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All-Star opinions on Runes Reforged

Riot·12/10/2017, 2:59:40 PM·2 votes·23,520 views

If “a new runes and masteries system” was on your Holiday wish list, then congratulations! If “NA wins an international event” was on it, then… uh… hell yeah Rift Rivals! The end of the calendar year has brought big patches year after year for Riot. And this year, with Patch 7.22, we saw an overhaul of the runes and masteries system that was so big people are referring to this patch as “League 2.0.”

Parallel to the changes is the final League of Legends event of the year -- the All-Star Event. It serves as the last show case for the best talent in the world while offering the first glimpse at what the new year has in store. Whereas last year brought significant changes to jungle interactions and the pick and ban phase, this year offers a host of dynamic runes that may open the door for a lot of aggression and flashy plays.

Here’s what a few of this year’s All-Stars had to say about Runes Reforged:

Bo-Wei “Bebe” Chang

LMS ADC -- J Team

"So there are a lot of positive changes especially when it comes to professional play. Professional players normally have 20 pages of runes, 20 pages of masteries, so it’s very hard for them to manage all of those. Now a lot of big changes have been made -- all these things will be good for new League of Legends players and not just pros. It’s very exciting and feels like a different game -- so I have a lot of positive [thoughts] on it."

Sanghyeok “Faker” Lee

KR Mid -- SK telecom T1

"For players new to League, I think the new rune system is definitely beneficial to them and easier to learn. So I think it’s better for the overall player base. For me, I think this amount of change always happens at the end of the season. We always have to face this huge change at the end of the year, so for me I think it’s the [same old thing]. I’m personally having some fun -- it feels like a new game to me, so I’m enjoying it."  

Martin “Rekkles” Larsson

EU ADC -- Fnatic

"I think it’s a step in the right direction for Riot. But at the same time for us pro players it’s not necessarily the best because you can’t really dive into your own individual strengths anymore. Like, there isn’t as many choices. Before you could mix up the runes or the 30 mastery points and really emphasize on your strengths and hide your weaknesses. Now you just have six slots and you don’t really separate yourself from others. So I think it’s maybe not as great for pro players as League of Legends players in general, but it’s still a step in the right direction because it simplifies everything and you can focus much more on what actually matters such as the game and the matchups rather than scrolling through 20 pages of runes and masteries to figure out what goes best together."

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Gabriel “Revolta” Cresci

BR Jungler -- Keyd Stars

"I like it because when I go to tournaments, I don’t have to make 20 pages for every champion. [Laughs] But besides that the game is a lot faster and it’s a lot more methodical because you can use different runes on a champion depending on what you want to do in the game. You can play tanks in the jungle like Jarvan or Sejuani, which we have seen a lot in this ASE and have been banned. And you can also play assassins like Kha’Zix which has been really successful. It gives you more options because you have more runes to use and I hope it doesn’t really change."

Berke “Thaldrin” Demir

TR Top -- 1907 Fenerbahçe Espor

"To be honest, I didn’t have enough time to practice and to train. So I can’t say for sure, but as far as I see and have played, it looks fun. A lot of things will change -- it seems kind of unbalanced in some aspects, but when it gets fixed it will be much more fun compared to last year especially for top lane. [Because of] versatility -- before it was tank meta for top. When the runes and masteries mix, I feel like it opens up some windows for some top lane metas to come back in the meta. [For example], I really miss the Ignite/TP or Smite/TP meta. I really want to play Hecarim or Shyvana -- I don’t think we will get to play them, but I would like to see that."

The 2017 All-Star Event concludes today at 3:00 pm PT. Be sure to tune in to see what runes your favorite players are running!

Kien Lam is a content producer for Lolesports. You can find more awful great jokes and commentary on his Twitter @meanmisterkien.

 

65 Comments

0ptical ILLUCIAN12/10/2017, 4:49:33 PM31 votes

These changes totally Runed the game. Hehehe

Krafir12/10/2017, 4:14:12 PM8 votes

SO... No pros said something negative about the new "runes and masteries combined"... are they all trying to <Removed by Moderation> or wouldnt like to be banned from the platform because they dont agree with your childish bullshit of changing the direction? Not only that, but 15% back of all what we had farmed... Thats literally the biggest joke Riot could have pulled. Anyone with a brain will adapt, but Riot's just not logical for a penny with the infinite leveling. That shit will and HAS driven players away already.

The biggest concern though isnt about the changes, but that your community is filled with negative behaviors. It is insane. Emotes also spike the punch even more. Trolls are strong. They go in the champ select, Ask* to change a roll by taking the worst imaginable character for that role... You agree to it telling them to avoid doing what they do. They then proceed to tell you to go Kys and during the game they harass you. You think your verbal abuse report will work? They're a premade of 3 so forget the weight of your report.

Certain key phrases should be banned instantly if reported... not just "gay"... yet even that word is used as an expression. Not the greatest word choice, but whatever. You guys suck at providing tips: "Oh shit its another lore thing nobody gives a shit about and isnt a tip".

Sincerely. We love the game because of the artists. Not the dev team nor the programmers. Sure they do their jobs, but they dont use their fucking thick skulls. Ask for some help by your community. Linking reward system (honor) with loot just makes us even more angry because the majority of our games someone threatens us with a report, verbally abuses us, trolls us. I am sorry, but when will you learn to fucking tackle this issue by asking US for solutions.

They're not hard. Lets see: 1- making a list box that tracks down the i-g chat and suspends people using keywords. Make those keywords known in your TOS/ EULA and ask us to give you the newer versions of the racial slurs and expressions that are beyond the limit: fa_g, fa_gg_ot ... etc. 2- Limit the report section to things that are actually worth reporting and that dont create a tool for trolls to anger you in game such as: "intentionally feeding"... I am sorry but thats included in negative behavior and is hardly ever accurate in gold games. People die 15 times and they are trying / got angry because someone said something after they died.

Good tips: " not commenting after someone makes a mistake / dies". " mute your allies if they say something that doesnt pertain to the state of the game". " Surrender if the game is far from being in your favor".

CHANGE THE FUCKING SURRENDER BUTTON TO 60% SINCE WE LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY. NA's SURRENDER BUTTON IS BROKEN. I lost about 20 minutes every lost game because its one sided. I ask: "what is the plan if you think we can win". The answer is always a kid saying go fuck yourself when I am 4/0/2 and they are 0/12/1 or some fucked up circumstance where nobody even talked shit about him/her. <Removed by Moderation>

AceGeo12/10/2017, 6:34:01 PM6 votes

11/12 comments so far are based around you-know-who being a flame troll. But to the actual subject at hand, I'm happy to see that at least some of the professionals are enjoying the new changes this year. I myself am enjoying them thoroughly :) They simply need some tuning and additions. I didn't expect for them to be perfect right out of the box.

ERROR 4Ø412/10/2017, 11:15:52 PM6 votes

Definitely a good step in the right direction but the options are very limited then before. If we can get more options and be able to mix things up a little more then it will be great. Also I do not like I cant remove the preset ones, for some people they might be good but I don't use them or have any use for them but they are always there. We should either be able to edit them or remove them completely.

TheStabulous12/10/2017, 4:55:07 PM5 votes

The runes are just one of the changes in an overall large-scale shift that leads me to believe the company is reacting to some disparaging projections. It's always been a money-grab, but they've taken it to a whole new level. The toxic community is what drives people to leave the game and not want to invest in it, not runes.

DanteLovesPizza12/11/2017, 2:59:43 AM5 votes

Personally, I just think Rito is stepping on their own words over and over. Remember the last mastery change? They said something along the lines of "we want every player to be somewhat unique because the new masteries offer a lot more variation, so not everyone will tunnel into the same masteries like the old ones" and while it still happened, it wasn't like the old ones, so it definitely did give rise to more variation, so it worked. Then this Runes Reforged totally stepped on that, variation is literally non-existent, there is nothing unique because certain masteries are just beyond more powerful than others, players don't get to have preferential statistics on champions they like, and it's limited the variety of champions more than the old ones, because of how a selected few champions benefit way more from the new masteries that are more powerful than others. Certainly, this has made it easier for new players, because there's less to consider, but for veteran players, this has just created a large gap; those who are meta and those who aren't. The old runes and masteries allowed for cases where if you could not win your match up, you could set your runes and masteries to not lose it, the new system does not offer this, if it's a losing match up, you will lose, assuming in both cases that the players are equally skilled. Why? You could choose to have defensive runes and masteries in the old set up, like armor/magic resist runes mixed with a little damage to keep up in lane. Or in ADCs' case, life steal to sustain in lane, since runes, masteries and a Doran Blade together give something like a 9.5% life steal, which if you take most ADC champions level one damage being 50+, you're looking at 5-6 hp life steal per hit. The new runes don't offer this, the life steal is incredibly weak compared to the old runes and masteries, so if you take it, the sustain won't help because the enemy deals significantly more damage for it to be worthwhile, meaning you lose out if you opt for it.

As for the pre-season patch in general, the new Blue Essence system is awful for veteran players. New players benefit it way more, but veteran players are being suffocated by it. I remember some calculations from an employee that compared how much IP/Blue Essence we could get from the old/new system respectively, and based on that, what it showed was, more games per day is not more rewarding like the old system, in fact, more games per day in the new system resulted in more possibility of getting less Blue Essence in the new system, than IP in the old system.

All-in-all, this change is clearly dedicated to new players, which, from a business perspective, is an atrocious move, and reminder that Rito is a business. Anyone who knows how to run a business knows this; retaining customers is better than trying to get new customers, because it's easier and costs less to retain current players, where as getting new players is more difficult and costly. This Runes Reforged scheme is in no way helping to retain players, but instead, trying to get new players, hence an atrocious move, but if this is the move that's necessary to make Rito realise how much the player base has diminished and how revenue has decreased as a result, before they decide to revert to the old system, then that's fine, we just have to bear with this horrendous system for a year. People can argue players won't leave, but having played this game since Season 2, this pre-season patch is by far the one I've heard most players openly speak about quitting. Whether they quit, is of course, another issue, but the fact is, the more people that say it, the higher the probability of more people leaving.

Kat Believes us12/10/2017, 7:41:12 PM5 votes

For all the people who complain about a toxic community, please stop it. They can't control every player and ensure that your team performs well. The same people complain that literally every move riot makes is somehow related, or not-related-but-should-be to the toxic community. I'm sure they worry about that. They don't need to be told. Not every department of riot is the make-league-less-toxic department. Some departments, and the players who don't have their head up their asses, work on gameplay and making the game more interesting and decision-oriented.

I think Rekkles has a good point. There theoretically are fewer decisions to make in pre-game prep. The potential combination states of runes and masteries before the change probably reached some double-digit exponent. You could ultra-fine tune your pages between 8.5 damage and 17 attack speed or 9.9 damage and 15 attack speed. Probably at the highest levels of play, those seemingly small variations could be the difference between first blood and getting away, while being able to discern what a player's runes were could be the decisive factor in pushing for an all in or not.

That all said though, I like the new system more. It reduces the number of pre-game decisions and instead increases their impact. And since most of the runes are tied to gameplay actions, it puts all these extra stats into maneuvering and controlling a character, rather than simply existing prior. I think it distances players from "stat-checks" (see Irelia rework reasoning), and pushes them more towards gameplay decision making, like when to trade, roam, etc, which ultimately is what the game is about.

Requiem Of Death12/10/2017, 6:42:06 PM4 votes

After taking a 7 month break from League I came back to find the rune / mastery system completely revamped. I was kind of hesitant at first because i had no idea what the heck was going on but after sitting down to take a look at the different runes they have now i felt like i could understand them (i don't know if there is a way to show the actual numbers in game for the different effects like how much damage smite does instead of just saying "Every 20 seconds burns an enemy") enough to actually play with them and know what their mechanics were. I owned all the champions already and many of the skins so i never needed to spend ip or blue essence anyways so i wasn't affected by that nor upset that they only gave a small amount of blue essence in comparison to how long it took to unlock all the rune pages and buy all the runes. The only thing i was dissapointed in was the "champion loot capsules" given for levelling up. I have owned all the champions for a good year or two now so getting champion loot doesn't really give me anything, instead of making it champion specific why not add ward skins, emotes, or summoner icons to the loot capsule? I feel like that would give players that already own every champion something to actually look forward to in levelling, because right now i don't even care about the levels, they feel kind of pointless right now. Overall i like the changes that happened and i hope to see a little more balancing in the runes as we get to see them more, Thanks Riot for helping this game continue and All-Star was fun to watch keep it up ^^

rèek12/10/2017, 9:38:19 PM3 votes

funny how they only got senior pro players who respect their careers and dont wanna bash and get replaced lmao if they got votes from the public this woulda looked a lot different

iChem12/10/2017, 7:55:45 PM3 votes

I like the idea of the new system. However...they just busted tanks and bruiser even more. I've disliked the game for a few years now but do enjoy the occasional ARAM, haven't done ranked in ages and basically only play aram because not only are normal/ranked games toxic most of the time but dealing with tanks who can 1v5 and kill half your team and leave with no counter-play against champs like Galio, Trundle, Garen, Darius, etc. etc. other then going poke disengage comps is just not enjoyable. It forces the meta even further and if you try to shift from it you lose.

There is way to many offensive options that give tanks absurd damage and still let them have 4-5k hp with 200 - 300 resistances and with the lack of base armor/mr on adc's and most apc's there isn't a whole lot you can do other then praying you catch out someone before they decide to kill you so they can't defend a 5 man siege. IMO Runes should be defensive or utility based options, not damage. If you want damage as a tank or bruiser you should have to sacrifice an item slot for it, not select a rune for it.

Farqad412/11/2017, 1:40:28 AM3 votes

The only problem I have is that everyone seems to get bursted down faster. IDK if anyone else agrees but it seems to favor burst but supps got nice runes. Better than pages. I do think they need to provide better armor and mr options though. Imagine if they made it to where each champ gets their own rune sets and let the players go out there with builds

Falcon Of Death12/10/2017, 8:45:31 PM3 votes

How much did Riot pay them? Oh wait, only a few million.

Rand0mH3r0X12/10/2017, 8:44:16 PM2 votes

https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/GXC1yIa.png

Link isn't working...

3K Zero12/10/2017, 5:43:29 PM2 votes

Wow, sad to these kind of comments but not at all surprised. Yeah, the news runes suck in some ways and are good in others. I preferred having runes and masteries as 2 different things, because it allowed for more customization. I was really sad to get nothing but a chunk of blue essence for the 5 years' worth of runes i had collected. And the levelling system that gives you "loot capsules" wich should be renamed "champion shard capsules" only give me champ shards when i already own every champ.

But those are just my complaints, in the end not that big of a deal. I'd really like to see changes to the loot capsules so that it's not always a dam champion shard.

KENNYC12/10/2017, 7:05:52 PM2 votes

simpler? yes, but does take a bit of getting used to.

Stexe12/10/2017, 9:51:39 PM2 votes

The changes are a good step, but the lack of freedom for weird and off the wall strategies hurts.

Some characters just got really hit hard and lost their niche build stuff. Can't really do Jungle Malzahar any more. And some champions like Tahm Kench, who heavily relied on Attack Speed runes, are pigeonholed into roles even more now.

Just wish there were more options and maybe the splitting of Keystone and the passive benefit it gives. Also, it seemed really weird how much sustain stuff was removed. Fervor of Battle being removed seemed odd as it was an interesting choice that let sustained fighters rack up damage if they could stay alive. There's not much like that now for pure AD.

AuRaylion Sol12/11/2017, 6:27:23 AM2 votes

Ezreal TPA Bebe please play one more year T-T

AdeBug12/11/2017, 10:59:13 PM1 votes

link not working? (anymore)

Falkentyne12/10/2017, 11:07:26 PM1 votes

It's a step in the right direction but completely overlooking one HUGE problem which affects certain champions severely: Magic penetration. There are no longer any flat magic penetration runes for DPS mages, and while other mages with gap closers or certain forms of hard CC can gain extra penetration, the old DPS mages lose on damage quite a bit. Losing out on 20 flat magic penetration (19.53) with max pen in runes, vs an enemy who has flat magic resistance runes and 42 base MR, vs the new system where that same person has 30 base MR, and you have ZERO base magic penetration, means you lose almost 10% damage on that alone. (42-20=22 magic resistance you are attacking in the old system, while 30 - 0 = 30 magic resistance you are attacking in the new system (attacking more resistance, losing more damage). And the dodgeable comet, and lower damage Aery, with their cooldowns, simply do not make up for the loss in damage.

Only burst mages and assassins benefit from these new changes.