League of Legends

[Eat_box]

Yeah, the ametuer circuit (instead of being handled rather poorly by 3rd party tournaments) is gonna be handled by Riot and fucking coca-cola. Also, I hope Coca Cola Volibear becomes a thing.

[vealin99]

now that you put it in my head I would like to see that
do it riot

[Verom]

http://www.surrenderat20.net/2013/10/re ... .html#more
Xerath rework coming to pbe when jinx goes live.
With special guest heimer rework.

Hype meter off the charts.

Also one of poppy's biggest issues is that when she gets in. You charge them, Q them. Maybe ult them beforehand.
And then you're just kind of taking up space for 6 seconds waiting for your W or Q to be back up.

[Tatzel]

Karthus's skittles deal a crapton of damage, remember it does double damage on single target champions, plus only having a .5 second cooldown means you can spam massive damage on a person.

But it also has a delay until they explode, and as I already said, all you need to do is simply move to avoid that.
And it deals more on one person? So it's still bad in teamfights.

Wall still shreds MR it shreds 15% MR, idk where you got the idea it doesn't anymore.

Oh right, they changed it to % instead of flat numbers. My bad here.

If you're having trouble with your lawnmower in team fights you're doing it wrong. Get a zhonas and laugh.

That is if you manage to get it off in time, because you can be sure that everyone latches onto you in an instant. And hey, you just have to move away from him a little bit because the radius isn't so big, very threatening, yes.

A champ which can be countered by nothing else than solely moving and keeping your distance (which you will probably be in mid anyways) makes for a horrible champ imo.

The range on Karthus' lay waste is a healthy 875 range. That's longer than bodaciously every basic attack range. So, keeping your distance from Karthus? A very good idea. It also forces your opponent to use mana to last hit, which they can't keep up as easily as Karthus can.

Keep your range from Karthus for his lawnmower, not for skittles. Skittles can be avoided piss easy by just moving to the side a little bit.

Your wall is only good for fleeing/chasing situations, but considering that it has no far cast range, and Karthus is slow as all hell, it's not too great either.

The cast range on his wall is 1000 range, which is huge, and at rank 1 it's 800 units across. Karthus' base movespeed is 335, which is average for casters.

Anivia also has a big wall, she's also very slow, but she got more means for such situations. Most importantly she doesn't need to be in the middle of a teamfight and can keep her range.
Both suffer from the same problem however, as a squishy you will be in the backrow, and helping to hinder enemies to escape or help your team to catch up is fast, because everyone will be long gone before you can cast anything to slow them down.

because when you want to get closer for your lawnmower, you get instantly focused and melt like ice cream in the open sun of Africa.

That's kind of what Karthus wants to do? He wants to go in and die in an area where the enemy needs to pass through, keep them in his defile with his wall and ult if someone is low enough. Karthus has insane amounts of AoE damage, making him great at jungle and non-tower objective fights.

That's hardly a positive point if you need to die to be useful.

You can try and build Karthus a bit tanky so you can try and use your lawnmower in teamfights, but then you'll very likely have mana problems, and your ult has to suffer too. And you will still melt as fast as all hell.

Ain't nothing wrong with RoA karthus. Zhonya's is almost standard. Seraph's has a huge shield. Karthus gets tanky enough in very standard builds. (Oh! And Rylai's)

That little HP burns incredibly fast when you have no resistances, and only 50 AR from Zhonya isn't doing anything for you. Even when you build an Abyssal Scepter. Besides, Karthus builds mana items first, which leaves him squishy for a good time, allowing you to get kills on him more easily.

And what if you're getting chased, like in a gank for example, and you didn't land your wall correctly or your chaser avoided it?
Your lawnmower doesn't deal enough damage for the short time they need to bash your face to a bloody pulp.

That would be the person's own fault for missing it or using it incorrectly. Every champ doesn't need 3 different ways to escape from a fight.

No they don't, but your kit should be able to help you when your escape mechanic failed. Melee range aoe dot and time casting easily avoid ground missiles aren't helping.

When I compare him to Malz, he has no escape mechanics either, but he can cast without having to stop, and he doesn't require enemies to be next to him to deal damage and hope enemies stop chasing him.

Malz also has no CC other than a hard to hit silence and a suppression, which is a channeled ability and his ultimate. Karthus has a massive, easy to hit slow and if they do catch up and kill him, he can deal a fair bit of damage back with his passive.

When someone dies and the opponent escaped, it failed. What good is Karthus passive when he can't get a kill back either? You have an extra 6 or 7 seconds on your respawn timer, and you can watch people being just outside your casting range, cool.
Picking Anivia again, her ult can go wrong too, of course, but more than often it denies the enemy team a kill, which is way better.

If you got your ult up, you can likely even get a kill from it, especially when you play it smart in a 2 man gank and trap them under the turret.
Suppress -> slow, from which you can just Flash away.

You're comparing an ult to a regular skill. Of course the ult is gonna be better.

That sounds like you're saying I can't bring it up. We ARE talking about Karthus vs other champs here; and sure, suppress so far is only appearing in ults, but a suppress itself is way better than a slow, large area or not.

I can't even think of one single mid champ Karthus would be a good counter against, not to mention an okay lineup, he just gets his shit beaten left and right.

Karthus isn't a good counter, he's just a really good champ. Counter-picks typically specialize in one thing to dominate their lane opponent. Karthus doesn't have that. Karthus can, however, farm from a ridiculously long range and poke pretty easily. As for comps, teams with at least a bit of CC work wonders with Kartus. Especially AoE CC like Zyra or Aatrox or Nami.

The only thing which might be useful is his ult - which has a horrendous cooldown.

That's because it's basically a guaranteed kill anytime it's up and 250 base damage at level 6 to everyone on the map? Kind of a big deal. And that damage only ramps up as the game goes on.

you have to keep your distance and can only use your skittles which do fuck all damage,

A spammable 240 (if single target) base damage is hardly fuck all. Put the 60% AP scaling on it and it's insane. (If you want multi-target values, just half the numbers)

And here comes the thing. Karthus isn't a good champ, he's pretty much a free kill. And that's what people do. Kill him, a lot, all the time. I've only seen Karthus perform good once in all my games, but that was because his lane opponent was pretty retarded in general, and their jungle didn't gank mid at all, so he had free cheddar raking.
It's good that Karthus can farm easily, because as often as a Karthus ends up dying, and he WILL die, he hardly gets any cheddar for items, making him fall off hard, which just leaves him underperforming. Your admired 60% AP scaling or not. All he's going to be good for is a wall, and an ult when he's lucky.
I don't even know if you can call his ult a glorified guaranteed kill either. First, it has a 2 or 3 minute cooldown. Then, you need to wait for an opportunity to show. If the enemy team plays it smart, then you hardly will get a chance. Your best chance will be when you have to try and get strugglers, most likely after teamfights.
But it's not like the enemy team won't counter what you in items anyways. Banshee's, Spirit Visage, Maw of Malmortius, Zhonya's when you're AP.


No matter how you (or I, whatever) look at it, Karthus just gets outperformed by everything.
Except Zilean. But I'd say that even Zilean is better than Karthus because of his ult (and his speed up/slow down to a degree), letting your heavy ADC or APC bring out the big guns.

[[Insert Fail]]

I'm not going to bother making a huge counter-argument because I know from Skype that writing this wall of text already burnt you out, but I will say your comment of:

And it deals more on one person? So it's still bad in teamfights.

Is faulty. Teamfights do not always mean AoE. Having an ability that deals double-damage to a single target means that much more burst to whittle down that glass cannon carry.

Karthus is under-played because he's outclassed, but he has a niche. And honestly, if a person has the skill, they can work around his weaknesses. (Also, is sacrificing yourself to kill two other champions really a waste? Sounds like a good trade, especially since you don't lose gold on dying.)

[Eat_box]

All I can tell from all of that is that you've never seen a good Karthus, that all you've seen is Karthus' who get caught out all the time because they're not used to playing a champ without a gap closer. That don't know how to lead his Qs. That don't know when to get in the middle of things.

Karthus is a good champ, I will stand by that, he's just not fool-proof (To a degree. I mean, come on. Free kill on ult). If someone actually knows how to play him, he's a god in solo queue. Same thing with Kassadin. Same thing with TF. All of those champs, played by people who don't know their ins and outs, will fail spectacularly.

[SaintCrazy]

Karthus's passive doesn't mean he's only useful when dead, just that he's kinda expected to die. It's the same deal with Kog'Maw's passive. Their job is to just deal tons of damage before they get focused, because they don't bring much utility otherwise.

[Tetrunes]

Sion's early game is literal feces, but lategame, I'm dishing out 800 MD stuns and shieldsdealing the same in an aoe.

[Verom]

But ap sion is an early game monster?

?????

[Tetrunes]

I must not have been building him right, because i was 1-5 against their lux until about 20

[Verom]

I'm pretty sure lux counters him pretty well, but yeah, 3 dorans rings and mobility boots and go terrorize other lanes.

[Doormaster]

I kind of want to try him ad and actually use his ultimate

[Blake]

I pretty much mained Karthus.(I don't mid much anymore, maining support, so I don't play him as much as I used to)

He isn't a counter to any mids because he doesn't have to be. Karthus doesn't go all in on his lane opponent unless they go on him, or he gets a gank.

Karthus's job is to get farmed up massively early game, land some good ults for other lanes in midgame, and then suicide into the enemy lategame. You land the wall and jump in with your defile on to soften them up, using skittles. When you die, then you use ult and skittle the target you think needs skittling. If the enemy isn't all dead by then, you have a bad team.

I had the most success against Katarina actually. I learned how not to die to her in lane, and then in late game, whenever she ults in a teamfight or a dual, she is immobilized because she is ulting. You can land as many q's as you want, and she has to take it.

Also, optimal build includes, not not necessarily in order:
Archangels(Serephs), Liandrys, Zhonyas, Abyssal, Deathcap

Need I remind you what Sereph's Embrace actually does. It turns a % of your mana into AP. Usually by the time I get it fully charged(which doesn't take long with Karthus), it has ~60 bonus AP, plus the 60 it already gives. Combine that with a Deathcap if you are doing well, and the passive will give 70, along with the 120 it already gives, so 310 AP. Add Zhonyas in there. +120 which means 460 total AP with 3 items. With Karthus' massive farm and participation in team fights, he can be a monster late game if you let him.

The main people who counter him are Fizz, Kassadin, or anybody who can pretty much go under tower to kill him, and then disappear out of range.

[Nancymaker]

And in an assassin heavy meta, he struggles to survive, hence his lack of play.

[Blake]

Well, like I said, I main support now(killmepls), so I barely ever get to mid.

So I don't know exactly how Karthus still fares. But basically, if I am playing Karthus and enemy picks Fizz, I am dodging.

All I know is he is a lategame monster, and you just gotta get him there without feeding too much.