Karthus Jungle Build, Best Paths & Clearing Guide for Patch 26.7
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RDiscover the best Karthus jungle build for League of Legends Patch 26.7. Learn optimal jungle paths, Karthus build runes & items, skill order, counters and explore our pathing guide to maximize your winrate in the Season 16 meta.
Jungle Trends
Highest Winrate First Camp
Blue Sentinel (47.8%)
Most Popular First Camp
Blue Sentinel (87%)
Top 3 Highest Winrate Paths
Top 3 Highest Popularity Paths
Karthus Tips and Tricks
- Lay Waste is Karthus' main damage ability, it can do incredible amounts of damage when only one unit is hit. This means that you can actually duel most enemy junglers even early on, as long as you're capable of consistently hitting them. Early on, around five to six hits can be enough to kill someone.
- Karthus' Lay Waste and Wall of Pain grant vision over the area on they are cast. Use this to your advantage by casting them in places you don't have, but need vision of.
- Even though Karthus can be quite powerful in the early-game due to his Lay Waste skill, it is preferred to path opposite of the enemy jungler. This often allows you to get a full jungle clear, snowballing Karthus' XP and getting him to level six much faster.
- During late game, Requiem can be a powerful teamfight initiator since it can disorient and scare the enemies, allowing your teammates to pick them off.
- Death Defied gives you enough time to do a couple of Lay Waste casts and finish enemies off with Requiem if needed.
Karthus Matchups
Karthus Jungle Pathing Guide
Jungle Pathing represents the choices jungle players make in regards to when and where to gank, invade or just path towards. It includes how camps and buffs are cleared between ganks, anticipating counterganks, and spotting opportunities for invading. Effective pathing requires deep understanding of your champion's abilities, their interactions, and how both team compositions play into those choices.
Full clear with a Blue Buff start
The recommended jungle path for Karthus starts on Blue Buff with Lay Waste at level one. After Blue, unlock Defile and clear Gromp and Wolves to reach level three. At this point, it is usually best to put a second point into Lay Waste for faster clears, though Wall of Pain is an option if you expect to fight or gank a lane. Proceed to path into Raptors, Red Buff, and Krugs. This gets you level four where you unlock Wall of Pain if you haven't yet, and continue to grab the Rift Scuttler and potentially invade enemy's Raptors if they already respawned.
The route is planned with mana in mind so you have enough regeneration in order to not worry about it. An alternative start is Raptors/Red into Red/Raptors and Krugs, then crossing to Blue side. This keeps tempo steady and disguises your pathing but leaves you at lower mana for the first parth of the clear, so if you get invaded you're dead. Blue start remains optimal in most games for sustain and speed.
Aggression-wise Karthus has very limited pre-6 gank strength, but a level three Wall of Pain wall can assist laners in setting up kills if opportunities appear. His true spike is hitting level six for Requiem, which gives him global kill pressure regardless of lane state. Early jungle control should therefore focus on farming and avoiding unnecessary fights until that point.
