Runes Corner: Late-Game Focused Runes

Hey Everyone!

I’m Wrekz from the Runes Reforged project and I’m back with some more Runes Corner previews! Last time we posted there was a lot of interest in seeing some of the runes that are more late-game focused and let you trade early power for a higher late-game payoff. Given how much League can snowball and accelerate in power, forgoing benefits you can claim immediately for lane phase is a big sacrifice. In exchange, however, you can take some late-game effects of considerable power. Today we have a couple examples of that pattern to show off. Give them a look and let us know what you think.

First, Gathering Storm. This rune is in the Sorcery path, and for those keeping track it’s in the last slot.

Gathering Storm

http://i.imgur.com/r7Sjcwns.jpg

Every 10 minutes gain +8 Ability Power or +6 Attack Damage, adaptive, per 10 minutes of game time that have elapsed.

Working through a quick example, that means: 10:00 8 AP 6 AD 20:00 24 AP 18 AD 30:00 48 AP 36 AD 40:00 80 AP 60 AD

Gathering Storm heavily concentrates its power into the late-game. Taking it is substantial risk, but with a big reward coming as the game goes on. Beyond normal linear scaling it actually accelerates its power growth as time passes. However, this rune doesn’t just grant its power gradually, you only get its bonus at each 10 minute interval. This makes some extremely powerful late-game spikes (30, 40, 50 minutes) particularly meaningful. The stats from Gathering Storm after 30 minutes can absolutely look scary, and we’re going to be keeping a close eye on its tuning. In general, scaling runes need to be balanced carefully and be fairly rare within the system. Their ability to be cool and powerful is proportionate to the risk you undertake in bypassing other options granting immediate and more reliable power.

Next up is another rune in the Sorcery path (gasp!), this time in the first non-keystone slot. This rune has a very temporary name.

Ultimore

http://i.imgur.com/WXS9q3u.png

Gain 5% cooldown reduction and maximum cooldown reduction on your ultimate. This increases by 1.5% each time you cast your ultimate. Stacks up to 10 times.

Ever played a champion and wished you could just get some more time off their ult cooldown? Vi, Karthus, Amumu certainly come to mind. Ultimore lets you get just that. Instead of broad power or cooldown reduction across the entire kit, this is focused purely on your champion’s ultimate. We’ve seen uses on both ends of the cooldown spectrum. Some players take this to get access to their long cooldown ultimates more often, while others use it to try and reach a point where they can use their ultimate twice in a fight. Overall, we hope it creates some creative uses and different feeling builds for you try out.

As an aside, we actually tried this mechanic as a keystone in its early iterations. Balancing delayed power in the keystone slot proved pretty hard, however. Giving enough power to make it worth the wait proved too pattern warping. When Lux starts ulting 3+ times per teamfight things get a bit scary. Moving this rune out of the keystone slot let us provide the ultimate-only cooldown effect at a more reasonable power level that everyone can still get excited about.

What do you think of the Runes we showed off today? What other things would you like to see next? Let us know in your comments below. As always we’ll be hanging out in the comments section below for a while answering questions. Thanks for reading!