Runes Corner: Summoner Specialist and Hextech Freezeray

Hey all! Stashu here, and welcome to another Runes Corner. I have a double feature of keystones for you this week, and from our most unique path: Inspiration. Be warned, this reveal is not for the faint of heart, these are some spicy keystones and I cannot be more excited to finally be able to talk about them.

The past couple reveals have gone deep into background and theory to give you guys a bit of insight into our iterative design process and explain how and why we’ve landed on certain runes. Now that we’ve laid the groundwork there, I’m going to give these runes a little more room to speak for themselves; and fortunately this duo has loud, beautiful voices. [W.I.P. note, names are temp and mechanics are subject to change as we continue playtesting. Temp icons borrowed from champion kits and beaten with my fumbling photoshop skills.]

So! Without further ado, I present Inspiration Keystone #1

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Summoner Specialist:

http://i.imgur.com/T3Qf7s6.png

You start with 1 Summoner Shard and gain an additional Summoner Shard each time you cast a Summoner Spell. Swap a Summoner Spell to a different one by exchanging 3 Summoner Shards at the shop. Additionally, gain 15% Summoner Spell cooldown reduction. (You cannot have two of the same Summoner Spells)

That’s right, you can now change summoner spells during the game. Ever wanted to take ignite as a jungler without giving up flash? How about taking exhaust/ignite to win lane, knowing you’ll need teleport later? Well, this one’s for you.

I doubt we’ve even got past the tip of the iceberg in our explorations of how to use this thing, so I can’t wait to see what ya’ll can do with it.

Worth noting, there are still lots of questions to answer here, like what cooldown is the swapped-to spell on? (Currently it inherits the remaining cooldown of the swapped spell.) How exactly does this interact with smite? Is the shop the right place for this? Is this sufficient power to compete with other keystones, or does it need other bonuses attached to casting summoner spells? Etc. But we’re confident that we can answer these in the coming weeks and deliver something new, crazy, and, importantly, balanceable.

Here’s a quick gif of how our prototyped version of this works (expect better UI on launch. Also pretend it has a WIP stamp on it):

http://i.imgur.com/DbAI6zn.gifv

Got it? Cool. Let’s jump right to the next one, Keystone #2,

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Hextech Freezeray:

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

Your first attack on a champion slows them for 1.5 seconds (8-3 second per-unit cooldown).

• Ranged attacks slow by 25% - 40%
• Melee attacks slow by 35% - 50%

Additionally, your active item slows create an icy zone around their target for 5 seconds, slowing all units inside by 70%.

Alright, alright, so this one’s a little more tame than swapping summoner spells, that’s fair. But even so, this is the first time we’ve ever offered this sort of power in the pre-game, and that’s pretty big. Now, every champion has the choice to opt out of damage or durability to add this new tool to their arsenal; and with the new power level of other keystones, that’s a LOT of damage/durability lost in this opportunity cost. Can you make that tradeoff worth it by clever use of the Freezeray, adding new synergies to your favorite kits and combos?

And then there’s the active item slow mod. The on-hit-slow, if tuned high enough, may be enough for a rune to stand on it’s own in terms of power, but it’s a very isolated effect with few relations/hooks into other game systems, leaving it a little… uninspired. So there’s thematically a need for something else here, but it also serves a valuable gameplay need, allowing us to distribute the power of this rune between its reliable slow and its delayed/unreliable active item modification. Also, active item slows are well distributed between classes, offering decent options to marksmen, tanks, mages, and supports. The exact effect (slow zone, for now) is still under heavy iteration and might not stick, but we’re very confident in some form of ‘modifies active item slows.’

Here’s Teemo using the passive as well as the active with both Bilgewater Cutlass and Hextech-GLP. Note that AoE slow actives create slightly smaller zones.

http://i.imgur.com/Bh9WbR4.gifv

And that concludes this reveal, thanks for reading! Please join us in the comments for Q&A, and while you’re there, we’d love to hear what you all would like out of a third Inspiration keystone -- now that you have a feel for what we’re working on in Inspiration, what creative and out-there tools have you always wanted but never had a place for? Keep in mind that inspiration does not offer direct damage or tankiness, or at least without extreme tradeoffs. We’re still trying out a whole bunch of ideas there, so now’s your chance to have your voice heard! I’m very excited to hear what you come up with, so, hope to see you in the comments!

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You can check the previous Runes Corner posts here: Runes Content Development Peek Inspiration Slot 1 Reveal Guardian's Soul Reveal Stormlord's Mandate and Spellslinger's Surge Reveal Hunt of the Blood Moon Reveal Domination Slot 1 Reveal Meteor Reveal