Don't forget that enemies can also use your Magical Journey doorways, and that your ultimate can also hit your allies!
Let your Caretaker's Shrines charge up - they heal for a lot more when at full power.
It's important to collect chimes to improve your meep's attacks, but don't neglect your lane partner! Try to make a big entrance by bringing an ally into the lane with you with Magical Journey.
Karthus can cast spells for a short duration after he is killed. Move away from his corpse to be safe.
Make sure you always have enough health to survive Requiem, even if you have to go back to the base more frequently to heal.
The stat comparisons shown on this page underscore some critical Bard against Karthus counter statistics that can help us interpret the differences between the two. Bard’s KDA ratio ([kills + assists] / deaths) of NaN is better than Karthus’s ratio of NaN, indicating that Bard may be more central to his team's team fighting effectiveness than Karthus. This observation is in large part fueled by the differences in assists.
Bard usually has a significantly smaller longest killing spree than his matchup does. Commonly, he receives less damage than Karthus. This is usually reflective of differing health capacities, but it can also hint that the champ with higher health has less agility and thus is not able to kite away from additional harm when poked or engaged.
Both LoL champions are great champions. Both champs have their pros and cons. In the game's current meta, Bard usually fairs equally well when trying to fight Karthus, with a 50.6% win rate. As a result, Bard makes an ok counter for Karthus.
While Bard does have a higher win rate compared to Karthus, when on opposite teams, Bard also has a greater level of difficulty that makes him a more difficult champion to pick up and master. You still need to be cautious when picking Bard into Karthusas his relative depth means you may not be able to unleash his full potential without a significant amount of practice beforehand.
Additionally, Bard has a good amount of CC and other utility, a similar amount to Karthus. This makes her just as valuable during teamfights, especially when trying to counter champions with a ton of burst damage.
While there isn't one best champion for every situation in League of Legends, in Bard vs Karthus matchups, Bard is the better champ with a similar win rate, more champion depth, and a similar amount of utility to help out your teammates during late stage team fights.
Bard is a decent counter to Karthus. Make sure you focus your tactics on maximizing your gold income and clearing objectives. If you do that, you should be able to stand on your own as Bard against Karthus.
If you would like to truly master Bard to counter Karthus during both the early game and mid / late game phases of League of Legends, you should continue reading to pick up a few extra lessons on this matchup. If you pay attention to the build and suggestions shown here, you should increase your win rate significantly and be that much closer to League of Legends pro players.
Bard often racks up a lot less CS compared to Karthus. Champs who typically don't take much CS often don't have to have much CS to be effective, such as support champions. These kinds of champions are capable of scaling well off of their skills, stats, and first items alone. Yet, champs with a lot of CS, such as hyper-carries, often need many items to be effective. In either situation, try to do better than the numbers displayed on this page to do well.
The most crucial items to use in your Bard versus Karthus build include Locket of the Iron Solari, Redemption, and Shard of True Ice. When Bard bought at least these three pieces in his build, he did a lot better when fighting Karthus than with most other typical builds. In fact, Bard had an average win rate of 50.6% battling Karthus with this counter build.
To have the greatest chance of defeating Karthus as Bard, you should equip the Guardian, Font of Life, Bone Plating, Unflinching, Zombie Ward, and Relentless Hunter runes from the Resolve and Domination rune sets. Out of all the runes players picked for Bard vs Karthus matchups, this order of runes resulted in the highest win rate. Notably, these runes gave a 50.6% win rate overall.
By default, tips, statistics, and builds on how to beat Karthus as Bard are displayed for all skill levels combined. If you would like to scope the statistics and builds to a particular player tier, you may use the selection menu at the top of this page.