Riot regularly updates and reworks their older champions to keep them visually appealing and to improve the overall design of champions that have builds which are either problematic or impossible to balance. Gangplank and Soraka are excellent examples of the former, while Evelynn and Twitch are examples of the latter. Now we get both in the same champion, and she’s one of my favorites in the League of Legends.
Karma’s rework has been hinted at for a long time. Her kit has a few design issues, most notably that her healing is effectively useless because making it any stronger would be too strong for a coordinated team since it is an AoE. It also never helps when one of your skills is as difficult to use in any truly powerful way as her Spirit Bond, and Riot doesn’t like when a given skill has no reason to be leveled before any other.
Recently there was an image leaked of the Ionian champion on the Taiwan League of Legends forum. That image has since been confirmed as being the new Karma. Not a new Karma skin, but the new classic. The splash art at the top of the page is going to be the new default look.
Riot decided that while they were working over her mechanics that they wanted to make her aesthetic fit better with lore behind her. They’re taking away the fans and instead turning Karma into a more determined representation of the fierce will of the Ionian people, the representative leader that they always wanted her to be.
As a bonus that old Karma veterans like myself can enjoy, those who already own Karma when the rework goes live will receive a special skin designed after her original appearance, and the display of that skin also reveals a bit about how her Mantra works now, based on the normal and glowing versions of her eyes and hands.
She looks awesome, and I’m practically holding my breath waiting to see exactly what she actually does in actual League of Legends game play. She has not hit the Public Beta Environment yet, though, so patience is a virtue we must all exercise… even if I don’t wanna.
