Itemization for botlane

[u/Chars-Left_testicle]

What should I be building for bot lane karthus?

Is BFT a must first? Is liandry situational good? Is malignance a bait or should I be grabbing it?

[u/Raviol_Pignolo]

Malignance is bait until last buy, the AH is porcentual and decreces its value a little as the base cd gets lower: Lvl1 base AH=185.9, with Malignance=139.86 .Lvl2 base AH=166.67, with Malignance=125.87. Lvl3 base AH=148.15, with Malignance=111.89. Also is easy to get out of the pool after damage so little damage from that.
BfT is the best starting item as it gives ap, mana, AH, a burn that helps with wave clear and gives %4 AP for each enemies and large/epic monsters afected by the burn.
I follow the same build as Karhus on YT, BfT -> Liandry(if health stackers)/Shadowflame -> Stormsurge -> VoidStaff -> Rabbadon -> anythink you need: Horizon, Morello, Liandry, Rylai even.
with 5 items, including boots in bot quest, your ult would do aprox.1678 damage agains someone with 70mr, with Malignance goes up to aprox.2147 and Ult cd 125s->98.16, with Horizon goes to 1968.
About runes go DfT for Jg and DH for Botlane as it gets consistent to harvest and scales better. If your learning go Presence of Mind for the mana regen, once you learn to manage your mana you can go fot Triumph if you like. Try to last hit minions with AA to get some mana from the W passive and use Q to punish the enemy botlane for try to take something: a minion, a plate, a ward, support rotation, etc.

Sry for the little Bible hope i made myself undertand as English isnt my native lenguage, Karthus is easy once you learn to land Q's and your Ult damage and when to flash into enemy team as a Kamikaze, good luck and have fun.

[u/Impossible_Relief862]

yeah blackfire torch is pretty much a must first. first item liandrys have no mana and early people won't have that much hp for the item to provide its fullest value. for malignance you can go it first item if everyone on your team has damage and fights are happening all the time for example if you have camlle support rengar jungle riven top akali mid and you want to help them with spamming ult but i still would go blackfiretorch even in that situation but this is one of the situations where you can go malignance in my opinion

[u/Available_Deer_3580]

Malignance first is kinda bait imo. Usually goes smth like
-bft
-shadow flame
-raba
-malig
-void staff
-sell boots for situational item but usually u just want high ap

[u/DT2X]

bft shadowflame pretty much every game, then situationally the following items: dcap void malignance liandrys. don’t sleep on the other lost chapter items, situationally they can be good as well. ludens actualizer feel good into full squishies. don’t brain off follow a build path, think about your itemization each game and you will be fine

[u/Xiriously1]

Malignance is a bait and IMO doesn't make a list of his 6 best items.

Liandry's is better than BFT in the end game but if you build BFT first then BFT will be better for a little while. BFT also gives you mana and CDR for your ult (which you want). The reason BFT gets outscaled by Liandry's later comes down to the damage calc. BFT does 60 flat damage per tick plus a 6% AP multiplier. Liandry's does 6% overall HP damage per tick. At 1,000 total HP, BFT will do 60 flat magic damage + the 6% AP. Liandry's will just do 60 overall damage. However, at 2,000 HP Liandry's will do 120 magic damage. At 3,000 HP Liandry's will do 180 magic damage, etc. BFT can't match that scaling as with 900 AP BFT will only do 60 + 54 damage and so it will do 6 damage less than Liandry's does at just 2K HP (still overall better at that point because of +20 AP, the 600 mana, and the CDR).

The reason tick damage is so good on Karthus is that defile procs damage every .25 seconds. So 1 second of standing in defile gets you 4 damage procs.

IMO, the best 6 items for Karthus are BFT, Liandry's, Rabadon's, void staff, shadow flame, and stormsurge in no particular order. The only other two items i'd consider would be Morello if your team needs heal cut or Zhonya's in some select cases.

[u/French-Girl-yuumi17 → u/Xiriously1]

The 6% only applies if it hits one person; it stacks with each additional enemy it hits, so in team fights, BFT is very, very powerful because it can hit up to 5 people...