If you caught the Curse Invitational or MLG Anaheim tournaments that were held recently, you may have noticed a common pairing of Nocturne and Karthus. Barring the fact that on their own they each excel in their respective roles, this article will focus purely on the synergy between these two champions.Let’s start with the raw level 6 burst. Ignoring scaling and resistances of enemy champs, Requiem and Paranoia do 400 mixed burst damage combined. Oww. At a time where champion health is roughly 1200 on average, this will chunk your health by a decent amount. It won’t take much for your lane and a Nocturne to finish a target off with that kind of up-front damage.This allows for low-risk, high-reward ganks and the multitude of opportunities created from it. On top of almost guaranteed kills, they are doubley assisted kills, which are worth more gold for your team then someone straight-up killing another champion. Finally, there is no lane disruption, by which I mean most mids have to roam to assist their team, causing their lane to be shoved in and miss gold and experience. Karthus ult hits everyone, and the jungle doesn’t really have a lane.Transitioning from early gank potential, the benefits keep on coming with the Karthus/Nocturne dream team. When lanes break and larger objectives become the focus of play, both champions remain highly synergistic. In taking Dragon or Baron, both champions do fantastic single target damage and minion damage. Nocturne with Wriggle’s and a flurry of Karthus Q’s will take down either target easily. When siegeing towers, Wall of Pain works beautifully to keep melees (i.e. Nocturne) safe while autoing the turret. These mid-game goals are made much easier to obtain with kits that work so well together.To top it all off, let’s look at team-fighting. Nocturne’s primary goal is to stick to targets, which is why you’ll often see a Phage/Frozen Mallet on him. When the team fight breaks out and Karthus throws down his wall, this enables Nocturne to easily catch whoever walks through the wall and cast Unspeakable Horror. With the target feared, slowed, and having their MR reduced by Wall of Pain, Karthus can Q them to his heart’s content. Continual walls into fears will be seen throughout the fight, along with Karthus AoE and Nocturne’s passive AoE. Don’t forget, this is mixed damage, so a champion can’t build exclusively against it.By looking at the kits of different champions, and how they synergize in game play during early, mid, and late-game, you can improve your own game play by leaps and bounds. Karthus and Nocturne’s standard game play compliments the others’ effortlessly; look for these queues to point you towards your own champion dream team.And hey, their skins synergize too!This article was written by our trial member YouGoJoe23. If you enjoyed reading through his post, feel free to follow his twitter.