Counter Guide

How to Beat Karma

Matchup Guide · Evergreen · 3 Counter Picks

Karma doesn't have a big moment. She has a hundred small ones, and by twenty minutes you've lost all of them.

She's an enchanter who plays like a mage, so she's the rare support who can just win a lane on her own. The poke is real damage, the shield turns a losing trade into a won one, and the speed she hands out means her team arrives at every fight first. None of it is flashy and none of it is a single moment you can point at. The counterplay is a decision about what kind of lane you're going to play, and it has to be made before the wave has been pushed twice.

Matchup Snapshot Karma, the Enlightened One

Where You Meet Her Bot lane, and occasionally mid

Damage Type Magic, arriving steadily

Why She Is Frustrating The health never comes back

Mobility Fast, and so is everyone near her

Biggest Threat Mantra [R]

Hardest Counter Braum

What a Counter Needs

Sustain, because a shield doesn't undo what she already did
Range, or a way to reach her past the minions
A reason for her to spend mana she can't spare

Patch 26.18 Matchup Data

Who Beats Karma on Patch 26.18

Best Picks Into Karma

Braum1,223 games55.3%
Rakan969 games55.1%
Leona2,466 games54.2%
Thresh4,556 games53.6%
Nautilus3,587 games52.9%

Picks Karma Beats

Camille713 games45.0%
Neeko824 games47.5%
Morgana2,563 games47.9%
Swain1,233 games48.3%

Win rates are for the champion listed, playing support against Karma. They come from Nerfplz's own ranked solo queue games on Patch 26.18, Silver and above, 64,487 Karma games in all. Only matchups that show up in at least 1% of those games are listed.

Karma Overview

Strengths: What Makes Her Dangerous

The poke does real damage. This isn't chip. An empowered rotation takes a serious piece of a health bar, and there's no support in the game who has to respect her less than they think.
The shield arrives with speed attached. It's mitigation plus a repositioning tool, so a trade she was losing turns into one she walks out of.
She's strong from level one. Most enchanters need time. She doesn't, so the early wave states are unusually dangerous against her.
She helps her team get there first. The map speed is the part people underrate. Her team arrives at objectives together and yours arrives in pieces.

Weaknesses: Where You Get In

A shield doesn't heal. Damage she prevents is prevented; damage she didn't is permanent. Against a lane with real sustain the arithmetic stops working for her.
Mana is her real limit. Everything good she does is expensive, and a lane that forces her to keep spending is a lane where she eventually has nothing to press.
She can't start a fight. The root has to be held and it can be broken by simply walking out of range, so she has no way to create the opening her damage would punish.
She's squishy and easy to reach. There's no escape beyond the speed boost, and a champion who can cover that distance in one motion is a champion she has no answer to.
Other enchanters overtake her. The lead she builds early has to be converted, because the version of the game where nothing happens for twenty minutes isn't the one she wins.

Countering Karma

Based on the strengths and weaknesses above, beating Karma comes down to champions who can accomplish at least one of the following:

Bring healing rather than shielding. The direct answer to poke that sticks is health that comes back. Trading shield for shield against her is agreeing to lose slowly.
Punish the mana. Every empowered rotation costs her real resources. Two or three of them and the lane changes character completely.
Engage instead of trading. She has no way to stop somebody who's already on top of her, and no way to punish the approach if it happens quickly enough.
Don't stand in the poke to farm. The CS taken at the edge of the wave is the most expensive CS on the map against her. Take the safe ones and let the rest go.

If you're already locked into the matchup without any of those tools, these strategies still work:

Playing a Bad Karma Matchup

Buy the sustain component on the first back rather than the damage one. It looks passive and it's the purchase that decides whether the lane is playable at eight minutes.

Break the tether by walking and keep the dash. Saving the mobility for the follow up rather than spending it on the root is the difference between escaping a trade and escaping the fight after it.

Play for the second objective rather than the first. Granted, her team gets to the first one faster and there's usually nothing to be done about that, but the speed advantage is a lot less useful once both teams are already standing there.

Best Karma Counters

Wall off the poke, engage straight through the shield, or beat her at the range she's playing at.

Braum Walls Off The Poke

Her lane is Inner Flame [Q] thrown again and again, and Inner Flame [Q] is a projectile. Unbreakable [E] intercepts projectiles from the direction Braum raises it, so the bolt meant for his carry bursts on his shield, and the first hit from a champion does no damage to him at all.

Concussive Blows [Passive] closes it out. Winter's Bite [Q] lands the first stack from about 1000 units, his marksman's basic attacks add the rest, and the fourth stuns her. A shield doesn't stop a stun.

Rell Engages Through It

A shield does nothing about crowd control, and Karma has no tool at all for somebody who's already standing next to her.

It converts the whole matchup. She wants a lane decided by a hundred small exchanges, and this is a lane decided by one.

Senna Wins The Range War

She fights the same fight from further away and she gets stronger for doing it (not something Karma can say).

The healing on top of that closes the other half. Poke that gets undone is just mana spent.

Itemizing Against Karma

The first is the matchup and the rest are for the fights the lane turns into:

Serpent's Fang is the item that changes what her team is allowed to do, since the shield is the reason their carry survives the opening of a fight rather than a bonus on top of it. Mercury's Treads is aimed at the root (the only piece of hard crowd control she owns, and so the only piece worth building against). Banshee's Veil suits whoever is being poked at most, because it blocks the leading part of her rotation and the rest of it does much less on its own. A Control Ward is here because the speed she hands out is worth most when nobody sees her team moving, and the cheapest way to take that back is vision on the path rather than on the objective.