Runic Echo is going to be OP as heck midlane

junglerboy16··4 votes·1,516 views

Okay, to start things off, THANK YOU RIOT FOR HELPING FIDDLESTICKS!

That said, this new jungle item is going to be abused SO hard in mid lane. Not only does it offer the AoE effect of Luden's Echo (20 less base damage is negligible) for enhanced wave clear at a very low cost, but additionally the mana sustain this item offers is insane for any mid laner. Restoring 18% missing mana for throwing a Q at the raptor camp is absurd. You don't even have to kill the camp, you just need to damage them. The only reason Ruenglaive's mana restore isn't broken on laners anymore is that it procs after every ability cast for a much lower amount, providing effective in-jungle sustain but being ineffective outside the jungle. Runic Echo on the other hand provides a massive burst of mana for almost no cost (a mage who is OOM with 1000 base mana and a low cost Q could easily restore well over 100 net mana for a single ability cast).

I'm really happy that Riot is replacing Runeglaive, but this item is not the answer. This item is not only easily abused and likely to be gutted for it, it is also only helpful for mana using junglers, and much of the cost is invariably wasted on the massive mana refund, making it incredibly unappealing to manaless AP junglers, who are already severely underrepresented. It is too strong outside the context of the jungle, while not dressing the needs of all AP junglers.

6 Comments

FatTaco2 votes

"This effect deals 250% damage to Large Monsters. Hitting a Large Monster with this effect will restore 18% of your missing Mana." the passive only works on Jungle camps and the biggest monster, the Mid laner won't have much access to the jungle camps early on and having summoner 11 on a mid laner can be very dangerous. Will no one try it? Of course they will but I don't think it will succeed in the way you are thinking. Ludens Echo is still a better choice for laners.

junglerboy162 votes

It hits 4 targets, and any of the 4 targets hit can be the large monster to still receive the proc. Simply throwing a blind skillshot into the raptor camp is enough to guarantee the mana restore, since you don't even have to kill the thing or have vision for an ability to hit them and proc the mana restore. Since they don't need to kill the camp, they can have as much access to jungle camps as the please without interfering with their jungler's clear, even if they are a devourer stacker.

Smite is indeed a dangerous choice early game, but once they upgrade to a full jungle item (which is not hard, especially considering its easy build path) it turns into a low cooldown alternative to ignite, or an extra vision item for superior map control.

If frost queen's claim is strong enough to be bought on midlands just because of its mana regen and active (which it is, many high elo players already use it frequently in place of morellonomicon or Athene's), then this item (which is arguably stronger in combat and in build path than FQC) would be of virtually no detriment to the player.

Throw in that Smite procs spell vamp and 2% is easily accessible in the masteries and they even get extra health sustain early game (along with safe, guaranteed last hits to compensate for their relatively less threatening start).

Squidblimp1 votes

Keep in mind it's missing mana. They're also missing out on a summoner spell. Runeglaive was good because it converted Ezreal's Q completely into magic damage, allowing his Q to scale off his magic penetration. This is different, and now that jungle items are MORE expensive and require even more gold to even get any offensive stats, it will not be viable.

Dunkrius2g2 votes

1 smite per team. Fixed

junglerboy161 votes

To much troll enabling with that change.

It would solve the issue of jungle items being taken in lanes, but it would also open up an avenue for people to ruin games in champ select by taking smite on a lane champ and forcing their jungler to go smiteless, which is a bigger handicap than ever in the current game state.

Axis the Dragon1 votes

An at-a-glance change: make it so it only procs if you kill a Large Monster. Keep the Luden's effect as is, but now they have to make the decision of fully committing to killing a camp. Decision making, yo.

More from Gameplay

More by junglerboy16