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Spells:
Teleport
Flash
Ability Order
Death Defied (PASSIVE)
Karthus Passive Ability
Intro



On your left, you see some routine normal games I played as Karthus some days ago, before I made this guide. On your right, is a ~20 minute surrendered ranked game at a low elo, trying to test just how viable Karthus is.
Pros:
Cons:
- Doing good at solo lanes.
- GREAT harass.
- Decent farmer.
- One of the best trololo ulties in-game.
- Rare to see, many people don't know most of his spells.
- Great bush scout.
- Able to avoid ganks if played properly.
Cons:
- Very squishy and usually enemies' first target.
- Expensive champion.
- Item dependent.
I use the pretty basic mage masteries. 9/0/21 to get Mpen from




Runes




You should go full Mpen and AP. Armor, MR & Health runes are for *******, jk. You start with ~30(29.07) AP just from the runes. You can pretty much kill a squishy champion by putting couple of

Alternative Runes:
- Lesser Seal of Replenishment: If you have mana regen issues and want to skip
Clarity.
Greater Quintessence of Health: In case you want to increase your early game survivability. But it's really a waste of quint spots imho.
Greater Glyph of Scaling Cooldown Reduction: This is actually a good alternative. Makes
Lay Waste cool-down really great and it works as good as AP glyphs.
Greater Seal of Armor: If you notice that you die at the first jungle route or you feel extremely squishy.
Teleport:
Karthus due to
Defile passive & Tear of Goddess can remain in lane for a long time if played defensively. Going back to base for shopping wont cost you any XP, as long as you teleport back to your lane right after you get your new items. Also, it becomes handy when you need to go to a lane to def after a gank/team-fight.
Flash: Helps a lot at the "OSHI!" situations, when you need to finish off a champion who just ran away with 100hp
! (e.g
Vladimir,
Tryndamere,
Ezreal). Also is very powerful "anti-gank" combined with
Wall of Pain.
Ghost: Some players use it instead of
Flash. In theory, after flashing you can land like 1 or 2
Lay Waste, but with Ghost you can kite the enemy with
Defile up and land way more mines.
Ignite: By taking this, you'll be able to do better ability combos and have a better damage output, but its really not that necessary.
Heal: Karthus has low hp pool and it heals you for pretty much, but as long as you don't play with spell vamp and any remarkable hp regen, heal shouldn't be part of your play-style.
Clarity: Rarely used. Can only help you early game if you can't time last hits properly. Useless late game.
Revive: Seen that like 1 or 2 times. Theoretically, you can enter a teamfight with
Defile &
Lay Waste and damage everyone a lot, after that due to your passive you will continue that for another 7 seconds and enemies will have low health. Then,
Revive,
Requiem & BOOM! Le penta-kill.









-- Starting with a



-- If played properly, some minutes later you will have drawn first blood, taken some assists or got plenty of cs and you'll have around 1000 gold. Go back to your spawn and get



-- Now it's time for your big item. At most of the matches you will be pretty much fed. It's the perfect time for


-- Our new aim is


-- Next, you get

-- Finally, grab

You can go for this build at normal games when you get REALLY fed. When you see that at 20 minutes or less you have 10-20 kills, go for it. Sell your boots and your early game items and get these babies. With Potion of Brilliance you get around 1300AP and your ulti hits for ~1200 damage. You can easily stand at your spawn and kill stuff! But again, not a serious build and obviously not recommended for serious games.
Alternate Items:









-- First of all, your ulti channels for 3 seconds before it damages all the enemies. That means that any stun/fear/knockback/silence will stop it. Also if you die during the cast, you wont continue casting with death defile. So in a teamfight don't attempt to ulti because 90% of the times you will get cc'd or die while casting. It's better to wait for the fight to end and then cast it or if it is just a harassment battle go a bit back and you'll be able to free-cast. Some times it's better to wait until you die to start casting during passive so you dont have to worry about mana or interrupts.
-- But unfortunately this is not the only problem. There are couple of spells and items that block
Requiem.
Banshee's Veil can block it every 45 seconds. #1 anti-karthus item. Also its less likely to see
Zhonya's Hourglass, which active blocks any incoming spell/attack every 90 seconds.
-- Here are some of the spells I mentioned before:
Rebirth,
Intervention,
Sanguine Pool,
Shroud of Darkness,
Spell Shield,
Undying Rage &
Chronoshift .
-- But unfortunately this is not the only problem. There are couple of spells and items that block



-- Here are some of the spells I mentioned before:







Karthus can also jungle. It's unusual but it's viable. He is very powerful mid and jungling shouldn't be your first choice except when your team really lacks a jungler or you're bored to death and want to do something different. The runes/masteries are the same except for Smite.
-- You select
Smite &
Clarity or
Flash, you buy the classic jungle
Cloth Armor and 5
Health Potion and you start moving to the wolves to avoid early jungle ganks & start clearing as soon as possible.
-- Pop 1 potion and move to blue. Start spamming
Lay Waste only at the golem in order to do double damage. If you go oom, don't be afraid to pop
Clarity. Your hp will drop really low when golem is about to die, but it's ok, you're not supposed to jungle as a "mage". Don't be afraid, finish him off with smite. After that, end up the lizards, pot up until you get ~50% hp and start moving to the wraiths. With blue buff you transform into super-karthus.
-- Kill wraiths, pop another potion if needed and go for the golems. Toggle on
Defile and damage both of them with LW. When done pop your 4th potion and start attacking only the red lizard. Pop your last potion if you drop too low and kill it with smite, which should be up. Go "b" and get
Amplifying Tome and 1-2 hp potions.
-- Your jungle started re-spawning. Repeat the route until you get level 6. Now you aim for
Mejai's Soulstealer. If you followed that exactly you have your ulti and your soulstealer and you're ready to start ganking. All you have to do is ping the gank target,
Wall of Pain him and start nuking him. If they have no
Flash or something similar, they should die pretty quickly.
-- Generally, your role will be to make some easy ganks and check for low hp enemies around the map, ulti them and stack your lovely soulstealer.
-- You select





-- Pop 1 potion and move to blue. Start spamming


-- Kill wraiths, pop another potion if needed and go for the golems. Toggle on


-- Your jungle started re-spawning. Repeat the route until you get level 6. Now you aim for



-- Generally, your role will be to make some easy ganks and check for low hp enemies around the map, ulti them and stack your lovely soulstealer.
- When you are looking for an enemy or ganking, let the tank/carry to lead the way, stay in Lay Waste range and let the others take the damage, thats not your job for sure. (tl;dr: keep your roles)
- Many people only use
Defile and
Lay Waste during passive and forget using
Wall of Pain. You can prevent enemies from leaving the fight or killing your teammates.
- If you are confident with your normal last hits you can gain a good amount of mana. Otherwise, last hit with LW and gain almost its mana cost.
- Make sure your team knows when you hit 6 and notifies you when an enemy is low.
- REMEMBER: Don't initiate any fights. You're not the kind of the lethal ap carry that can initiate a teamfight and make enemies start running away. Don't copy fiddlesticks' ulti-flash playstyle. If you start a fight, you'll die before you even realize. Try to stay alive as much as possible and killst... finish off the enemies with
Requiem.
- Ask your jungle for the blue buff. It's soooo useful for
Karthus. You can spam
Lay Waste like there's no tomorrow and you are able to keep
Defile up for much more in a teamfight.
- If 1 or 2 low health enemies are following you to kill you and you are absolutely sure you will die stop running away and suicide! Die next to them, slow them, toggle defile and start spamming lay waste and kill these bad boys. WIN-WIN.
I hope you liked my guide and I'll be happy if you do great with this build. Karthus is not an easy champion. If you are overall new to the GAME, you better check out some cheap champions with easier skills and more balanced stats. And don't forget, practice makes perfect! :)
Special Thanks:
TheiosXarhs
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TheiosXarhs
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jhoijhoi
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