Both Karthus and Cassiopeia have been officially disabled, thanks to the AoE bug I mentioned earlier today. As I said in that post, those two champions in particular seem to benefit in big ways from the problem, though Riot wasn’t clear on how widespread the issue actually is.

Here’s the official post:

Due to a current bug affecting AOE damage spells, we are temporarily disabling Karthus and Cassiopeia. These champions are disproportionately affected by this issue and will be re-enabled when we release a hotfix. Rest assured that we have a dedicated team working to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

This is one of few times that we’ve seen champions disabled thanks to bugs associated with their skills. I’m glad to see it, though. I was getting sick of Karthus hitting me from crazy range.

If you’ve been on the forums lately, you’ve no doubt noticed the threads bemoaning an AoE bug. The bug, as far as I can tell, allows AoE spells to land at a larger radius than their animation. Among the top offenders are Mordekaiser’s Siphon of Destruction, Brand’s Pillar of Flame and Caitlyn’s Yordle Snap Trap. Riot has yet to respond, or at least yet to respond in a post that I can find, so it’s unclear whether the bug is official or not. I will say this – I seem to be getting snagged by farm more traps than I used to.

In my mind, this is a really tough bug to assess. It’s frustrating to get hit by more spells than I’m used to, but I can’t help but think that my paranoia about the bug feeds into my analysis of the bug. Still, I did have a Cassiopeia land seemingly every cast on me, even though I had boots at level one. It’s not totally inconceivable that she was just the best Cassiopeia player I have ever seen, but I’d bet it’s more likely that there is some sort of bug.

Have you noticed the AoE bug? Seen a prevalence of AoE casters like Karthus and Cassiopeia?

I spent most of my time with Karthus early in the week since I had so much to test. He may not have been given a completely fair shake, but, well, I can always revisit him later if necessary. For now, here’s what I think about The Deathsinger.

Karthus is heavily reliant on immobile teamfights. He doesn’t do particularly well with chasing, largely because so much of his damage comes from the Defile toggle. Also, as teamfights get more mobile, his passive loses much of its effectiveness, existing to pretty much only get his ultimate off. His ult is definitely a pain as the game goes on, especially at higher ranks, so it’s extremely important that he stay ahead of the leveling curve as much as is possible.

I think I had the most fun building Karthus kinda tanky. I definitely missed having a massive ult, but with a Rod of Ages and a Rylais it was easy enough to soak some serious damage, all the while dishing back some pain with Defile. Add in an Hourglass and he can be really tough to hang around. His ult still hit surprisingly hard whenever I built him on the beefy side.

Playing Karthus was a strong reminder of why I hate global ults so much. His might be the best of them, if only because he doesn’t teleport with the ult, but it’s still too much unavoidable damage to be dealt across the entire map. If I could change one thing about Karthus it would be that his ult not be castable while his passive is up. It’s just silly that he can be 100% effective from death. I would even be fine with a 50 percent damage reduction while in his passive, but frankly, I think the best thing would be a rework of his ultimate in full.

It’s Monday, which means it’s time for a new Champ of the Week. I was thinking about rolling with one of the remade champions from tomorrow’s patch, but I think I want to have a champion to play that won’t be getting picked quite as often as those champions are likely to. With that in mind, I’ve chosen Karthus as this week’s Champ of the Week.

Karthus currently holds a very strange position in the game – he’s one of few champions that can provide almost as much value dead as he can alive. In fact, I’ve seen some Karthus players use death as a viable carry strat. They allow themselves to be focused so that the teamfight happens on top of their dead body. Once dead, they cast like mad, dropping that humongous ult in the middle of five opponents. It can be seriously devastating.

I have a problem with the concept of global ults in general. So much of the game is knowing how to position yourself – when to run, when to fight, when it’s good to leave lane and help your teammates survive a gank. Global ults circumvent that knowledge requirement, allowing players to be more sloppy with their play.

With the advent of Deathcap, Karthus poses an even bigger threat. His ult has a pretty awesome AP ratio, which Deathcap obviously takes advantage of. Dealing 700-900 damage to an entire team before the fight starts can be catastrophic. If the teamfight then happens on top of Karthus, well, it’s probably game over.

I’ll be focusing on the ways Karthus affects the game, mostly at the early and middle game – I think we all know what he can do late game. I’ll also be taking a look at his best build. Is just rushing all out AP best for that big ult or is some sort of utility a better service to the team. At the very least, it’s going to take some time for me to get used to mouseover casting again.

After that big string of losses I had to do something to make a comeback. Luckily, a buddy of mine logged in just as I was about to pick up some late night games. We queued up for Summoner’s Rift hoping for the best. It went surprisingly well. Our first game was a nice long back and forth with a pretty solid opponent. We had the AOE advantage, though, and my survivability as Nidalee kept me on top of the kill charts and at the bottom of the death count all game long. It was a long fight, but a good one. Our second game our opponents had a Nidalee DC, so we had an easy victory.

Another friend logged in and we started 3-man queueing, though still on Summoner’s Rift. I thought I recognized one of our teammates as the DC from the previous game. As it turned out, the two just had similar names. We went in rolling Tryndamere, Janna, Blitzcrank, Tristana, Karthus. It was an admittedly strange team, but I’d been wanting to play Trynd ever since I bought his Highland skin earlier in the day.

Things started out rough – our two randoms were feeding pretty hard and one of my buddies couldn’t get traction because his lanemate was dying just about every 3 minutes. We were getting outpushed as well, though I was farming well bottom and getting a few kills. Around the 20-minute mark I was up 7-0, but my team had died something like 12 times with no kills. We were also down four towers.

By 35 minutes things looked grim. Our Karthus was now 1-9, Janna was something similar if not worse, and we were down two inhibitors. I still hadn’t died, though, and was flying high on a good farm with 12 or so kills. We kept trying to defend, and though my team was dying often, we were steadily holding them back. They did get one break and bring down all the inhibitors. From there we decided to just stand and fight at the nexus. They would rush in and beat on a tower until Janna could blow them back and we’d get a few kills. Eventually, though, they brought down both towers.

What I’m about to tell you is a little surreal, and I don’t mean to suggest you can win every game if you just stick it out. Sometimes it’s just lost. For whatever reason, though, we decided to stay and fight. After they killed our second nexus turret, we managed an ace. Obviously we couldn’t push, so it was back to defense and trying to let inhibs respawn. Time after time the other team would roll in and time after time Janna would blow them off nexus and we would somehow manage to ace them (I think my massive farm had something to do with it). Slowly our inhibitors respawned and we kept acing them further and further toward the base. In the final fight, our opponents had to split to protect two lanes that were being pushed by creeps. We killed two of their teammates and pushed straight to nexus for the win. It was one of the most satisfying victories I’ve had (ending 25/0 as Trynd certainly helped).

As much as it hurts to lose those epic fights, it feels just as good to be on the winning side after a long losing streak, which is a big part of my continued enjoyment of this game.