To this day, as a season 2 veteran, what I hate the most in this game was the addition of keystones
Just to preface, this is going to be a rant. While I might make valid points, in fact I’m certain I will, I absolutely understand that there are valid retorts. I also understand I’m incredibly biased coming from a much simpler, and at times more binary, history in this game. That said, let me have my 5 minutes of soul cleansing. Profanity will be used.
I fucking hate keystones so much. I hate everything about them. They give such ridiculous power to champions that is so fucking hard to judge. Whether it’s PTA Renekton, Conq Jax, Grasp Poppy, etc., it’s all the fucking same. I know conq is going to hurt, I know PTA damage is going to hurt, I know grasp is going to hurt. But I literally always fucking find myself saying “wait it did how much damage?” How in gods fucking green earth are you supposed to be able to accurately judge how much damage these stupid ass keystones are going to do without playing 8-10 hours a day and eventually just developing an instinct for it?
I’m not saying old runes/masteries didn’t give hidden power but it was never like this shit. Even invisible power like %pen or %healing still didn’t feel so fucking overwhelming. And because of keystones, you’ve added another variable you clearly cannot balance and who could expect you to? You threw in these ridiculously powerful concepts onto a roster of over 100+ champions that were never made or balanced around the idea of such a powerful outside source being available to them. Low and behold, every season you have some extreme abuse case of keystones and it’s always absolutely game breaking. Runes and masteries NEVER did this. While there were certainly powerful runes (anybody remember LS Quints pre-nerf?) or masteries (season 4 defensive tree during pre-season), they never escalated to this point. And that’s because they couldn’t, because they were so basic that at most it would provide marginal advantages to champions and all you’d have to do is adjust some numbers. But with these fucking abominations(keystones), you’re constantly nerfing champions because of the existence of keystones and then you turn around and nerf the fucking champions, too!! Why is it any wonder that this game is going down the toilet when shit like this isn’t just constant, it’s EXPECTED.
Who wants to play a game where PTA Renekton combos you without any fury and kills you with ignite when he has a slight lead? Then I’m forced to sit there and just absorb as much experience as I can because I can’t go near minions - and by the way he’s freezing and my jungler won’t help me break the freeze. So I get to sit at 25 cs for 10 minutes cuz even without full fury, PTA Renekton is going to delete me in one combo. This shit is so dumb dude. I try to enjoy this game with the limited time I have. I don’t expect to ever get back to being a really good player, so I don’t go into these games thinking less of my opponents and just trash them the entire time, I go in with the idea that I’ll have fun. But most of my games are like this and that’s because keystones are a fucking abomination and need to be deleted. Oh haha by the way, those runes/stats didn’t matter? Yeah, who’d think 12 armor would do anything to a keystone that can infinitely proc true damage, or a keystone that does magic damage and heals or a keystone that stacks adaptive damage. This shit is so dumb dude, why do I even waste my time?
I feel slightly better now. Mind you, it’s 11:30 am and I’m still butthurt about something that happened 12 hours ago.
