Skip to content

Quick Gameplay Thoughts: September 29

RiotMeddler··1 votes·55,400 views

Morning all,


Usual Disclaimers

These posts will often contain talk about future work we're doing, or planning to do, that isn't yet guaranteed to ship. The nature of the work could change or, depending on what we discover, projects mentioned may get put delayed or even stopped. If you'd like to see a Tweet whenever a new one of these posts goes up: https://twitter.com/RiotMeddler

Fewer champion gameplay updates coming for a little bit

For a little while (approximately the rest of the year) we'll be putting less time into gameplay updates like Xin Zhao's or Azirs and a lot more into getting pre-season ready and then balanced once it's out. We'll get back to gameplay updates at around the same speed sometime early next year, but expect to see fewer of those for a bit. VGUs (the large updates) by contrast will keep going at their usual speed, given the folks working on those aren't generally involved too much ith pre-season.


Runes Feedback

Now that all the runes are on the website and people are getting a bunch of play on them on PBE we're poring through feedback about them. There are some things it would be particularly helpful to get people's thoughts on in addition to general feedback, including:

  • Whether it feels like specific champions have no choice of primary and/or secondary tree
  • Runes that you'd always want to take, or never want to take
  • Runes where how they function isn't clear from the tooltip, or where there's information missing from the tooltip that's essential to making informed choices before the game starts

Build a Rune page website

As some of you may have noticed the rune page website doesn't reflect some of the recent changes to runes that are on PBE. We will be updating that website, but not as frequently as the PBE itself changes. Should see an update to it next week, and more regular ones following that, there'll be times where it's a bit out of date though and we're more focused on getting stuff into game and tested quick.


Balancing in 7.20 and 7.21

Generally we'll be balancing champions and the game in general for the new Runes system much more than the old one. We'll hit anything that's massively out of line in the new system still, but we're focusing work on how things will be for the long term, rather than the 2-4 weeks any changes in those patch will have on Live before old runes/masteries are replaced and balance around them's no longer relevant. Evelynn's one of the champs most likely to be affected by that (might be temporarily stronger or weaker than she will be long term).

http://ddragon.leagueoflegends.com/cdn/6.24.1/img/champion/Ziggs.png

347 Comments

The Deathsinger33 votes

A number of Karthus mains feel there's no keystone rune that benefits him. The Domination tree feels to be his strongest option, but there's still no keystone that he can benefit from. The restrictions of "three unique spells" really messes with his DPS capabilities.

Is there anything in mind for the DPS battle mages like him? Others like Cassiopeia and Vladimir can go the mobility and burst options, but there are limited options for Karthus. The inclusion of a 600g stopwatch is already concerning enough, please don't forget him this preseason.

Furthermore, with the removal of DFT, any possibility of reverting the wall nerf or otherwise giving him some compensation?

FlufyBunnyRengar1 votes

Keep in mind that Karthus isn't the only one with this problem, champions like Kennen, Rumble, Kat or even Ahri don't have a specific keystone for them anymore

Impish Yordle4 votes

Kennen has multiple options but the best one would probably be Electrocute. It's essentially just thunderlords to him as none of the changes done to it affect him negatively.

DeathBurst12 votes

Kat? Just take Dark Harvest. It combines super well with her reset play-style. Or Electrocute to guarantee the first kill and get the resets going. (EDIT: or even Predator to get the ball rolling with early game roams.) What Keystone are you taking in the current system with Kat? Not TLD? I think that would be a mistake.

Kennen can totally use Press the Attack. Ahri has Electrocute or Arcane Comet.

Rumble is indeed without a good Keystone like Karthus. I think I'd go for Electrocute, Phase Rush, or some fancy stuff in Inspiration, but nothing is actually attractive.

Impish Yordle19 votes

They changed the wording from "unique" to "separate" because of people getting the wrong idea. You can hit someone 3 times with Karthus Q and it will proc Electrocute. It's basically the same as Thunderlords. The only difference is that a single spell can no longer proc it by itself which means that multihit abilities like MF E, Morgana W, Pantheon E can no longer be the single cause triggering it. Overall DPS mages are still not very favored by the rune selection.

hpp37 votes

You're not going to be able to Q 3 times in 2 seconds though.

Matban13 votes

Q + E + (Q or AA) looks doable for me

Xizz3l2 votes

Pretty sure this isn't true, was playing Garen earlier and couldn't proc it with QEE

jellyfueesh6 votes

its because the e counts as one spell. to make it work, you would have to auto-Q-E in order to proc it

RiotMeddler5 votes

{quoted}

its because the e counts as one spell. to make it work, you would have to auto-Q-E in order to proc it

Yep, what you describe there's the intended funcitonality (AA+Q+E).

RiotMeddler6 votes

Likely plan there is we'll see how the Runes system impacts everyone. If sustained damage mages like Karthus in general are struggling a bit that's a strong argument for prioritizing work on something that fills DFT's niche but with better gameplay. If it's just a couple of champs such as Karthus, with others using Phase Rush or whatever well, then we'd want to just buff those champs instead most likely. I'm not familiar enough with Karthus personally to predict well where it'd be best to put power if adding some, Wall satisfaction would be my personal starting point though.

Malicious Metal6 votes

I agree that DFT shouldn't just flat out be copy pasted into the new system as currently it's very unintuitive and just feels like "Additional damage on my spells". Granted it's great as the damage adds up, especially on low CD spells like the ones Mordekaiser, Malz and Karthus have.

Wouldn't something akin to Press the attack be something worth considering though if DPS mages do end up with lackluster rune options? It could be adaptive too as every tree seems to be open for every kind of champion but precision kinda feels like it's just adc exclusive.

Omituinen22 votes

"Runes that you'd always want to take, or never want to take"

I worry that Kleptomancy will end up as a compulsory keystone for supports as the only way to support their gold income, especially with Bandit now gone and no other runes which give gold directly. For instance I could take the Guardian mastery on tanky supports or Summon Aerie on enchanters, but if Kleptomancy lets me get core items 10 minutes earlier then that's way better than taking either of those.

Is this intentional, or would Riot want to adjust support gold upwards and tone back the gold income off Kleptomancy if it ended up just being the obligatory support keystone with no real choices?

Velzard of Koz9 votes

I am more concerned about it being yet another RNGade. A lane with better consumables drops will still have advantage, even If small, over one that got one Mana Pot while having Coin the entire time.

Tormentula8 votes

This^

RNG never felt good to play with or against (starving on mana? Outplay your opponent by getting a lucky mana pot!... LCS big play there boy!)

Overall, just a bad decision for a rune IMO, surprised there aren't many runes that seem like they need reworked yet, but this by description and practice needs deleted and redone because the loot system isn't interactive at all. This is the one clear mistake rune. The rest look fine minus tuning, you can't tune RNG drops however unless they drop in a specific cycle to the point it isn't RNG.

Hell we're trying to fix the "chance" part of crit, we don't need more chances lol.

RiotMeddler5 votes

Yeah, there's some risk of that. We'd like Kleptomancy to be one of multiple options for supports, not a mandatory choice. Approach we'd probably take if needs be would be to reduce the raw gold income and put power instead into looted items in ways that aren't as mandatory for supports (e.g. more temporary combat elixirs or something similar).

Sahn Uzal10 votes

Speaking of Kleptomancy, I'm kinda afraid Gangplank might end up using that one like he did with bandit. Which would be fine with me, but I'm afraid it might become a must have. On live, it feels kinda shitty to go for a Grasp runepage because I feel kinda forced into 0 12 18 if I do.

I really don't think anyone likes seeing a GP click Q on them and constantly gaining gold for it, and as far as I'm concerned, I'd really prefer to take Arcane Comet or Electrocute on him, that seems like way more fun to play around than Kleptomancy.

I don't have a PBE account to test anything, but it is something that I'm kinda worried about :P

Kloqdq10 votes

I think GP has a lot of strong options besides Kleptomancy. Since he also has to build into the inspiration tree to get that keystone, he loses out on other strong options in the other trees. It's a fair trade-off in my mind.

Sahn Uzal7 votes

Maybe you're right, I hope you are.

But since Meddler mentioned this in the original thread

''Whether it feels like specific champions have no choice of primary and/or secondary tree''

I didn't feel like there was a reason not to post my concerns :P

Kloqdq4 votes

You are right in posting them still. I am personally on the Grasp hype train myself. We'll have to just see where the Pirate king lands at the end of the day.

RiotMeddler6 votes

Similar thoughts on GP to supports - should be a good and fun choice, should be a choice though not a mandatory 'GP must go Inspiration primary and take this' rune.

In terms of counterplay Runes are fairly reliable, some exceptions, so GP getting gold like that consistently isn't necessarily inappropriate relative to the other effects he could be getting. If needs be though could push more of the power into the items looted again and ensure they've got appropriate counterplay (e.g. windows of power).

Feedback's much appreciated though, those are the sort of cases it's great to be talking about and assessing.

HenzoAF19 votes
  • Where is the DPS/Sustained Damage Focused Keystone for Battle Mages?

  • I don't even know how Press the Attack works, it's just too dificult to figure out.

  • I didn't really get Presence of Mind.

  • Bloodline still feels weak with 6% Life Steal, I would never take it over Alacrity.

  • Why does Coup de Grace has a hard fixed trigger while Cut Down and Last Stand has a "growing" trigger?

  • What is the minimal bonus and when do I reach full power on Cut Down and Last Stand?

  • Dark Harvest: Minion souls grant 5 soul essence. Is that right? I suppose that should be "Epic Monsters" or something like this.

  • Cheap Shot: Does the impairing ability apply the effect or do i need to apply the CC and then attack?

  • Ingenious Hunter: Why not 5(+5 per stack) instead of 1(+6 per stack)? The other two are 2.5(+2.5 per stack) and 8(+8 per stack).

  • What is the cooldown on Summon Aerie?

  • Is The Ultimate Hat multiplicative or additive?

  • Scorch seems too weak. I think it needs more damage late game, a AP/AD scaling should be added.

  • Iron Skin and Mirror Shell seems too weak when compared to Conditioning.

  • Revitalize seems not worth it when compared to Second Wind even when used on a Sustained Champion.

  • Biscuit Delivery, Future's Market and Minion Dematerializer all seems useless.

  • Celestial Body is too weak. 100HP is worth 267 Gold while Magical Footwear is woth 470 Gold.

Linna Excel1 votes

Press the attack is for AA focused champs. Teemo/kayle should be fine with it as long as hurricane doesn't screw them up.

HenzoAF12 votes

I mean a keystone for people like: Azir Cassiopeia Fiddlesticks Heimerdinger Karthus Malzahar Morgana Rumble Ryze Singed Swain Vladimir Zyra Something that fills the lack DFT does.

Leonde17 votes

With the introduction of things like Urgot's ult, Eve's ult, and now some of the new runes that all have % health thresholds, could there be a way to display % health on the HUD? I think it's much more preferable for players to know exactly when a certain effect is going to take place, rather than inferring/guessing; especially since work to the HUD is already currently being done.

Rathar Dashing12 votes

Scorch is an absolutely useless rune. It's outclassed immensely by Gathering Storm, and is gated by a cooldown. Anyone with any scaling in their kit is going to go for GS or even Waterwalking, since the MS boost is constantly the size of boots of speed, making roaming and warding easier, plus the bonus stats are applied instantly from the beginning, making early trades in river and dragon contesting much better.

DeathBurst18 votes

Hyperbole aren't the best way to start a discussion, but yeah, I do feel that Scorch is a bit underwhelming. I asked about it in the Patch Chat, and was told that it's much stronger than it appears in early game.

Rathar Dashing3 votes

Hyperbole is usually a good way to grab someone's attention.

And after being on these boards for a while I kinda assumed it was a rule that you HAVE to use it in your argument.

DeathBurst9 votes

Not true. Most posts with Hyperbole are just ignored by the people that matter. See in this very thread the two comments on Karma, one at 4 points and with a reply from Meddler, the other at -5 and relegated to the depths of the thread.

FancyKiddo11 votes

Hey Meddler.

At the Eve subreddit, we're feeling pretty lonely for interaction. We have suggestions, but it seems like they're being ignored or we're just too late in the development process to make a difference.

Regarding that, what do you think about the possibility of coming to main communities earlier when working on reworks? It feels pretty bad to love a champion for a long time, and then have a new one decreed to replace it without feeling like you have any say.

Thanks!

RiotMeddler11 votes

In case you've missed it Reave3 currently has a thread going on the Eve Mains subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/EvelynnMains/comments/738r6h/evelynn_hybrid_context_ama/

In terms of general process I think there's a lot of value in talking to mains of a champion. Also important to talk to the wider audience though, particularly people who could be mains, people who used to be, those frequently laning against the champ etc. We do things like surveys targeted at both the player base as a whole and separate ones at mains in multiple regions, playtest sessions with players at the office here etc to try and build a stronger understanding of current perception of a champion. The subreddits offer some great discussion and insight, but they're also a very, very small slice of a champion's playerbase and only the English speaking part at that.

Dope Solo4 votes

These sound like platitudes.

RiotMeddler5 votes

{quoted}

These sound like platitudes.

Which bit or bits feels that way to you? Avoiding repeating previous answers without putting new effort into them's something I try to be aware of, I'm sure it still happens sometimes though especially when trying to answer stuff quickly.

Nefas3 votes

Everything about talking to non-mains just sounds like an excuse to remove parts of a reworked champ’s originally identity. It makes it sound like “we got rid of x about champ because all of the people who don’t play the champ said they would if we put in y” but x is part of the reason why people who already play the champ actually play the champ. All of which feeds in to the general feeling among smaller playerbases who are often more likely to have the champ reworked that Riot doesn’t care about them - along with skins and everything else.

RiotMeddler6 votes

Is your concern that we don't only talk to mains or the way I'm describing our approach?

Nefas8 votes

I would say it is more about the approach but that the vagueness in the description doesn’t help. The approach is unclear and the description doesn’t help explain things when you make a decision that negatively impacts a group.

I think Riot plays lip service to the idea that some champs can have small, niche playerbases but then also goes out of the way to dramatically change thematics or kit in reworks because “the theme didn’t resonate with many players”, e.g. Yorick and Gallio. Only certain champs seem like they qualify for niche playerbases status in Riot’s eyes and the reasoning is not clear and seems capricious.

Some times Riot seems to care more about what the mains think/want, some times it seems more about the people who could maybe be mains one day or pursuing an individual Rioter’s own conception of a champ regardless of all else.

It is cliche to say but if everyone’s opinion is deeply important, then no one’s is. Its an empty statement that gives little insight into why a decision is made or help players form expectations about how Riot will treat their main if they are to be reworked. It doesn’t serve as a very satisfactory explanation for a decision - when every group is important than there is always something that could justify just about any decision. In that case, it just feels like Riot is going to do what Riot wants.

I don’t believe Riot pays enough attention to what mains think and want. The real negative of a main losing what they like about a champ should factor higher than the hypothetical player would could perhaps become a main.

EDIT: Hopefully that was clear - I realize the ironic potential for being vague in my own response. I avoided using many specific champs, kits, and situations on purpose to avoid rabbitholes but can provide those examples if needed.

Cosnirak3 votes

I've found that most of the time when mains really love something about a champion and it gets reworked, it's because it was a really unhealthy gameplay pattern. When that's the case, they look for other people to satisfy in some way with the new thing.

Linna Excel10 votes

Rune feedback:

  • Conditioning is strictly better to iron skin or mirror shell. Frankly they should function like conditioning be about 10 armor/mr and a 7.5% boost to a single resist. Maybe get rid of the time limit on conditioning as well.
  • Revitalize feels odd in resolve. If I'm soraka/sona/nami/janna I don't see many other options to even splash the tree. I mean I guess I could go demolish, but that feels wrong on a passive support.
  • Inspiration smells like poo-poo compared to the other trees.
  • Waterwalking should be renamed Riverfighting
  • Nobody likes dark harvest
  • Eyeball collection seems win more
  • Gathering seems like it's going to be a win-more skill for hypercarries and a lose-less skill for champs who fall off because of poop-tier scaling. Not really sure who it's for other than bronze. I mean despite C9-Lyn going past the 60 minute mark, you know pro teams are never going to take this.
  • Fleet Footwork is terrible. Taste of blood should heal an ADC more and should be up nearly as often. I really doubt fleet footwork will proc more than once in a teamfight or trade to be worth it as a keystone.
  • I feel like overheal should be a support rune that converts excess healing going out into a shield.
  • It'd be cool if there was a rune that converted 30% of a shield into a heal.
  • Triumph seems a little weak. You only get the heal if you get a takedown but in laning if that happens, you are going to push the wave in and either take the tower or base. In a teamfight, there's so much burst it doesn't feel like it'll help. It's almost like it belongs on the tank tree where it'll do better.
  • Legend:bloodline is terrible because you won't get any lifesteal until you get a takedown.
  • In short all of the sustain options in precision are terrible.
  • The AS options on the other hand feel like they'll be too good.
  • Last stand feels more like a tank or juggernaut option as ADCs have lifesteal to stay above 80%. Why is it here? I don't see either class splashing precision for last stand/triumph.

I'm wondering if riot went the wrong direction this preseason. Considering all the complaints we've heard about how terrible this season is, I feel like this isn't a big enough improvement for 90% of the playerbase to warrant the work. We know by the end of preseason there's going to be an optimal build for every champ, so it isn't like this'll fix that problem. I also feel like more could have been done if riot overhauled the items and whatnot instead. Maybe give a mid-sized rework to some of the problem champs.

I feel like that after the mymu, the assassin update, the support item update (mainly item 3301 and perhaps item 3504), and the tank update that league overall is worse and it would have been a better use of time to correct the fallout of those things instead.

DeathBurst13 votes
  • You're missing the point of Conditioning... It's not strictly better, precisely because there is a "time limit". And if you're against a hard match-up, this delay is the difference between giving an early kill or not. Either you take one resistance right now against your lane match-up, or you can survive without it and you get to have both, but later into the game.
  • Revitalize works for self-heal. Also, if you don't put it in Resolve, where else? As for something else to splash, Font of Life works well with most Enchantresses, except Sona (and even then, it works with her Ult, still better than nothing). Otherwise, Conditioning is never bad.
  • Inspiration is a matter of taste. I don't like it either, but I've seen people who swear by it on the boards.
  • Dark Harvest seems tricky to use effectively, but super powerful if you manage to do it. Once again, a matter of taste compared to the more reliable but less powerful Electrocute, but not an inherently bad Rune.
  • Agreed for Eyeball. On the other hand, the other options in that slot, especially Ghost Poro, are lose less options. You have to predict and bet how the game will play to get max value out of your Runes. So, I agree with you, but I don't see that as a problem.
  • Who cares about pro-team? In SoloQ, Gathering Storm will be pretty strong.
  • Fleet Footwork is obviously much more powerful. Yes, you will proc it more than once in a team-fight. How many procs of statik do you see in an average team-fight? Taste of Blood has a static 20s CD, so it will definitely proc less. It also has a better scaling, but a lower base value, so you need at least 150 Bonus AD to make it as good as Fleet Footwork for a single proc, and 150 AD is IE+Bloodthirster. Finally, Fleet Footwork gives MS, and that is not negligible at all.
  • Overheal would be a must pick on any healer if it worked that way. It wouldn't be a nice option, it would be something you would be forced to take, and all healers would be balanced around it. It's much better here.
  • More generally, this whole slot is about Sustain. Do you have easy access to pre-combat sustain? Versus do you want resets in team-fights (and yes triumph will help, it's an instant heal...)? Versus do you need mana?
  • A Rune that converts Shield into Heal: no, absolutely not. This is a terrible and super dangerous idea. The whole point of Shields is that you have to time them correctly, whereas you can just heal whenever. Jana or Karma would be super oppressive with that Rune.
  • Agreed that Legend: Bloodline will feel bad in early game.
  • Still, that doesn't make all sustain options terrible.
  • Juggernauts could totally Splash precision for Legend: Tenacity, Triumph, Last Stand, or even Coup de Grace. But more importantly, you under-estimate the amount of time ADC spend below 80% health.

We know by the end of preseason there's going to be an optimal build for every champ

I very much doubt that. There will be a "most common build" that will be OK-ish in most cases, but the "optimal" build will be different game to game.

Cosnirak5 votes

Not trying to be mean or rude, but just to help with perspective and fighting natural echo chamber effects... please know that I strongly disagree with at least 80% of your post. I'm tempted to go over the details, but I just don't think it'll be worth the effort, sorry.

Grief Me Please8 votes

Are there any more details on Karma buffs?

RiotMeddler10 votes

Passive: Cooldown reducing effect :: 2/2.5/3 (1/1.25/1.5 for basic attacks) >>> 2/3/4 (1/1.5/2 for basic attacks)

That change is actually on PBE, it's a hard one to datamine though so it doesn't seem to have been noticed with everything else going on. As usual, not guaranteed to be final, or ship at all etc etc, but odds are high it will.

Geshultz7 votes

Meddler, how do you feel about sunfire cape as an item currently or other item balance in general?

RiotMeddler7 votes

I'm not particularly a fan of Sunfire because of how it homogenizes its users. It means they all get at least a moderate amount of waveclear and get pushed towards 'just stand in the middle of everything' in team fights. Couple that with an always useful stat line (always going to want health/armor, especially on non carry melee) and I think the game's worse whenever it's strong.

Having said that, it is satisfying, it does have some gameplay to it beyond just stats and it's certainly cool.

Cosnirak9 votes

When there's time for it perhaps consider exploring a version of Sunfire that pulses, going from more like Bami damage to every ~5 seconds a burst of fire comes out and does damage worth caring about to both minions and champions. Or something along that line at least. Still not an 'active use' item, but with just enough play to it to make it a much more interesting item.

Kloqdq5 votes

Saw a post on the Twisted treeline Reddit talking about a change to the Ban system on the map. Does that mean you guys are going to try looking at the map in the future sometimes after the pre-season stuff?

RiotMeddler4 votes

We've been talking a bit about the ban system, and whether the recently changed to one ban per player simultaneously makes sense there or not. No current plans for other TT at present.

Kloqdq5 votes

I know there are a few good ideas running around like a 12 ban system to help hit more key problem champs since the map doesn't get a regular patch update. What would be your thoughts on something like that? each team gets 6 bans, 2 each, allowing for us to hit 12 champions instead of the normal 6.

RiotMeddler5 votes

I think 2 bans per player's worth considering as an option. I'm not sure exactly where thinking's up to in terms of which options make sense though, or what the comparative cost of implementation on each of them is though.

Everlark5 votes

Miss Fortune is one of those champions that doesn't seem to have a great set of rune choices. I'll try to outline the difficulties.

Precision is the usual primary tree for most marksmen, but Miss Fortune is less of a traditional crit carry than her peers. Precision has a ton of attack speed built into it and barely any %damage or flat AD (the only example of the latter being Press The Attack, which conflicts with her tendency to switch targets for Love Tap). This path provides her with relatively little benefit and is especially bad for Lethality MF.

Sorcery is one of the other choices for a primary damage path. Sorcery has some pretty cool options in the smaller runes, but all of the keystones perform terribly on her both in lane and out of it. Summon Aerie is weak and she can't use the shield aspect at all. Arcane Comet is incredibly unreliable with her more interactive Q-max laning phase, and her E-max laning phase is weak, boring, uninteractive, and still can't even make Comet land reliably. Phase Rush is probably the best option here, but her playstyle usually relies more on burst or good teamfight setup instead of brute-forcing people down in an extended chase. It mostly helps her kite better.

That leaves Domination, which probably has the best keystones options for her right now. Dark Harvest is a strong snowballing/scaling option and Electrocute gives more reliable early power. Predator is probably the worst of the three on her but still gives her a decent assassination option. However, the last two rune slots are lacklustre. Cheap Shot and Taste of Blood are decent options, but Cheap Shot can't really be used in lane without using E (same problems as Comet) or in a gank/all-in, where it offers little damage. Taste Of Blood is probably her best bet, but not as an aggressive option. However, Sudden Impact's Lethality being locked behind a dash/blink/stealth kind of feels insulting. Her fellow dashless Lethality marksmen (Varus, Jhin) both make better use of Precision as a primary path while Lucian can access Sudden Impact without burning Flash. The Bounty Hunter rune slot also offers her very little: all of her spellvamp-able spells are AoE (may be a bug since her Q is apparently supposed to proc spellvamp according the wiki, but doesn't heal her at all with this rune last I checked), she typically doesn't buy many impactful item actives (Youmuu's is probably the best use of Ingenious Hunter), and additional out-of-combat movespeed is weak because Strut already provides her with so much.

Resolve (rightfully) offers very little, and Inspiration is cool but relatively ineffective because her average autoattack range makes her a mediocre user of Hextech Freezeray, meaning it doesn't make up for the lack of damage in the rest of the path. Secondary trees tend to be fine because Sorcery, Precision, and even Inspiration all provide MF with some strong options without locking her into a subpar keystone. Anyway, that's enough about MF.

General rune impressions:

Fleet Footwork seems extremely weak. The change from %total AD with crit scaling (Warlord's) to low base values with terrible scaling in general is a perplexing choice in direction. Maybe I'm not seeing who this would be useful on, but with Press The Attack for AD toplaners and Lethal Tempo for marksmen, I don't know who else would even consider this. I'm tempted to say that Taste of Blood is almost as powerful as this keystone with its better early values, better scaling, and only slightly longer early cooldown.

Presence of Mind obscures too much of its numbers even in the detailed tooltip. Mana return values would be appreciated.

Dark Harvest seems pretty strong, but I'd like to see some clarification of the fact that deaths of relevant units on both teams (e.g. allied champions and cannon minions) also grant souls. Not sure if this is intended, so I'm asking for either a bugfix or tooltip change to specify this behaviour since typically only enemy deaths grant rewards. If it's not intended, the numbers on soul scaling seem to be quite low.

Arcane Comet seems really unreliable if you don't have hard CC. Not sure how this can be fixed; maybe make it slightly faster so that slows are more reliable in making it hit? Also, it's a pretty boring keystone. Not much interaction for the user other than "land your cc ability" or "land any ability and hope for the best".

Celerity's damage scaling seems weak. Even in extreme cases, 8% of bonus movement speed seems to have very little payoff in terms of offensive stats. Perhaps most of the power was intended to be in the 3% movespeed bonus? The fact that I wouldn't even consider this on MF seems a bit strange as a champion with 100 bonus movespeed in her kit.

Absolute Focus's tooltip is misleading. Last I checked, it did not scale linearly but instead gave something like a 5 AD buff at level 1, 7 AD at 6 and 11 and 16, and 2 AD at 18. I think smoothing out the curve is the simplest solution, but otherwise I'd like to see the tooltip reflect this. Not sure if Waterwalking follows the same pattern; didn't test that one.

Scorch also seems weak, particularly in late game. I recognize that this rune is probably not meant to be a late game rune, but its early impact is also somewhat negligible at the moment. I'd like to see its niche sharpened to focus on early game or to give it better scaling to compete with Waterwalking or Gathering Storm.

Waterwalking is a cool concept but I wouldn't use it in practice. It feels like a rune I'd want to try and play around, but the bonus AD/AP values scale so slowly that it feels like a waste of time to do so. The movespeed for roaming feels most relevant, but 25 roaming movespeed in the same slot as Scorch and Gathering Storm feels lacklustre. I'd like to have it scale to its maximum value sometime in the midgame so that you get the most value out of it during dragon/herald fights, when you spend the most time in the river and to differentiate it from the late, late game scaling of Gathering Storm (and if it already scales like that, I'd like to see that in the tooltip).

In Resolve, Iron Shell and Mirror Shell are so weak that it doesn't feel like I'm making a major tradeoff for always taking Conditioning instead. I'd like to see the secondary effect on Iron Shell and Mirror Shell provide extra flat resistances instead of 5%.

Lastly, I didn't really like Kleptomancy as a concept. I don't think gold income is a "cool" effect, and the RNG aspect of item looting is highly undesirable.

Other than that, I'm really liking the progress on runes. There's still a lot of improvements that can be made, but the overall direction is really cool and much better than old masteries. There are some sacrifices on certain niche builds on old runes, but I think that the gains are overall more than worth it.

EDIT: I've been reading some of the other replies in this thread and and someone mentioned that there isn't a great keystone for DPS-focused spellcasters (Karthus, Kayn, Rumble, Malzahar, Fiddlesticks, and Singed being some examples of champions I've seen fitting this pattern). Seems pretty accurate to me since I've run into the same problem with MF though she's actually better off than most of those champions; there's nothing really similar to DFT in the new runes, which seems to have left a gap behind.

More from Dev Corner

More by Meddler