The Resolve Runes

They suck. Only the keystones are actually any good. Its supposed to be the defensive tree, but let's look at what it does.

The top row gives either Demolish, Font of Life, or Shield Bash. Here's a problem though, there are a number of champions who want to take Resolve for a keystone who don't want ANY of these options!

If you're a team fighter, Demolish doesn't matter because if you lose the fight you can't kill a turret anyway, and if you win, your team can probably destroy a turret before you can even proc Demolish anyway. Call it Demolishit and move one. Its great for inting Sion (no, NOT strategically focused Sion, I'll give you Suicide Sion at best) and.... that's about it.

Font of life is a joke. Its only practically useful on supports as they are the only champions likely to take resolve who spend a significant amount of the early game with a team mate nearby. Also, many supports don't take Resolve regardless.

Shield Bash will only be useful regularly if you can shield yourself. A lot of champions can't. The only time this is a good choice on anyone without a self-sheild is if you're the ADC in a lane with a support who can shield you often and you are, for some reason, willing to give up on any of the much better options in Domination, Sorcery, or Precision to get this.

What about the second row? Well, its probably the only one that's any good, but it still has plenty of problems. Conditioning, Second Wind, and Bone Plating. Whew... the best of the worst right here.

Conditioning is... lacking, in all honesty. Don't get me wrong, the stats are nice, but it does NOTHING for the first 10 minutes of the game. Meanwhile, plenty of Runes give offensive stats RIGHT AWAY, or give them progressively as the game goes on just by you being near something dying. If Conditioning gave the +8 Armor and MR right away, and the increase by 5% starting at the 10 minute mark, OR gave the 5% more right away, and added in the +8 to both at 10 minutes, it would be a good rune choice. As of now, its only good if you can survive the laning phase with a dead rune.

Second Wind is the "please daddy Zed don't snowball on my" rune. The added survivability is okay, but I think everyone would rather it give slightly less HP/10 and instead was always active. During season 4, for only 2 of 30 mastery points, you could get 2 HP/5 (4 HP/10), at the start of the defensive tree. That was jst BETTER because it was ALWAYS active, not just when your opponent happened to hit you. Also, let's not forget that Second Wind's percentage scaling is off of your MISSING health... which means you'll heal more if you're closer to dying, but if you're really close to dying, you probably want to leave the lane and heal up on base anyway, so... shrug feels bad man.

Bone Plating... the best thing about Resolve outside of the Keystones themselves. But it only lasts for 1.5 seconds, with a 45 second cooldown. Proc it with an auto attack, back off, then do your all it. Its now basically worthless as a melee champion against ranged, which is the situation where you would need it the most!

And the final row. Ooooooh BOY! Overgrowth, Revitalize, Unflinching... YAWN. What can I even say about this garbage.

Overgrowth is the biggest loss, since the health it gives on its own BEFORE the 2.5% kicks in caps at 45. Yup, 45 health. Less than Chrysalis gave at level 1. And that 2.5%? That's an extra 25 health per 1000 max. So, if you have 4000 max health, you'll get an extra 100... which will mean nothing against ADCs with their Infinity Edge, or any Bruiser/Fighter/Juggernaut with Conqueror, or Press the Attack if they are hipsters. At least the old one, while slow scaling, could give you 800 gold worth of extra stats late game. If you're max health before that 2.5% is 4k, you ALMOST get a Ruby Crystal from this, with 145 extra health. ALMOST 400 gold worth of stats... assuming you get up to 4k max health in the first place.

Revitalize... okay, so unless you're a champion with healing or shielding, you never take this. Its good for those people, and worthless on everyone else. This guy might like it but even then, since the health from Runes is no longer attached to the Resolve tree, he's probably better off with Ravenous Hunter 11 times out of 10. So, uh... I guess Soraka likes this? Maybe? She's probably still be better off with Sorcery + Inspiration though.

Unflinching is a joke. Well... actually, Tenacity is a joke. Given how many things have knocks and other displacements now, the Tenacity is hardly noticeable. Worse yet is the fact that you only get it when you are lacking in Summoner spells. I'd rather have my Flash available than have 25% Tenacity, thanks.

tl;dr the Resolve tree is trash tier and super niche, only good for some champions, and even then probably sub-optimal for most of them, as Domination and Percision have better Keystones mostly anyway, and Sorcery has better lesser runes regardless. Inspiration is just better in general.