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Introduction
Hellooooo! Ecco the Dolphin here with a guide for the almighty Karma. She is a very interesting champion who got reworked roughly a year ago. Overall, people seemed displeased with the remake but as the year progressed she began to see some play and this year she has seen a good amount of play as a support. Now, as Burgerking showed us in the LCS she is actually a very strong mid-laner. Extremely safe to pick blind as her laning is very well rounded and safe. She is really fun to play so I suggest you try her out mid and see how you like it!
Pros
- Absurdly strong and well rounded laning phase.
- Poke damage with AoE slow.
- High burst.
- Extremely mobile.
- Has a shield.
- Has a make-shift Talisman of Ascension that shields everyone.
- Has the ability to heal herself.
- Good wave-clear.
Cons
- Doesn't have a "real" or game-changing ultimate.
- Has a lot of consistent damage and burst with Mantra Q but doesn't have a real devastating burst chain of spells.
The composition that I have laid out above is very poke heavy with strong disengage, decent engage and looooooooooooooooooots of poke damage. This composition is made to be a ball of poking death that wins purely by taking objectives and forcing engages on low health teams. Karma is best put into this kind of composition because it makes best use of her kit. She has consistent poke with her



I'm having trouble putting it into words but Karma is just good at what she does. She is a very mobile, tanky, poking champion who has pretty much one spell, her inner flame, that does all of her damage for her. She is very straight forward with her spells. If you were to put her into a heavy engage composition she would serve decently well with her mantra-ed Inspire helping the team follow-up but she just doesn't have that oomph. She just doesn't have something like an Orianna

Sooo I actually take ignite on her. I typically only take ignite on assassin champions but I feel like Karma is the black sheep of the AP mid family. With the mobility and defensiveness of her




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greater mark of hybrid penetration![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Because her laning is so aggressive and you /will/ be the bully, I run very aggressive runes. Putting in hybrid penetration marks with four magic penetration blues to make up for the loss of magic pen in your marks helps put a lot of pressure on your lane opponent. Scaling health yellow is just by far the best thing on ranged AP mids in my opinion. They scale so incredibly well and, definitely on Karma, you shouldn't be needing that extra bit of health pre-6 to justify taking flat health.
The one thing about this rune setup that is open to change is the five magic resist glyphs. If I am against an ad champion then I am going to switch these out for scaling ability power.

These are my standard masteries that I'll be running the majority of my games. It is very well rounded, giving you a lot of damage through the offense tree and a little bit of extra mana-regen and other utility aspects in the (surprise!) utility tree.

This is the defensive route to go for Karma's masteries. You are losing out on lowering the cool-down on your Summoner Spells, extra time with buffs, mana-regen, etc to make yourself tankier and have some health-regen. Typically I go this if I am going to be trading a lot of auto-attacks in lane or taking some harass (such as being against a

Pretty standard skill sequence here. The only thing I ever change is that if I know my jungler will be ganking my lane when I'm level 3, I'll put a point in my

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Gathering Fire (Passive)![]() |
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Inner Flame![]() To go over Mantra Q, it is important to know that it increases the range of by roughly a teemo. When it reaches max range and explodes into the giant AoE that then explodes itself shortly after, that entire circle does the initial burst damage. It is nice to keep this in mind on a target who is running away and would otherwise be barely out of range of your normal Inner Flame. Also nice when you have a bunch of clumped enemies and want to bring them all to half health in one spell! |
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Focused Resolve![]() ![]() ![]() Mantra combined with Focused Resolve is a very overlooked combination. I don't think many people even know what it does because I literally never see it used which is a shame because it is amazing. Initially, on cast, it heals you for 20% of your total missing health and at the end of the leash, another 20% of your missing. Let's say a Kha'Zix is trying to finish you off when you're low health. You're at 400/2000 health so it's pretty late in the game. He jumps towards you, you use Inspire on yourself and Mantra + Focused Resolve on him. That's 320 health you gain instantly. 320! That is a lot! That brings you up to 720 health with a shield on yourself. That is a lot harder to kill than it was just a second ago. Don't forget about this option as it can save your life! |
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Inspire![]() Mantra with Inspire is actually pretty underused as well. It acts like a Talisman of Ascension that also shields everyone on your team and does AoE damage around your initial target. Pretty good use of Mantra if you ask me. If there are a lot of teammates clumped up and you need a follow-up on an engage or are disengaging then this is a fantastic choice. |
The standard starting items on every ranged AP mid champion this season. Works very well on Karma so no reason to change it!
On your first back you're going to want at least 1020 gold for a second









After my Morello, I follow it up with the standard mid-game core of


Once your core is completed, you have two more items to complete. Which one you are wanting to complete first though is situational. If they have a lot of front-line, health stacking champions (such as both a





Laning
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Going into laning phase, from the very beginning we are going to be very aggressive. Throwing out a lot of ![]() ![]() Speaking of pushing the wave, Karma is one of the very few champions who can get away with having it pushed early on in the game. She is so safe with her ![]() ![]() Typically I don't roam very often on Karma unless there is a very obvious time presented to me. Such as if their bot lane were both ~30% and trying to stay under tower. My Mantra Q would probably one shot either of them so it is worth my time to shove mid and at least put pressure/secure kills if possible. |
Mid Game
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Once the laning phase starts to come to an end your team should become a ball of poke. Roam around, siege turrets, get vision out, dance around dragon and just poke. If they try to engage on you before you get strong poke off, it is best to disengage with ![]() ![]() For fights you want to stay far back near your adc and just pump out a ton of ![]() ![]() ![]() So overall you and your team will just be annoying and hard to engage on while you slowly get objectives and build a lead. If you and your team ever get engaged on when you shouldn't and get destroyed in a team-fight, that one mistake could very well cost you the game. Being behind on a poke comp is very hard to come back from since you are innately weaker than them already. |
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Late Game
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Entering the late game, you should continue sieging turrets and dancing around objectives (which will now be Baron). When you are going to be sieging, do your best to get other lanes pushing first to put more pressure on the other team and potentially set up a 5v4 siege situation. Your positioning in team-fights should be the same as mid-game. You should be a second support to your adc while dealing out consistent damage with ![]() |
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