so long as you are playing smart and keeping an eye on her Bailout cooldown. You outrange and outpoke her if you play this matchup early, ideally leading to a quick snowball. ✶ How to Play ✶ In lane, Renata Glasc will usually be looking for poke using her Handshake and Loyalty Program. Karma’s cooldowns are amazingly better than Renata’s at the start of the game. Handshake is 16 second cooldown, whereas Loyalty Program is 14 seconds to begin with. This means that to start the game you will want to play hyper-aggressively. This is even better if you have an ADC who also favors aggressive play like a Draven or even a Lucian. You want to be abusing your superior cooldowns as much as possible to snowball a lane with early kills. Loyalty Program has two functions and will be Renata’s main poke in lane as mentioned. Because this ability is both her shield and her poke try to look for angles that will force her to pick one function over the other. Force her to decide to either hit you or to shield her ADC from your massive early game poke ability. If you are ever caught out by Handshake, try to focus on using your W on the enemy ADC when they step up to punish you. This will force the ADC to either turn to get out of the root zone or to risk being stuck in place and have the fight turned on them. If this is not possible because the ADC is too far, you can W Renata. Don’t forget that if you are caught at low health, a RW can be a quick way to not only save your life but even turn the encounter on its head! I cannot emphasize enough how much you want to be pressing this lane for all its worth. Often, I like to take even further advantage of Karma’s superior cooldowns by rushing Ionian Boots of Lucidity. This will become extra helpful when Renata gets her ultimate Hostile Takeover. This is an extremely powerful ultimate that can turn teamfights and even games if used properly. Your job when Renata ults is to get as many of your teammates as possible out of the zone using your E as well as your Shurelya's Battlesong. Shield allies in the zone as well to stop them from taking too much damage from one another. It is also helpful to use your W to stop any enemies from trying to get close and take advantage of the window where your allies are inflicted with Berserk. I find that one of the best items against Renata is Redemption. This is helpful for two key abilities, which I believe to be Renata’s strongest. For one, you can use Redemption to regain team health and turn a fight around after being hit with Hostile Takeover. The second is to thwart Renata’s Bailout. This extremely powerful ability allows Renata to grant extra attack and movement speed, as well as to give them a second chance if they are hit with fatal damage. In order to prevent their death, the target of Bailout must score a takedown. If they do, they are restored to a threshold of health. A well-timed Redemption can give your ally just enough health to escape and stop Bailout from reaching its full potential.

DIFFICULT Senna ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Senna is one of the three champions on my recommended ban list. She is a terror for Karma if the game goes too long and she is able to stack her souls and gain massive power spikes across her stats as a result. If you do find yourself up against a Senna it is absolutely critical that you crush her in the early game, denying her scaling and slowing down her match to becoming a late game monster. Ultimately though if the game goes on too long you will be outscaled ridiculously hard. ✶ How to Play ✶ Senna is so incredibly squishy, especially in the game start that you should be looking to play extremely aggressively. You need to be doing everything you possibly can to chunk and force her out of lane, denying her the chance to pick up souls and stack her passive, Absolution. Senna is a late game champion who scales infinitely, and since Karma falls off in the late game your best bet is to force a quick game. Anytime you are against an infinite scaling champion who is assumedly doing decently it is important to end the game quickly but this is even more critical on Karma because of her late game fall-off. Forcing a quick game will require that extremely aggressive playstyle as well as very well-timed roams. You want to focus on getting your team as ahead as possible in the early game which means taking dragon quickly and efficiently by forcing the bot lane to recall before it spawns. This is best done by holding brush control and absolutely bombarding Senna with RQs as often as possible. If she has recently used her root ability, Last Embrace, do not be afraid to try to land a W on her while she goes to collect souls on the ground. If she or her ADC becomes too aggressive, do not be afraid to back off. You don’t have to land a root, just continue to use your skills to chunk her. Ideally, you want to punish her for every single soul that she picks up. If she uses her Curse of the Black Mist it is incredibly easy to hit her with an RQ. While her allies may move around in the zone, Senna will always be in the center of the mist. Senna does have a decent amount of sustain in lane with her Piercing Darkness which has the ability to both damage enemies and heal allies. I often rush an early Oblivion Orb to keep her sustain in check and to make sure that you are able to keep forcing her out of lane and away from XP and scaling. I cannot emphasize enough how critical the early game is going to be in this matchup. It is not enough to go even in lane against Senna, even on support. You need to absolutely crush her and her ADC if you want any shot of winning this one. If the game ends quickly, that’s wonderful! But that will not always be the case, so you will have to know how to deal with late game Senna who is doing well (obviously if she is having an awful game, most of this won’t apply!) My best advice is to stay away from her as much as possible. Focus on trying to get picks on someone else because she will absolutely melt you if she catches up to you. Try to travel the map with someone who is tankier than you, especially if you are warding. Because of the popularity of Umbral Glaive Senna will likely spend a lot of her time clearing your wards. This means that if you want to place wards, you want to have someone with you who will pose more of a threat to late game Senna so she does not try for a fast pick with her insane attack speed and damage. Ask your jungler or top laner to ward with you, depending on who they are playing and their relative power level. Once it has reached late game, you have to remember to play like an enchanter support. Senna will be playing like an ADC. It is rarely a good idea for an enchanter to try to 1v1 a late game ADC, so try to avoid putting yourself in this situation! In teamfights try to focus on staying closer to the back and shielding your allies so that they can handle Senna for you while you buff/debuff to make it possible.

AVERAGE SERAPHINE ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Seraphine versus Karma is a pretty fun lane and one that is mostly a skill matchup. That is to say, the winner of this match will be determined almost entirely by who can hit the skillshots more efficiently and who is better able to punish the other for blunders. To win this matchup you will need to be keeping careful track of Seraphine’s passive counter and make sure that you are making the most of your selected Mantra to match her selected empowered spell. ✶ How to Play ✶ As I mentioned, you will need to extra aware of Seraphine’s Stage Presence stacks in order to play this lane efficiently. Her passive allows her to double every third spell for extra effects. It also gives her a bonus to her basic attacks if she is near an ally, so you want to do your best to divide and conquer in this lane. Try to take Seraphine on when she is not close enough to an enemy to get her bonus magic damage. You can tell if she is close enough to an ally to get those bonus by looking at the base of her model which will have an indicator for herself and her ally when they are range. She is more dangerous this way, so be careful if you decide to get into her basic attack range. You and Seraphine will likely be battling it out for brush control in the lane, and it is unfortunately a bit easier for Seraphine to poke you out of brushes more consistently because of her High Note and Beat Drop. Your best bet is to use your E to try to avoid these skills, wasting her cooldowns but not budging from your brush unless you absolutely have to. It is much easier for your ADC to dodge an empowered Beat Drop when they can see the Seraphine in lane as opposed to a bush, and this is going to be one of her main ways of catching out picks since it has the ability to root. Speaking of making picks, Seraphine’s ultimate Encore has amazing potential because it is a ridiculously large charm that can have its range extended for every ally or enemy that is hit. It’s very important to keep in mind that this is both allies and enemies because Seraphine can use this to catch you out even if you are pretty far away from her. Try to always avoid fighting Seraphine in narrow corridors because she can easily use her ultimate to hit and charm your entire team. It is always better that you and your allies try to stay a bit away from one another when she has her ultimate up lest your entire team get charmed. Though she is stationary during the cast of her ultimate I would not recommend trying to W her in these instances as most Seraphine’s will choose to stay very far back and take advantage of her ultimate’s long range. Going to close up can be incredibly dangerous, especially if she combos her ultimate with an empowered E to root your allies. Seraphine does have some decent sustain in lane using the empowered version of her Surround Sound which can heal and haste enemies around her. But remember, this ability must be empowered if she is going to get the healing out of it, otherwise it functions as an okay shield for nearby teammates. Your RE is a much more powerful shield, even if it lacks the healing element. Make sure to make good use of it to help your teammates speed out of her relatively slow skillshots like Drop the Beat and her somewhat slow moving Encore wave. You definitely always want to go Chemtech Putrifier into Seraphine, though I very rarely find that an Oblivion Orb rush is necessary to win this lane. Seraphine is relatively squishy and though Surround Sound offers some sustain its cooldown is incredibly long even at higher ranks. Still, the healing will begin to ramp up as the game goes on, especially if she goes for a Moonstone Renewer so always make sure you look for second item anti-heal to keep her healing from becoming too oppressive.

DIFFICULT Sona ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Sona versus Karma is usually more favorable to Sona simply because of her late game scaling that leaves Karma in the dust, but this matchup can be winnable. For that to happen, you will have to play very aggressively and try to deny Sona the chance to get gold that will help her scale up into a late game healing and shielding monster. ✶ How to Play ✶ Sona’s kit is a lot more complicated than a lot of people give her credit for, and it is important that you understand the intricacies of how it works if you want to have a shot of coming out on top in this matchup. The first important thing to understand is Sona’s power chords, which change with the last ability she cast. Since this is not a Sona guide I will not go too deep into them, but a somewhat overly simplified way to think of them is that her Valor chord will deal extra damage, her Perseverance chord is like a mini-Exhaust, and her Celerity chord is a slow. How you engage Sona will change based on these chords and what she has active. For example, if Sona hits your carry with a Celerity power chord you will want to give them a shield to combat to slow and keep them moving. Sona is an extremely squishy champion who is very mana hungry to start the game. Karma wants to take full advantage of these weaknesses by chunking down Sona, leaving her the option of healing herself and hitting empty on her mana bar very quickly or backing to refresh. Either of these are good for you because it means that you can continue to push the lane and make the most out of Sona leaving her ADC vulnerable. I find it is best to chunk out Sona first before going after the ADC with your RQs, though it is still good to be hitting unempowered Qs and Ws on both bot laners. But poking out a Sona early leaves her with few options as I mentioned which we can use to further press our advantage. Another important thing of note is that we want to punish Sona every time she tries to poke for her support item stacks. Sona trades in a way that is somewhat similar to Karma, often speeding herself using Song of Celerity and poking with Hymn of Valor. When she does this, its best to back up and allow the Hymn of Valor to hit a minion so that she does not receive her support item proc. That said, you do not ever take Sona poke for free. Its very important that you punish her with even an auto attack for doing this. Song of Celerity has its duration more than doubled if Sona does not take damage, so you always want to be sure that you hit her during this time to make it harder for her to retreat. Additionally, you want to make it very dangerous for Sona to farm any gold on her support item by hitting her fast and hard with your Mantra Q when she attempts it. A regular Q is also good but try to weave in auto attacks as well. You want to make it as difficult as possible for Sona to get her gold because of her incredible scaling once she begins to get mana items. Sona’s mythic purchase is a massive power spike for her, so we want to put it off as long as possible. Maintaining brush control over Sona is very easy. She just lacks the ability to drive you out of the brush without her ADC’s assistance, and if her ADC does try to force you out definitely Mantra Q and try to chunk them out before they can get close enough to auto attack you or use any abilities to push you out. It is very important that you keep brush control here not because you want to keep Sona from the bush but because it makes it much easier to punish her for any mispositioning. Sona is so incredibly squishy and has so little self-peel, especially against Karma. Her speed up is not as effective in lane as Karma’s and so if she is ever out of line in her positioning you should seek to capitalize on it aggressively. Without a doubt you will want to rush an Oblivion Orb in this lane unless you are hard winning without it. Sona’s sustain does make it a little difficult to snowball which is why you want to use every tool at your disposal to slow her down. In addition to eventually purchasing a full Chemtech Putrifier you absolutely should look to get a Mikael's Blessing in this matchup to combat her ultimate, Crescendo. Crescendo can stun as many targets as it hits, meaning that it is possible for her to stun your entire team! It is very helpful to have a Mikael’s for teamfights when you are not the main target of her ultimate. Being able to cleanse 1.5 second stun on your carry is absolutely massive and can be the difference between winning and losing a game.

DIFFICULT Soraka ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Soraka versus Karma can be a tough matchup for Karma. Soraka has really great sustain in lane which can make hitting your big RQs feel a little bit less impactful as she can just heal them up. But with proper focusing and itemization it is possible to keep an upper hand on Soraka even after the game starts to go late and she outscales Karma. ✶ How to Play ✶ In lane versus Soraka you always want to focus her over her ADC when it comes to using your RQ, Q and W to poke. This is because Soraka’s main counter to Karma is her ability to sustain in lane using her W Astral Infusion. This ability allows Soraka to give up a portion of her heal to an ally. This means that she will be able to thwart a lot of Karma’s poke damage if not played carefully. She is able to maintain this healing through the use of Starcall which will be her main poking tool in lane. Many people complain that Soraka’s Starcall is incredibly slow, giving the opponent plenty of opportunity to move out of the indicator zone. But a fun fact about Soraka is that her Starcall’s travel time is actually decided by how close she is to the target cast area! This means that a good Soraka will be doing a lot of running up to get close and Q before moving backwards quickly using the extra movement speed granted when Starcall hits. In general, it is best to stay away from Soraka’s Starcall zone using Karma’s shield. The actually ability does very minimal damage even at high ranks, but the very last thing that we ever want in lane against Soraka is for her to recover her health. So make sure that you are using your speed boost to avoid these zones as much as possible. Remember, the only way for Karma to really beat out full enchanter style champions is to really crush the early game and if you allow Soraka to heal she will be able to sustain in lane longer, gaining more money and experience that will put you at a massive disadvantage as the game goes on. Soraka can also regain health using her ultimate Wish which is a global heal for her entire team. Make sure to ping your team if they are in the middle of a close fight across the map and Soraka still has her ult as it can very quickly turn a fight in the enemies favor and rack up a ton of assists for her! Briefly, Soraka’s ultimate had the ability to cleanse grievous wounds, but this is no longer the case. So, what does that mean for Karma? It means that you want to rush Oblivion Orb as fast as you can. In many cases I would recommend picking this up before your mythic because it will allow you to snowball so heavily against Soraka. There are different schools of thought about delaying mythics so if that is not something you are comfortable with just make sure that you pick up Chemtech Putrifier second item no matter what. Remember, your oblivion orb will proc on any damage ability, including a simple half second tap of your W. Try to use the anti-heal to your advantage as much as possible to really shut down Soraka’s main strength. One great upside for Karma against Soraka is that you have a much easier time warding and dewarding and can do so with more independence than someone as squishy and generally defenseless as Soraka. Otuside of her Equinox Soraka has very few skills to protect herself when she is alone. Use this to your advantage. You should always win 1v1 duels with Soraka by simply being mindful of her Starcall zone and keeping her in place to gun her down. Use this knowledge to your advantage and try your best to make sure that you are always keeping vision control over neutral objectives.

SIMPLE SWAIN ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ There are few things more fun for a Karma player than getting to go up against a Swain. Karma absolutely crushes him, even with his new and improved ultimate ability. This lane should be absolutely no trouble and should lead to a strong snowballed lead for your carry. ✶ How to Play ✶ Swain is definitely one of Karma’s easiest matchups mostly because of the way that Swain trades and pokes in lane. Swain often trades using his Nevermove to pull an enemy in close and in range of his Death's Hand. But this is actually really amazing for Karma. Swain quite literally drags you into range of himself and usually his ADC which means that you can lay down all of your damage while Swain has no cooldowns. Sometimes I let Swain pull me purposely so that he hand delivers my to his carry and I can get a free pick lined up for my carry. This is a riskier strategy though so if you aren’t entirely comfortable with Karma and hitting your abilities at the right time or hitting the range correctly then I wouldn’t recommend trying to bait Swain. That being said, what if you do want to bait him? Like I said, sometimes its great as Karma to get pulled in by a Swain, especially before he has any kind of serious damage item. As soon as you are hit by Evermore you want to shield yourself. This will negate the damage from his combination of Death’s Hand and Vision of Empire. Now he is entirely out of cooldowns, save for his ult if he has it. Then what? As soon as you are in range you want to W Swain to root him back. A root for a root! This gives you the chance to use your Mantra Q to do massive damage to him while your carry gets close enough to lay down the damage to finish him off. Otherwise, you can use Swain’s being rooted as a chance to jump his carry while his cooldowns are still all down, and he can do little to stop you. Swain’s ultimate, Demonic Ascension recently received some changes that are very important to how you plan on fighting him. Because of these changes, Swain’s ult can last indefinitely provided that there is an enemy champion nearby for him to drain. This means that we absolutely do not want to stay in his ultimate range and actually want to back off and engage again once it has worn off. But it is critical that you back off because again, he could ult forever if there were enough healthy enemies around for him to drain. Obviously this means that Swain will try to chase you using Evermore to keep you in the zone. Your best bet any time Swain ults is to use your W to root him in place, then use your RE to speed yourself and your carry out of the zone. He will be stuck sitting still without any enemies to drain, giving you time to recover cooldowns before re-engaging and looking for a kill. In teamfights, always ping your team away from Swain while he is ulting. Sometimes in hectic teamfights it can be difficult to be mindful of positioning when there are a million particles on your screen. It is your job to keep Swain locked down and keep your team away from him. One final important note about Swain is that you will definitely want to purchase Chemtech Putrifier. Swain can heal a lot thanks to his passive Ravenous Flock so you want to make sure that you shut down his ability to sustain in a fight as much as you can.

AVERAGE Tahm Kench ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Tahm Kench is not exactly the most common support pick these days but he is seen at times paired with champions like Jinx and Senna who really benefit from having a big catfish to keep them safe. This isn’t the best matchup for Karma, but is not unwinnable. It will take a little bit more effort than many matchups, but Karma definitely has the peel and shields needed to combat this beefy pick. ✶ How to Play ✶ In lane, Tahm Kench is going to be spending most of his time using Tongue Lash to poke out you and your ADC in the lane. This can be very dangerous as it allows him to stack up his passive, An Acquired Taste. You want to be very careful here that you are not engaging when Tahm has two or three stacks on you because when he reaches three stacks he can use his ultimate Devour on you. This is a very dangerous spot to be in because you never want someone else to be in control of where your champion is moving! So be very mindful of the stacks on you if you plan on getting into a fight with Tahm Kench as he can very easily take you or his ADC out. In lane you will want to really focus down Tahm’s ADC as much as possible. It is very ineffective to spend your time trying to whittle down Tahm Kench’s health with your RQ and W. Because of his Thick Skin ability Tahm Kench actually stores up a portion of the damage that he takes and will heal for that percent when he is not in combat. He can also activate this skill to create a temporary shield based on his stored damage. This is why it is such an awful idea to try to focus him down, and because he will be building tank items that will only make it increasingly difficult to kill him as the game goes on. So if you are not going to be focusing on Tahm Kench that means that you will want to do your best to maintain brush control so that you can be aiming at his carry as much as possible. But you need to be very careful camping a bush too far forward because of Tahm’s Abyssal Dive. This ability allows Tahm to dive into the ground and reappear in a location where he will knock up and damage all enemies in the area. This is very bad for Karma given how squishy she is. Thankfully, Abyssal Dive does have a cast time and an indicator that makes it possible for you to tell where Tahm is going and prepare. If you are holding control in a bush and you see Tahm dive, you will want to try to move out of the indicator zone as fast as possible. Immediately self-cast E and run. If you and your ADC are both in the zone, RE to save you both health and to up the odds of you both escaping. Once Tahm has reappeared you can also W him to cause him to become rooted if he does not disengage. This makes it much easier for you and your allies to flee to better positioning. The most important thing you can do in a teamfight against Tahm Kench is to keep an eye on his Abyssal Dive zone and shield the appropriate teammates. It is also helpful to activate your Shurelya's Battlesong to increase your odds of getting away before he hits what can be extremely devastating CC. Also try to make sure that you body block his attacks on teammates who already have 2 stacks of Acquired Taste on them so that he cannot Devour them.

AVERAGE Taric ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Taric is fortunately a champion who can do very little against a Karma and who is very simple for her to beat by just poking his ADC down. Taric is a pick that has not very popular recently, but thanks to some changes and the release of some ADCs he synergizes well with he is seeing a resurgence! Because of this, it is important to understand Taric and his kit as well as how to thwart it so that you can crush him! ✶ How to Play ✶ Taric is a tanky champion who also has the ability to a little bit of healing and shielding. That said, his shield, Bastion is much worse than Karma’s. While it is neat that Bastion allows for Taric to cast spells off of his selected ally the cooldown is massive and offers little else besides a way for him to chain his Dazzle. That is not a bad thing, per se, as Dazzle has a great ability to stun and do a bit of magic damage as well. But overall, this is just not the best engage against Karma as it is very easy for her to avoid with a well timed E speed up. In lane you want to be focusing on playing very aggressive in order to poke out Taric’s ADC. This will leave him with the option of pouring his resources into healing them or to save his mana for the rest of his abilities. Because Taric is very mana hungry and his healing is not very effective especially in the early game it should be your goal to totally drain him of his mana as fast as possible by forcing him use his shield and heal frequently. You can do this by maintaining brush control and throwing out your RQs in a way that makes it more difficult to dodge. I would make sure to ward to bush in front of the one you are camping is possible though because the last thing you want is to get hit and stunned by a surprised Dazzle! Taric’s ultimate, Cosmic Radiance is without a doubt the strongest and most iconic part of his kit. This ultimate makes him and all nearby allies invulnerable after a delay. This means that you have two options: burn them down while Taric is channeling the ultimate or to wait until it ends. There is no reason you should ever waste an ability cooldown hitting an invulnerable target. That said, you can look for a good W to root once the duration ends so that you can turn the fight after Taric’s strongest ability has been used. His ultimate also has a ridiculously long cooldown so if you can look to start fights with him after you know it has already been used in a previous skirmish. This is critical because Taric’s ult can be game changing if timed correctly which means that you will have to play around his timer to be successful.

SIMPLE THRESH ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Thresh is a somewhat easy matchup for Karma, provided you are able to avoid his skillshots the majority of the time. This should not be a huge problem because your ability to get in quick poke and flee behind a minion wave where Thresh cannot use his hook. This matchup requires that you are mindful about your movement and using your speed up effectively and is very winnable for Karma. ✶ How to Play ✶ Despite being a “tank” champion, Thresh is not very tanky especially to begin the game. As the game progresses Thresh will become more and more tanky as he collects souls thanks to his passive Damnation. But what is important about Damnation is that it only increases his Armor and Ability Power, not his Magic Resist. That means that for Karma this matchup is excellent because you needn’t worry about him becoming too beefy too quickly. You will still be able to poke him down once he has started to stack up a few souls which is the main goal of this lane. Thresh’s Damnation passive will require that he harvest souls which is most commonly done by moving close to them. This creates great windows of opportunity which you may use to punish him for stepping up. You can do this through an RQ or even just an unempowered Q. If Thresh has recently used any of his skills you may also use a W in order to get an extra proc on your support item and a bit of damage, but make sure that you are not getting close enough for him to use his Flay as this could put you in a very unfavorable position. If Thresh does ever manage to Flay you, immediately place a W on him or his ADC if they are in range to do so. It is unlikely that Thresh will back up from a root, but his ADC will have to more carefully consider if they want to attempt to get damage onto you at the cost of being rooted in place. Using W on Thresh may not make him move back but it will give you a window of opportunity to retreat to more favorable positioning. Thresh is of course most well known for his Q, Death Sentence. This ability is a hook that pulls the target towards Thresh and allows Thresh to pull himself towards his enemy should he chose to. The best way to avoid this Q is to play around the minion wave as the hook will grab the first enemy unit that it collides with. Try to play around the wave and use E to speed yourself up if you are ever in danger of getting grabbed. This way even if the hook does connect you can block some of the initial damage, keeping you healthy enough to W Thresh to make an escape. Do not be afraid to use RW if you are very low on health when you get caught as it may be just enough health to let you speed away to safety. Thresh’s ultimate The Box creates a zone with walls that slows enemies who break it. The best thing to do if you or your ADC is caught is to RE so you can make a faster escape. If possible, place the target of your RE on whoever is going to break the wall initially as they will be the one to take the slow effect and Mantra E is more powerful on the target than surrounding allies. It is very difficult to maintain brush control over a Thresh but can easily win you the lane if you are able to keep dominance. To do this, make sure that you always check the bush you want to enter by sending in an RQ. It is not guaranteed that Thresh will stay in the blast zone, but your RQ cover most of the zone of the lane bushes. It is a good way to check, but still be cautious when entering a bush and be ready to make a fast escape it needed. If you wish to keep brush control, always make sure to place a ward in the bush one ahead of the one you are camping to make sure Thresh does not sneak in to line up a Death Sentence on you. Do not immediately cede bush control to Thresh if he decides to contest you. It is not worth dying over of course, but keeping Thresh out of the brush places him at a huge disadvantage as he cannot hide his Death Sentence wind up in the open, giving you more time to dodge.

DIFFICULT Yuumi ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Yuumi is a nightmare matchup for Karma. It may sound silly, because so many people underestimate the Magical Cat! But Yuumi is an incredible late game scaler whereas Karma falls off in the late game. What makes Yuumi worse than say, Janna or Sona is that she can be untargetable and therefore immune to Karma’s amazing early game poke. This will be one of your hardest matchups but is by no means unwinnable. ✶ How to Play ✶ So, Yuumi made it through the ban phase! This game will likely be rough for you provided that your opponent knows how to properly play Yuumi and does not simply AFK heal, which is really only how unexperienced Yuumi’s play. If you are against someone with a good understanding of Yuumi’s kit you will find that this matchup requires a lot of work to come out on top. One of the biggest issues with Yuumi as opposed to other healer supports like Soraka is that Yuumi has the ability to attach to an ally and become untargetable using her ability You and Me!. This means that you will very rarely have the chance to poke her out in lane and you will instead have to focus on killing her ADC. But this is easier said than done, because of Yuumi’s passive Feline Friendship which allows her to acquire a fairly large shield for herself or her ally that can be very hard to get by even with your Mantra Q damage. This ability is on a 12 second cooldown, meaning that you want to focus on breaking the shield and getting in your poke damage during the cooldown period. Your best bet at beating Yuumi is to make the game end as quickly as possible. To win quickly you will have to play very aggressively to force Yuumi and her carry out of the lane. The best way to do this is to focus on laying down as much damage as possible so that Yuumi is forced to use her healing ability Zoomies often. This ability is a massive mana suck in the early game, and despite Bop ‘N’ Block restoring some mana Yuumi remains very mana hungry for the majority of the early game. The best way to take advantage of this is to early rush an Oblivion Orb in order to reduce her healing as much as you possible can to drain Yuumi’s mana and to stand a chance at killing her carry. An additional note is that when Yuumi jumps off of her ally to proc her passive or any other purpose you will not be able to root her. Well, in all technicality you could root her if she were willing to not use her You and Me! Ability for the entire duration that it takes for your root to go off. The only thing that can stop Yuumi from being able to jump to an ally is if she is CCed and her dash is interrupted. Unfortunately, your W just takes way too long for this to happen in almost every case. More CC is needed to slow down this Magical Cat so it will be very difficult to catch her out when she has an ally nearby. Focus on brush control as much as possible, and once you have grievous wounds do not be afraid to proc it using your W. Again, your goal here is to exhaust all of Yuumi’s resources and force her from lane so you can hard push waves in and get early game advantages and objectives. Always make sure that you E yourself or your carry out of range of Yuumi’s Prowling Projectile, especially if you are being chased down. This ability can be cast while Yuumi is on an ally and slows down whatever target she hits. This can be an excellent gap closer for Yuumi’s ally as it gives them a few seconds to catch up, especially if paired with the movement speed buff on Zoomies. Thankfully this is one area where Karma excels and you should really have no trouble getting your ally away from the projectile. The same goes for Yuumi’s ultimate Final Chapter which you should answer with an RE and perhaps even a speedup with a your Shurelya's Battlesong if you have it available.

SIMPLE ZILEAN ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Zilean is an interesting pick that has sort of fallen out of fashion recently. Like all mage supports he can be a bit difficult to deal with if you are not confident about your positioning and using your abilities appropriately, but beyond his stun he poses very little threat to Karma. You will have to play this lane carefully to avoid taking too much damage, but your shield is an excellent counter to his bomb pokes. ✶ How to Play ✶ Zilean’s biggest play in lane will be trying to lay down damage using his Q, Time Bomb. The most basic Zilean combination is to use Time Bomb with W. Rewind which allows him to recast one of his other basic abilities. The combination of Q+W+Q will allow Zilean to use 2 bombs, and if he lands them on the same target the second bomb will explode the first, causing it to stun enemies within the zone. So the first thing to be aware of is that Zilean can stun and that he can stun multiple enemies. It is worth considering a Mikael's Blessing into this matchup if Zilean is consistently landing large stuns in team fights. In early lane, Zilean poses very little threat to Karma. His stun combo is an excellent CC but is difficult to hit on Karma because of your E speed up ability. Make sure in this matchup you are shielding whoever is hit by the bomb to speed them out of the second part of combination and to block the damage of the bomb itself. Also be careful about standing too close to your carry if you are carrying a bomb on your head! Be aware that bombs that do not hit an enemy unit will stay on the ground until they detonate and stepping into the zone will cause you to pick them up. Maintaining brush control over Zilean is very difficult as his bombs can take up an entire brush and force you out. That said, it is still worth weaving in and out of brushes so that you are both wasting his time, spells, and are keeping his attention off of your ADC. Brush control with Zilean is going to be all about mind games. Being a mage support, Zilean will be looking to buy a mage item in almost every case. This puts you at a 700 gold advantage when it comes to reaching your mythic powerspike and you should be looking to abuse that! The first way to do this is obviously to avoid letting him get free pokes on you. Use your E to speed yourself or your carry up when you see him begin the animation for his Time Bomb to escape the zone. If you or your carry are struggling to avoid the bombs even with the speed up, you can save your E to block the damage instead but it is vastly better to speed yourself to avoid being hit at all. This may take a little practice so if you find yourself getting very chunked out by the bombs try to use them more as shields instead of speed boosts. On the subject of speed boosts, Zilean’s E Time Warp can be used to speed up himself or an ally or can slow down an enemy. This is less of a problem for Karma given her speed boost ability. But you can use Zilean self-casting his E or using it on an ally as an indicator that you may way to back up if you are not in a favorable position for a fight. Because of this speed up it can be very difficult to catch Zilean with your W if he is coming up to poke, so instead focus your W on the ADC or as a way to poke him back. The final important thing to note about Zilean’s kit is his ultimate, Chronoshift. This ability will restore the health of any ally who takes lethal damage, essentially resurrecting them. This ability has a very clear indicator when it has been used on an enemy and it is best to leave that enemy alone while the indicator is up. If the target of Zilean’s ultimate is not killed his ultimate is wasted and no health is restored. If the target does end up being killed be ready to very quickly cast W on them so that they are not able to get away and will die a second time.

DIFFICULT ZYRA ✶ Overall thoughts ✶ Zyra is an incredibly annoying matchup for Karma that will require a lot of awareness of her cooldowns and plant placement. It is very easy to lose your entire Mantra to an unfortunately placed plant so you’ll have to be very careful about when, how, and where you are using your Mantra if you want to win this matchup. ✶ How to Play ✶ Zyra’s passive Garden of Thorns makes seeds spawn nearby her current location. She can further add more seeds to the area using her W Rampant Growth. Importantly, stepping on a seed will destroy it, rendering it useless. That said, it can be very dangerous to walk up and stomp on a seed because Zyra can very quickly turn them to vines using her other abilities. That said, you want to use your E shield to try to crush as many seeds as possible without being too risky. This will help keep the lane a little more manageable and definitely reduce some of Zyra’s poke power. The matchup is so incredibly annoying, I absolutely hate playing it. That said, it is very winnable especially since you will have a 700 gold advantage for your mythic power spike compared to Zyra who will be almost always going for the more pricey mage item over a cheaper support build. You will want to press this advantage by trying to keep her from getting too much poke off in lane. Stay far back and try to focus on hitting your Mantra Qs on her carry. That said, the reason this matchup is so dreadfully annoying is because Zyra can block your entire Mantra Q with a single plant. By sprouting a plant in front of your RQ she will cause it to explode on contact with the vine instead of your intended target. So you want to make sure that you are hyper aware of her seed locations and her Deadly Spines and Grasping Roots cooldowns. You absolutely must keep brush control over Zyra because the last thing you want is a surprise Grasping Roots with several vines being created out of a bush. Try to plan your poke around when the plant sprouting abilities are down. You can try to bait out her abilities by walking towards her then quickly using you E to veer to the side. You really want to make sure that your RQ is coming only after her abilities have been used. I cannot emphasize that enough. You do not always have to wait of course, because you don’t want her setting the tempo of the lane, but it is helpful to try to bait these out to get the maximum payoff from your poke. Make sure you are very careful when going for objectives against a Zyra. Her ultimate Stranglethorns can take up a significant amount of a lane or objective area such as dragon pit and do huge damage as well as CCing your team. Warding over walls and keeping a close eye on where she is in a teamfight is critical to success against Zyra. Always use your RE after she ults to protect as many of your allies from the impending damage as possible as Zyra is very effective at lowering many health bars very quickly and putting your team in a dangerous health range for a fight.

Below I have outlined Karma's synergy with a variety of bot lane pics, including both AP and AD carry. In the coming weeks I will be focusing on adding in jungler synergies as well! Each carry has been categorized as having High, Average, and Low synergy.

The great thing about Karma is that because her kit is so incredibly flexible and her playstyle diverse enough that she can work with pretty much any bot lane pick. That said, there are a few that work better than others so I've tried to highlight some of the main strengths and weaknesses of the matchups.

AVERAGE APHELIOS ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Aphelios and Karma have decent synergy together, especially because Karma is able to snowball Aphelios in the early game which is incredibly important for him to reach his later game power spikes. He is not bad in the early game, but a snowballed Aphelios can become extremely difficult to kill and incredibly lethal. The great thing about Karma/Aphelios is that Karma can support Aphelios throughout the game as both a mage and an enchanter because Aphelios is a champion who also has incredible flexibility. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Aphelios is able to output a lot of AOE damage when hitting a minion wave, which is fantastic for Karma because this means that the enemy has two options: to stand in the minion wave and potentially take AOE damage from Aphelios or stand outside the wave and get gunned down by your RQ. Always look to play aggressive when Aphelios pushing someone out of the wave. ✶ Aphelios can output a great deal of damage once he has his item. This means that once your Aphelios has picked up his first item you should look to push aggressively to snowball him further and get a great late game. ✶ Aphelios is very immobile. You can make up for this using your E and by utilizing a Shurelya's Battlesong ✶ Aphelios is great in long, sustained trades so you should really be looking to use your E to keep him up and fighting as long as possible. Try to always make him the target of your Mantra E in teamfights so that he can output the most damage and get the maximum use of your shield. ✶ It’s very important that you learn what each of Aphelios weapons does so that you can be aware when he will be playing longer range with Calibrum, the Sniper Rifle, when he will want to move in closer with Severum, the Scythe Pistol, or when he is about to root with Gravitum, the Gravity Cannon. It can be difficult to keep straight if you are new to the game or new to Aphelios but it will be critical to your success in lane because Aphelios’ trading patterns change frequently depending on his weapons.

AVERAGE ASHE ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Ashe and Karma are decent together, but nothing entirely special. It is great that Ashe has CC with her Enchanted Crystal Arrow that Karma can work with using her W, but overall they are not exactly a power couple like you’d want. Constant speed boosts are great on immobile carries but because Ashe has an incredible amount of slow in her kit she does not benefit quite as much as other immobile ADCs do with Karma. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Ashe has a fantastic powerspike at level 6 with her ultimate. The long range stun is fantastic, and Karma can help her close the gap to get damage done. That said, it may be hard to get both you and your carry to the stunned enemy if they are too far away without using your RE, leaving you without many options to do damage as your Mantra will be down. ✶ You can chain CC off of Ashe’s stun, taking the instance of the stun as an opportunity to channel a root on the target. This will keep them in place longer and give longer for you to secure the kill. ✶ Unfortunately because of Ashe’s Volley many enemies will choose to hide in the minion wave where they will be blocked from the damage. This can be very difficult for Karma to work around as you have to be careful using your RQ into the minion wave lest you steal too much CS ✶ If Ashe misses her ultimate it leaves you very vulnerable to counter engage because you lack any hard CC yourself. Be careful and be prepared to speed boost with your E to run if things begin looking unfavorable for you. ✶ Ashe’s Hawkshot can be great at securing vision on the map. Try to place your wards in a way that builds off of the information her E can give you rather than placing redundant wards in placing you know are not of great concern.

HIGH Caitlyn ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Karma and Caitlyn are wonderful together and is one of my absolute favorite combos to play. These two synergize so well because they both excel at long range poke. Beyond that, Caitlyn very much wants to be pushing in the lane and taking tower plating as often and as quickly as possible. This is great for Karma who is all about the early game snowball. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ In lane with Caitlyn you want to do everything you can to push in the lane and take tower plating. That said, you absolutely need to make sure that you have the land well warded so that you are not surprised by the enemy jungler or midlaner. Pushing is great, but be aware the more you push the more the enemy is probably begging in team chat for a gank. Be mindful and try to keep track of the enemy as you push. ✶ You want to play this lane very aggressively, but through intense poke instead of attempting to all in. With you and Caitlyn both gunning the enemy down from max range it is very unlikely that the enemy will be able to get close enough to retaliate. ✶ When you do plan on going all in, it’s a great idea to try to combo your CC abilities. How do you go about this? RQ is a great start, followed by a root. Caitlyn can place a Yordle Snap Trap under the enemy, changing your CC together. After this it will be much easier for her to hit her 90 Caliber Net and finish off an enemy. ✶ Be careful about sniping kills with your RQ on Karma – you are playing the a sniper after all! If Caitlyn has her Ace in the Hole up it is usually better to let her finish off the kill and receive the majority of the gold. ✶ Caitlyn drags a bit in terms of power in the mid game, but you can help her get through this by making your transition into enchanter to begin focusing on buffing her with items like Ardent Censer and Staff of Flowing Water. This will help her keep up momentum in the mid game.

HIGH DRAVEN ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Draven/Karma can be an incredible duo. Draven is a champion who has a strong early game that only grows better and better if he is able to snowball early because of his passive League of Draven. And since snowballing lanes is exactly what Karma excels at, you can see why this duo works so great together. Draven also benefits more than even most ADCs from Karma’s E speedboost. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ More than most other champions it is critical that Draven does not die. This is because his passive gives him stacks of Adoration which make him grow stronger but are lost on death. This means that you need to focus all of your energy on peeling Draven. If necessary, you will need to body block and eat CC for him. ✶ Most enemies will try to aim their skillshots at wherever Draven’s Spinning Axe will land. Try to keep an eye on where it will land and on the enemy abilities so you can shield him or even step in front of the ability if need be. ✶ Draven is great with a speed up, so use your E to help him gap close so that he can catch his axes and continue to output intense damage. This will also help him block the initial retaliation damage from the enemy team. Draven does have his own speed up, Blood Rush but speed with a shield on top of his own speedup can turn him into an unstoppable killing machine. ✶ Most Dravens will want their first back to include a large AD purchase, more so than many other ADs. This may mean that you will want to go for an early RW in order to keep yourself at high health so that you can stay in lane with him longer and keep pushing. Getting early tower plating is critical with a Draven so try to always hard shove in the lane if you are safe to do so. ✶ Keep a very close eye on Draven in teamfights. Because of his need to catch his axes Draven will constantly be weaving throughout a fight. You want to stick very close to him so that you can peel anyone who steps up to him. Remember, it is most important that Draven stays alive over you if it comes down to it because you absolutely do not want him losing his Adoration stacks.

HIGH EZREAL ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Ezreal and Karma are another stellar duo. This works so well because they are both able to stand far back and poke. In Ezreal’s case, his poke damage actually ramps up the more he is able to hit his Mystic Shot. Karma and Ezrael can both remain pretty far back and throw out aggressive poke damage to lower the enemies health before going for an all in using Karma’s W to hold the enemies down. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Ezreal is a champion who excels in duels because of his ramping damage fromhis Rising Spell Force passive. Karma is very good at supporting duels because of her own high damage output with RQ as well as her ability to hold an enemy down with her W. ✶ Ezreal becomes very vulnerable when he uses his Arcane Shift. The cooldown is very long and is his main form of mobility. Thankfully, Karma does a great job at protecting Ezreal when he is vulnerable using her E. ✶ If Ezreal is ever caught out without his mobility you can use the slow on your Q to discourage a chase while placing a W on whoever the biggest threat chasing is. If you are both in danger, use your RE and try to land an unempowered Q behind you to cause a brief slow to put more distance between yourself and the enemy. ✶ Ezreal is actually quite decent at pushing and taking towers because of his Essence Flux which can be applied onto objectives including turrets. Try to help him push in the wave and take plates quickly so that he can reach his power spikes such as a Sheen purchase. ✶ Staff of Flowing Water is an amazing item to buy when you are with an Ezreal because the ability haste cooldown is amazing on him. Again, Ezreal really wants to be throwing out abilities as much as possible so that he can ramp his damage output. Staff allows his cooldowns to be further lowered, so look to purchase this item early!

HIGH JHIN ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Jhin and Karma might be my favorite duo in the game because Jhin is one champion who can get the most benefit out of Karma’s speed up. While it is great on pretty much any champion (especially immobile ADCs) Jhin is uniquely in need of movement because of his unique auto attack pattern thanks to his Whisper passive. Karma can help Jhin weave in and out of fights quickly, ensuring that he stays safe when he goes in for his extremely powerful forth shot. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Jhin has a reload mechanic on his gun, having up to four shots at a time. His forth shot is extremely powerful and Jhin will often run forward to try to land this ability on a champion instead of wasting it on a minion. It does insane damage, but because Jhin is not particularly mobile it can leave him vulnerable. Use your E to provide Jhin the movement speed and shield protection he needs to make the most of his forth shot. ✶ When you are fighting alongside Jhin you absolutely most keep an eye on his ammo. After firing his powerful 4th shot Jhin will have to reload which means that he will briefly stop outputting damage as he goes through the animation. Be very careful during this time because you will not have Jhin to back you up if the enemy continues to press the attack. ✶ Jhin’s W Deadly Flourish roots an enemy if they were recently hit by him, his allies, or his Captive Audience. Karma is excellent at long range pokes which means you can make it much easier for Jhin to land a root, especially with the slow on Karma’s W making the aiming a bit easier. After the enemy is rooted you can use your W to chain CC, allowing you two to gun the enemy down. ✶ Jhin’s ultimate Curtain Call opens up in a wide range and requires Jhin to fire out four shots, the fourth doing incredible damage. Because this shot is more powerful and a guaranteed crit it is very important that he be given the time to line up and hit. That said, it is common for enemies to flank Jhin and look to kill him while he is focused on hitting shots. You want to stick close to Jhin if he is danger of being flanked, rooting enemies who approach and shielding Jhin to allow him time get the most of his ult. ✶ Ardent Censer is an amazing item to have for Jhin. Mikael's Blessing is also very helpful because Jhin is extremely vulnerable to CC. Hard CC completely shuts him down and makes him very easy to kill because he has the time to get out his damage.

HIGH Jinx ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Jinx and Karma work together fantastically! Jinx can take full advantage of Karma’s speed up. Speed is so important to Jinx that it is a part of her passive Get Excited!. Being able to have a mini-speed boost every few seconds is a massive boon for Jinx who often can miss out on a lot of damage because she cannot get close enough to her enemy to do damage. Karma can provide a wonderful gap closer for her while also protecting her from incoming damage as she chases. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Jinx has a small amount of CC in her kit that Karma can play into and vise versa. With her Zap! ability she can slow down an enemy in a line, giving Karma the chance to run in and land a W. This also works for Karma who can use the slow on her Q to set up a nice Zap! angle for Jinx. Both of these combos can be wonderful openers for skirmishes. ✶ Karma excels at long range chunk damage, but at times it can be hard for her finish off a kill because her damage comes out in one large burst (RQ) in most cases. Jinx’s ultimate Super Mega Death Rocket! is a global ultimate that can help finish off kills. ✶ Jinx has a very weak early game which is something you have to be aware of since Karma is all about the early game. You may think that this would make them an awful combo, since Jinx since her powerspike late game. But this actually works wonderfully because it means that Karma can babysit Jinx in lane, keeping the pressure off of her so she can farm and also pick up kills thanks to Karma’s aggressive poke. This can very quickly snowball Jinx into a monster. ✶ Because of Jinx’s weak early game you need to be very careful about leaving her to go roam or ward. Always make sure to ping when you are leaving lane so your Jinx knows to play it safe. Thankfully, Jinx is a champion who can farm decently even when she is pushed in thanks to the versatility on her Switcheroo! ✶ Take advantage of Jinx’s Flame Chompers! by chain CCing rooted targets with your W. An RQ on an enemy stuck in these traps can often be a fantastic opener because it also applies a slow. So much CC against a speedy Jinx is very often a death sentence.

LOW KAI'SA ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Generally, Kai’sa and Karma are not the best together. It is not unplayable of course because as I mentioned there is not really any ADCs that Karma has zero synergy with. That said, you are not really able to help Kai’sa take advantage of her passive Second Skin. This passive is critical to Kai’sa’s success so she is better off with a champion with more hard CC to proc the passive and help her scale out of her relatively weak early game. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Kai’sa has a fairly weak early game, and Karma can help keep her safe while she farms by being aggressive with her poke. That said, it is harder for Karma to help Kai’sa scale because she cannot help with collecting stacks for Second Skin. Regardless, look to keep her as safe as possible by playing up and aggressive, using E to escape if things get too hot. ✶ Kai’sa is very good in extended trade because her passive is able to stack. Try to focus on shielding and keeping her up so that she is able to get off her damage and continue to scale. You should be able to extend trades by keeping enemies locked down with your W. ✶ If you and Kai’sa are looking to engage a fight, try to do so away from the minion wave is possible. This works for both your and Kai’sa’s benefit because Kai’sa’s Icathian Rain will target nearby enemies. This include minions, and being too close to them can eat up a lot of this abilities potential damage. Of course staying out of the minion wave is better for Karma in fights because it allows her to hit her RQ and Q more often. ✶ If you see Kai’sa hit her Void Seeker make sure to very quickly shield her. It is very common for Kai’sa to go after an enemy marked with Void Seeker using her Killer Instinct. You will not be able to keep pace with her, but you can apply all of your buffs through shielding before she takes off! This will hopefully make is much easier for her to secure her kill. /spoiler]

LOW Kalista ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ I don’t love Kalista and Karma together, but it is not totally unworkable. The biggest issue that I have here is that Karma just cannot get the same amount of value out of Kalista’s ultimate Fate's Call as other more engage heavy supports. That said, Kalista snowballs very hard which means Karma can be a good support to help facilitate a late game stomp. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ As mentioned, it is hard for Karma to get full value out of Kalista’s ultimate. It is possible to get some great engages by properly throwing yourself at the enemies for the knock back effect, but be aware that this will often put you in a dangerous position. Be ready to immediately W to further lock the biggest threat down while you E to reposition yourself more favorably. ✶ Karma and Kalista are both very good early game champions whose goal is to snowball the early game. Use this matching playstyle to your advantage. Don’t be afraid to play aggressive and really try to put the pressure in lane. You want to establish dominance in the lane as fast as you can. If this scares the enemy off, great! Kalista can farm uncontested and stack up items while you keep the enemy zoned off the wave. Your biggest goal playing with a Kalista is to create the largest gap between the ADCs as you possibly can because you will be reliant on Kalista to carry once Karma starts to fall off. ✶ Kalista loved prolonged trades because it allows her to stack up autos for her Rend. Focus on hard peeling her and keeping enemies in place using your W so they are forced into longer fights. Your E should also help Kalista stay on top of enemies so that she can use her Rend to its fullest potential. ✶ Kalista is incredibly weak to CC. This means that you will need to peel for her and potentially even eat the CC for her so that she can keep moving and autoing in order to stack Rend and do massive damage. A Mikael’s Blessing can be quite helpful here. ✶ Make sure that you and Kalista are always targeting the same person in a fight! The passive on her Sentinel gives her more damage when you are striking the same target. ✶ Take advantage of the active on Kalista’s Sentinel by placing your wards in areas that it has not already checked for you. You can also use this to gain vision in bushes that you fear might be stacked with enemies but want to get vision in. Try to play alongside the Sentinel because it can get serious value if used correctly!

LOW KOG'MAW ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Kog’maw and Karma don’t work great together, though its not an awful matchup. As mentioned in the introduction to this section, Karma does not really have “bad” matchups because her utility is so wonderful. But there are just better pairings for both Kog’Maw and Karma. That said, Kog’Maw is incredibly weak early and needs a lot of peel and protection. Karma can certainly offer some of this, but it can be difficult to match playstyles and powerspikes with Kog’Maw. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ One of the main issues with Karma and Kog’Maw together is that Kog’Maw does not have the best power spike at 6. This isn’t to say his level 6 is bad, but Living Artillery just does not have the same impact as many other ADCs level 6 spike. Karma really needs a very strong level 6 spike from her carry because her level 6 is less impactful on account of her starting the game with her ultimate. An additional rank in Mantra is useful and ups her power, but it is not the same powerspike as it is for most other champions. His level 6 can output a great deal of damage, but it often just isn’t enough early enough for the snowball Karma wants. ✶ Kog’Maw is extremely squishy to start the game and can also be very mana hungry if he is focusing too much on using his abilities to poke too much. You will need to play the role of babysitter, peeling for him and protecting him from all the incoming damage that can force him from lane. ✶ Your E can be a massive boon to Kog’Maw. Look to speed him up when he has hit someone with his Living Artillery so that he can use it in tandem with Bio-Arcane Barrage and keep outputting high damage even if enemies flee. ✶ You will need to stick very close to Kog’Maw in teamfights. He has virtually no self-peel. It’s incredibly important that Kog’Maw stay up and firing auto-attacks from a safe distance. It is your job to W anyone who gets too close so that he can gun them down without taking too much damage in return. ✶ As the game goes on, Kog’Maw will get better at extended trades. Early on you want to focus on using your RQ to really do most of the poking in lane until Kog’Maw has enough points in Bio-Arcane Barrage to really run the enemy down with his rapid and lethal poke.

AVERAGE LUCIAN ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ This pairing is not particularly strong, nor is it incredibly weak. This combination can work, but there are better pairings for both Karma and Lucian. But Karma can give Lucian a shield and speedup that can make him incredibly lethal and even more difficult to pick while also setting up easy kills for him with her RQ chunk damage in lane. This botlane matchup can be deadly and decent, but very rarely will it simply fizzle. This is a pretty decent pairing. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Lucian is a champion the excels at dashing around and being incredibly difficult to pin down and kill thanks to his Relentless Pursuit. This is something Karma can easily capitalize on because of her shield and its speed up ability. You want to try to use this ability on Lucian when Relentless Pursuit is up because it will help him not only stay safe when he goes in to trade but will also help him close any gaps that may remain between him and his target. ✶ Lucian has a good early game and can scale quite well, becoming more and more slippery and as the game goes on and he is able to pick up boots and Galeforce. Try to capitalize on this by setting up kills with aggressive play. Lucian works very well with aggressive supports because of his high mobility. ✶ On the subject of early game snowballing, be sure to push for level 2 as quickly as you can. This means you should be helping push the wave though be careful that you are not upsetting your ADCs farming rhythm. Lucian has a great level 2 power spike because this is when he will have both Piercing Light and Relentless Pursuit up. It is critical that you hit your first RQ in lane because you want your enemy softened up for a level 2 all in. Take your time and look for the best angle because a nice early RQ chunk damage can easily secure a kill once Lucian hits 2. ✶ Level 6 is another great powerspike for Lucian because it is when he unlocks his ultimate, The Culling. This ult can lay down some serious damage, but will be blocked by minions. This means you want a thinner wave or to have the enemies outside of the wave in order to get value. Try focus on softening up one enemy as you are approaching level 6 and ping them as your target. Ideally, you will focus the same person and grab a kill. ✶ There are two key ways you can support Lucian when he ults: for one, you want to use your E to speed him up, allowing him more maneuverability when he is in his ult animation. Secondly, try to run up and root someone either at the start of or just before the ult. This means that he will not even have to aim to unload a barrage of bullets!

AVERAGE MISS FORTUNE ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Miss Fortune and Karma can work together decently well, as they are both lane bullies who can really poke out an enemy for an early advantage. That being said, it can be a little more difficult to secure kills with this matchup because Miss Fortune is not the most mobile of champions and you will often have to use your shield to get her in close enough to lay down the damage you need to finish a kill. This matchup can work, but you will have to pay special attention to your shield usage so you can have it up to both protect Miss Fortune as a squishy ADC but also to help her reach her enemies in time to finish off kills. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Though Miss Fortune does have some movement on her Strut ability, this only stacks when she is not being attacked. Beyond that, it is not the most impressive movement speed buff. Her range is also not the longest, but you can make up for all of this by using your speed boost to get her in closer to a fight. That said, this will leave MF very vulnerable to a counter engage as you will not have a shield up to protect her. You will need to pay very close attention to the trading patterns of the enemy and the location of the jungler so you can safely use your E offensively instead of saving it for defense. Recent MF builds also tend towards Magical Footwear which means that if you are not securing picks early MF may stay rather slow and immobile for some time. ✶ One very great thing about MF and Karma together is that you can put your enemy into very unfavorable positions by combining her Make it Rain with your RQ. This will leave the enemy with few options of where to safely stand in the lane lest the get poked out. Unfortunately, Make It Rain has a long starting cooldown and eats up a lot of mana, so you will still need to play for aggressive poking mostly on your own. ✶ Make It Rain is not MFs only poke ability. Double Up can also be used to poke enemies who are standing in the minion wave. This can be excellent for Karma as it discourages the enemies from standing behind minions, making it much easier to land your poke without fear of disrupting the flow of the minion wave. ✶ Post level 6, it can be great to push in provided that you have vision and are confident you are not going to be ganked. Pushing the enemy under tower not only forces the enemy ADC to farm under tower, but also allows you to poke them heavily and to use Bullet Time if they choose to step forward to try to regain some ground. Standing in a tighter space will make it much harder for the enemy to avoid MF’s barrage of bullets. ✶ Bullet Time requires that MF is stationary to channel the full cast. This means that you will need to peel for her to ensure she is not hard CCed as this will end her ult early, missing out on its full potential. Ulting also puts her in a vulnerable position that you should try to look to peel for. ✶ Make sure you ward over walls to give MF unique and difficult to escape angles from which to launch her ultimate.

HIGH NILAH ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Nilah and Karma can be an unstoppable duo. They work together beautifully and are able to easily snowball a lane with ease. Nilah’s passive is massive for making this combo work – because of her increased XP gain and shield augment Karma/Nilah should be able to get some easy early game picks that will allow them to shut down the enemy bot lane. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ You want to make sure that the enemy is not able to freeze the lane in such a way that makes it hard for Nilah to farm safely. This means that you will likely need to help Nilah with wave management more so than some other champions. What is most important though is that the wave is in a spot that allows her to play safely while still keeping an eye out for potential all-in opportunities. ✶ With Nilah you really want to be looking to spam your shield on her. It is always best to use your shield on her because of the enhancement given by her passive Joy Unending. This ability makes Nilah amazing with enchanters so you will want to take full advantage of this ability. When looking to all in, make sure that you use your shield on Nilah to gain a free shield for yourself. This will allow you to potentially use your Mantra for more aggressive plays. ✶ Nilah has serious power spikes at levels 3 and 6. It is best to go for an all-in as soon as Nilah has gotten access to all of her abilities. To help facilitate a favorable level 3 you want to make sure that you are targeting one person with your poke as you will be looking to get a pick as soon as you hit her level 3 spike. Thanks to the bonus XP from unending joy you will hit 3 before the enemy, so be ready to get to this powerspike quickly and play aggressively! ✶ In similar fashion to the level 3 power spike, you will want to play very aggressively when you hit 6. If all goes correctly you should always hit this before your enemy because of the extra XP. Nilah’s ultimate is powerful, to look to play around her engage by giving her a shield to speed her in so she has the maximum chance of hitting multiple targets.

LOW SAMIRA ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Sadly, there is not a lot that Karma can offer Samira. A speed boost is nice, but Samira is already such a naturally mobile champion that it feels much weaker than other potential pairings. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this duo, but Karma really cannot offer much to Samira outside of her standard aggressive lane poke. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ As mentioned, Samira is incredibly mobile. You can help make her even moreso with a Shurelya's Battlesong or can explore other mythic options that may offer more to your team. This will depend mostly on the rest of your team comp – if everyone else is mobile, consider breaking the mold and going a different enchanter mythic. If the rest of your team is made up of slow pokes, stick with Battlesong. ✶ The biggest issue with the Samira/Karma matchup is actually often Samira’s mobility. Because of her Wild Rush Samira can be leaps and bounds ahead of you, making it difficult to keep up without wasting your E to speed yourself up. Unfortunately, this means it will likely be on cooldown when you do arrive to the fight, leaving you with significantly less to offer Samira to aid her. It is simply difficult for Karma to keep up and stay relevant. Other champions, particularly those with hard engage, can simply offer Samira much more. ✶ Keep an eye on Samira’s Style Points during a fight. Unlike other champions, Samira has to collect stacks in order to use her ultimate, Inferno Trigger. You must be aware of her current style grade all times so you can play around her major power spikes in fights. ✶ When Samira is starting to rack up Style Points you want to look for an enemy to W. In some cases, you may even want to RW if you plan on getting right up in an enemy’s face with the intention of making them Samira’s next victim. RW is not strictly necessary here of course, but you want to make sure that you are not losing too much health trying to find aggressive picks while Samira is still gearing up to hit her Wild Rush spike. ✶ In the same vein as watching for Wild Rush spike you also need to be hyper aware of when Samira is low on Style Points. Essentially, her Style Points are going to be setting the tempo of the lane. When she is low, she is most vulnerable for a fight, especially if her Blade Whirl is on cooldown. Make sure that you have your peeling tools ready for when she is low.

LOW SENNA ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Senna and Karma are one of the few duos that I would say is practically unwinnable, emphasis on practically . Any game is winnable, but this will definitely be the biggest challenges you will face when playing Karma! Unfortunately, Senna just synergizes so much better with champions like Tahm Kench and Karma cannot fulfill any of the things that Senna is really looking for. If you are playing this duo, don’t give up! Just do your best, and try to focus on helping out your entire team and being useful any way you can, even if it is not to Senna specifically. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ The reason that Karma is such a bad pick with Senna is because Senna needs someone to farm minions for her in order to get the most value out of her passive Absolution. Karma can farm minions relatively effectively if she chooses, but doing so makes you loose out on all of Karma’s value. You should be using the early game to lay down poke and to stack your support item quickly. This duo just is not effective for either party as neither can really do what they want if they want to play as efficiently as possible. If you are playing Karma is very likely you will go the “Starving Senna” playstyle, which is a huge loss for Senna as an ADC. ✶ Senna is extremely squishy, which means that if she is not careful she will die very quickly. Do not be afraid to eat some aggro for Senna, because she has the ability to heal you using her Piercing Darkness ability. Be careful about how much aggro you are taking, but make sure that you are doing everything you can protect Senna. ✶ You will need to always save your peel, particularly your Mantra E for Senna in teamfights. Unless she is wildly behind you will almost always want to make her the main target of your RE because of just how squishy she is. In late game she will begin to gain some life-steal to help her sustain, but Senna is still a very immobile and vulnerable champion. Senna personifies the “glass cannon” archetype, and it is your job to keep that cannon firing. ✶ In the mid-game, Senna will likely want to farm a sidelane so she can gather souls and pick up gold for items. You will want to stick with her whenever possible as she is a very easy pick target for the enemy team.

HIGH SERAPHINE ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Seraphine and Karma are a very fun duo who excel at sustaining and outpoking the enemy. When playing with a Seraphine you will be able to fully focus on hard chunking the enemy and pushing the lane once the enemy has been forced to leave to recover their missing health. This duo has great synergy because both enjoy playing back and going up for quick trades before moving back to safety. This is a great duo and is super fun to play! ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ One key thing missing from Karma’s supportive kit is healing, Seraphine can very easily make up for this gap by using Surround Sound. This means that you will be able to stay in the lane for much longer and push the wave continuously. ✶ Your main strategy when playing alongside a Seraphine is to sit back and away from the enemy and poke. You want to try to really keep your distance so that you cannot be punished for this ability spam poke playstyle. If you are caught out it becomes much trickier because Seraphine really excels at poking. Later in the game once she has acquired some mage items it will be much easier to handle up close fights, but in general you want to play back and use your RQ + E combo to poke down and tilt the enemy out of lane. ✶ Make sure that you are staying close enough to Seraphine for her to get her bonus damage from Stage Presence. You will know when you are close enough to her by the indicator under your champion model. ✶ Seraphine has a massive power spike at level 6 when she unlocks her ultimate Encore. One very cool aspect of this ultimate is that it has it range extended by both enemies and allies. This means that by standing in front of Seraphine when she casts you can actually extend the range for her! ✶ A very common combo for Seraphine is to use Encore into a doubled Beat Drop to charm enemies and then root them in place. Look to play into this combo by using your W on the biggest threat caught in her CC and using Mantra Q to burst them down. ✶ Though most Seraphine APCs will go for a damage mage item, just make sure that you aren’t doubling up on support mythics if your Seraphine chooses to go that route. This may be a rare occurrence because going support items severely limits Seraphine’s damage, but it is worth keeping an eye on her build just in case she decides to go something a bit out of left field.

AVERAGE SIVIR ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Sivir and Karma are a pretty average duo. There is not a ton that Karma can offer Sivir specifically that is outstanding for her more than any other ADC. Sivir also does not offer anything great for Karma to work with, though they can have a powerful poke combo if Sivir is focusing on helping to chunk down the enemy team. Because this duo offers nothing really special on its own the level of synergy will really come down to how well your playstyle meshes with the Sivir’s. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Since Sivir has such fantastic wave clear, you will often be pushing the wave under the enemy tower. This is great for Karma because it means that you can help snowball early. That said, it will be much harder to land your RQ when you are close to tower as the enemy will have an easier time hiding behind minions to block your damage. Make sure that you are focusing on pushing all the way to the tower and getting off autos on it so that you do not fall behind on your support quest. ✶ Since pushing is so natural for Sivir’s kit because of her Boomerang Blade and Ricochet you will need to be hyper-aware of the enemies’ movements. Effective and frequent warding are critical to making this duo work, moreso than most. Pushing in is great and can widen a bot gap by forcing the enemy to farm under tower, but it is only good strategy if you do not get yourself caught out. Always make sure you ward both to the side and behind you so that you are not surprised by an enemy sneaking up on you. ✶ Because Sivir can bounce her Ricochet off the wave and decimate minions with her Boomerang Blade the enemy will very likely want to avoid standing in the wave. Take full advantage of this to use your RQ on anyone who steps out of the safety of minion block. Your main goal here is to make the lane as dangerous as possible, threatening heavy poke no matter where the enemy chooses to position. Keeping brush control can really make this strategy even deadlier. ✶ Sivir has a solid ability to self-peel using her Spell Shield, but this can only block one single ability. Keep a very careful eye on when she uses this ability because it has an incredibly long cooldown. If Sivir does block an ability with her shield she will gain health and movement speed. Try to use your E on her after her own shield expires to further boost her movement speed and to keep her safe for longer. ✶ Sivir’s ultimate, On The Hunt grants movement speed to all of her surrounding allies. When she uses this ability try to consider whether it is better to wait on your Mantra E so that you can chase for longer. A Mantra E during her ult will make your team lighting fast, but it will also decrease the duration which you can be moving quickly. Consider whether you need a quick burst of incredible movement speed or if a sustained, slightly less speedy movement burst would be better for the situation. Either way, look to all in and chase down the enemy when she activates her ultimate, provided she is not using it to escape a sticky situation.

LOW TRISTANA ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Tristana and Karma aren’t the best together, nor are they the worst. The problem with this duo is that Tristana just shines so much more when she has a hard CC or all in engage type of synergy (with the exception of Yuumi – the two of them are a terror together). As with every ADC, Karma can still offer them something in terms of speed and peel but overall, the pairing is just lacking a bit in terms of fulfilling Tristana’s needs. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Tristana is great at taking towers using her Explosive Charge in combination with her Rapid Fire ability. Furthermore, by nature of her kit Tristana is fantastic at pushing in waves efficiently. This is good for Karma, as getting early turrets can be great for getting the early snowball rolling. Just make sure that if you are pushing towers that you have the lane well warded so you are not surprised by a gank from behind. ✶ To begin the game, Tristana has a very short auto attack range. This grows as the game progresses thanks to her passive Draw a Bead. But this means that early on you will need to be careful about getting caught out because Tristana will have to step up quite far in order to reach you. It is often unwise for Tristana to use her Rocket Jump to get to her support if they are caught out early and far away because if she is not able to get a takedown she is left extremely vulnerable. This ability has a very long cooldown early on so most Tristana’s will try to avoid using it if the trade looks unfavorable. You need to be very careful early that you are not being caught out when you are poking. Try to play it a little safe while still laying down pressure with your RQ. ✶ If Tristana is going to go for an all-in, try to place a shield on her before she goes in. You want to do this before an all in because if Tristana uses Rocket Jump to get in you will have a distance to travel before you can join the fight. I would recommend rushing boots in this lane so that you are able to keep up with Tristana when she does want to go for an all-in. ✶ Locking someone down with a W can be vital for all-ins with Tristana because she needs takedowns or to hit full Explosive Charge stacks in order to get a reset on her Rocket Jump. If Tristana is close to killing one enemy, look for the next most vulnerable champion to CC so that Tristana can get multiple uses of her Rocket Jump in a fight.

AVERAGE TWTITCH ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Twitch and Karma are a decent duo, but there is little that Karma can offer for Twitch specifically and vise versa. Twitch takes quite a while to come online in terms of his powerspike and while Karma can help get him there she is not uniquely fit to do so over other support champions. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Twitch begins the game very squishy and will likely be focused on farming. That said, he is capable of poking using his Venom Cask and Contaminate combo. This also slows enemies, so try to look for opportunities to hit Ws on enemies who are slowed by his poison zone to either secure a pick or push the enemy back so Twitch can have a safer farming zone. ✶ Make sure to give Twitch a shield when he has entered Ambush so that he can have the movement speed boost to set up his positioning easier. ✶ Stealth is incredibly important for Twitch as he likes to use his Ambush to surprise enemies, laying down damage quickly and efficiently to get quick kills with his high damage output. While Ambush does give Twitch stealth, you need to make sure that the enemy has not set up wards to detect him. Twitch can be seen on a Control Ward which means that you must be putting a great deal of emphasis on de-warding, especially if Twitch is looking to gank his own lane. Take advantage of your E speed up to do full sweeps of the lane bushes and the river bush for wards. ✶ Try to keep an eye on when Twitch is invisible. If he is looking to go and surprise the enemy, walk up and throw out your RQ as you are the entire lane. You don’t want to raise suspicions by running up to the enemy and saving your Mantra because it will likely give away that Twitch is setting up an Ambush. Play it cool and trade just as you normally do to assuage suspicion. ✶ Even in the late game Twitch remains quite squishy. That said, his Ambush can allow him to enter teamfights at interesting angles. Try to keep an eye on where he is in a teamfight and W anyone who begins to approach his general location. Don’t give him away, but the last thing you want is for Twitch to un-camouflage to hit a massive Spray and Pray only to be greeted by a fed top laner who can one shot him. Always try to keep the zone where Twitch is setting up clear of immediate threats but close enough to enemies to output a great deal of damage on multiple targets. Clumped enemies are great for Twitch – clumped enemies directly on top of him are not. Don’t be afraid to use yourself as bait.

AVERAGE VARUS ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ The quality of a Karma/Varus duo depends greatly on Varus’ build. On-hit Varus is great for Karma because he will still be looking to get in close enough to lay down multiple autos. This is preferable for Karma over a build prioritizing his long-range poke as this can leave you with fewer options of how to fight and secure kills. Karma can support both playstyles, but you will have a much easier time supporting with on-hit Varus. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Varus has very powerful Q poke in the early game which can be either a detriment of a boon for you as Karma. In some cases this may make the enemy play further back and try to let the wave push which will make landing your own poke more difficult. If the enemy is letting the wave push to them and you are playing in a tighter space near their tower try to really focus on using your Q splash damage to keep up the aggression without changing the wave state too much. Look for RQs when there is a gap in minions. ✶ Because of his heavy poke in lane using Piercing Arrow the enemy will likely try to stand outside the minion wave. Take full advantage of this by making outside of the wave unsafe using RQ and Q. ✶ Varus is so incredibly squishy that he will likely need you at his side the entire game. This weakness is only further exacerbated by his lack of any kind of mobility. Make sure that you are paying special care to the cooldown on his ultimate Chain of Corruption. Without this up he is even more vulnerable to ganks and flanks. ✶ Be more careful about using your W in lane to poke. Because it requires you to get closer and to be a bit more vulnerable it can be a bit difficult for Varus to help you if the enemy turns aggressively on you. This is especially true if your Varus prefers to stay further back to charge up his Q and poke. You can still use W to poke but you should be mindful of Varus’ current position in lane and his relative immobility. If you use your E to protect yourself from the aggression you will have nothing to speed him up to get into the fight. Just be mindful of his positioning in lane before trying to get more aggressive. ✶ I really prefer Exhaust when playing with a Varus. You both have great abilities to snipe and finish off kills, but Varus is incredibly vulnerable of an enemy can get close to him. You’ll want Exhaust to shut down anyone who gets in his face.

AVERAGE VAYNE ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Vayne and Karma don’t have great synergy. Outside of her ability to speed Vayne up Karma just doesn’t offer a lot for Vayne. That said, if you and your Vayne are both committed to a very aggressive playstyle you can very quickly force an early snowball for Vayne. Because Vayne is a hypercarry she will only become more powerful and more relevant as the game extends. Since Karma falls off you want to force that snowball to get rolling as fast as possible so that you will not have an awkward lag in your transition to an enchanter support. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ Try to test the waters early to get a sense of your Vayne’s playstyle early. Some Vayne’s are happy to chase down kills and get an early lead that way if their support is aggressive and setting things up and others would rather farm for a more reliable source of income to hit their late game stride. Whichever your Vayne chooses you want to make sure that you are matching her tempo. If she is aggressive, go for Ws to keep up the poke and go for more aggressive Q plays. Otherwise, try to stay further back and poke safer. ✶ Oftentimes a good strategy against Vayne is to force her to overextend so that she is easily ganked. It is very important for the enemy to put your hypercarry behind so you should expect a decent number of visitors to your lane. If your Vayne uses her Tumble while you are pushed up in the lane try to make sure that you keep E up in case there is jungler lurking in the wings so that she can make a fast escape. ✶ Vayne is great in longer trades because of her Silver Bolts which do extra damage on her third shot. Try to keep this in mind and focus on extending trades as much as possible so that she can stack up her W. Use your W to hold enemies in place so that Vayne can auto and stack. ✶ If Condemn is up, be careful who you are using W on. Vayne can very easily push the target out of your W zone, essentially wasting your spell. This is fine if you are only being pursued by one enemy, but if you are being chased by multiple enemies you want to make sure that you are spreading your CC out among multiple enemies. ✶ Try to stick close to Vayne when she is using her ultimate Final Hour. This is an amazing ultimate that is a huge powerspike for Vayne and you want to stick close so that you can support her with increasing her already increased movement speed and giving her a shield in case she is caught by the enemy. The stealth and movement on this ultimate is amazing, but it is still possible for Vayne to be caught and shut down during it. Stick close to her to ensure she can get the maximum value.

AVERAGE XAYAH ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Xayah and Karma are decent together as Karma can help make Xayah much more mobile and save her from having to use her Ultimate to reposition herself in a fight. This is not always a bad move for Xayah, but you never want her to be forced to use her ult because it is so powerful and can turn fights when applied properly. This means that in teamfights you will want to be playing both with Xayah and around her feathers for maximum value. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ In the early game, Xayah will need babysitting because of how squishy and vulnerable she is. Though her W Deadly Plumage does grant her movement speed, it is conditional. She must be attack to get this movement bonus, which is not always the greatest option when being ambushed or run down. Karma can help in cases where kiting is not an option by giving Xayah a shield to grant her extra movement speed. ✶ In teamfights and skirmishes you want to always be keeping an eye on Xayah’s feathers that are laid down by her passive clean cut and her Q Double Daggers. This is because she can use her E Bladecaller. If an enemy is hit by 3 or more feathers when Xayah recalls them the enemy will be rooted. Capitalize on this by using your W on already rooted enemies. This will make it much harder for them to escape your W zone before the root and will allow for great chain CC opportunities. ✶ Keep an eye on your Xayah’s runes. Magical Footwear is a popular build on Xayah, which will require you to get takedowns early and often if she is to become mobile before 12 minutes. Karma is a great early game bully so try to set up kills using your RQ on one target throughout the early lane. Without her ultimate or high crit chance Xayah is not quite as good at burning multiple enemies at once. Look to set up duels for her by distracting and blocking the other laner while keeping Xayah’s victim in place with your W. ✶ Once Xayah has her Galeforce she will be considerably more mobile and more powerful. Look to play more aggressively once she has her mythic so that you can snowball her into the late game.

HIGH ZERI ✶ Overall Synergy ✶ Zeri and Karma are like a match made in heaven! Zeri thrives off of movement speed and shields, which Karma has in spades. This means that your strongest asset is the basis for the ADCs kit and playstyle! This combination is deadly and difficult to catch, and since Zeri will thrive off of Karma’s shields it means that your late game fall off will be significantly less painful. ✶ Important Notes ✶ ✶ You want to always be using your shield on Zeri. It will increase her movement speed by nature of Karma’s E but will make her even faster because of Zeri’s passive Living Battery. You want to be shielding her as much as possible so she can constantly moving as moving charges up Zeri’s energy thanks to her Burst Fire. ✶ Try to keep an eye on Zeri’s charge. This will be a good indicator of the tempo of her trades so that you can be ready to offer her a shield when she wants to take a fight. ✶ Watch your positioning in lane. When you are too far pushed up it can be difficult for Zeri to use her Spark Surge to escape. If you are far away from terrain try to do all you can to get her there safely by peeling with your Q while speeding you both up using your E. In many cases where you are getting ganked on Zeri/Karma you may be the one more in need of the E movement speed boost. If you are near terrain and you know that Zeri has her Spark Surge up you may actually want to give the movement speed to yourself to make sure you both escape safely. ✶ Look to follow Zeri around teamfights the best that you can. The more you can be applying shields to her the better because it means that she can be incredibly slippery and continue to lay down damage on the enemy team efficiently. That said, she is a very fast champion so you will need to be moving alongside her to make sure she doesn’t move too far away from your E range. ✶ Zeri’s ultimate Lightning Crash is wonderful in teamfights because of its AOE damage. You want to always make sure you are shielding her before it is cast both to keep her safe and to help her stack movement speed alongside her passive. This will give her amazing maneuverability and will make her incredibly slippery. ✶ Zeri has decent AP ratios on some of her abilities, and she also wants to have her abilities up as quickly as possible so that she can stay moving and generating energy. Staff of Flowing Water is an amazing item for this duo.

Thank you so much for taking a look through my guide! I hope it was able to provide you with a little more knowledge about how to play Karma, the Enlightened One! If you have any questions, critiques or thoughts please feel free to share them - I'd love your feedback!

I hope to also add in matchup information for all the ADCs you may face as well as jungler synergies in the coming week!

I am also working on a new guide for Soraka, the Starchild so stay tuned for "So-rocking the Botlane" soon! :)