A rebirth of sorts.
Riot Games is currently testing a number of big changes to support champion Karma.
In a post shared in the “Dev Corner” of League of Legends’ message board, Riot Games designer Naomi “NeuroCat” McArthur detailed a host of in-progress Karma tweaks that will be hitting the PBE at some point in the near future.
NeuroCat addressed issues with Karma’s design lacking “many defining elements that set her apart”, and expressed how Riot Games’ first goal “is to give Karma a unique mechanic that reinforces a core part of her identity”.
It’s clear Riot aren’t happy with the finer parts of Karma’s kit, and NeuroCat explains how it will “file down some of the sharper edges on Karma’s existing mechanics to let us buff her elsewhere, making her relatively more powerful for the average Karma player.”
Activate Karma’s Ultimate ability and it will affect the way her basic abilities function, essentially buffing them. Although, Riot recognises that some upgraded basic abilities are far more useful than others. It aims to “make Karma’s mantra choice feel more meaningful in most situations”.
Now, onto the changes. Riot wishes to level the playing field between pro players and average Karma players in a couple of ways:
”We’re changing her live passive to operate on a charge model similar to Spellthief’s Edge, triggering on any damage on champs or monsters.”
”We’re generally reducing the benefit of movespeed in the kit, most notably by changing her Mantra-E, Defiance, to reduce the movespeed given to allies near your primary target (the same as the reduction to shields).”
NeuroCat details the final set of tweaks aimed at increasing the flexibility of all Karma’s Mantra spells:
”For Soulflare (Mantra-Q), we’re loading more of the damage into the initial hit of the projectile, and less into the detonation damage – using Soulflare to poke should remain powerful even later into the game.”
”For Renewal (Mantra-W), we’re changing the scaling to scale both with Missing HP and directly with AP – even if you’re building AP instead of tanky, your healing should be substantial.”
”For Defiance (Mantra-E), the shared shield (and movespeed) percentage will be much higher than live, but will be split evenly across all nearby allies – now using Defiance will still be quite effective in a 2v2 or 3v3 scenario.”
Here’s how the revamped Karma’s abilities may look in the future:
Passive – Gathering Fire
- Kindled Spirit – When Karma deals damage to an enemy champ or large monster, Mantra’s cooldown is reduced by X seconds (to a cap of Y times over Z seconds).
- Souls Alight – Karma can see her allies’ total basic ability cooldowns.
Q – Inner Flame
- Functionally, the same as live
W – Spirit Bond
- Ally Cast: Karma reduces target ally’s basic ability cooldowns by up to X seconds.
- Mantra – Harmony: The cooldown reduction amount is increased by Y seconds. Karma restores Z% of the ally’s max mana.
- Enemy Cast: Karma deals X damage to target enemy. If they don’t break the tether, they are dealt X damage and rooted for T seconds.
- Mantra – Renewal: Roots for longer. When this deals damage, Karma heals for Y% missing HP + Z% AP.
E – Inspire
- Grants an ally movespeed and a shield.
- Mantra – Defiance: Grants the target bonus shields. Other nearby allies split X% of the shield and movespeed between them.
R – Mantra
- Functionally, the same as live
These changes won’t be hitting the PBE when the preseason update lands, but they will be arriving in the near future.
