Runes Reforged: Manaflow Band needs buff timer
Manaflow Band needs buff timer like other runes instead of having the hassle to count down 1 minute from when it is ready.
3 Comments
Your mana bar turns light blue when it's active.
I agree with you, I hope that it gets added to the buff bar, but I asked a Rioter about this and they said it is currently under discussion among Rioters:
[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=4fAcHIyE,comment-id=00010000000000010000000200000003000000000000,timestamp=2017-12-07T01:50:15.809+0000)
In collaboration with the Game Designers on Runes, yes, I am the correct person. Going to be honest and up front here, we're still monitoring the play patterns around runes like Manaflow Band or Presence to see how you all are using them before we decide whether or not to change anything on the visibility front. Generally with any change we try to let things settle before we shake things up again. That being said:
I've been reading a lot of the topics around Manaflow & other impactful normal runes (requests for buff bar icons, etc.) with a lot of interest but didn't wanna jump in on anything because I wanted to see what you guys thought without my input.
When we were originally talking about runes visibility for playing with & playing against experience we were pretty worried that putting an exact timer on the "normal" runes meant that both players & opponents would be required to track that information. We provide in game VFX cues for things like Manaflow (& HUD support) so we don't want players to feel like they have to watch a timer to know when things were ready or not (because hopefully you can see the big giant glowing hands or the mana bar color change).
We also didn't want to overwhelm the buff bar with a ton of icons for every rune (a real concern with so much new stuff) and we want(ed) to be very clear about our rules for tracking runes in different spots. Thus, the guideline was (and currently still is) that only keystones, with their large power budget & gameplay impacting effects have buff bar icons. Those runes, the ones with the greatest effects on the game, are the ones we DO expect players to track pretty exactly. Hence why Grasp has a buff bar icon (and scoreboard, etc.) and Manaflow does not.
Now, I could see an argument for something like Manaflow being impactful enough to warrant additional tracking, but if it did it would probably be the exception and not the rule. Again, we're still talking about it as a team and I think there are very fair points on both sides of the discussion in this case. It's possible we decide to be more exact and more UI support in this case, but it's also possible that the current VFX/UI treatments will be enough to recognize the rune once players figure things out enough to know what to look for. Hence, us watching cases like Manaflow right now as Runes continue to stabilize.
Just thought you might like to know that Riot is aware of this and are considering their options for dealing with it.