Riot, please don't fumble Attack Speed
The S9 stat system is great news for overall playstyle diversity. Shards are intended to prevent unhealthy stat combinations, however the current version has one oversight that I believe causes strictly negative effects. It takes a lot of background, but there should be an Attack Speed shard in Row 2. To explain, I differentiate Resolve and Precision, a distinction which was lost in the "stat siphon" system and may have caused the choice of a single Attack Speed shard.
**Resolve's Issue and Solution**: *HP too strong on tanks AND no cost to Secondary users; stats split.*
Two issues that were found early in Season 8 were that tanks were given too much security in the early game by always having access to full HP stats from the Resolve Tree, and other classes (marksmen) who took Resolve Seconday didn't have to sacrifice damage. (Recall this was also when Aftershock was broken, and ADC's took Relic Shield.) For these reasons, in 8.1 Resolve was changed to siphon stats.
**Effect to Tanks**: *partially successful nerf*
Now the premier Tanks/Bruisers (Sion, Urgot, Poppy, Maokai, Mundo) mainly take Resolve/Inspiration or Inspiration/Resolve, as it's the only way to get full tank stats. They're locked into this combo for a secure early game. Without it (as in next season), there would be new issues for the tank class to respond to.
**Effect to Secondary users (marksmen)**: *successful nerf (after Relic Shield fixed)*
The premier (non-Klepto) marksmen became the late game attack speed scalers (Kog'Maw, Vayne, Tristana, Twitch, Xayah). Relic Shield was still an issue, but after its 8.2 nerf, Vayne and Kog'Maw dropped off, and Attack Speed became the bot lane meta.
Who still goes full Tank? a.k.a. why full tank is overpowered The fact that full tank is the strongest Resolve page is evidenced by the fact that the most popular Secondary page for Resolve is Inspiration. Also, the most popular rune pages for most supports are Resolve/Inspiration or Inspiration/Resolve. Again, this means that tanks are in an unhealthy state.
**Precision's Issue and Solution**: *Attack Speed too weak for most marksmen; stats split.*
Attack Speed meta was due (in large part) to the fact that the best marksmen keystones, Fleet Footwork and Press the Attack, were in the Precision Tree. Therefore its best users would all be Attack Speed marksmen. (Also Rageblade was still broken). Riot correctly realized that more marksmen should have access to these keystones, and so in 8.4 they split the Precision stats as well.
**Effect to Marksmen**: *successful buff to non-AS; worth for class diversity*
The renewed success of Xayah, Vayne, Tristana, Draven, and other Crit Marksmen meant that this was a successful buff to non-on-hit. Meanwhile Varus and Kog'Maw would wane before the 8.6 Rageblade Rework.
**Effect to Secondary users**: *essentially non-existent*
The only champs taking Precision Secondary would have been non-AS marksmen, which now switch to Precision Primary, some Bruisers, who already have their stats split by Resolve, or a small number of Mages using the old Presence of Mind (Cassiopoeia, Azir, Kassadin) which required a fix anyway.
Who still goes full Attack Speed? a.k.a. why full AS is underpowered The only champions that still value pure Attack Speed (either Precision/Inspiration or Inspiration/Precision) are Jax, Kayle, and sometimes Tyrndamere (looking at top ranked KR mains and popular pages). This means the other tree combos for champions like Ashe, Kalista, Master Yi, Twitch, Varus, etc., are more valuable than the 9% AS they're missing. Almost none of these champions are considered top tier OR couldn't be met with direct nerfs/buffs. In other words, allowing them a possibility of +18% Attack Speed would not break the game.
To summarize, Resolve stat siphon was as nerf to full tank, and Precision stat siphon was a buff to non-attack speed (by way of opportunity). This tells us that there is an issue with full tank, but not with full attack speed. All of this is confirmed by Rioters as well.
> "Allowing tanks to pick 3 defensive choices at level 1 can compensate for their purposely weak early game too much." - RiotRovient on the tank issue.
> "While we think it will open up Precision primary to a wider range of champs it does have some downside for champions who want to take Precision secondary but don't want attack speed much" - RiotMeddler on splitting Precision's stats.
So to conclude, there should be another Attack Speed shard in the second row... that's it! It again gives full access to the stat that Attack Speed champions want, and will allow many champions and playstyles a healthy way back into the meta.
Sorry if this seems longwinded. I felt I had to lay it out this way to make it all clear, as I suspect the complexity of these decisions and effects led to the current choice of rune shards. Thanks for reading!
[slayer-pantheon-thumbs]
