Boards›Gameplay

Who was Hail of Blades designed for?

Tusutaki·6/10/2018, 10:33:46 PM·5 votes·11,859 views

A serious question. We get that it's supposed to be for really quick in and out trades for three autos but then you have Lethal Tempo that was designed almost under the same fashion. There is no practical reason for Hail of Blades to exist when its objectively a worse version of Tempo.

Sure, Tempo has a 1.5 start up but it can be proced by any forms of damage and even then, it doesnt have the limitation to just 3 autos. Nor does it have the restriction of needing to be 5 seconds out of combat inorder to be refreshed like Hails does. Not out of combat with champions, out of combat in general. That is a pretty big restriction compared to Tempo's generic 6 second cooldown.

Even with the buffs to Hails in the PBE there is no reason for any champion to take it over Tempo. If anything, the only champion that I can remotely think of that would consider using this would be Jhin depending how it interacts with his passive.

23 Comments

Get Ogre Here6/10/2018, 10:35:19 PM5 votes

Idk what they were thinking with Hail of Blades. It's literally a precision rune in domination lul

Zeppelins circus6/11/2018, 3:12:20 AM4 votes

Thresh top with stormrazors. I ain't kidding.

Rysophage6/10/2018, 11:25:57 PM3 votes

Vayne but she's garbage anyways so who cares anymore

Hammermancer6/10/2018, 10:56:51 PM3 votes

Amumu item 3031 item 3087 item 3095 item 3078 item 3046 item 3006

MagicFlyingLlama6/10/2018, 10:52:09 PM3 votes

Considering how it bugs out, Mordekaiser

WTBeGirl100EUhr6/11/2018, 1:06:26 PM2 votes

Rek'sai is probably the best user of the keystone. She's reliant on getting 3-4 AAs off in a fight and can struggle doing so. Hail of Blades helps a lot with getting stuff done within her knock-up.

Haven't found anyone else who wants it, and even on Rek'sai other keystones seem better at least until the PBE buffs to HoB.

Warlord Rhinark6/11/2018, 9:01:53 AM2 votes

I mean.

If you land E + Q as Shen with Hail of Blades up you get sick nasty amounts of attack speed.

Makes it pretty easy to trade with him.

Too bad the rest of the Domination tree (with the exception of Ultimate Hunter I guess) is garbage on him.

Pokemonred2006/10/2018, 10:37:53 PM1 votes

Hail of Blades was meant to be for alternate playstyles where you're trying to frontload your 3 auto burst, rather than using Lethal Tempo's sustained DPS (which is on a delay; after the AS reaches a certain point, all 3 hail of blades autos will have fired before Lethal Tempo even procs in a HoB vs LT matchup).

I feel like it does that job rather well, tbh.

VoraciousX6/11/2018, 3:14:06 AM1 votes

Kai'Sa is good with it...for killing one champion. Afterwards though she doesn't have a keystone and is useless. When they made it they mentioned Darius, who I could see being good with it early game, but electrocute is probably better if you're going into domination even with Darius.

{quoted}

Jhin Because the attack speed just turns into more damage for him and his reload is just enough time for hail of blades to be back up. And uh... Rageblade users? I mean yeah there are a ton of characters with three hit passives but it seems like a waste of a keystone since electrocute is in the same exact tree.

Lethal Tempo gives him a full 100+(I think it's around 155) AD late game with a crit build. I'd much rather have it, as hail of blades requires 1 seconds between autos and Jhin's attack speed only scales with level, meaning early game this keystone isn't good on him as he only gets one auto out of it.

Wild Geese6/11/2018, 5:56:05 AM1 votes

In theory Hail of Blades would win in a duel against other attack runes, I think they had it in mind since they wanted junglers to fight over scuttle.

But in practice hitting all 3 autos doesn't usually happen, even with the attack speed.

ZapMyHeart6/11/2018, 8:37:42 AM1 votes

It's probably designed for champions who need that quick burst of AS to front load their AA damage in order to get the kill. Which is probably not many.

Nocturne Akali Vi and maybe Teemo Riven are the champions I could see using it to deal their damage quicky, as they utilize AA with their abilities, but not enough like ADCs do. But even then, there are better options to choose from.

I believe that it was created to give Assassins a way to better weave AA into their burst, but with Electrocute (or Dark Harvest if you going for late game deletion), Hail of Blades is kind of meh, if the goal is to destroy someone as quick as possible.

Akali is SO HOT6/11/2018, 9:03:51 AM1 votes

I guess the idea behind it was to allow champs that like to auto attack to be able to go into domination as primary with a good keystone to use. I guess it was a good idea, but didn't really work out that well. I've only seen it a few times so far.

lolipopevelynn6/11/2018, 9:10:41 AM1 votes

Its designed for 3 hit proc champs to get their 3 hit procs off. So your ekko's your jax, your gnars, diana, etc. Lethal tempo is bad for these champs because any ability procs it. Hail of blades only AA procs it. So you can harass in lane with ekko Q or gnar Q or diana Q without proccing the rune. Its also good for stacking rageblade faster.

Good on paper but bad in practice. Mainly because it doesn't replace tempo.

SirLapse6/11/2018, 11:34:08 AM1 votes

The keystone feels bad on champions that don't have a reliable way of getting onto the enemy for the said AA's. I've tested it with Diana and it's quite good if the enemy literally stands still, but if they kite back then you simply do not have enough time after your first attack to really do anything with the rune. It doesn't really help that on champions with low base AS that this rune sees even less returns and actually is clunky in the game.

Does it really need extreme buffs? I don't really think so. Needs higher duration because it's literally 3 auto's and nothing more, making it burst-centric for on-hits in the early game. The out of combat side of it makes it extremely hard to justify the short window of time you really get to use it with, since I usually have to skip out on CS to use it in lane compared to junglers who do not.

I'd also like to say that if some champions find this to be a comfortable rune, AA animation speed for the initial hit should be improved so as to not cancel auto's. It damages the rune's effectiveness by denying an ability to get any bonus AA's to begin with.

Miles The Man6/10/2018, 10:44:16 PM1 votes

Diana

gabetheguy6/11/2018, 4:58:05 PM1 votes

xin zhao, sometimes yi, basically any AA based burst champ.

ISeeDumbPeople6/10/2018, 10:49:56 PM1 votes

Honestly I like how it can charge item 3124 faster... but why bother when you can just take lethal tempo? Then again game is going the path of your fight is decided in 3 atks anyways.

ZackTheWaffleMan6/10/2018, 10:53:14 PM1 votes

RekSai

Kurt Hyzan6/10/2018, 11:03:47 PM1 votes

I don't understand why the same keystone is on 2 different trees tbh

Caidicus6/11/2018, 1:00:34 AM1 votes

Jhin Because the attack speed just turns into more damage for him and his reload is just enough time for hail of blades to be back up. And uh... Rageblade users? I mean yeah there are a ton of characters with three hit passives but it seems like a waste of a keystone since electrocute is in the same exact tree.