Boards›Gameplay

Runes Dumbed Down: The Loss of Options

Anaphiel·5/27/2019, 4:20:06 PM·31 votes·11,441 views

This is, you guessed it, another obligatory salt post about the current state of runes and masteries!

[galio-happy]

I started and loved league back in Season 4. Masteries didn't really do all that much, minor flavor/customization is all you got.

You learned how to play a champion, not a rune combination.

You spent an obscene amount of IP buying runes that really should have been free in the first place.

Everyone had their own opinion regarding what combination was best, but in the end picking the wrong masteries wasn't a huge deal.

But you had options. The illusion of choice can make a frustrating game seem much less hopeless. But instead of listening to the community and simply making runes free, riot elected to fix what was not broken. They made Keystones. Keystones ballooned the damage and reduced TTK, and introduced chaos for quite a while. Then as soon as the dust started to settle on that particular balance nightmare, Riot doubled down by making Runes Reforged.

What really agitates my almonds is the fact that they introduced runes reforged just after they finally managed to get the keystones to a reasonably balanced, non-awful state. I had only barely started to feel that familiar spark of joy again when they fixed what wasn't broken!

They removed the customizable stats that allowed you to alter your lane experience, and operated as a sort of player-driven balance lever that helped compensate for any individual balance nightmares within a meta. Did everyone use this customizability? No! But for those who knew to use it it felt wonderful.

Are you fighting your counter? Is he AD? Enter lane with 34 extra armor! You aren't carrying anything anywhere but you physically CANNOT feed! Are you fighting a man you can bully? Eschew defenses, acquire big deeps and carry! Do you need to go a buildpath that does not have CDR? Or be able to dodge skillshots using movespeed? There's options.

Removing wonderful options simply because of under-utilization seems like a majorly unnecessary fun-police sort of thing to do!

[sg-shisa]

TBH I felt the same way about boot enchants. Almost nobody knew they existed. But a nice Captains enchant on a tank or Distortion on Fiddle was a wonderful strategic boon. Getting rid of those things really dumbed down the strategy aspect of the game, ya didn't even need to keep homeguards as an option, but there was no reason to remove essentially the only thing that made not replacing boots once full build advisable!

Current runes: Free CDR at no cost. Everyone gets strong as all hades, but everyone also uses the exact same rune page every game without much variation. Everyone dies hilariously quickly, including the tanks. China, Korea, etc. want games to be even shorter and faster! The hell with the entire regions who want a more strategic League of Legends back! LC$ Plays boys!

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]

36 Comments

Ryastar5/27/2019, 9:40:55 PM7 votes

"Agitates my almonds"

I think I love you

Clockwork Mouse5/27/2019, 4:36:10 PM7 votes

My issues is just how much damage comes from runes. Feels like it is one of the major issues with the burst meta right now. Like, Yuumi is a fun champ that I like, and there are some good runes that sound like they might be good for her as a support. But right now to be optimal i take Comet, Sourch, The CDR one, and cut down to maximize how much damage my Q poke does and the damage is not something to sneeze at. And in the assassin tree there is one that does true damage whenever you slow someone or otherwise immobile them, which might as well be free damage because almost all champs have some kind of CC in their kit to proc that. And one gives pen for dashing, something that I am sure every assassin has and loves and they get free extra damage for just playing their champ normally.

wmbkryboy5/27/2019, 8:05:14 PM4 votes

I totally agree. I could just choose the same runes on every champion. The choice between keystones was not that big of a deal in most games. Now I almost have to have a separate page for every champion. Instead what I have resorted to is just using the pages provided and if my champion doesn't synergize well with comet too bad. I'm not going to waste my time setting up a new rune page every time I want to learn a new champion. I just want to play the game, I don't want to study for 1 hour, watch streams and read patch notes before I feel like I can queue up for a game. Sure this has resulted in me being unable to reach the ranks I have in the past.

Honestly, it wouldn't bother me too much if it didn't make such a big difference in the game. Picking the wrong mastery in previous seasons was not as big of a problem.

Eleshakai5/27/2019, 7:06:31 PM4 votes

I... don't like illusion of choice. Remove the choices that mean nothing and just give me the important ones.

Irelia Bot5/28/2019, 4:08:05 AM2 votes

In truth I wish they deleted the masteries instead of the old rune page.

Being able to take extra armor against Panth or Wukong made a world of difference.

Now we have to deal with things like predator Hecarim and Rengar showing up before you can even react.

Metal Janna5/27/2019, 9:03:03 PM2 votes

I'd like to see rune shards expanded, and the main runes nerfed, along with the champions themselves. Less damage overall, unless you go full offense on your rune shards.

TheSingularity5/28/2019, 3:47:08 AM2 votes

In addition, to demonstrate the absolute failure that is the resolve tree... let's compare the old resolve tree and the new resolve tree, the numbers equate to the row the masteries are in (note you could mix old masteries a bit so it isn't as clear cut as below eg 3 points here 2 points there): https://pyroblasty.github.io/masteries/#YYK0ClCqv https://leagueoflegends.fandom.com/wiki/Resolve

  1. 2 hp/5 OR 6% bonus MR and armour.
  2. 2 less dmg from champ/monster AA's OR 12 MS in bush/river
  3. +8% healing/shielding OR +50% health regen, increased to 200% when under 20% HP
  4. +15% tenacity AND slow resist, OR +2 armour and MR for each enemy champ nearby
  5. Grasp- steal 3% of your max health every 4 seconds in combat with champion. OR siege minions and large monsters killed grant up to 300 HP, after this siege minions restore 100 HP. OR Courage of colossus- Gain a shield for base (+ 5% maximum health) per nearby enemy champion for 3 seconds after hitting an enemy champion with a stun, taunt, snare, or knock up.

Now for current resolve tree:

  1. Grasp: deals 4% of max HP, steals 2% and grants 5 HP permanently. OR upon immobilising enemy gain 70 armour and magic resist (+50% bonus of each) for 2.5 sec, after duration deal dmg in a shockwave of base +4% max HP. OR upon receiving damage you and ally gain a shield+movement speed.
  2. Demolish: deal dmg to tower equal to 100+35% max HP. OR upon immobilising enemy champ, allies heal of them for 5+1% of your max HP. OR while shielded, gain bonus MR/armour and your next AA deals bonus dmg from base+1.5% HP +8.5% shield amount
  3. After 10 min, gain 9 armor/MR and increase both by 9%. OR after taking dmg from champ, regen for 6 +4% of missing HP. OR Bone plating, reduces the dmg of the next 3 auto attacks. Gain 3 HP for every 8 enemy minions/monsters that die near you. After 120 (45 HP) gain max HP. OR +5% heal/shield power, below 40% HP increased to 15%. OR Gain 10% tenacity for each summoney spell on CD, in addition gain 15% slow resist and tenac when using a summoner spell.

The key difference here, is old tree granted more HP and less but more consistent flat resists compared to current, meaning it was less obnoxious early (eg lissandra aftershock) and scaled smoothly late. However the old masteries were applicable to EVERYTHING! In other words, they works vs towers, they worked vs monsters and dragon. They weren't effective in the vacuum that is champ vs champ combat. Now while some may point to Aftershock and say this rune saves the tree. COURAGE OF THE COLOSSUS would grant over 1250 HP in a 4000 HP tank 8 of the 12 current resolve runes are completely irrelevant to non champion interaction (jungling) and 4 of them have damage tacked onto them. A clear example of everyone not only being squshier than before but also dealing more damage

RazsaKorren5/28/2019, 4:18:45 AM2 votes

i agree there is far to much damage in the game. a 3500 health nasus with 240 armor should not be 3 shot by an adc with no armor pen or last whisper.

as for the runes. agreed. but the cdr is very nice as a nasus one trick, that is also terrible at this game might i add, i love walking to lane with 6% cdr and only needing sheen and stinger to almost hit that sweet 3 second q.

the runes are very strong, overly so, but in the current meta its all about damage

TwitchInMyPants5/28/2019, 7:42:13 PM2 votes

"You had options with old runes"

Rosetintedglasses.jpeg

R2v3ns5/29/2019, 5:10:31 PM1 votes

Personally I think runes should just be completely removed. I don't really customize anything and they just make balancing harder. The trait system that DoTA 2 and HotS have is more finely tuned and streamlined than Runes. If anything runes just seem like a lazy verison of traits because runes are just general abilities for the whole cast instead of actual personal lists tailored to each champ.

rtbf2476264235/28/2019, 9:11:56 PM1 votes

its because riot doesnt care about what's good, they only care about change for the sake of change. League of thunderlords was stupid but we should've known that it was a foreshadowing of what was to come

BLIGHTBRINGER5/28/2019, 1:16:07 PM1 votes

At this point I just want something similar to Odyssey Augment System which directly enhances your champions playstyle.

Putting aside that some of the Augs buffs your damage, I actually found such a system fun.