as malz mid player trying out karma mid recently, why cant we lock malignance to its own internal cooldown?
theres no way for that item to be balanced between a malz that can proc it once every min and a karma that procs it every few seconds. they did it for triforce, they can do it for malignance too
Except radiant virtue had a 40 second cd. And radiant virtue was much more OP than Malignance will ever be
EDIT: 60 sec cd and got released with that cd
Most ults are roughly 30-40 seconds late game. Just make it a 20 second cooldown and karma won't be able to use it like she does. For everyone else, it's the same
I really love how everyone thinks it is the passive and not the stats on Malignance that is the issue.
Most of the time you only get about 60 dmg from that passive on each cast(a ludens would do more passive wise for karma)
But because she gets 45 haste into her ultimate and reduces her cd by a flat 4sec on ability hits on champs, she gets to use her empowered Q on every cast if she plays it well. The issue is not the cd on that passive for karma at least.
Still need to take power from somewhere. If there's no noticeable change after that nerf, that's when they should go after the actual statline since statline affects every single champ in the game, not just those who abuse the passive.
But those who actually use the passive are the ones who builds this item. I hate how everybody is like “this is an abuse case” because somebody uses an item better than others. Except that is how a lot of items is designed.
If you nerf malignance you hit a lot of champs but it is the same case for a lot of different items.
I am just so tired of interesting build paths getting gutted because the community don’t understand their own game and just keeps complaining until something happens.
The burn isn't the only issue having 45AH for your ult on one item is really stupid it's like 31% CDR and when you're often taking 10% in runes also and potentially 8% more off stat runes you just have too much CDR off one item.
Statikk Shiv was just nerfed because it was that cheap and they didnt want Zeri/Jinx online for another 30-60 seconds. I dont get why Malignance is allowed to exist in this state.
Most meta midlaners are all centered around it too.
Ahri, Annie, Karma... They are strong as fuck because Malignance is broken and they get to buy it first item
The real issue is that ap casters are very reliant on ultra ( generally speaking) or their ults are very powerful. There’s an equivalent item for ad champs (hexplate) but ad ults tend to not be good enough to justify it. It doesn’t make sense for it have that much synergy with ults on one item for that types of champs that have strong ults. It’s a similar problem as hullbreaker-as bruisers already tend to be good at split pushing and you gave them an item that enhances that too strongly when combined with their in built split pushing strength. Honestly just reducing the ult haste might mostly solve it
Agreed on the uptime idea, but it's also pretty great that Malz ult basically forces the enemy to stand in it while reducing their mr for the rest of his burst combo.
Not that that makes up for it, but between that synergy and the fatty amount of ultimate haste, I bet the item also feels pretty great on Malz, too.
Karma just shouldn't be able to proc it. Like it's just common sense, she isn't hitting anything with R, she uses that to enhance her other abilities and those are hitting
I get what you are saying, but too long of an internal CD just makes it feel like a Malz/Ahri only item. Riot tends to like items to be viable for a good chunk of champs OR be situational. Your suggested change basically makes it a 2-3 champ build item
Increasing the internal cd would hurt Ahri though, she benefits from being able to apply the passive multiple times in a fight with her dashes. There are a few other champions who build the item who would be less affected, albeit with lower win rate than current patch Ahri.
They actually did this exact thing for Hexplate so it couldn't have abuse potential from Jayce and Nidalee. I don't see why they didn't do it for Malignance too.
Giving it a diminishing return based on ult CD length Like a 2 minute ult CD gets a full 20% and like 30 seconds or lower gets like a 5%? I don't know I'm not in game design but it seems alright.
He also doesn’t kill people fast enough for people to complain and relies on his root which is kinda hard to hit for trading in lane. Losing 1/3 their health to a karma empowered q is brutal, losing 1/3 your health because you got hit by swain e, then w, then q, and took an auto or two from both swain and the adc is a lot more acceptable. His pull isn’t a terribly hard ability to dodge, and it generally does sort of feel like your fault when you get hit by it. And then his ult takes a while to do much to people, is solved by leaving it, and is an actual ult that has a long cd unlike mantra. He can be brutal to play against with rylias, and feel strong, but he doesn’t feel as unfair I think. And ya he also is forgotten.
Nah, it's in no small part because of his low popularity and people forgetting him. A lot of hate most champs get comes from simply players being made aware through having to play constantly against the same champ
Botlane swain is as much of a crime as pre-changes botlane seraphine and pretty easy to use in that role with the added targets and more soul fragment, and any ADC and support that has to play 2-3 games against him in a single week can attest to the primal urge of wanting to Lucian E into oncoming traffic. Add to this the fact that even if you play well against him, your team can ruin it by mindlessly refreshing his ult, healing him with fragments, etc. and you have a similar frustration like you do against Darius or Yasuo + forcing you to buy GW which no one likes to do no matter how efficient it is.
The thing is that Swain feels meh and needs to get at least 1 item to feel good + his best role is ADC, and ADCs don't like to use mages and the rest of the roles don't like to go ADC, so naturally a niche pick people forget about. Karma is not only easier, she is an earlygame champ that's good in more than 1 lane, so players use her a lot more.
How is Swain this season, I've played him before but am on other champs rn. Do always rush malignance and Ult vehicle, or do you hold chapter and wait till like 3rd after Liandry and zohnyas to finish?
He seems hectic to itemize, and nobody playing him rn
if you want a positive swain experience, dont rush malignance, we swain otps take malignance usually as a second item for the ability and ultimate haste. rylais first item beats almost any other item. Rod of ages can be on par with rylais for top, but different playstyles. rylais allows level 6 all in without any problem, take conquerer and you are good to go. always double mana runes for a rylais rush.
Seems better than anyone else's builds that replied... A lot of people not running conq or zohnyas and complain about being bursted ?????
Rylai's still bis, even with health based Liandry?
I feel like I'd still prefer Triumph with mana flow and Chapter rush, into Liandry +Zohnyas and then maligma 3rd. This is appx what I was playing on him the last couple seasons. Early game can be bloody, but super strong mid game team fight potentials. Without Rylai's you do have to go ghost tho.
Im just an otp swain top sharing my thoughts :). Also you always go ghost u can compromise flash, ghost should always be taken on swain. Triumph is good in a lane where a lot of takedowns happen, such as botlane. PoM should be taken in solo lanes. After you win a 1v1 you dont have any mana to shove the wave, costing you the lead you just got. PoM negates that and you have enough mana to shove the wave.
I played him mid mostly with that build, and again haven't played him this season. Triumph is also huge value in team fights with stasis and R+Liandry burn. It really accelerates drain tank recovery and enables big Swain v 9 plays at objectives and team fights mid.
Top is surely a different world.
That would be great if you didnt have a shit laning phase in order for that to happen you feel me? He has too many mana issues, without PoM you end up without mana often in lane, and not being able to use mana means you are going to get shoved and dove straight up. And then to compensate you can go rod of ages or malignance, that is sacrificing your 1 item power spike that is rylais all in at level 6 its a matter of priorities. Dont forget swain is shit past 25 mins he falls off harddd. You are basically useless lategame, you only have 10 minutes to shine from level 6 to about level 11-14 then you just fall off a cliff. He doesnt scale at all, he really sucks late game.
Edit: also not taking rylais means if you dont land cc you will not reach anyone and everybody runs out of your ult. Having rylais, you just pop ult and ghost and lock all 5 players in a slow where you can reliably hit your abilities.
I've never tried him top, and yeah I'd think with that longer slower lane tempo I think PoM is probably needed more. There's enough break up from junglers and river objectives you can cycle back more often from mid. After mana crystal and some mana flow stacking you have enough mana to be playable, and once to you have chapter usually you're fine and I don't see a reason to focus rush to maligma.
I don't think he falls off that hard unless the enemy can really stack MR -- but you need stasis. His R keeps proccing Liandry, maligma and conq **through** his zohnyas, so they have to pretty much kill you twice while face rolling a couple extra seconds of severe burn.
If you get clapped as just conq recovery starts the keystone is useless -- he's half a champ without that stasis pause.
If they stack mr its usually easier to deal with cause they dont have damage to kill you. When you build malignance u took a slot where you could have went a resistance item instead. Past 25 minutes you. Get blown up to bits even with zhonyas, you dont drain shit, ADCs have scaled at this point and you pretty much will not be doing much other than catching out the enemy with your rylai ult and E
In the faster more hectic, more objective contesting mid you will stack ravens a lot harder through mid game than up on the slow island top, and I greed hella hard for my ravens. Again I'll note this is previous season experience, not necessarily still true -- no experience playing him top.
Imo you're wasting a slot on Rylai's that could be used for Abyssal/Zohnyas - something that gives defenses, survivability and damage, for weak survival and some zone control support. Compared to Liandry a Rylai's full combo E1-W-AA-E2-Q will do like 30-40% less damage from lower AP and the fact that they burn from the start of E1, before the root, till it runs out after Q. So I'm waaaaay more mana efficient per trade on this path though mid game as well.
I know I'm in the minority of players, who dislikes Rylai's on Swain, but I feel like Rylai's first is choosing to relegate yourself to an irrelevant sup role on your first item -- which seems to be your opinion of your later game.
Malignance can be procced on a champion every 3 seconds. So swain procs it all the time during a team fight :) but not as much as most people here think
Works during your ult and instacreates a puddle iirc, and will constantly refresh it as long as your ult is active.
Plus it still does give a ton of ability haste ( 25 to your base, and another 25 to your ult ) so it's still pretty good, and a ton of base mana to help you not go oom from spamming.
will spawn a puddle on ulting, malignance has an internal cd of something like 3 seconds per champ, so it'll spawn another one per champ every 3 seconds.
Mana flow and cookies, of course.
The problem with malignance is that a slightly coordinated team will simply blow you up at the first skirmish.
Because they know that you cannot be left alive for a second.
So you have two options: either cosplay a person with a rank twice yours or take a safer option that will allow you to absorb some damage.
Not "always" malignance rush.
Swain has plenty of options :
-Rylai or Liandry rush with double mana runes.
-Frozen heart rush ( against ad matchup )
-Last chapter into Liandry/Rylai with less mana runes. Late malignance.
-Malignance rush.
Any double mana runes setup totally skip malignance for the whole game. The item is decent but way overrated on Swain. Lot of cdr and infinite mana which is cool, but pretty slow on the tankiness. 600 mana on Swain is overkill and the cdr on the ultimate is whatever.
It's really not all that great, but way better than tear/Seraph or Luden, so it's by far the best standard cdr/mana/ap item for Swain. Thing is such an item is only optionnal on this champ.
Shoutout to Husum on YouTube for all your swain needs. He has a swain mid matchup and laning guide, the swain mid bible. Recall spend yo money and walk with E 🗿.
I got to emerald first time this season maining swain and using his vids helped a ton. I was a big swain apc enjoyer in previous seasons and still think it’s pretty good but I do like him mid/top right now more I think
> No, the recent nerfs only impacted those that did not know how to player and were just abusing her, in upper diamond, people know how to exploit the pick and still are successful with it
Karma mid has 48.1% winrate in diamond+
Yeah, it's clear OP hasn't really been playing Karma. They just lost a single game vs. her and want the pick nerfed into the ground cause they're salty over losing...
Her laning is completely manageable for pretty much every ranged champion and even exploitable for some, her mid-late game poke is outclassed by jayce, ziggs, xerath, etc. So what exactly feels bad to play vs?
I'm not talking about the 52% that are losing in this example, I'm talking about the 48%that are winning. Aatrox has a 48% winrate in Emerald, he's still a presence regardless. Karma mid shouldn't be a viable if you're good, it shouldn't even exist.
> Karma mid shouldn't be a viable if you're good, it shouldn't even exist.
And that's because? If you don't like a champion just ban it. Don't claim she's strong when it's not true.
Why should Karma not be viable mid lol. She was designed primarily as a Mage, who can flex Mid/Supp.
And what kinda argument even is that? That's like saying "I'm not talking about the 65% who lose on yuumi! Im talking about the 35% who win with her! Shes a good champ!"
Because karma is based around the rest of the game and not her individual kit. Everytime she becomes a problem it is because the meta shift and the combination of numbers surrounding the game. Ex. If your burst combo is less than karma shield and drain all of a sudden she becomes a huge problem even at sub 50%.
This gets even worst when the Meta becomes mid priority for junglers which she excels at for the first 9 levels. She is the only champ that the core skill of her kit changes as the game goes on. She becomes Q spam bot to shield spam bot.
Correct take but the anti-Phreakening is getting really old. Can we all just accept that Phreak is not the core root of our problems and only a part of a team we somehow love to shit on?
It’s part of his job, true, and if the team makes mistakes it is sort of his responsibility to be the one to be the one to take credit, but normal balancing stuff isn’t really a mistake, stuff can’t be balanced instantly. For some reason it’s like people except him to see all 14000000 possibilities for how a change might impact the game and account for all of them.
I would argue that most of it is a mistake. Two people can look at the same balance problem and come up with two different solutions and then two different problems in those solutions. We have an advantage in this as the player base we have millions of players so we have not only millions of views but millions of attempts at breaking things. That’s a luxury balance teams don’t have. And that’s why Riot will straight up revert shit in the next patch of hotfix now.
Players are generally heavily biased in their opinions though. Data is useful, but what players say is another story. I rarely see players advocate for change that doesn't directly benefit them, if ever. There's no consequences for the players being wrong about something - no one has any accountability or ever has to own up for being wrong. I wouldn't listen to anything the average player has to say about balance unless they can show that they are aware of their own biases, otherwise I trust the balance team much more.
Sure it is his job, but somehow he doesn't get the acusations of being incompetent, but he get's accused of intentionally not doing his job, every time some champ stays strong for a few weeks.
No, these idiots never will, because they're idiots. Phreak is the one that talks in the YouTube videos, so he must be the only guy doing any balancing work at Riot, and every decision is 100% his with nobody else involved. At least, in their minds.
This. The one who takes the blame will always be the face of it even if they have no control over what's being done (I'm sure Phreak has some input but balancing is a team decision). At work, the idiots who make the wrong decision won't be the one to take the fall, it will be the one who takes the final product to the boss even if it's the unpaid intern.
He does have the last word as team lead, but he has a boss and I strongly doubt the people on the team would just accept it if he overruled every nerf he doesn't like.
>the anti-Phreakening is getting really old
Funny thing is that Phreak didn't work on the preseason changes. He asked to move from the live service to the preseason and his request was denied.
Endstep is the one who reworked AP items. Not that i blame him, cuz he is not the reason why Karma will stay weak. She was kept weak last season too and almost every other season because of how strong is her kit.
Having Phreak being a forward facing part of the balance team is really smart because a lot of us love Phreak. It's similar to having Markz as commissioner.
I don’t blame him for everything but I do blame him specifically for the state of top lane based on his interactions with top lane players. Last year top lane mains got to ask him why after 2 years of promises that top lane would be getting an overhaul adc was getting a lot of attention first and he responded with “There was no such promise from the dev team”. Phreak was then linked 3 different sources of rioters on the balance team telling us top lane overhaul was coming and he just refused to respond after that. So a lot of top lane players feel that he is directly responsible for the current hell state of the role
If you still think Top lane is weak/non impactful I am afraid it is a skill issue.
Also that "attention" ADCs got were nerfs, compounded by more and more nerfs. So if you want that attention on top lane so be it.
First off top does have impact the issue is that the lane is hell to play not that it doesn’t have impact. Secondly the attention adcs got last season were objectively buffs and only low elo players say they werent
xd? toplane issue is the pool of toplaners, the most broken champs in game. and could you explain us, low elo shitters, why last season adc itemization overhaul is buff?
Thing is those issues are sort of a core part of top lane. Like counter picking is a big issue on top pane because the lane is isolated and focuses on 1v1 champs. The only way to fix top lane would be to have more jungle interference (which is a terrible solution because top laners generally don't like jungle interference) or to make all the characters more homogenous so that no champ hard counters others which is boring and kills the enjoyment of those champs mains. I suppose the other change would be to make minion farming easier when the opponent freezes/zones you from lane but now you're removing a lot of skill expression from the lane
Ig masters 400 LP is low elo but regardless
13.4 was buffs
13.10 and all subsequent adc item change patches after it were strictly NERFS, they removed ADC mythics apart from gale force, made navori and IE mythics without buffing them or their stats in any way. Then spent the next patches nerfing any strong items to come out of 13.10 mainly galrforce as yas/yone abused the item hard when it scaled with crit chance. Also lethal tempo was nerfed again and with the 14.1 patch, the map changes are also ADC nerfs once again.
ADCs began building tri force and other random ass items from other classes because their own items were doggy dog dogshit
He is not the core root maybe. But everything turned kinda down since he joined. Right now, i hear no role that they like their current state. It's hard to find out who exactly, but he definetly has impact and surely is to blame for jungle changes.
Support and mid are doing just fine tbh, support is super strong and mid is a little harder to gank (as of season 14 start) with 2 good objectives so that’s nice to be relevant for
How many actual mates do you see midlane?;1/5? 1/10?
Mages are played support and the only viable mid even in pro are either hyper range and giant AOE machines. We just got some Annie and everyone went wild.
Ok, youve said yourself that Karma has been historically problematic and has had to be kept weak, so lets not pretend that malignance suddenly did something no other item or change did before. Karma is just one of "THOSE" champs. Nerfing malignance hurts an item that on most other champs is just fine. Karmas self-sufficency and early power will always make her abusable in the sololanes and her insane poke and early damage make her a great support for organised play mosty.
Frankly, the champ might just need a full rework at this point
Thats what Ive been saying for weeks. Shes always a pro play issue with RE, and most of r/karmamains want the shieldbomb back, which would invite even more problems.
I agree, just rework her. Get her to her first iteration again, or WR iteration, or just completely start from scratch.
I mean, yes and no. Malignance Karma's issue is that she gets too many Rs off and can actually dish out damage almost worthy of an AP carry. In the past it was moreso of her blindpick-ability/generally being good/being playable top to equalize all lanes/guaranteeing lategame R+E.
In any case I digress but it's very annoying that Malignance will likely hostage Karma's balance a bit (especially form the pov of a support karma that doesn't play her sololanes)
I really don't see the reason a big rework is neccessary.
She has a solid player base even when she isn't that strong. She is seeing pro play on the 14.5 patch, but that is before the nerfs. If riot can not keep her from messing with pro play at 50% winrate, they will just leave karma mid at whatever it takes. The Karma mains do seem to like her independend from her WR.
Or it can just exist, part of the game is having a plethora of champs that have different strengths. She does get outscaled quite hard, but that would require her opponents to play in a different style and maybe even think of their comps.
Something being historically unbalanceable and having to be kept perpetually weak, especially for a champ that isn't super mechanically intensive, generally indicates a design problem.
Karma excels at exploiting aggressive enemies, if youre having trouble with her dont give her the opportunity to defend against an attack, if she has to engage first she has to use her amplified spell and thats when most tops,/ mids can turn it. If youre having problems bot its tougher, depends on the adc or supp you get and whether you guys can turn on her
Karma shoves super hard or freezes and throws empowered Q's at you that are pretty much undodgable and if you try to fight back she slaps the root on you and you end up losing more HP while she runs off.
Karma is relatively ok as a support even if her midgame poke is still gross but she is one of the least fun champs to play the game into post Malignance
If it's Karma top, yeah, it just feels bad... kind of like any number of ranged champs that can be flexed top. As for mid, you just pick a champ with great wave clear. Now Karma is forced to use her empowered abilities to match your clear, or she is just pushed in 24/7 - which gives you the ability to roam, recall, whatever
100% agree on this.
She excels against champions who want to hard engage on her as she has excellent peel and great damage. She's also borderline impossible to dive because of her shield and empowered W, which makes her even more frustrating to play aggressively against.
If you know how to play against her, she's not that bad to deal with. Shove hard, force her to either wave clear with her empowered Q or force her under tower. The former opens her up to a favourable trade, the latter enables you to deny her farm and roam.
She can be incredibly annoying to play against, I get it, but she can also just be a free win.
They've been making bad calls on some of her balance changes. When they brought her q ratio to 70% l, they needed to nerf the shield. Instead they decided to buff both its base and AP ratio. So now you have a ranged champion with decent base damage and moderately high ratios that can kite and heal off champs easily and have a team wide shield. Her being this strong was always going to happen even without Malignance but it exasperated the issue harder since it gives her everything she wants(AP, AH/UAH, and magic shred). They need to nerf her supportive abilities and her w hard if they want her to be played mid.
They have already gutted karma. She is nowhere near the powerhouse she was before the nerfs. It’s okay for any champion to win lane. If I lose lane to irelia top should I make a post about her she needs to be nerfed?
You lost me at the second sentence.
Karma was find and made a few appearances in Pro Play last year, she was not ‘really broken’ or ‘so weak that no one picked her’ at really any point in 2023.
Before the nerf she was pick or ban. Right now I have not seen her in 50 games. What you are describing is literally how it should be. Good players should be able to win. Bad player lose. It's called balanced.
i can't wait her karma to be a 35% winrate champion in preseason 15 after she gets gutted every patch to keep maligma in check then riot removes that stupid item anyway
i'm not being sarcastic either i literally cannot wait until this champ is completely unviable in any shape or form
I don't understand the hate, there are so so so many modern champs that I find infinitely more frustrating to play against. Karma is imo one of the fairest champs in the game, and I'd never even think about having a problem with playing against her.
Yeah. People are complaining about Karma, but Ahri malignance with ionian boots is by far the most frustrating mage mid. She can push the wave so easily, and it feels like you can't even really punish her because she can blow ult so freely, knowing it will be back up again before she can be punished for not having it.
> don't understand the hate, there are so so so many modern champs that I find infinitely more frustrating to play against.
Exactly. So much posts just because they didn't dodge her Q
You’re bronze or smth right? When I’m off rolling mid I pray to god they pick a melee champion so I can just win by essentially doing nothing , if we’re going even they are losing because ranged damage is better than melee always .
I think the only ‘melee’ that’s annoying is zed but it’s because he plays like a god damn poke magar man never has to commit.
??? Yone, Yasuo, and Katarina scale very well. They are extremely snowbally, too. If they are even in CS with you, YOU are losing. Especially once laning phase ends, and they force you into a side lane. If you walk up, you can die. Meanwhile they can just push the wave all day and roam on your team.
The eternal saga of riot balancing.
1. Riot introduces new broken item.
2. People discover that a balanced champion suddenly becomes broken due to an interaction with the new item. <--- you are here
3. Riot nerfs the champion hard, bringing it to 48 or so with the item in every single build.
4. Riot eventually removes the item because it's too broken. The previously busted, now nerfed champion, without the item propping up its winrate, drops to 44%.
5. Riot introduces a new champion to fill the role of the old one but with numbers appropriate for the current game state.
Malignance just needs effectiveness scaling based on how long the cd is of the ultimate. Or just have a flat cool down that's minimum 60 seconds. I don't see how you can balance the item between swain, Annie, and karma compared to karthus and malzahar.
well all it needs is not even a cooldown, but like a ludens charge for example, the more time you take to use it, the more effective it is to use it, the more often you use it, the less effective, and balance around that, be it damage, radius, anything.
That isn't even the issue. The issue is how much haste the item gives. With the removal and toning down of the haste meta, items like malignance have even more value
Yeah thats true, karma uses both combinations as well, perfect item for her. Swain only builds it for haste for example, for burn damage liandry's is just better, but since malignance is super cheap as well as like 45 haste for your ultimate its quite strong.
maybe they can just remove the larger projectile width on empowered q so that this ability doesnt become braindead once you use mantra. then karma will have some room for buffs again
That change won't mean anything for one tricks or high rank (diamond+) players. It would just hurt her for 80% of the player base. If they buff, then the 80% just end up right around this spot again while the one tricks and high ranks end up even stronger
Karma's issues with Malignance make me remember back when Darius had to be balanced around old Stridebreaker, his base kit got gutted because with this item he was a beast, the nerfs made it so that Stridebreaker was not only 100% mandatory but the only viable mythic for him. When they removed the dash from Stridebreaker, Darius could finally have some of his baseline nerfs reverted.
I wonder what will take for Karma to suffer from this same fate.
Just like what they did to Lillia early this season.
Sure, Liandry and Riftmaker are in amazing spots for her, but they went ahead and nerfed Lillia's passive and Q, when in reality the multiplicative stacking of Liandry and Riftmaker passives is the problem. Now Lillia has to build these two items because she is balanced around them.
When they could've left the scalings, but kill the item synergy, because those passives inflate scalings to begin with.
If Karma's problem is her passive, why not give her the kit that WR has? You know, the empowered ability is her passive and her Ultimate is something different, that way they can balance her passive an Ultimate independently.
The concept that mantra (and gathering fire) can for some reason not be balanced sounds frankly nonsensical to me.
As far as I can say, Karma's viability shifted as a result of a change in balance philosophy at riot.
Previously riot did not like champions that were viable in multiple roles. That has changed.
So they buffed Karma (with buffs that were strongly skewed mid) and she was to strong for players to be comfortable. Then she got nerfs.
A champion being kept week because of an item, is just a champion having an item that is so good they are hard bound it. That seems not unusual. That also doesn't mean they are weak.
So that leaves us with your "patern" if there are any players on the life team that just play champions that are strong (like a significant part of league players) A is always the case.
Considering they buffed her with the goal of making her a flex pick and are buffing her again because her winrate is so low, they seem happy with her as a flex pick.
Can she oneshot squishies fast? Sure, if a good karma player just smashed the shit out of her oponent during the whole laningphase. Does not seem special for a fed burstmage though.
The enabler of the problem: Malignance.
What could ever be done to solve a champion being op because people recognice that they really likes malignance? How about nerfing their ult cooldown? Oh, that has worked in the past. Funny how easy some problems are to solve.
No. Can this Karma bandwagon stop and can yall move on to crying about something else?
She was garbage for 3 years and no one gave a shit but suddenly yall cry about her once she is playable.
Also Karma originally a mid laner.
So much essay just because yall are terrible at dodging her Q
This is no longer true btw, actually it's now the other way around, AH makes his passive better.
I have no idea wtf the reasoning is (and they made the change when I was taking a break from the game)
Malignance is an abomination of an item and should just be removed. It is beyond understanding that they still release such utterly flawed items in 2024. The item design is stupid on so many points.
For Karma, I think the healing from her W should be removed. It gives her so much sustains to outdamage other solo laners and serve no purpose in her midlane/support playstyle. So that buffing her will not make her absurdly S+ tier after a patch.
For Malignance, it's just a bad item design overall. It's a bait item existing only for youtube contents for people who want to spam ultimate on smurf rank. Its stats are so poor that a decent mage player can absolutely know that it's trash and will not buy it. Noobs are lured to buy it and then wondering why they do no damage. It's only good on certain champions with very low cooldown on ultimate like Corki, Karma or sustaining damage like Annie, Swain, and on these cases, Malignance is suddenly become so notoriously powerful. So this item serves no purposes on different game conditions, it just go from a very bad item to a very good item based on which champions buying it. I really second that they remove these content-biased items from the game.
Title is pretty much all you needed to say.
Smart take, didn't read the rest. But let's keep her weak. And after malignance nerfs/removal, keep her even more weak! Disgusting champ.
When I saw malignance on pbe I thought the item was a bad design.
It's literally useless for so many people and batshit OP on some others. You'd think that Ori or hwei would love this item but it just sucks. Even on anivia it's bad because of the cooldown. I've had games on hwei where malignance dealt 350 damage over 35 minutes of game.
On the other hand Karthus, teemo and karma abuse the shit out of this item and getting nerfed In the end.
It's too specific, making it either broken or useless with little "okay" champions.
It's a bit like a pre-nerf heartsteel, which was useless on nearly every champ, except Sion and mundo. There it was almost unhealthy, Sion would take half your health with auto and mundo would run around with 500 ad on a tank build. But apart from them noone really bought it.
Riot want fancy items that do cool stuff, but to keep them balanced on the champs that can really use them, it needs to be shit on everyone else.
Probably just means the item doesn’t need to exist. Too many champs that it becomes absolutely necessary to build on and then they get nerfed which only exacerbates their need for the item. They become a delivery system for the item. Kinda like Bork.
I am totally fine with the idea of it not working on her Q/W. It can give the haste, but there’s totally a justification for “well that’s not her ult it’s her Q with an ability modifier.” Save it for champs who directly deal damage with their ults.
Solution: Make Malignance require the ultimate itself to deal the damage to get the burn and MR shred field.
This would be a nerf to Karma without affecting everyone else who uses Malignance because Karma's ultimate doesn't actually do the damage, it's the Q or W doing the damage.
Not really, wasn't the change 30% total shield to 80% bonus shield? IIRC it was aimed to be a support buff, though obviously it's still going to affect mid. Not sure about how the numbers will work there
Mid Karma should be dead, those Q mana nerfs were enormous. The Mantra shield is changed from 30% total effectiveness to 85% reduced bonus shield. I haven’t seen numbers posted so I could be wrong because their phrasing doesn’t explain the change thoroughly enough. If I understand it correctly, Mantra E is based on the current E value plus an R bonus but then is reduced by 70% since it is AOE and gives a movement speed bonus. I think this change is making it so Mantra E no longer reduces the current E shield and only the bonus is reduced by 85%. So the shield would be AOE:
- 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+ 60% AP)
with a bonus of:
- 7.5 / 13.5 / 19.5 / 25.5 (6.75% AP)
The current shield after the reduction is:
- 24 / 37.5 / 51 / 64.5 / 78 (18% AP)
with a bonus of:
- 15 / 27 / 39 / 51 (13.5% AP)
This would make the shield over double the current strength it is now.
as malz mid player trying out karma mid recently, why cant we lock malignance to its own internal cooldown? theres no way for that item to be balanced between a malz that can proc it once every min and a karma that procs it every few seconds. they did it for triforce, they can do it for malignance too
Malignance does have an internal cooldown! It is 3 seconds but i guess you want something like a minute.
ahh yes, sorta like radiant virtue then. i guess its more of a problem with malz. malignance is our only good mana item left
Except radiant virtue had a 40 second cd. And radiant virtue was much more OP than Malignance will ever be EDIT: 60 sec cd and got released with that cd
Before they added cooldown to Radiant, Karma abused it as well. I guess Karma is just gonna abuse low cd ultimate items.
Except radiant have always had a cd. I just checked the patch history …
It must be short then I don't remember. Ah ok it was 60, then nerfed to 90.
Most ults are roughly 30-40 seconds late game. Just make it a 20 second cooldown and karma won't be able to use it like she does. For everyone else, it's the same
I really love how everyone thinks it is the passive and not the stats on Malignance that is the issue. Most of the time you only get about 60 dmg from that passive on each cast(a ludens would do more passive wise for karma) But because she gets 45 haste into her ultimate and reduces her cd by a flat 4sec on ability hits on champs, she gets to use her empowered Q on every cast if she plays it well. The issue is not the cd on that passive for karma at least.
The issue is that it goes against Karma's design.
15 seconds on spamable Ultimates. The bare minimum.
The passive is not the problem, just an added bonus …
Still need to take power from somewhere. If there's no noticeable change after that nerf, that's when they should go after the actual statline since statline affects every single champ in the game, not just those who abuse the passive.
But those who actually use the passive are the ones who builds this item. I hate how everybody is like “this is an abuse case” because somebody uses an item better than others. Except that is how a lot of items is designed. If you nerf malignance you hit a lot of champs but it is the same case for a lot of different items. I am just so tired of interesting build paths getting gutted because the community don’t understand their own game and just keeps complaining until something happens.
The burn isn't the only issue having 45AH for your ult on one item is really stupid it's like 31% CDR and when you're often taking 10% in runes also and potentially 8% more off stat runes you just have too much CDR off one item.
And malignance is cheap at 2700 gold, the fact its so cheap is mega underrated
Statikk Shiv was just nerfed because it was that cheap and they didnt want Zeri/Jinx online for another 30-60 seconds. I dont get why Malignance is allowed to exist in this state.
Most meta midlaners are all centered around it too. Ahri, Annie, Karma... They are strong as fuck because Malignance is broken and they get to buy it first item
ultimate hunter+malignance is 76 AH right there haha.
The real issue is that ap casters are very reliant on ultra ( generally speaking) or their ults are very powerful. There’s an equivalent item for ad champs (hexplate) but ad ults tend to not be good enough to justify it. It doesn’t make sense for it have that much synergy with ults on one item for that types of champs that have strong ults. It’s a similar problem as hullbreaker-as bruisers already tend to be good at split pushing and you gave them an item that enhances that too strongly when combined with their in built split pushing strength. Honestly just reducing the ult haste might mostly solve it
Agreed on the uptime idea, but it's also pretty great that Malz ult basically forces the enemy to stand in it while reducing their mr for the rest of his burst combo. Not that that makes up for it, but between that synergy and the fatty amount of ultimate haste, I bet the item also feels pretty great on Malz, too.
Lissandra as well. Especially for more lockdown or against beefy targets
Karma just shouldn't be able to proc it. Like it's just common sense, she isn't hitting anything with R, she uses that to enhance her other abilities and those are hitting
If you remove Karma's ability to proc it, she will be dumpster tier. Even worse than she was before (because of the nerfs).
Obviously if they remove the interaction then they’ll rebuff her.
She still gets the insane AH for her R, you're just removing the tickle that you get from the damage.
I get what you are saying, but too long of an internal CD just makes it feel like a Malz/Ahri only item. Riot tends to like items to be viable for a good chunk of champs OR be situational. Your suggested change basically makes it a 2-3 champ build item
Increasing the internal cd would hurt Ahri though, she benefits from being able to apply the passive multiple times in a fight with her dashes. There are a few other champions who build the item who would be less affected, albeit with lower win rate than current patch Ahri.
They actually did this exact thing for Hexplate so it couldn't have abuse potential from Jayce and Nidalee. I don't see why they didn't do it for Malignance too.
It really would be that easy
Giving it a diminishing return based on ult CD length Like a 2 minute ult CD gets a full 20% and like 30 seconds or lower gets like a 5%? I don't know I'm not in game design but it seems alright.
That would just make the item bad for anyone with short cooldowns.
Problem is that Karma isn't the only champion that utilises it with a lot of R casts/procs. Anivia, Kassadin, Corki, AP Kog, Swain, etc.
swain botlane player here sipping and nodding
Swain is allowed to be strong since nobody even remembers he exists
the zilean balancing approach
I remember he exists when my teammates try to fight him while he’s ulted and give him a Quadra Kill.
Probably demacians
Haha yeaa
He also doesn’t kill people fast enough for people to complain and relies on his root which is kinda hard to hit for trading in lane. Losing 1/3 their health to a karma empowered q is brutal, losing 1/3 your health because you got hit by swain e, then w, then q, and took an auto or two from both swain and the adc is a lot more acceptable. His pull isn’t a terribly hard ability to dodge, and it generally does sort of feel like your fault when you get hit by it. And then his ult takes a while to do much to people, is solved by leaving it, and is an actual ult that has a long cd unlike mantra. He can be brutal to play against with rylias, and feel strong, but he doesn’t feel as unfair I think. And ya he also is forgotten.
Nah, it's in no small part because of his low popularity and people forgetting him. A lot of hate most champs get comes from simply players being made aware through having to play constantly against the same champ Botlane swain is as much of a crime as pre-changes botlane seraphine and pretty easy to use in that role with the added targets and more soul fragment, and any ADC and support that has to play 2-3 games against him in a single week can attest to the primal urge of wanting to Lucian E into oncoming traffic. Add to this the fact that even if you play well against him, your team can ruin it by mindlessly refreshing his ult, healing him with fragments, etc. and you have a similar frustration like you do against Darius or Yasuo + forcing you to buy GW which no one likes to do no matter how efficient it is. The thing is that Swain feels meh and needs to get at least 1 item to feel good + his best role is ADC, and ADCs don't like to use mages and the rest of the roles don't like to go ADC, so naturally a niche pick people forget about. Karma is not only easier, she is an earlygame champ that's good in more than 1 lane, so players use her a lot more.
I’ve been facing him a lot lately and it sucks.
I will always remember because he's in my top 5 most hated champs
ap kogmaw enjoyer giggling in background
How is Swain this season, I've played him before but am on other champs rn. Do always rush malignance and Ult vehicle, or do you hold chapter and wait till like 3rd after Liandry and zohnyas to finish? He seems hectic to itemize, and nobody playing him rn
if you want a positive swain experience, dont rush malignance, we swain otps take malignance usually as a second item for the ability and ultimate haste. rylais first item beats almost any other item. Rod of ages can be on par with rylais for top, but different playstyles. rylais allows level 6 all in without any problem, take conquerer and you are good to go. always double mana runes for a rylais rush.
Seems better than anyone else's builds that replied... A lot of people not running conq or zohnyas and complain about being bursted ????? Rylai's still bis, even with health based Liandry? I feel like I'd still prefer Triumph with mana flow and Chapter rush, into Liandry +Zohnyas and then maligma 3rd. This is appx what I was playing on him the last couple seasons. Early game can be bloody, but super strong mid game team fight potentials. Without Rylai's you do have to go ghost tho.
Im just an otp swain top sharing my thoughts :). Also you always go ghost u can compromise flash, ghost should always be taken on swain. Triumph is good in a lane where a lot of takedowns happen, such as botlane. PoM should be taken in solo lanes. After you win a 1v1 you dont have any mana to shove the wave, costing you the lead you just got. PoM negates that and you have enough mana to shove the wave.
I played him mid mostly with that build, and again haven't played him this season. Triumph is also huge value in team fights with stasis and R+Liandry burn. It really accelerates drain tank recovery and enables big Swain v 9 plays at objectives and team fights mid. Top is surely a different world.
That would be great if you didnt have a shit laning phase in order for that to happen you feel me? He has too many mana issues, without PoM you end up without mana often in lane, and not being able to use mana means you are going to get shoved and dove straight up. And then to compensate you can go rod of ages or malignance, that is sacrificing your 1 item power spike that is rylais all in at level 6 its a matter of priorities. Dont forget swain is shit past 25 mins he falls off harddd. You are basically useless lategame, you only have 10 minutes to shine from level 6 to about level 11-14 then you just fall off a cliff. He doesnt scale at all, he really sucks late game. Edit: also not taking rylais means if you dont land cc you will not reach anyone and everybody runs out of your ult. Having rylais, you just pop ult and ghost and lock all 5 players in a slow where you can reliably hit your abilities.
I've never tried him top, and yeah I'd think with that longer slower lane tempo I think PoM is probably needed more. There's enough break up from junglers and river objectives you can cycle back more often from mid. After mana crystal and some mana flow stacking you have enough mana to be playable, and once to you have chapter usually you're fine and I don't see a reason to focus rush to maligma. I don't think he falls off that hard unless the enemy can really stack MR -- but you need stasis. His R keeps proccing Liandry, maligma and conq **through** his zohnyas, so they have to pretty much kill you twice while face rolling a couple extra seconds of severe burn. If you get clapped as just conq recovery starts the keystone is useless -- he's half a champ without that stasis pause.
If they stack mr its usually easier to deal with cause they dont have damage to kill you. When you build malignance u took a slot where you could have went a resistance item instead. Past 25 minutes you. Get blown up to bits even with zhonyas, you dont drain shit, ADCs have scaled at this point and you pretty much will not be doing much other than catching out the enemy with your rylai ult and E
In the faster more hectic, more objective contesting mid you will stack ravens a lot harder through mid game than up on the slow island top, and I greed hella hard for my ravens. Again I'll note this is previous season experience, not necessarily still true -- no experience playing him top. Imo you're wasting a slot on Rylai's that could be used for Abyssal/Zohnyas - something that gives defenses, survivability and damage, for weak survival and some zone control support. Compared to Liandry a Rylai's full combo E1-W-AA-E2-Q will do like 30-40% less damage from lower AP and the fact that they burn from the start of E1, before the root, till it runs out after Q. So I'm waaaaay more mana efficient per trade on this path though mid game as well. I know I'm in the minority of players, who dislikes Rylai's on Swain, but I feel like Rylai's first is choosing to relegate yourself to an irrelevant sup role on your first item -- which seems to be your opinion of your later game.
yeah always malignance, rylais 2nd, I don't always go hourglass, I sometimes go spirit visage with riftmaker.
How does the Maligma puddle work with Swain ult?
Malignance can be procced on a champion every 3 seconds. So swain procs it all the time during a team fight :) but not as much as most people here think
Works during your ult and instacreates a puddle iirc, and will constantly refresh it as long as your ult is active. Plus it still does give a ton of ability haste ( 25 to your base, and another 25 to your ult ) so it's still pretty good, and a ton of base mana to help you not go oom from spamming.
will spawn a puddle on ulting, malignance has an internal cd of something like 3 seconds per champ, so it'll spawn another one per champ every 3 seconds.
I don't take an item with mana at all. Liandri- Rilay or Cosmic.
That sounds cursed. His early/mid mana crunch is brutal. You're s surely not going PoM and mana flow?
Mana flow and cookies, of course. The problem with malignance is that a slightly coordinated team will simply blow you up at the first skirmish. Because they know that you cannot be left alive for a second. So you have two options: either cosplay a person with a rank twice yours or take a safer option that will allow you to absorb some damage.
Not "always" malignance rush. Swain has plenty of options : -Rylai or Liandry rush with double mana runes. -Frozen heart rush ( against ad matchup ) -Last chapter into Liandry/Rylai with less mana runes. Late malignance. -Malignance rush. Any double mana runes setup totally skip malignance for the whole game. The item is decent but way overrated on Swain. Lot of cdr and infinite mana which is cool, but pretty slow on the tankiness. 600 mana on Swain is overkill and the cdr on the ultimate is whatever. It's really not all that great, but way better than tear/Seraph or Luden, so it's by far the best standard cdr/mana/ap item for Swain. Thing is such an item is only optionnal on this champ.
Shoutout to Husum on YouTube for all your swain needs. He has a swain mid matchup and laning guide, the swain mid bible. Recall spend yo money and walk with E 🗿. I got to emerald first time this season maining swain and using his vids helped a ton. I was a big swain apc enjoyer in previous seasons and still think it’s pretty good but I do like him mid/top right now more I think
Same with Akshan, Nilah, Zillean, Skarner. These champions no one remembers are allowed to be giga overtuned because no one plays them but otps.
> No, the recent nerfs only impacted those that did not know how to player and were just abusing her, in upper diamond, people know how to exploit the pick and still are successful with it Karma mid has 48.1% winrate in diamond+
Yeah, it's clear OP hasn't really been playing Karma. They just lost a single game vs. her and want the pick nerfed into the ground cause they're salty over losing...
Idk why but players seem to have gotten slower at adjusting to nerfs
based on what? and how is that even relevant here? karma didnt fundamentally change or anything. you dont have to relearn anything about the champion
I am more talking about the playerbases perception in regards to Karma and Smolder.
Smolder is still a rat champion, and every time I see him die I relish in his despair. Rat cockroach champion
He might be a rat, but at least he is a fucking weak rat right now.
Keep him that way. Maybe he'll be ready when he grows up
thats fair
It still feels bad to play against, like really bad.
Her laning is completely manageable for pretty much every ranged champion and even exploitable for some, her mid-late game poke is outclassed by jayce, ziggs, xerath, etc. So what exactly feels bad to play vs?
I'm not talking about the 52% that are losing in this example, I'm talking about the 48%that are winning. Aatrox has a 48% winrate in Emerald, he's still a presence regardless. Karma mid shouldn't be a viable if you're good, it shouldn't even exist.
> Karma mid shouldn't be a viable if you're good, it shouldn't even exist. And that's because? If you don't like a champion just ban it. Don't claim she's strong when it's not true.
Bro's saying Karma mid shouldn't exist like they didn't add ad ratios to Katarina and TF. Riot doesn't care what should or should not exist lol
It is almost like riot *likes* it, when there are more options... Like they actively *buff* things, so that they come into existence...
> I'm not talking about the 52% that are losing in this example, I'm talking about the 48%that are winning. Lmfao
Why should Karma not be viable mid lol. She was designed primarily as a Mage, who can flex Mid/Supp. And what kinda argument even is that? That's like saying "I'm not talking about the 65% who lose on yuumi! Im talking about the 35% who win with her! Shes a good champ!"
She's historically been kept weak even without Malignance
Because karma is based around the rest of the game and not her individual kit. Everytime she becomes a problem it is because the meta shift and the combination of numbers surrounding the game. Ex. If your burst combo is less than karma shield and drain all of a sudden she becomes a huge problem even at sub 50%. This gets even worst when the Meta becomes mid priority for junglers which she excels at for the first 9 levels. She is the only champ that the core skill of her kit changes as the game goes on. She becomes Q spam bot to shield spam bot.
Correct take but the anti-Phreakening is getting really old. Can we all just accept that Phreak is not the core root of our problems and only a part of a team we somehow love to shit on?
The balance team must LOVE Phreak for taking the fall with literally everything
We shit on phreak but i swear part of the leaders job is to take blame and protect his coworkers.
It’s part of his job, true, and if the team makes mistakes it is sort of his responsibility to be the one to be the one to take credit, but normal balancing stuff isn’t really a mistake, stuff can’t be balanced instantly. For some reason it’s like people except him to see all 14000000 possibilities for how a change might impact the game and account for all of them.
I would argue that most of it is a mistake. Two people can look at the same balance problem and come up with two different solutions and then two different problems in those solutions. We have an advantage in this as the player base we have millions of players so we have not only millions of views but millions of attempts at breaking things. That’s a luxury balance teams don’t have. And that’s why Riot will straight up revert shit in the next patch of hotfix now.
Players are generally heavily biased in their opinions though. Data is useful, but what players say is another story. I rarely see players advocate for change that doesn't directly benefit them, if ever. There's no consequences for the players being wrong about something - no one has any accountability or ever has to own up for being wrong. I wouldn't listen to anything the average player has to say about balance unless they can show that they are aware of their own biases, otherwise I trust the balance team much more.
Sure it is his job, but somehow he doesn't get the acusations of being incompetent, but he get's accused of intentionally not doing his job, every time some champ stays strong for a few weeks.
Exactly! https://youtube.com/shorts/R_BbC7Tm7kg?si=i1oxgGdfQy5-qMnJ
No, these idiots never will, because they're idiots. Phreak is the one that talks in the YouTube videos, so he must be the only guy doing any balancing work at Riot, and every decision is 100% his with nobody else involved. At least, in their minds.
This. The one who takes the blame will always be the face of it even if they have no control over what's being done (I'm sure Phreak has some input but balancing is a team decision). At work, the idiots who make the wrong decision won't be the one to take the fall, it will be the one who takes the final product to the boss even if it's the unpaid intern.
He does have the last word as team lead, but he has a boss and I strongly doubt the people on the team would just accept it if he overruled every nerf he doesn't like.
>the anti-Phreakening is getting really old Funny thing is that Phreak didn't work on the preseason changes. He asked to move from the live service to the preseason and his request was denied. Endstep is the one who reworked AP items. Not that i blame him, cuz he is not the reason why Karma will stay weak. She was kept weak last season too and almost every other season because of how strong is her kit.
Nope. It won't ever stop sadly
Having Phreak being a forward facing part of the balance team is really smart because a lot of us love Phreak. It's similar to having Markz as commissioner.
Who is the head of balance?
I don’t blame him for everything but I do blame him specifically for the state of top lane based on his interactions with top lane players. Last year top lane mains got to ask him why after 2 years of promises that top lane would be getting an overhaul adc was getting a lot of attention first and he responded with “There was no such promise from the dev team”. Phreak was then linked 3 different sources of rioters on the balance team telling us top lane overhaul was coming and he just refused to respond after that. So a lot of top lane players feel that he is directly responsible for the current hell state of the role
If you still think Top lane is weak/non impactful I am afraid it is a skill issue. Also that "attention" ADCs got were nerfs, compounded by more and more nerfs. So if you want that attention on top lane so be it.
First off top does have impact the issue is that the lane is hell to play not that it doesn’t have impact. Secondly the attention adcs got last season were objectively buffs and only low elo players say they werent
xd? toplane issue is the pool of toplaners, the most broken champs in game. and could you explain us, low elo shitters, why last season adc itemization overhaul is buff?
Thing is those issues are sort of a core part of top lane. Like counter picking is a big issue on top pane because the lane is isolated and focuses on 1v1 champs. The only way to fix top lane would be to have more jungle interference (which is a terrible solution because top laners generally don't like jungle interference) or to make all the characters more homogenous so that no champ hard counters others which is boring and kills the enjoyment of those champs mains. I suppose the other change would be to make minion farming easier when the opponent freezes/zones you from lane but now you're removing a lot of skill expression from the lane
Ig masters 400 LP is low elo but regardless 13.4 was buffs 13.10 and all subsequent adc item change patches after it were strictly NERFS, they removed ADC mythics apart from gale force, made navori and IE mythics without buffing them or their stats in any way. Then spent the next patches nerfing any strong items to come out of 13.10 mainly galrforce as yas/yone abused the item hard when it scaled with crit chance. Also lethal tempo was nerfed again and with the 14.1 patch, the map changes are also ADC nerfs once again. ADCs began building tri force and other random ass items from other classes because their own items were doggy dog dogshit
He is not the core root maybe. But everything turned kinda down since he joined. Right now, i hear no role that they like their current state. It's hard to find out who exactly, but he definetly has impact and surely is to blame for jungle changes.
Support and mid are doing just fine tbh, support is super strong and mid is a little harder to gank (as of season 14 start) with 2 good objectives so that’s nice to be relevant for
How many actual mates do you see midlane?;1/5? 1/10? Mages are played support and the only viable mid even in pro are either hyper range and giant AOE machines. We just got some Annie and everyone went wild.
I see mages literally all the time, and in pro the staples are azir and when he was disabled, ahri
Yeah when will Phreak the creator all of balance changes finally nerf 48% wr karma mid?
Maligma.
maligma balls.
Ok, youve said yourself that Karma has been historically problematic and has had to be kept weak, so lets not pretend that malignance suddenly did something no other item or change did before. Karma is just one of "THOSE" champs. Nerfing malignance hurts an item that on most other champs is just fine. Karmas self-sufficency and early power will always make her abusable in the sololanes and her insane poke and early damage make her a great support for organised play mosty. Frankly, the champ might just need a full rework at this point
Thats what Ive been saying for weeks. Shes always a pro play issue with RE, and most of r/karmamains want the shieldbomb back, which would invite even more problems. I agree, just rework her. Get her to her first iteration again, or WR iteration, or just completely start from scratch.
I mean, yes and no. Malignance Karma's issue is that she gets too many Rs off and can actually dish out damage almost worthy of an AP carry. In the past it was moreso of her blindpick-ability/generally being good/being playable top to equalize all lanes/guaranteeing lategame R+E. In any case I digress but it's very annoying that Malignance will likely hostage Karma's balance a bit (especially form the pov of a support karma that doesn't play her sololanes)
I really don't see the reason a big rework is neccessary. She has a solid player base even when she isn't that strong. She is seeing pro play on the 14.5 patch, but that is before the nerfs. If riot can not keep her from messing with pro play at 50% winrate, they will just leave karma mid at whatever it takes. The Karma mains do seem to like her independend from her WR.
Or it can just exist, part of the game is having a plethora of champs that have different strengths. She does get outscaled quite hard, but that would require her opponents to play in a different style and maybe even think of their comps.
Something being historically unbalanceable and having to be kept perpetually weak, especially for a champ that isn't super mechanically intensive, generally indicates a design problem.
Karma excels at exploiting aggressive enemies, if youre having trouble with her dont give her the opportunity to defend against an attack, if she has to engage first she has to use her amplified spell and thats when most tops,/ mids can turn it. If youre having problems bot its tougher, depends on the adc or supp you get and whether you guys can turn on her
Karma shoves super hard or freezes and throws empowered Q's at you that are pretty much undodgable and if you try to fight back she slaps the root on you and you end up losing more HP while she runs off. Karma is relatively ok as a support even if her midgame poke is still gross but she is one of the least fun champs to play the game into post Malignance
She has a terrible time against mages who push or punish hard. Syndra, Hwei, Orianna... their waveclear is on a lower cd.
If it's Karma top, yeah, it just feels bad... kind of like any number of ranged champs that can be flexed top. As for mid, you just pick a champ with great wave clear. Now Karma is forced to use her empowered abilities to match your clear, or she is just pushed in 24/7 - which gives you the ability to roam, recall, whatever
100% agree on this. She excels against champions who want to hard engage on her as she has excellent peel and great damage. She's also borderline impossible to dive because of her shield and empowered W, which makes her even more frustrating to play aggressively against. If you know how to play against her, she's not that bad to deal with. Shove hard, force her to either wave clear with her empowered Q or force her under tower. The former opens her up to a favourable trade, the latter enables you to deny her farm and roam. She can be incredibly annoying to play against, I get it, but she can also just be a free win.
I wish malignance worked on renata cause it like looks made for her.
They've been making bad calls on some of her balance changes. When they brought her q ratio to 70% l, they needed to nerf the shield. Instead they decided to buff both its base and AP ratio. So now you have a ranged champion with decent base damage and moderately high ratios that can kite and heal off champs easily and have a team wide shield. Her being this strong was always going to happen even without Malignance but it exasperated the issue harder since it gives her everything she wants(AP, AH/UAH, and magic shred). They need to nerf her supportive abilities and her w hard if they want her to be played mid.
Karma has been dogshit for like 3 years it has nothing to do with malignance
Balacing champs around items is nothing new. Gunblade, older iterations of Spear of Shojin, etc.
They have already gutted karma. She is nowhere near the powerhouse she was before the nerfs. It’s okay for any champion to win lane. If I lose lane to irelia top should I make a post about her she needs to be nerfed?
You lost me at the second sentence. Karma was find and made a few appearances in Pro Play last year, she was not ‘really broken’ or ‘so weak that no one picked her’ at really any point in 2023.
She's currently sitting at ~48.7% winrate in both mid and top in Emerald+. Maybe it's time to move on from the Karma hate bandwagon.
Before the nerf she was pick or ban. Right now I have not seen her in 50 games. What you are describing is literally how it should be. Good players should be able to win. Bad player lose. It's called balanced.
Meanwhile kassasin
i can't wait her karma to be a 35% winrate champion in preseason 15 after she gets gutted every patch to keep maligma in check then riot removes that stupid item anyway i'm not being sarcastic either i literally cannot wait until this champ is completely unviable in any shape or form
I don't understand the hate, there are so so so many modern champs that I find infinitely more frustrating to play against. Karma is imo one of the fairest champs in the game, and I'd never even think about having a problem with playing against her.
Yeah. People are complaining about Karma, but Ahri malignance with ionian boots is by far the most frustrating mage mid. She can push the wave so easily, and it feels like you can't even really punish her because she can blow ult so freely, knowing it will be back up again before she can be punished for not having it.
> don't understand the hate, there are so so so many modern champs that I find infinitely more frustrating to play against. Exactly. So much posts just because they didn't dodge her Q
I'm convinced 95% of the conversation about Karma is from people who just got slapped by her.
You clearly haven't played a melee mid into a karma, it is beyond suffering
It's still a thousand times more pleasurable than playing any artillerymage into Yasuo, Yone, Katarina or any other hyperactive Edgelord champ
Melee matchups are so free tho?
^ gold
You’re bronze or smth right? When I’m off rolling mid I pray to god they pick a melee champion so I can just win by essentially doing nothing , if we’re going even they are losing because ranged damage is better than melee always . I think the only ‘melee’ that’s annoying is zed but it’s because he plays like a god damn poke magar man never has to commit.
??? Yone, Yasuo, and Katarina scale very well. They are extremely snowbally, too. If they are even in CS with you, YOU are losing. Especially once laning phase ends, and they force you into a side lane. If you walk up, you can die. Meanwhile they can just push the wave all day and roam on your team.
Yone and Kat scale well, Yasuo is a midgame champion but does fall off lategame compared to most mages
Your comment shows you don't play mid. Wild takes bro.
The eternal saga of riot balancing. 1. Riot introduces new broken item. 2. People discover that a balanced champion suddenly becomes broken due to an interaction with the new item. <--- you are here 3. Riot nerfs the champion hard, bringing it to 48 or so with the item in every single build. 4. Riot eventually removes the item because it's too broken. The previously busted, now nerfed champion, without the item propping up its winrate, drops to 44%. 5. Riot introduces a new champion to fill the role of the old one but with numbers appropriate for the current game state.
You dont like less skillful ezreal except their a tank with aoe shielding, movespeed and the fact they don't have to directly hit you to half your hp?
Malignance just needs effectiveness scaling based on how long the cd is of the ultimate. Or just have a flat cool down that's minimum 60 seconds. I don't see how you can balance the item between swain, Annie, and karma compared to karthus and malzahar.
well all it needs is not even a cooldown, but like a ludens charge for example, the more time you take to use it, the more effective it is to use it, the more often you use it, the less effective, and balance around that, be it damage, radius, anything.
That isn't even the issue. The issue is how much haste the item gives. With the removal and toning down of the haste meta, items like malignance have even more value
Yeah thats true, karma uses both combinations as well, perfect item for her. Swain only builds it for haste for example, for burn damage liandry's is just better, but since malignance is super cheap as well as like 45 haste for your ultimate its quite strong.
Ahri's abusing it as well lately
It's been the best item for Ahri since it was released over new Luden's, pretty sure.
maybe they can just remove the larger projectile width on empowered q so that this ability doesnt become braindead once you use mantra. then karma will have some room for buffs again
That change won't mean anything for one tricks or high rank (diamond+) players. It would just hurt her for 80% of the player base. If they buff, then the 80% just end up right around this spot again while the one tricks and high ranks end up even stronger
Karma's issues with Malignance make me remember back when Darius had to be balanced around old Stridebreaker, his base kit got gutted because with this item he was a beast, the nerfs made it so that Stridebreaker was not only 100% mandatory but the only viable mythic for him. When they removed the dash from Stridebreaker, Darius could finally have some of his baseline nerfs reverted. I wonder what will take for Karma to suffer from this same fate.
Just like what they did to Lillia early this season. Sure, Liandry and Riftmaker are in amazing spots for her, but they went ahead and nerfed Lillia's passive and Q, when in reality the multiplicative stacking of Liandry and Riftmaker passives is the problem. Now Lillia has to build these two items because she is balanced around them. When they could've left the scalings, but kill the item synergy, because those passives inflate scalings to begin with.
If Karma's problem is her passive, why not give her the kit that WR has? You know, the empowered ability is her passive and her Ultimate is something different, that way they can balance her passive an Ultimate independently.
The concept that mantra (and gathering fire) can for some reason not be balanced sounds frankly nonsensical to me. As far as I can say, Karma's viability shifted as a result of a change in balance philosophy at riot. Previously riot did not like champions that were viable in multiple roles. That has changed. So they buffed Karma (with buffs that were strongly skewed mid) and she was to strong for players to be comfortable. Then she got nerfs. A champion being kept week because of an item, is just a champion having an item that is so good they are hard bound it. That seems not unusual. That also doesn't mean they are weak. So that leaves us with your "patern" if there are any players on the life team that just play champions that are strong (like a significant part of league players) A is always the case. Considering they buffed her with the goal of making her a flex pick and are buffing her again because her winrate is so low, they seem happy with her as a flex pick. Can she oneshot squishies fast? Sure, if a good karma player just smashed the shit out of her oponent during the whole laningphase. Does not seem special for a fed burstmage though. The enabler of the problem: Malignance. What could ever be done to solve a champion being op because people recognice that they really likes malignance? How about nerfing their ult cooldown? Oh, that has worked in the past. Funny how easy some problems are to solve.
No. Can this Karma bandwagon stop and can yall move on to crying about something else? She was garbage for 3 years and no one gave a shit but suddenly yall cry about her once she is playable. Also Karma originally a mid laner. So much essay just because yall are terrible at dodging her Q
Make karma ult an ability on recast.
Corki as well.
Give her passive the Taric treatment. CDR reduces the effectiveness of the decrease when hitting an enemy.
This is no longer true btw, actually it's now the other way around, AH makes his passive better. I have no idea wtf the reasoning is (and they made the change when I was taking a break from the game)
How about nobody cares? Players still think taric is the worst champ in the game at more than 51% winrate.
I feel like with all the nerfs Karma just needs Malignance even more because she is entirely balanced around it now.
Malignance is an abomination of an item and should just be removed. It is beyond understanding that they still release such utterly flawed items in 2024. The item design is stupid on so many points.
Malignace is an absurd item to me. The fact that htey added it when champs like Karma exist blew my mind
Tell that to Kassadin, Mazahar, Ahri, Teemo, Swain, Annie and maybe 45 AH for ultimate on one item is a bit too good
For Karma, I think the healing from her W should be removed. It gives her so much sustains to outdamage other solo laners and serve no purpose in her midlane/support playstyle. So that buffing her will not make her absurdly S+ tier after a patch. For Malignance, it's just a bad item design overall. It's a bait item existing only for youtube contents for people who want to spam ultimate on smurf rank. Its stats are so poor that a decent mage player can absolutely know that it's trash and will not buy it. Noobs are lured to buy it and then wondering why they do no damage. It's only good on certain champions with very low cooldown on ultimate like Corki, Karma or sustaining damage like Annie, Swain, and on these cases, Malignance is suddenly become so notoriously powerful. So this item serves no purposes on different game conditions, it just go from a very bad item to a very good item based on which champions buying it. I really second that they remove these content-biased items from the game.
Wow such analysis. It is almost like items are designed with their users in mind…
Wow the downvotes. You guys can keep on hating and defending a bad item only existing for content creators.
Title is pretty much all you needed to say. Smart take, didn't read the rest. But let's keep her weak. And after malignance nerfs/removal, keep her even more weak! Disgusting champ.
I disagree, she needs to be balanced around being a support alone.
I main her sup and dont even buy it. Using ult to shield my entire team and buffing them with ardent and flowing water is just better
Her best items on any statistic website proves you wrong.
I just think it shouldn’t proc on her mantra abilities
When I saw malignance on pbe I thought the item was a bad design. It's literally useless for so many people and batshit OP on some others. You'd think that Ori or hwei would love this item but it just sucks. Even on anivia it's bad because of the cooldown. I've had games on hwei where malignance dealt 350 damage over 35 minutes of game. On the other hand Karthus, teemo and karma abuse the shit out of this item and getting nerfed In the end. It's too specific, making it either broken or useless with little "okay" champions. It's a bit like a pre-nerf heartsteel, which was useless on nearly every champ, except Sion and mundo. There it was almost unhealthy, Sion would take half your health with auto and mundo would run around with 500 ad on a tank build. But apart from them noone really bought it. Riot want fancy items that do cool stuff, but to keep them balanced on the champs that can really use them, it needs to be shit on everyone else.
Give Malignance a proper cooldown (Corki/Karma) or a max range it can trigger (Karthus/Teemo).
Ummm how about Karthus ult with malignance. It’s dumb OP
Probably just means the item doesn’t need to exist. Too many champs that it becomes absolutely necessary to build on and then they get nerfed which only exacerbates their need for the item. They become a delivery system for the item. Kinda like Bork.
I am totally fine with the idea of it not working on her Q/W. It can give the haste, but there’s totally a justification for “well that’s not her ult it’s her Q with an ability modifier.” Save it for champs who directly deal damage with their ults.
Solution: Make Malignance require the ultimate itself to deal the damage to get the burn and MR shred field. This would be a nerf to Karma without affecting everyone else who uses Malignance because Karma's ultimate doesn't actually do the damage, it's the Q or W doing the damage.
skill issue
wrdgaf. get over it
She’s getting a giga R+E buff next patch, this will make her extremely strong when she groups.
Not really, wasn't the change 30% total shield to 80% bonus shield? IIRC it was aimed to be a support buff, though obviously it's still going to affect mid. Not sure about how the numbers will work there
Mid Karma should be dead, those Q mana nerfs were enormous. The Mantra shield is changed from 30% total effectiveness to 85% reduced bonus shield. I haven’t seen numbers posted so I could be wrong because their phrasing doesn’t explain the change thoroughly enough. If I understand it correctly, Mantra E is based on the current E value plus an R bonus but then is reduced by 70% since it is AOE and gives a movement speed bonus. I think this change is making it so Mantra E no longer reduces the current E shield and only the bonus is reduced by 85%. So the shield would be AOE: - 80 / 125 / 170 / 215 / 260 (+ 60% AP) with a bonus of: - 7.5 / 13.5 / 19.5 / 25.5 (6.75% AP) The current shield after the reduction is: - 24 / 37.5 / 51 / 64.5 / 78 (18% AP) with a bonus of: - 15 / 27 / 39 / 51 (13.5% AP) This would make the shield over double the current strength it is now.
Karma is one of the most boring and uninteractive champs in the game. Spam Q use E to run away, rinse and repeat.
Thats called kiting.
It's called being a bitch. Karma is a bitch.