Runes Corner: Meteor Sneak Peek

Hello! And welcome to another Runes Corner. I’m Riot Gregab from the team working on Runes Reforged and this week we’ve got a sneak peek of a new keystone we’re working on tentatively called Meteor. Check it out and let us know what you think down below!

http://i.imgur.com/HvXteg0.png

Meteor Damaging a champion with an ability hurls a meteor at their location. If the meteor hits them it deals bonus damage [40-100, based on your level +0.2AP and 0.2 bonus AD] Cooldown: 20 - 8 seconds

_(Note: all the specific numbers here are tentative and are likely to go through significant changes before launch.) _

Here’s what Meteor currently looks like in action:

http://i.imgur.com/3ugxkVY.gif

(Note, as usual, that these are temp vfx and not what it’ll look like at ship.)

When Syndra’s Dark Sphere hits Cassiopeia, the meteor fires off from Syndra’s position aimed at the spot where the sphere hit Cassio. Note the red circle that shows up on the ground after Dark Sphere hits.That’s an indicator showing where the meteor’s going to land, giving opponents an opportunity to dodge it. Plus, note the small orange sphere orbiting Syndra before she casts Dark Sphere. It indicates that Meteor is off cooldown and will fire with her next ability. Despite these warnings, Cassio stands still, allowing the meteor to hit her. If she’d walked away before it arrived she could have avoided its damage.

One excellent way to prevent your targets from walking out of the meteor’s path is to stop them from being able to move at all. This gives Meteor excellent synergy with CC abilities like Lux’s Light Binding.

http://i.imgur.com/3ePDVQ7.gif

Like Perxie, which we showed off before, Meteor is a Sorcery keystone. We’ll have more to say about the identities of the individual styles soon, but here’s the short version: Sorcery serves champions who want to enhance ability-based damage, especially AoE spells. Our motto for it is “unleash destruction”.

Let’s take a look at some similarities and differences between these two keystones to get a better idea how you might decide when to take one over the other. The first obvious difference is that Meteor does significantly more damage when it hits (40-100 based on level vs Perxie’s 10-40, plus lower AP and AD scaling ratios). That’s because Perxie is more consistent. It always hits its target while Meteor can be dodged. Also, Perxie sacrifices some raw damage for versatility. When you shield an ally with it, you give up its bonus damage until the pet returns. Whereas Meteor, on the other hand, is all damage.

One similarity between the two keystones it that they both play off of your positioning relative to enemies. However, each rune requires very different positioning to get the most out of them. Perxie asks you to move towards your target to get the pet back sooner and shorten the cooldown. When Perxie’s available it automatically hits enemies you damage, but to land Meteor, you have to position your spells with it in mind, placing them so it’s hard to dodge the flaming rock from the sky that follows.

I hope this quick post gave you a clearer idea of what a keystone can be and got you excited to try out Meteor. We’re looking forward to hearing your reactions. Who would you take this on? What cool synergies can you think of with it?

We’ll stick around in the comments to nerd out with you and answer any questions you might have. Thanks for reading!

For previous Rune’s Corner posts, check out: Rune’s Corner: Content Development Peek.