[14.15] Diamond Tank Karthus - Slow Death (2024)

Early

In the early game, your goals are to

• Farm waves from a distance
  
• Dive opponents regularly with Defile and force summoner spells
  
• Replenish mana between these attacks with Defile's mana regen
  

Bully Hard: Don't let up! Make the opponent suffer for every minion they wish to get.

Abuse Defile's Mana Refund: Each dive is heavily mana intensive. Early levels in Defile will provide a quick way to get more mana as you prepare for the next tackle.

Farm with Autos: Using Lay Waste to farm will not return nearly as much net mana as farming with autos, so avoid relying on it when you can.

Abuse Aery / Comet: Time your Lay Waste harass with Aery / Comet to maximize the poke damage. It adds up exceedingly fast.

Roam Often: You can start roaming very early on due how abusrdly fast Tank Karthus can clear the wave. You even can just walk into the middle of a wave, clear it, recall, and return to lane in time for the next wave.

Don't Overly Rely on Lay Waste: It's sometimes better not to use Lay Waste during defile tackles, as the mana cost expends a second of Defile's time. Unless you know for sure that you'll land the hit, let Defile do the brunt of the work.

Autoattack During Tackles: At early levels, the autos will nearly as much damage as Lay Waste!

Don't Level Up Wall of Pain Until 7: It has an exorbitant mana cost and the slow it provides isn't as strong as simply getting earlier points in Lay Waste and Defile.

Learn to Efficiently Clear Waves: Let Defile whittle down the whole minion. While it's dealing damage to all the minions, use Lay Waste on the tankiest minion(s). Ideally, this causes the entire minion wave to die at the same time, maximizing overall clearing speed.

Mid

As the laning phase ends, you will start taking on a more aggressive role.

• Initiate fights with Wall of Pain.
  
• Pick a target in the fight and stick to them
  
• Chase down lonely opponents and kill them
  
• Use Requiem to clean up easy kills
  

Dive Headlong: You are the one who decides when fights happen due to the enormously powerful initiation. Lead the charge; you decide when it's time.

Disengage, then Ult: Opponents who barely escape from your defile tackles can be shot down with Requiem. Take note however that Tank Karthus' Requiem is not too strong. Keep tabs on its base damage and use that number to figure out when it's time to ult.

Preemptively Ult Often: It is often better to just use Requiem preemptively instead of trying to execute targets with it. Notice a fight happening in another lane? Just ult anyway. Otherwise, trying to execute targets will usually just leave Requiem on cooldown for half the game.

Duel Regularly: Your dueling power is fairly respectable. If you see someone extending too far to push or too far in your jungle, use your superior mobility with Exhaust to defile them down.

Use Full Defile Range on Melee Champs: You move pretty fast and are tanky, but that's no reason to take free hits. Try to skirt melee enemies at the edge of your defile instead of always standing right next to them.

Get Close to Ranged Champs for Aery Procs: Try to stay especially close to ranged targets when using Defile since this will allow Aery to refresh multiple times over the course of a fight. The closer you are, the faster it refreshes.

Watch Your Mana: Once you're out of mana, you're spent. You have no real mana regeneration outside of lane. Be cautious of your mana bar to make sure you won't overexert yourself before battles are truly done.

Late

You retain a similarly sticky role as the game reaches its conclusion

• Build defensive items for the situation
  
• Make picks on lonely opponents with your mobility
  
• Try to attract the attention of as many opponents as possible in fights

Lead Fights: Continue to start fights when you see openings. You remain the dictator of when fights begin.

Consider Thornmail: Thornmail is especially powerful on Karthus. It's easy to get into close range of ADC's. Once Thornmail nullifies their lifesteal, their death becomes guaranteed, especially with an Exhaust. If you can force the ADC away by yourself, you can gain an immense fighting advantage for your team.

Spam Lay Waste: Your Lay Waste will start packing a bit of a hit now. Feel free to spam it for offense, though be mindful of your mana.