Runes Reforged, what happened, and what needs to be done.

First I will introduce myself -- I am sanaru02, a Darius main with over a million mastery on mah boy and a plat top laner. I have been playing for years, and never before felt so inclined to even speak about balance of this game on a wide level. This pre-season is the least fun, most unbalanced, and most importantly -- unfinished lol has ever been. And I've seen some shit. Lets take a look at why, shall we?

It mostly began with runes reforged, as pretty much everyone could guess. For years, champs were balanced around the stats given by runes/masteries -- so even "big" changes still didn't blow open most champions viability. This is due to the base stats of all champions still stayed close to the same. When runes reforged came around, one of the biggest overlook changed was the stats missing from runes and how that changed the game in a way that it still hasn't recovered from.

Alright, enough blabber, example time. My boy Darius. Here is an example of the old runes he would take Quints: Attack speed x2, movespeed x1 (9% attackspeed, 1.5% movespeed) Marks: attack dmg (9ish) Gliphs: Mr based, some scalling some flat / scaling cdr if you were ballsy (up to 7% cdr or 2.88 to 51 mr at lv 18 with scaling) Seals: Armor (9 armor) Then whatever masteries, mostly fervor of battle granting stacking ad.

Here is what you get in runes reforged: Attack dmg goes from 56 - 64. Pretty much takes the marks place. cool. base armor from 30 - 39. Takes the seals spot. So far so good.

This leaves attack speed, movespeed, cdr and a boatlaod of mr.

Your choices are aftershock, phase rush, or klepto, and none of these truly deal with the missing remaining stats. Here's why:

Klepto was the best melee on melee rune -- especially against tanks. It's the only mastery that gives you enough ad and sustain to survive against tanks and scale with your second choice. (Generally gathering storm and celerity to supplement the lack of ad missing from runes in general) It also allows Darius to hit cleaver or zzrot or whatever item you were rushing first sooner. So this in all give sustain, some ad, and movespeed. This fails to give attack speed or any amount of mr, but all in all covered the most ground. This just got nerfed though, so fuck me.

Phase rush makes you so squishy and is sooooo match-up dependent. Again, no mr unless you take resolve, which then leaves attack speed and damage out of the equation. You do get movespeed here, but we are missing so many core stats to survive lane it doesn't fit. Also a good thing to note, resolves mr is dog shit. Lets compare the 5-15 mr you can possibly get from the new system to 51 in scaling runes. Seems like a pretty big gap to me.

Aftershock is decent, but the stats you get for taking that tree are hot garbage. Health, don't see that listed in stats I need to win the game. Oh and it's unreliable damage due to a few reasons. The proc doesn't always hit due to enemies flashing after an e, or the spacing for your q can move you too far away to both hit with the blade edge and hit aftershock. The most common combo is e, auto, w, free q which frequently can put you out of aftershocks rng. Also, choosing this gives you no ad or attack speed. Now you can take precision as your secondary, but lets face it, you aren't killing anyone with aftershock. So good luck using the snowbally runes in that tree like triumph.

SO WHAT AM I GETTING AT WITH ALL OF THIS STAT TALK? YOUR THINKING, I DON'T EVEN PLAY DARIUS.

1. The stats given out for runes reforged were not equal at all and heavily favored damage. Darius got barely half of the stats needed from the old system, and no rune combination to fill in the rest. Turns out the rest of the bruisers in the game had the same issue. But Maokai and nautilus get 15% attack speed. Where the fuck are bruisers 9% attack speed that they are sorely missing out on? This is one of the biggest reasons champs do too much damage at this moment, everyone got ad and armor, and no one got magic resists who needed it. And if bruisers go attack speed, they lose all chances of staying alive for more than a second in team fights. This leads to point two.

2. There needs to be magic resist in the resolve tree that isn't 5 at 10 minutes. Even if you assume games went to lv 16 or so, scaling mr gave around 40 extra magic resist. 40! And flats gave 12.06 if I remember correctly? That is still wayyy more than resolve can even try to hand out. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Well, tanks do mostly magic damage and percent health early, and now bruisers have no defense against it. Why do tanks feel like assasins right now? Because they are lane bullies due to bruisers not having defensive stats. And if they take defensive stats, they lose everything they got from old runes. Following me?

3. So your asking, what the hell should be done? Well first off, runes reforged should of been launched with at least 20 other keystones. That sounds nuts to say out loud, but champs like elise, darius, jax, riven, renekton, victor -- they all have no home because of the gaping holes in runes reforged. This system will be better than old runes and masteries, but right now Riot gave 3 options out of the 300 that were available before. Why does elise feel like ass now? Not a page for her other than electrocute. Why do fighters blow? No defensive stats and no keystone like fervor. Why do tanks do so much damage and vayne take over games? Well they got keystones that work for them, but I would say 40% of champs didn't. The new runes are purely damage focused and anyone who wanted stats anywhere else got shafted.

Why is this important to point out? Because I feel Riot could forsee some of this and at least address it. But no, we were left in the god damn dark and were forced to deal with them forgetting about melee champs in the top lane. They made no keystone for melee champs in toplane and still barely acknowledge that is is an issue. And all mains of all champs that don't have keystones right now are pissed off, and rightfully. All I want is for Riot to come out and say, hey, we didn't realize what stats people wanted. We didn't think of all champions when making runes reforged, and we didn't know mr was so important. ONLY THEN can we move forward and fill in the holes of runes reforged and figure out how to give each champion the stats they want, and not force them into runes that are merely acceptable, or in the case of fighters, pure fucking disappointment.

Riot, you guys are amazing. You have more stats than you could want, and more talent than you need to fix this. You missed the bus here and need to start coming up with new keystones last fucking month. This roll-out of 2% of runes reforged with ranked already started is just plain unacceptable, and I look forward to seeing you guys begin to bring out the other 98%. Look at what is missing on champions that they used to have, and fill in the holes. This will in a huge way make the game fun again and feel a hell of a lot more balanced. You want people to take resolve? Give the tank tree fucking tank stats, not damage on aftershock. Not scaling fucking health, not useless gimmicks for botlane. DURABILITY IS COMPLETELY MISSING IN THE DURABILITY TREE. Hand out mr so that we don't feel bad about losing attack speed, damage, and sustain in a trade for it. Then maybe we can actually live through a chogath or ornn in lane.

Sorry this might be a bit all over the place, but I really just had to get my frustrations and thoughts out on the matter. I just want league to be fun again, and I think restoring the stat balance that Riot worked on for the last 7 seasons would be a great starting point for runes reforged.

Thanks for reading everyone, I do appreciate it.