Looking to play Karma in ARAM? The pre-season 13 patches brought in a lot of changes to the game. One of those was a long-awaited change to the ARAM map, the Howling Abyss. The League of Legends community appears to overall appreciate the changes to ARAM.
Changes have made melee characters much more viable and characters that felt useless in ARAM now have a place. But these changes may have overshot the other way, with the best comps almost being five melee characters running at you, tanking all poke, and engaging with the help of Ghost or Snowball.
Teleportation gates removed the time spent moving from the fountain back to the fight. But to account for this reduced time getting back, they have increased the respawn timer. This makes it so games can snowball more quickly, as the teleportation gates only reach the second tower. Beyond that point, it just becomes harder to defend than before. This makes it so games snowball harder and winning certain fights might end the game much earlier than before.
Then there are the falling towers, which change the map and also create choke points. This may also stop the game entirely in its tracks, as some characters can control those chokes constantly.
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Table of Contents
Karma in the Pre-Season
So how does Karma fare in these new conditions? This meta change should work well for Karma. AOE shield is very useful for juggernaut comps as compared to poke comps where heals are more useful. She can also give movement speed which is also very useful. Karma has typically been very good in a duel situation against bruisers as she can keep them at an arm’s-length with her root and slow and can usually tank the damage done with her shield.
12.23 Performance: Surprisingly Poor
In actuality, Karma is performing very poorly in ARAM, with win rates typically below 48%. The low win rate has been pretty consistent across pre-season, indicating it is not dependent on the map changes. But more based on the item changes. The majority builds Karma in ARAM as an AP carry. Performing consistently better is support Karma and support-tank Karma.
Her win rates are low across all skill levels, except the highest, and the pick rates for this supportive playstyle are surprisingly low, even if it seems to be performing consistently better. This indicates that the tank/support playstyle on Karma is not very enticing in ARAM, even if it would be rewarding. In normal League, people appear to enjoy playing this build, however in ARAM players build support on characters like Seraphine. Full-support Karma could be understandably dull to play, as you are essentially a shield bot, but tank-support Karma should be more popular.
Building for the Team
The clear reason for Karma’s poor performance in ARAM appears to be that most people play her as a caster as opposed to support. As a caster, building for AP, she is a way worse version of most other casters. Karma support builds like those based on Moonstone, Shyrelyas, Imperial Mandate or Radiant Dawn perform significantly better. When building support items, her shields get hypercharged as well as other supportive actives and passives. Played this way, Karma fits well into the juggernaut meta as she can speed and shield her team and lockdown and slow the opponents. This synergizes well with characters that use Jak’Sho, the Protean as it helps them survive longer
It appears that the Karma meta in ARAM has not caught on to the Summoners Rift Karma meta. There, players play her mid lane, and build her as a mix between tank and support based on Radiant Virtue. In this role she is performing very well with an almost 52.50% win ratio. So clearly this build is good. Radiant Virtue also fits perfectly into the current ARAM meta, buffing everyone around you with ability haste and healing per every third second based on missing health. A Karma built this way is going to be disgustingly difficult to kill for bruisers.
Karama ARAM: Items and Ruins
In the current meta, items like Radiant Virtue and Shurelyas are incredibly strong as they empower juggernaut comps. Redemption also really helps in this case. Tank-support Karma has a lot of items options to choose from depending on what you have in your team and what you are facing. As she can choose from tank, support, and AP items.
So what one should be looking for as Karma is supportive items that best support one’s team. Radiant Virtue gives your team ability haste and heals based on your max health, Shurelya’s gives them a movement speed burst. Imperial Mandate gives conditional move speed and additional damage, Moonstone Receiver increases the shields and heals as well. Additionally, Mikael’s blessing removes CC, Redemption heals in AOE, Staff of Flowing water gives shielded allies AP and ability haste and Ardent Censer gives attack speed and on-hit damage.
All the mentioned items are much more useful for Karma and her team than any AP item. And your build can be tailor-made to best support your team. The actives from them complement what Karma brings to her team and further increases her utility. AP items for the most part just bring pure AP which increases shielding power and her damage, but the increase in the shield is less than from support items and the increased damage is likely a loss in the relative effective health in terms of loss shields. So the difference makers are the actives and passives and the fact these supportive items are usually cheaper
This can also be seen in runes and spell order priority. Supportive runes like Guardian or Aery perform better than pure damage one’s Comet and Dark Harvest. There is also an increased win rate based on skill priority where maxing shields first also outperforms her Q or W.
At higher levels where they are performing better, they usually max shield first and play Aery. Even if they still mostly build her as an AP carry.
Support Karma too Boring?
People may have just not caught on to this meta. Or people simply find AP Karma to be that much more fun. Stats show us that AP carries and poke champions are performing very poorly, so AP Karma does not have space in this meta. We recommend trying support-tank Karma and relishing being an annoying unkillable caster.
And supportive Karma with good itemization should theoretically be a perfect fit for juggernaut comps, as she allows her team to survive for longer, catch targets and run people down. But the sample size for people playing that style is too low to make any judgment on her power level. But most likely it would massively bring up her win rate in ARAM.
How to Play it: Balance in All Things
When playing Karama is is important to know how to use her empowerment. In teamfights you will almost always use it on the shield. Shields are much more complicated to use than heals and their use comes down to trying to maximize the effective health it gives your team by timing it right.
Karma while a supportive champion can usually stay in the front line to harass and be annoying with her root. This also allows her to be close to her own frontline to boost them.
Summary
Karma should be performing a lot better than she is. This is due to how people are playing her. What Almost everyone choosing to play her like an AP carry. In the current meta there is very little advantage of doing this and you lose out on a lot of benefits. So if you want to win with Karma in ARAM, put on your supportive cap and play for the team and you will have a significantly higher chance of winning.
