Simple thoughts on rewards, runes, balance, and the state of the game

The TLDR: If you do the math, the rewards are actually better now than they used to be, but they still feel worse because certain things are more expensive and you get the BE in chunks rather than slowly. I also think that the balance is very off right now but that's to be expected.

Rewards If you look VERY carefully, the new reward system hands out blue essence more easily than the old system handed out IP. I have all of the champions in the game unlocked and I'm sitting on a lot of BE right now from the rune refund and my stockpile I had before the patch, but I'm still hesitant to spend it right now in case the values of anything change soon.

OMG MATH, MUST AVERT EYES There are two scenarios that we should look at. A binge night, and a super casual player.

IP used to be handed out every single game... 40 - 70 or so for an ARAM, 60 - 120 for a game on the rift, +100 for the first win of the day bonus, life was good. A little math, let's assume you played 20 games. 10 ARAM, 10 Rift. Your win/loss was 50/50 and you picked up FWOTD bonus: 1550 IP

Now however, you get 575 XP for the first win of the day, and then you get around 910 BE for leveling, and no BE per game. I don't have a growth chart for this, but I'm lvl 31 right now and it takes 2496 XP to level. I can only assume the ratio it gets worse from here, but I'm just going to pretend all levels cost that much. ARAMs seem to produce 90 - 160 XP and 150 - 250 for Rift games. Take the same 20 games from before and that's 4200 XP. You will level 1.7 times giving you an average of 1531 BE for those same games.

Now let's look at a super casual player:

First, let's assume that on both systems, you got on every night and played ARAMs until you won, and then stopped playing. You did this for 20 nights. This should be the most advantageous to the new FWOTD bonus. If you have a 50% win rate, then you will play on average 2 games per night. An average IP earning for 2 games of ARAM plus FWOTD was 210 IP. Over 20 nights we're talking about 4,200 IP.

In the new system, the average XP for these two games plus FWOTD would be 825 XP. That's 16,500 XP for 20 nights, and ~6.6 levels. If the capsule you get is worth on average 910 BE then you will receive 6,015 BE.

Spending BE If you don't have all of the champions yet, I think this system will help you get them all more quickly than I got them. But you're going to have to be patient in getting the champions that you actually want. It's much more BE efficient to roll random tokens than it is to disenchant them and buy just the ones you want. Just think of it this way I guess... for every champion that you unlock that you don't want, you make the odds that much better that you will unlock a champion that you do want next time.

For those of us that already have all of the champs, I think the best buys in the shop right now are extra rune pages for the added convenience of not having to build one on-the-fly pre-game as often. I also plan to keep unlocking lvl 6 and 7 champions with BE even though their price has increased significantly. I actually like that they are more expensive now. It increases their value since not everyone will be willing to spend their all-to-important currency on them.

Runes reforged and Balance First of all, I was a big supporter of the counter triangle that Riot had going last patch. With certain exceptions: Tanks could out sustain and kill most mages, mages could out burst most ADCs, and ADCs could kite, shred, and life steal most tanks. (then there are assassins who just kill everyone but let's not talk about those).

I'm also a big fan of the game requiring consistent out-playing before one team pulled ahead of the other and takes the victory. Snowballing off of a single play or kill at 7 minutes to win a game is very bad IMO. It goes against the idea of counter play.

The new balance seems weighted heavily towards the carries as both mages and marksmen can both destroy tanks right now given the right runes and items.

I feel like marksmen have to play a much more dangerous game in the beginning because they're every bit as squishy as they used to be and their supports can't really mitigate any more damage than they could before. There is also more stuff to dodge and champions just do more damage now. Jungle ganks are more successful because they can take burst keystones. Mage and assassin burst has gotten even more bursty.

Playing a lot of the tanky champions feels really bad right now. Particularly in the support role where you can't get tanky as quickly and the tank keystones for supports are not as useful as the mage or utility keystones. Grasp of the undying is hard to stack in a 2v2 lane as a mele champion and doesn't really do much for your ally. Aftershock makes you pretty tanky and does damage, but once again... not really anything for your ally. Guardian only works well if you have something that you cast on your ally. A few of the tank supports work well with that, but not all of them.

Playing a tank in the top lane is like a roller coaster. First I feel awesome as I slowly beat the crap out of my opponent and win my lane. Then I get utterly destroyed by a fed enemy jungler or ADC after 20 mins and realize that they can pick me just as easily as they can pick anyone else on our team and I am extremely frustrated. I have an armor item, I have 3-4K HP, killed the enemy laner a couple times, out farmed him, destroyed his tower, so why does this 4/1 Kha'Zix 1-shot me? Then the game continues into late-game where I now have ungodly amounts of HP because of the new infinite HP runes, but I still end up 4/9 and we barely eek out a victory thanks to the carries.

I think the tank runes need some straight-up % damage reduction and some additional armor and MR on them. I still feel like a squishy late game no matter what I build.

A couple of other things, all of the extra damage based on multipliers from either stats or take downs makes the game way too snowbally for my liking. Also, there is only one mana rune so if you're any kind of champion that needs a mana boost to be viable, it really limits your path choices down.

There are also a few champions that are a little too powerful right now with certain rune combinations. So far I've seen:

• A cho'gath with 14,000 HP after activating stoneplate
• Vayne players who can kill carries with 2 auto attacks, and tanks with 3-4
• That Kha'zix I mentioned earlier with a stacked Dark Harvest who could half-health a tank with a single auto attack
• Xerath that took , Arcane Comet keystone, manaflow band, and early bought then just spammed everything on CD
• Ezreal with Kleptomancy - "stealin' your items and your lunch money"

All that said, Riot has plenty of time to tweak and adjust the runes to bring them into balance, and at least we have a 10-ban system now to mitigate some of the unintended OP that is going on right now. What kinds of OP combos have other people seen?