Hello and welcome to my guide on how to play Karthus in ranked games.

First off, I would like to help you get to know all of his Abilities.

Abilities


The order in which I would choose to get these abilities would be as such:

1) [Lay Waste] | (2) [Defile]
3) [Lay Waste] | (4) [Wall of Pain]
5) [Lay Waste] | (6) [Requiem]
7) [Lay Waste] | (8) [Defile]
9) [Lay Waste] | (10) [Defile]
11) [Requiem] | (12) [Defile]
13) [Defile] | (14) [Wall of Pain]
15) [Wall of Pain] | (16) [Requiem]
17) [Wall of Pain] | (18) [Wall of Pain]

With this, you're priority list is: [Requiem] > [Lay Waste] > [Defile] > [Wall of Pain] with the exceptions at the first four levels.
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Reasoning and Logic

The reason I do this is so your Spam Button, your [Lay Waste], will get very powerful and make it much easier to both last shot creeps and do massive damage to enemy champions. Remember, when trying to kill champions, this ability is best used to hit them by themselves. The ability will do TWICE as much damage if you hit one person alone, thus is why it is a great harassing ability. Getting [Defile] next will allow you to help stay in your lane longer by giving you mana for everytime you kill a minion. If you can kill a minion with your auto attacks, that is best. If not, use your [Lay Waste] ability to do so, just make sure you're always getting the last hit so that you build your gold very fast.

When going to kill enemy champions, try to harass them as much as you can without losing your ability to farm minions. If they have a health regeneration item, anything with Health Per 5 Seconds, then wait until level 4 or level 5 to begin harassing them, otherwise you will begin to lose mana on a pointless harass that they will regenerate very quickly. When you believe you have the chance to kill them, begin to harass them once more, then catch them with your [Wall of Pain] and turn on [Defile], then begin to follow them and spam your [Lay Waste] directly infront of their path of where they are running. If done correctly, you will get the kill. If they are very low (below 150 at level 6, below 350 at level 11, or below 500-700 at level 16) and their magic resist is quite low, as well as you are level 6 and have your [Requiem], then use it at a safe distance. Remember, it has a 3 second cast time that can be interrupted with a silence, stun, knock-up, or fatal blow. Plan this as best as you can.

To elaborate on this, lets use for example Sion.
Say you get Sion to 150 health and he has no health potions or Health Per 5 items. Try to wait until his shield. [Death's Caress], is on cooldown/done to use your [Requiem] ability.

Another example would be Rammus.
You get him to even 100 health and you use [Requiem]. For some reason or another, he has no potions and no Health Per 5 items, but he lives through your [Requiem]. You forgot that he has his own [Defensive Curl] ability to help increase his magic resist! It is all about timing when using this ability. After experience, you'll better learn when to use it on whether beginning a team fight, ending it, or simply using it to get a extra kill and help your team push.

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Summoner Spells

For my Summoner Spell Suggestions, I would choose one Supportive Spell and one Offensive Spell.

Good Support Spells: [Flash] | [Ghost] | [Teleport]

Good Offensive spells: [Exhaust] | [Ignite]

Acceptable replacements for either: Double Support Spells (Flash and Ghost, Ghost and Teleport) | Support Spell + [Clarity].

I personally do NOT recommend anything besides these. Even still, I never use [Ignite] or [Teleport] on Karthus, but it is viable depending on the situation.

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Items


(1) When starting the game, grab a [Meki Pendant] and two [Health Potion]'s. This will help you to keep using your spells without going out of mana too fast.
(2) Build into a [Tear of the Goddess] As quickly as you can, using your [Meki Pendant] and a [Mana Crystal] to forge it.
(3) Get your [Boots of Speed] next.
(4) Build into your [Archangel Staff] as quickly as possible to finish it.
(5) Finish your [Sorcerer's Boot].
(6) Build and finish your [Rabadon's Death Cap]

Once you have these three main items, your build will differ upon your game play and the course your game is going.

*Are you being targeted and killed first with little help to your team?*
No, I am not.
(1) Build the remainder of your items to be [Archangel Staff]'s.
Yes, I am.
(1) Build into [Zhonya's Hourglass].
*Is this enough?*
Yes:
(1) Finish with [Archangel Staff]'s for your last two items.
No:
(1) Build a [Rylai's Crystal Scepter]
(2) Build a [Banshee's Veil]

The reason for this is if you're not dying and you're effectively killing the team, you should stack more Ability Power to help clear them out.
If you're not being of any use to your use in team fights because you always die immediately away from the fight, you should get a bit more for defense.
If Zohnya's isn't enough to keep you in there long enough, begin building the Scepter and Veil to help give you Health, Ability Power, Armor, and avoid one spell everyone 45 seconds.

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Runes and Masteries

For my runes, I personally use...

9x Greater Seal of Replenishment - 0.41 Mana Regeneration / 5 Seconds.
9x Greater Mark of Insight - 0.95 Magic Penetration
9x Greater Glyph of Potency - 0.99 Ability Power

For the Quintessence, I switch them up. The two choices/mixtures are...

3x Greater Quintessence of Fortitude - 26 Health
3x Greater Quintessence of Swiftness - 1.5% Movement Speed

You can always get more health in the match from various items, but there are very few viable ways to obtain speed besides your boots on a caster, thus is why I sometimes involve a Swiftness Quintessence page now and then.

Masteries

I always go 9-0-21.


This will allow you to revive faster (30% with your passive ability!) than the opposing team, give you lots of mana regeneration, keep your buffs longer, and buff your overall output of damage.

The only difference would be to put a point into [Exhaust] over the increased critical strike damage on the [Offense Page] if you will be using the [Exhaust] ability in your Summoner Spells, as well as such applies to the [Flash] reduced cooldown on the [Utility Page].

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Final Tips

*When playing Karthus, your job should always be to farm as much as possible and then to be part of team battles in a suicidal way. Yes, that is correct. Using this method, your respawn is 30% less than the opposing team, so even if you kill 1 of their people and you die, you'll be up before they are by a decent period of time.

*Using this strategy should allow you to help get your team some very nice kills, deal massive amounts of damage to the enemy team, and allow your team to "clean up" and push a lane.

*Never try to fight more than 1v1. Even with this play style, you are doing this to give your team a advantage, not to be greedy and try to kill their entire team by yourself. Granted, sometimes this works, but if you mess up it could be the factor the opposing team uses to push your teams lanes. Always fight 1v1 when you are sure you can get the kill, or when it's a team fight where you can spam all of your abilities and make the enemy team fight on your corpse, then finish with your [Requiem].

This strategy seems...reckless, I know. But using his passive mixed with the ridiculous damage output he can do, your death versus the 3 or more the other team will suffer is USUALLY worth it. This will depend on your team. Though, until you get decent with Karthus, I do not suggest using this exact method. Play it safe, get a good farm going with your minions, and use your abilities at a safe distance to help your team and stay alive.

Ranked Stats with Karthus:

It works, trust me.

Thanks for reading my guide! If you have any questions, I'll try to answer them with a example game or a quick message via Game or Message Box.
Enjoy!

Awful pictures they have so much useless empty space. You should cut them.

SOOO I stopped reading there

Thanks for your input! But I like them the way they are.
Besides! The point is to improve peoples gameplay with Karthus and to offer a new point of view with him, not to be judged by the way the pictures are done!

hmmm no mejais on karthus? serious??

It helps for a guide to be aesthetically appealling upon initial glance for most people to even consider reading it. Although your perspectives on how to build Karthus may be viable, the guide as a whole suffers due to unnecessary pictures and interjections that seem more appropriate for Mobafire or another site. Don't be offended by criticism intended to be constructive.

There were some helpful tips that I will implement the next time I play Karthus.

Karthus with mejai is really useful specially with his ult ^^
Ult assist = +1 stack =P

If you read my final tips, I play Karthus in ranked very suicidal. You'll notice I have many deaths, though many kills/a average of 2 double kills per game/some triple and quadra kills as well.

Mejai's would be wasted if you play him the way I do for it only builds 4-7 stacks, which is a extra 60 ish AP max. The archangel staff spam with the Deathcap will give you the best overall AP with my strategy of Flash-Defile-Wall-Lay Waste Spam-Die-Lay Waste Spam-Requiem to kill 3+ and give your team the edge.
Remember, ranked games are all about working with your team to win, no all about you!

If I could record a video of a good example ranked game and host it, I would happily show you what I mean. >.<
Again, it's the way I play him and it works for me in ranked games. I'm almost 1700, so it's effective.

As for the pictures, if you are willing to look away from a decent-rank players perspective simply because the pictures are not to your liking, I don't believe you will improve much whether or not the pictures are changed or stay the same. >_>

I've read your guide and I am one of the judges for this contest. Many judges have talked to me and said they like your guide, and I am here to only enhance the guides to be the best that they can or could be.

One thing I have an issue with is for starters you have no information in this guide in regards to innitiating with your ultimate! Yes with karthus sometimes its best to save your ultimate but in a 5v5 late game karthus' ultimate is absolutely 100% strongest when used to innitiate, and not just grab kills from the 'leftovers'. Yes if the opposing team has banshee's you want to drop those shields before you ult, but that is not very hard with his wall or laywaste or even waiting on someone else on your team to get rid of it. The problem is that the channel time for this spell is so long that you want it to be the inntiation combo'd with the start of the fight, and if you get focused you can cast as many lay wastes as possible instead of wasting your death timer with your ult (This is a DPS optimization). When you do this you're putting EVERYBODY on the other team down by anywhere from 10-30% life (Guestament), instead of just letting your team get rick rolled and then maybe picking up 1 kill out of the 3 left enemies and having the last 2 push a turret or two.

Good guide, learn to crop pictures. Looks are a part of guides, and no offense but the pictures are attrocious, and the fact that I have to scroll left and right to read it is a hassle and just makes me want to not bother.

Good luck and we will let you know about the results.

This post was edited by Chubby on Apr 3 2011 03:34pm

A lot of smart words in a row i must say.

That's nice for a change.

This guy's fucking insane on Karthus. I've played a decent number of games with him and he's really consistent with his play and really good.