How Kleptomancy is Actually Hurting Ezreal (and direction to move for a fixed)
Kleptomancy is an extremely unhealthy rune in the way that it effects how champions like Ezreal
and Gangplank
are played. Instead of giving them new options it has crowded out all other options. This is to the point that an Ezreal player without Klepto has an avg. winrate around 46% and with Klepto has an avg. winrate above 53%. I haven't heard any talk about this by riot or the community so I will explain my thoughts. Note this is not about the RNG of Klepto.
Klepto is designed to offer someone the option to be rewarded in terms of gold and consumables, at the cost of a combat related keystone. It is supposed to reward more risky or aggressive play, which we can see due to the requirements of an auto attack. I would like to compare this to something very similar and yet healthy for the game: Spell Thief's Edge
. Spell Thief's Edge also rewards for aggressive play, but has shown effective on many champions, and even in a variety of roles such as mid and jungle. It is versatile because it (1) gives gold over time, and (2) only requires ability hits to proc the passive. Klepto, on the other hand, has only shown to be popular on champs that can abuse it in a way where they take the benefits without the risks (Ezreal, Gangplank) and champs that don't have any other keystones that fit well (bruisers).
Bruisers just need better keystones, that's not what this is about. Because Ezreal and GP CAN use Klepto so well they are now all but required to. Ez has received 2 or 3 nerfs in a row, and while GP hasn't been nerfed yet he has grown extremely popular and his winrate has jumped a couple % (He was a bit weak before, and his high skill cap makes nerfs less necessary).
What would be healthy would be a rune that had similar potential on many champions that allows for increased income as a result of playing better/more aggressively/other criteria. In it's current state however, requiring an ability and auto attack to proc, it can't be balanced without being too strong on some champions or being too weak on most.
TlDR: Kleptomancy Functionality has to be changed to be similarly accessible by many champs to improve game health