First of all, why would you want to play this Champ?

- the best jungle clear in the game
- A lot of outplay potential
- Your ult is one of the most dangerous and annoying abilities in the Game
- You're even useful if you die!
- scales like a ******* monster

Overall, Karthus is generally hated as he has an insanely fast Clear and can legit gank all Lanes with just pressing R at once, you can AFK farm the whole game and just do nothing but ult and still be more useful than the enemy Jungler.

If you get fed on this champ, you can instantly 1 shot every enemy below 50% HP which is really funny to see :^)

Here are some Pros and Cons about Karthus!

PROS

- Very fast Clear
- Scales very well
- Good early damage to fight enemies and contest objectives
- Can instantly 1 shot targets at 50% HP if fed enough
- Useful after death
- Wall gives Vision
- Doesn't need Leash

CONS

- High Skillcap/Hard to master
- Ult has low Base damage and high cooldown early on
- Invades can really destroy you
- Items like banshees, Edge of Night and Zhonya can **** you over

In this Chapter I will explain the Abilites and how to effectively use them

Death Defied/Passive

When Karthus dies, he remains active for 7 seconds, making him unable to move, Autoattack or to use item effects, but becoming untargetable and invulnerable for the duration as well as being able to use abilites at no cost.

If Defile has been learned, it will remain toggled on for the entire duration at no mana cost.


You can abuse this in fights, especially later on.
As example, you could Flash into the enemy team for permanent AOE Damage and easier to hit Q, besides that, I would recommend dying before using ult if your in a teamfight or at the risk of getting CC'd.

Lay Waste/Q

Target Range: 875
Effect Radius: 160
Cost: 20/26/32/38/44 Mana
Cooldown: 1 Second

After a 0.5-second delay, Karthus detonates the target Area in the cursor's direction, dealing 45/62.5/80/97.5/115(+ 35% AP) Magic Damage to all enemies within, dobuled when hitting only one target.
This Spell does 95%

This spell has a really low CD and low mana cost and even gives you vision for a short amount, abusing that is Key, especially as Cheesing can really destroy you.
Just Q into a bush or somewhere you think the enemy could be to go sure he isn't there.

Wall of Pain/W

Target Range: 1000
Cost: 70 Mana
Cooldown: 15 Seconds
Wall Lenngth: 800/900/1000/1100/1200

Karthus Creates a wall at the target location for 5 Seconds and grants sight around it.

For the Duration, all units who cross it are both slowed by 40/50/60/70/80% for 4 seconds, reduced by 50% over the first second, decaying over its duration and lose 15% magic resistance for the same duration.


This Spell is mainly used early on for vision or as a slow when ganking, the range is really helpful later on as u gain a lot of vision by using it throughout the whole game and when you die, use this ability first if you're allowed to.

Defile/E

Effect Radius: 425
Cost: 30/42/54/66/78 Mana per Second

Toggle Off: Karthus restores 15/25/35/45/55 Mana whenever he kills a unit.

Toggle On: Karthus deals 30/50/70/90/110(+20% AP) Magic Damage per second to all nearby units.


This Spell is probabaly the most important on Karthus Jungle as the abusing of this spell makes a gigantic difference between a good and bad Karthus player.
You have to abuse the Mana refund early on a lot as its really insane and helps so much to clear your Jungle.

Requiem/R

Effect Radius: Global
Cost: 100 Mana
Cooldown: 200/180/160

Karthus channels for 3 Seconds and deals 200/350/500(75% AP) Magic Damage to all targetable enemy champions upon its completion.


This is the Main spell and makes Karthus what he is, the usage of this ult shows, just like your E, weither you're a good Karthus or a bad one.
This spell can be used as an execute or a Zoning tool for important fights and Objectives.

Now we'll talk about the Pathing.

The Pathing of Karthus is pretty much every game the same, start Bluebuff or otherwise just your Botside if you're scared of lvl 2 invades on you, generally I personally just start botside every game and if I think the enemy might invade me I just place a ward at my Topside buff or entrance depending on the enemy champ and just back at around 0:50~ to get back into base, pick up an oracle and go to my buff on the otherside.

Example clear by Kiz: Play Video
If you start Redside you can start Red, obviously without Leash too, then clear Krugs and raptors and head to your botside to full clear that one too, then gank bot and do the same as before, even though I wouldn't recommend this pathing as a Level 2 Gromp is way better than level 2 Krugs and you kinda waste time walking from red to krugs to raptors instead of just going a straight line while jungling, it's way riskier because of easy invades and if you don't manage your mana properly with your E usage without Blue Buff you may actually **** up your clear if you're not used to it.

The other thing you can do is to invade the enemy blue buff level 1 and take it solo if no one is there, then just continue to take the whole blueside and head back to your jungle if the enemy tries to invade your redside or just back, pick up a dark seal and head back into your jungle.

As you can see this Guide isn't that long because there just arent a lot of Karthus mechanics or anything that important, the most impactful thing you can do on this champion is having very good macro and micro, this champ is insanely good at counterjungling especially in the early stages and can snowball out of control very fast, he's probably the most broken champ in the game in my opinion.

Some other information that could be useful:

- the general rule of farming on this champ is Q > Q > AA > Q > AA, get used to this, this is very important to have this in your head and doing it automatically

- something else which is actually pretty obvious but can be quite hard to execute or to think about in the game is just general counterjungling, especially in the earlier stages you can just walk into the enemy jungle and take their raptors for free 90% of the game early on unless they did it and even then let's say the enemy started on Redside on their Redbuff and fullclears and you start on your redbuff and fullclear, after you're done with fullclearing, doing crab and maybe ganking, at around 4 minutes their krugs spawn again with raptors following, so if they don't back or you can just see them on the map you can pretty much take them for free, this is very important especially in high elo and can actually help you in any elo, its something thats pretty obvious and basic but most people just ignore reset timers for some reason, they probably just forget about it tho.