a sorta deep look into runes/masteries, damage and how it has gone to change the game

i think we can all agree at the moment that damage is quite... high compaired to previous seasons. and iv been under the impression for quite some time that there are several reasons for this,

First: with the initial removal of runes most people lost some flat defenses with the standardized runepages they ran. while runes were removed everyone who used damage runes had their base ad/ap buffed to compensate, however only a handful of champs had their base resistances buffed.

the base stats for ad/ap may not have changed but due to the lowered resistance the overall damage has increased.

Second: removal of meaningful masteries is one of the BIG culprits here.

at some point during season 5 keystone masteries were introduced in an effort to streamline masteries for the more casual audience and to "spice up" gameplay with new effects, in my honest opinion keystones were a massive failure. along with nerfing the everliving god out of utility and defensive masteries they buffed damage excessively without changing the requirements for getting the extra damage.

im sure everyone who was around for it remembers league of thunderlords? where a single keystone dominated the game to the point where champions were nerfed and buffed entirely on how well they interacted with that single keystone? literally everyone in the game but used it.

damage was once again directly (addition of damage keystones) and indirectly buffed (heavy nerfs+removal of defensive and utility bassed masteries) by a very heafty ammount.

Third: runes reforged

there are several problems with runes reforged but the main one has to be the MASSIVE damage bonuses from the damage trees outweighs the utility and defense trees by UNREAL amounts.

not only do the damage trees "minor" bonuses end up giving effectively free stats for normal play the "major"(main runes) bonuses literally give free damage by either giving a ton of upfront damage (electrocute, predator, dark harvest) or slightly delayed bonus damage (comet, press the attack, lethal tempo, conq, aery) not to mention the free stats all the trees give outweigh the tiny amount of health and resistances you get from the guardian tree.

as a direct result of everything that has happened with runes reforged damage has skyrocketed.

**Fourth **: BUFF BUFF BUFF nerf COMPENSATION BUFF.

over time riot has been steadily buffing champions and (damage) items, normally this wouldn't be an issue because you would expect things that are problematic to be getting nerf while things that are weak getting buffed right?

well that has not been the case for the last few years what has been happening is a champion is preforming "badly" for whatever reason... it could be a myriad of reasons that specific champion is under preforming, such as the current meta not being favorable or their main build items getting Nerfed.

whatever the reason they end up being buffed to be able to preform with the other champions in their role often while nerfing the reason they they wernt preforming well getting changed so now theyre not just strong. theyre too strong so everything that was weaker than them get buffed again to be able to preform. but they dont get nerfed back, so they stay really strong, but now everything is strong so nothing is right? well no, the most common thing to get changed on a champion is the stats on their ability's, for the mostpart damage and cooldowns.

so now we got damage getting buffed and buffed and buffed, but health and resistance stats have effectively not been changed at all for most champs not to mention items (infact most defense items have been nerfed over the years and not buffed at all).

runes reforged ended up buffing damage through the roof and out of orbit.

**Fifth ** : Mana changes and overloading cdr.

i dont remember exactly when this happened at this point but not too long ago mana was changed DRASTICALLY from being a resource you had to actively manage and pay attention to something you only had to worry about early in laneing phase. well the main reason this happened is because almost every mana item (that wasnt a dedicated support item) was switched over from mana regen to flat mana, and large amounts at that.

at this point mana pools for every champion that relied on mana regen items (ap assassins and mages) went from having limited mana pools they had to carefully watch so they dint run out when they needed it now had massive mana pools. now lets combine that with slamming cdr onto nearly everything.

so now with their powers combined mana management was taken out of the game for the champs that rely on it the most as a sort of power gate, and with their now massive mana pools and cdr on everything they now can actually just spam spells at everything with no worries in the world the second they finish the first item. why would they worry? they have enough mana to do like 15 full spell rotations and still have enough for that upcoming teamfight.

**Sixth **: Towers.

i get that they were changed in order to stop the first tower race in pro play but right now theyre pathetic, they dont have enough heath or resistance to matter and dont do enough damage to champions to discourage low level dives.

its not "towers defend you early game you defend them mid-late game" right now. you have to defend them at ALL points in the game, theyre actually glorified weak super minions.

infact it had the opposite effect that you wanted on pro play to make it more exciting, teams now play VERY safe during lane phase only doing anything when their jungler is close and can 100% get them something. why do they play it uber safe? because if they die once they will lose their tower.

**Seventh **: gold income

when masteries were removed several ways for supports to generate gold for supports were removed from the game, to combat this riot raised the passive gold income for everyone in the game so supports could still get their items within a somewhat reasonable timeframe while at the same time changing how kill gold works.

as a result of this snowballing got out of control very quickly and the best way to deal with someone that got even slightly fed was to basically send your entire team at them or avoid them altogether

**Eighth **: Duskblade, last whisper items, stormrazor

first lets talk about duskblade... the item is extremely overloaded. movespeed, lethality, an passive that can 1 shot wards while letting you walk right through them, flat damage, on hit damage that can easily do enough damage by itself to half health a squishy. im not even joking when i say this.

remove it

not only is it beyond stupid strong it has warped the game around itself more than once now and since it can proc electrocute as well it can make squishys explode with no room for counterplay even if the assassin misses their abilities.

now then the last whisper items, lower it to 30% and have base last whisper do 25% more or less fine

and stormrazor honestly dosent need the free crit on charge, thats basically just static shiv's passive. a quick temporary attack speed steroid will make it strong enough.

                                    **MOVING FORWARD WITH THE GAME FOR THE BETTER**

_remove _the "main" damage runes and most - _all _ the secondary runes, replace all secondary runes with the mastery trees from end season 4 (for refrence http://abccbaandy.github.io/league-S4mastery-calc/# )

the idea here is to have the main rune be what "modify's" your playstyle a bit while the masteries will give all the necessary bonus status for the game to make the playstyle work the way you want it to.

all main ruins should be utility or objective focused, (very little-no damage) and give NO upfront stats to the champ being played. you only get the passive from it.

examples of things that would be ok/good: demolish, grasp of the undying, unsealed spellbook, glacial augment, phase rush

a few possible runes: arey(only gives bonus shield, on a cooldown), reinforce(buffs nearby towers defenses OR gives tower a shield that builds up over time as they are near it), architect(slowly heals nearby towers) Titan slayer(bonus damage to epic monsters)

lower passive gold generation with the reintroduction of the gold generating masterys for supports there is no need for the higher passive gold.

base stats need to be "base" lower the base damage and resistances on the champs that got the "post rune removal" buffs, the reintroduction of masterys will ensure damage dealers and tanks will get the stats they need and want to do their jobs.

mana and cdr revert most of the mana item changes and start removing cdr off of items. there should only be a few ap items with alot of flat mana attached, mana regen rather than flat mana will make games more interesting and strategic. remove cdr from items, it should be hard to reach max cdr and you should have to go out of your way to get that with items.

towers buff them, seriously. not just a tiny buff. its needs to be significant.

give them a part hat or something :^)

but seriously please undo some of the pro play centric changes, they had backfired in your face and did not make the game more enjoyable to watch.