Can we start shifting the dominance of defensive runes and encourage people to build defensively?

2yordles1cupcake·Oct 5, 2015·26 votes·1,246 views

After so many seasons it's always the insert x in red followed by x armor runes and x magic res runes, even adc/pureDPS are taking them because they arent losing anything. Not to mention for some odd reason the dps meta has always been centered around an arms race to see who could reach x amount of dps first instead of building a banshee/GA as a 3rd or 4th item, There is absolutely 0 diversity in runes or items dps rush. The only thing riot has done so far is at least shift people away from the flash/ignite meta and actually get them to pick tp/heal, and in some cases barrier/ghost.

17 Comments

IcyPepperOct 5, 20159 votes

The best we're going to get, imo, is hybrid items like item 3157 item 3027 item 3116 item 3001

As for ADC's, I don't believe they can really afford to except for their six items. There's a reason why teams are usually built around protecting their own ADC, and destroying the other.

MelledoneusOct 6, 20151 votes

Still waiting for an AD item 3157 .

IcyPepperOct 6, 20152 votes

Not all AP and AD items should have counterparts.

ADC's aren't limited by cooldowns, and they're typically the designated role for having the most protection through teammates. If there was an AD zhonyas they made good use out of, it could mean nerfing some of their safety.

MelledoneusOct 6, 20151 votes

How about one for melee assassins? Seriously, playing Talon is suicide.

IcyPepperOct 6, 20151 votes

AD assassins in general need an itemization rework, if you ask me. That is just my opinion, though.

item 3139 is your best bet. Assassins, due to their nature, probably shouldn't be able to go into stasis, but rather be slippery. Stasis is more of a mage thing.

If you ask me, they ought to buff Merc a bit to have some good tenacity on the active (not passive) or something?

MelledoneusOct 6, 20151 votes

I played a match of One For All against Veigar . Needless to say, Mercurial Scimitar didn't help much.

IcyPepperOct 7, 20151 votes

Against one it is useful. Trust me, QSS was invaluable in ARAM >.>

Against five? There is no saving you. Ever.

SquarefighterOct 5, 20153 votes

Actually a lot of high level ADC's have begun to take attack speed blues, defensive runes are good but not 100% dominant.

HellioningOct 6, 20153 votes

Ranged characters will probably always prefer offensive items because they can apply their offense from a distance, and therefore good positioning can be far more efficient then any defensive item. A melee character will need to build more defense, obviously.

Combine that with the fact that most offensive stats scale with each other (instead of just buying another AD item, you could instead buy an attack speed item and gain more DPS) and barring major changes, most ranged damage champs will build full offense.

Photos of GhostsOct 6, 20152 votes

Wait, aren't midlaners using only HP yellows and no resistances since spring split?

ValyrianBladeOct 5, 20151 votes

Offensive stats scale really well with eachother. So stacking offense instead of grabbing defense on a 3rd or 4th item makes sense.

Often the offensive champion is ranged. Thus, they can stay safely away while their defensively building champions tank for them. This not only applies exceptionally well to Baron (much more efficient for a pure glass cannon and a pure tank to take him down than it is for 2 hybrids to take him) but also towers and teamfights. In most tower sieges your adc is only getting a couple shots at the tower each wave because the enemy has 5 champions there with waveclear. You want your ADC powering out 1/4 of the towers health each time rather than 1/10 when no one else can even reach the tower.

Crowd control provides better 'defense' than defensive items do. Taking no damage is always better than taking reduced damage.

Defensive seals and glyphs are popular because there are no offensive counterparts. Make reasonably tough AD glyphs or AS glyphs and I guarantee you ADCs will start taking them. And APCs do indeed take AP, AP/lvl, CDR, or CDR/lvl glyphs fairly regularly. Some also take MP5 seals. It's just really tough to drop defenses that are really strong early game when you can't gain a similar amount of offense.

Need Gold 4 TentOct 5, 20151 votes

yea, yellows are made for defense, there are no offense runes that are effective on them. if one goes full hyper offense, there will be wasted gold on the yellows (you'd be getting less gold's worth of AD compared to another defensive stat). But a +22 AD rune page was fun to run in the old days.

Teridax68Oct 5, 20151 votes

Rune setups in general have never really succeeded at being truly diverse, even in the case of per-champion personalized rune pages, and they tend to simply be an extension of champions' usual builds plus armor and magic resist. I personally think it might be worth removing runes entirely from the game and buffing all champions directly in compensation if needed, though that's very probably not the only solution out there.

As for marksmen or mages building full damage plus one defensive item, I don't think that's especially a problem, since it preserves their weakness to incoming attacks and focus (a successfully tanky ADC would likely be a nightmare to deal with). As for build diversity, I agree with you that marksman itemization is really abysmal in terms of interesting and varied choices, though hopefully that will change soon with the marksman pass. Mage itemization is a lot more diverse, imo, though there's probably even more that can be done to improve it (Rito's been trying to split item 3001 into two separate items, for example, one for AP bruisers and the other for mages seeking a MR option).

Kats PajamasOct 5, 20151 votes

Damage peels are reals.

Rito StaffOct 5, 20151 votes

I feel that there's diversity now with defensive items but not with damage ones.

Warmog -> good on aram specially c: Banshee -> Good for Zed, Yas, ADC's. Anyone who doesn't want to be locked in. Visage -> Sustain dependent champions. Dead Man's -> Good for split-pushers, chasing, (dis)engaging, roaming. Randuin -> now very good vs fed yasuo and ADC's in combination with defensive masteries (though the latter as you said...) + the attack speed redution. Frozen -> good with randuin to stack that attack speed reduction on Vaynes and others.

Sunfire needs to be tweaked into relevancy. It should be fit the AoE burn damage.

Then there's Maw, Scimitar, Titanic Hydra which which also have distinct purposes.

Meanwhile the ADC life is trying to not fall behind facing the ammount of armor one can get nowadays =|

Crits, armor pen attackspeed hustle

ZedexOct 6, 20151 votes

Runes are an archaic system that needs to be completely reworked or removed.

But, due to the fact that we play a free game, Riot needs to sell some of their items in the store ( IP boost i'm looking at you!) to keep afloat, and thus an IP sink is needed.

Plus the pages cost more then basic champions, IP wise.