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Runes:
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+9 Adaptive (5.4 AD or 9 AP)
+65 Base Health
Spells:
Flash
Heal
Items
Ability Order
Death Defied (PASSIVE)
Karthus Passive Ability
Champion Build Guide
+ Great scaling + Huge damage with isolated + can either start or end teamfights + Good slow from + OK if you get focused and killed early on in a teamfight + Strong level 6 powerspike Karthus is a versatile mage carry that can go top, jungle, mid, or ADC. When playing him bot lane, your weakest phase of the game will be protected by the presence of your support. Your team doesn't have to risk dangerous tower dives because you have a global nuke on your ult. His , when utilized properly, can devastate other ADCs. |
- Sub-par early-game - Getting kills with requires watching your allies - No mobility - Hard to CS with autos - Potential early-game mana problems - has an extremely long CD One of the weaknesses of Karthus is his early-game. Before getting , you can find yourself running out of mana easily if you spam on the wave. Also, as an immobile mage, you are extremely susceptible to being ganked. Finally, if you want to do well on , you'll have to pay attention to what your allies are doing, in case you want to use to secure the kill. |
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DEATH DEFIED (Passive): With this passive, you can feel free to play Karthus in the frontline of a teamfight, because you will still be able to sling out your spells for the next 7 seconds. When your passive is active, your abilities cost no mana, and your Defile is turned on automatically. |
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LAY WASTE (Q): Knowing how to use Lay Waste effectively separates the good Karthus players from the bad ones. When waveclearing, you'll generally want to use lay waste on a single minion, to judge how much damage it will do. Being able to land Lay Waste on enemies can make you an incredibly strong dueler. |
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WALL OF PAIN (W):Usually the last ability you max, Wall of Pain's strengths come from allowing you to easily land your Lay Waste. It also decreases enemies magic resist, which will allow your Lay Waste to really lay waste. |
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DEFILE (E): This ability has two parts - an active and a passive. The when not activated, Karthus refunds mana any time he kills a unit. When it is on, it will drain an amount of mana to do damage all around you per second. This helps you last hit minions and refund mana costs so you can continue to use Lay Waste. |
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REQUIEM (R): Requiem is Karthus's signature ability. A global damaging ult, it's guaranteed to hit all enemies unless they become untargetable. This allows for you allies to not need to recklessly chase down kills, as you can simply press R and secure a grey screen for your enemies. |
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I P S |
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R I C K S |
When stacking your
, an easy way is to leave your
on as you recall, as you can recall while it's still active. Your
and
both give you vision, so don't be afraid to use them instead of facechecking a bush. Farming with Karthus is really important, so don't be afraid to go to the practice tool and practice hitting single minions with Lay Waste and tapping Defile for last hits. When dueling enemies, you can weave in autos in between your Qs for maximum damage output. |
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Doran's Ring This is the best starting item for Karthus as it gives AP, mana regen, extra damage on autos to minions, and a bit of health. Getting Dark Seal is better if you're going to get poked out in lane pretty hard, as the extra healing from potions is better, but otherwise the mana regen from Doran's Ring is better than the extra 100 mana from Dark Seal. |
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Health Potion This item will let you to recover from trades and stay in lane so you don't miss cs. It restores 150 health over 15 seconds, so be aware that you don't get all 150 health at once. |
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Archangel's Staff This item is very strong on Karthus because it allows him to not worry about mana consumption at all, as well as giving him an activateable shield. You can stack it up by using your Lay Waste while walking back to lane, but note that Karthus stacks it pretty easily without having to spam out spells whenever the proc is off CD. |
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Sorcerer's Shoes Almost all mages get Sorcerer's Shoes because having having flat M-pen is so strong. It works differently than Void Staff's unique passive, because it is calculated by taking the enemies magic resist and minusing your M-pen value from it before it calculates damage totals. |
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Zhonya's Hourglass A repeatable Stopwatch effect is incredibly useful as a squishy ADC who is usually going to be focused in teamfights. It also comes with some decent stats, giving armor, 10% CDR, and 70 AP. |
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Rabadon's Deathcap This item is a huge powerspike for Karthus, because it gives 120 AP and a unique passive that increases all your AP by an additional 40%. Your Requiem will nuke anyone below 50%, coupled with your Dark Harvest. |
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Morellonomicon This item is great against teams with a healer ( Dr. Mundo, Soraka, Vladimir, etc.) because it applies grievous wounds. It also comes with the desired M-pen stat, but sadly got nerfed in 9.2 to give less AP than it used to. |
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Void Staff For when you seriously need to take down enemy tanks, this item provides a bit of AP and more importantly, 40% ignore magic resistance. Don't buy this before Morellonomicon unless they rush a magic resist item. |
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Rylai's Crystal Scepter This item slows down enemies any time they are hit by one of your abilities. This allows you to land Lay Waste on them even easier, and allows you to have decent kiting potential. |
✦ Focus: Farm Your most important job is to stay alive and get cs so you can scale into late-game and take over with your crazy Requiem damage. Don't overextend for kills - a kill is around 10-12 cs that you could potentially miss by overcommiting for a kill. Make sure you are hitting your single target Lay Waste's and last hitting with your Defile. Ping when your lane opponents are missing and place wards! They can easily save your life when you're pushed up in lane. Establish a game plan based around who your lane opponents are so that you can focus on certain goals while in laning phase. |
✦ Focus: Objectives Mid-game usually begins when after first tower blood. This usually happens in bot lane. After this, you should lane swap with either your top or mid laner. Once all the outer turrets are down, you can look to take more important objectives like dragons, rift-herald, and baron. Make sure you stay with you support, as being caught out alone will most likely lead to your death (unless you got super fed while laning. Make sure you're watching your opponents in other fights, in case you need to use Requiem to finish them off. Don't be too afraid to stay near the front in teamfights - if you die, you can still wreak havoc with your Death Defied. |
✦ Focus: Nexus It may seem rather redundant that you're trying to take the nexus but it's important to keep in mind that's the only way to win a game. The easiest way to end the game is through the baron buff. Killing the baron will grant you a buff that gives adaptive stats. More importantly, it gives all of your minions a stat boost whenever you are near them. The baron buff allows you to siege towers more effectively, but is dangerous to get when the enemy jungler is still alive. While you don't have it, you can siege towers by slowly poking them down. Slow-push until you have a large minion wave, then chip away at the tower. If enemy champions try to defend it, poke them with your Lay Waste. Eventually you will take down the tower. |
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Karthus is a fun late-game carry with lots of damage and good teamfighting potential. He can often find himself low on mana if he spams Lay Waste before getting Archangel's Staff, but his Requiem puts a timer on the game that allows you to win almost any teamfight after you have enough items. Thanks for taking the time to read my guide. Any comments are appreciated! |
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