Karthus·Top Build

Most Popular

If you want to use the most popular Karthus Top build, you should take Exhaust and Teleport as your Summoner Spells. For runes, you should pick First Strike as your keystone, followed by Magical Footwear, Future's Market and Cosmic Insight in the primary tree, as well as Eyeball Collection and Ultimate Hunter in the secondary tree. For rune shards, you want Adaptive Force in offense, Adaptive Force in flex and Health Scaling in defense, though it depends on the matchup. Finally, for your items, you should build Malignance as your first item, followed by Sorcerer's Shoes and Liandry's Torment. For your last 3 items, you should build Shadowflame, Rabadon's Deathcap and finish with Void Staff. For the skill order, you want to stick with Q - E - W. Right now, this build has 52.4% winrate over 401 matches played.

Optional

Your second option for Karthus Top build would be to take Flash and Teleport as your Summoner Spells. The runes that this build takes advantage of are Dark Harvest as your keystone, Cheap Shot, Eyeball Collection and Ultimate Hunter in the primary tree, and Presence of Mind with Coup de Grace in the secondary tree. The shards used in this build are Adaptive Force in offense, Adaptive Force in flex and Health Scaling in defense. The items for the build are Malignance, which you should build first, followed by Sorcerer's Shoes as your second item and Liandry's Torment as your third item. The rest of the items in order are Shadowflame, Rabadon's Deathcap and Void Staff. The skill order for this build is Q - E - W. In the current patch, this build has a 46.8% win rate over 186 matches.

Situational Karthus Runes and Items

Depending on the context of your game, your matchup, and enemy champions, you might want to consider building some situational items or take specific runes. Carefully examine your team, enemy team, game state , and your matchup to plan your Karthus build accordingly! For example, when it comes to rune shards, you might want to take either Armor or Magic Resist, depending on which champion you are about to lane against.