Welcome to the League of Legends Champion Spotlight featuring Karma, the Enlightened One.
Karma is a ranged mage-support who can thrive in solo or paired lanes.
Karma players will have to carefully utilize her ultimate, Mantra, to augment her basic abilities and make clutch offensive or defensive plays.
For Karma’s abilities, let’s start with her ultimate, Mantra, which is automatically learned at level 1.
When activated, Karma’s next basic ability will have bonus effects, but we’ll get into those when we describe the abilities themselves.
Unlike Karma’s old ultimate, Mantra just has a cooldown and does not store charges.
Gathering Fire is Karma’s passive. Every time one of her abilities or basic attacks damages an enemy champion, she reduces the cooldown on her ultimate, Mantra.
Inner Flame fires out a blast of energy that explodes on the first enemy it hits, damaging and slowing surrounding enemies.
When used with Mantra, Inner Flame becomes Soul Flare, dealing bonus damage and leaving behind a slowing circle of fire that explodes after a short delay, dealing even more damage in the area.
Focused Resolve links Karma to target enemy champion, revealing and damaging her target over a few seconds.
If the enemy does not break the link, they’ll be rooted in place.
When cast with Mantra, Focused Resolve becomes Renewal, dealing bonus damage and healing Karma while the two remain connected.
Inspire shields and grants a brief movement speed boost to target ally.
If Mantra is used beforehand, Inspire becomes Defiance, which overloads the shield, damaging nearby enemies while shielding and hasting all allied champions around her target.
In early laning, use Inspire and basic attacks to deal some easy damage with no chance of counter-attack.
Once you hit level 2, add Focused Resolve to the combo, and use Mantra on top of it for an even deadlier harass game.
Once you hit level 5, it’s time to look for kills.
Inspire into Focused Resolve makes it really easy to land a Mantra’d Inner Flame.
Add Ignite to the combo and all in all, you’re dealing tons of damage.
Once Karma starts looking for fights outside her lane, crowd control becomes her biggest asset.
Karma rushes into position with Inspire, finds Malphite with Inner Flame, and follows up with Focused Resolve.
The resulting root makes another Inner Flame easy to land and Ezreal picks up the kill.
As the battle continues, Karma baits Ziggs and Quinn into chasing her.
She roots Quinn with Focused Resolve and because she’s landed so many abilities, Mantra is back from cooldown, which gives her a boosted Inner Flame.
The resulting damage allows Ezreal a second kill onto Ziggs.
While Karma has a great toolset for starting fights and saving allies, remember that she is quite squishy.
As a fight starts, she supplies some damage with Focused Resolve and Inner Flame and her team picks up an early kill.
Karma then turns to save Hecarim with Inspire. After that, Flash plus Focused Resolve locks down the enemy Taric for another kill.
However, Karma has overextended, putting herself in range of both Taric and Ziggs, giving away a free kill on her own end.
Always keep in mind what the best use of Mantra might be.
While Focused Resolve is best for dueling and Inner Flame adds the most damage in a team fight, Inspire has its own uses.
Here Karma’s team gets caught a bit out of position, but Mantra plus Inspire grants a movement speed buff to all of her surrounding allies, allowing them to quickly disengage and regroup.
Karma has incredible kiting potential, which can bait enemies into a bad position.
Singed tries to open up onto Karma, but Inner Flame, Focused Resolve, and Inspire all work to keep her safe.
Note that Karma sits patiently near the safety of the back lines, waiting for her time to strike.
Mantra into Inner Flame puts another chunk of damage onto the enemy tank and her team re-engages for the kill.
Karma Focused Resolves Malphite and Inspires herself to run for the back line.
With everyone else out of the way, Inner Flame scares away Quinn and her team takes control of the map with the final kill onto Malphite.
Now let’s take a quick look at Karma as a dedicated support. First, you should always assist your jungler with Mantra and Inner Flame.
Stick around to help him take the camp down and then make your way to the lane. Trust me, he’ll really appreciate the help.
While fighting in lane, good reflexes can make or break a good Karma player.
As the four champions get into a fight, Ashe tosses out Volley.
Karma hits Inspire just in time to block the arrows onto Sivir, resulting in a lot of un-answered damage.
And you can use the exact same combo from the solo lane:
Hit a Focused Resolve and once the root is about to land, toss out Mantra and Inner Flame, which will deal incredible damage to your opponents.
Now let’s put everything together for a big team fight. Karma Inspires Hecarim, helping him initiate with the movement speed boost.
Once he piles in, the enemy team is grouped up, granting a lot of damage and slowing through Inner Flame.
Karma then Focused Resolves the most important target, Ashe, and they continue the chase.
What’s important next is her target selection for Inspire:
She puts it onto Brand, who can use the movement speed boost to land a stun, as well as use the shield to protect him as Warwick’s most likely target.
In the end, her team takes the fight 3-1.
For an Ability Power focused solo lane Karma, I recommend Hybrid Penetration Marks, Scaling Health Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs, and Ability Power Quintessences.
I suggest 21/0/9 Masteries, taking Ability Power and Magic Penetration in Offense, plus Mana Regeneration and Neutral Buff Duration in Utility.
For Summoner Spells, try Ignite and Flash, helping you kill enemy champions and engage or escape from fights.
For a duo-lane support-oriented Karma, I recommend Armor Marks, Armor Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs, and Gold Quintessences.
Then, take 1/13/16 Masteries, focusing on durability in Defense, plus Gold and bonus items in Utility.
For support Summoner Spells, I recommend Exhaust and Flash, allowing you to disable enemy threats and reposition in fights.
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