'League of Legends' Previews Karma Gameplay Changes

Riot Games has several gameplay changes for League of Legends’ Karma in the works that affect [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

League of Legends Karma
(Photo: Riot Games)

Riot Games has several gameplay changes for League of Legends' Karma in the works that affect many of her main abilities.

Sharing a post on the League of Legends boards, Riot Games game designer Naomi "Riot NeuroCat" McArthur shared a list of work-in-progress Karma changes being worked on. The Rioter said that Karma was a challenging champion to balance since making her balanced for average players pushes her to broken levels in professional games, a problem shared with other team-oriented champions like Azir and Ryze. Part of these changes are made with a goal in mind of making it easier to balance the champion for both levels of play, Riot Games said.

"Karma is a difficult champion to keep in a healthily balanced state," Riot NeuroCat said. "When she is tuned appropriately for the average player, she can become dominant at the pro level. Our second goal is to 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."

Karma's passive and her ultimate ability work in tandem to become core parts of her kit with the ultimate changing the effects of her different abilities, so much of the focus in Karma's changes deal with those two abilities. Some abilities remain the same while other gain new or adjusted effects, all of those seen below according to Riot Games' work-in-progress list of changes.

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: 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

These changes won't be coming to the PBE when the preseason update releases, Riot NeuroCat warned, but they will be coming to the PBE eventually for players to test.

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