riot: Merge Sorcery and Domination then make 5 runes for every row in the 4 resulting pathes
at this point, sorcery and domination seem to occupy the same design space anyways. theyre both a weird mix of mobility, and ability enhancement that adds flat damage from the runes that dont add mobility (even the ones that play around vision just grant flat ad/ap).
i know that youre thinking this, and why you refuse to add more than 3 runes to each row in each path, but
WERE NOT TOO STUPID TO HANDLE MORE RUNE OPTIONS.
infact, with how a lot of these runes are designed in a way that they have extreme niche value and are very champion kit specific (not playstile specific like you originally promised), this system desperately needs it. there are way too few runes to give every champion enough options with the way youve designed them.
look at what happened to the resolve path. overgrowth got downright cut in half in value for champions that buy health. your only concern was to give squishy building champions options for resolve runes as a secondary path. but at the same time you devalued the rune for champions who opt into the path primary. where is the progression in this change?
same happened to the first row of the resolve tree. the amount of champions who can make effective use of font of life or shield bash is incredibly small. this lock almost all tanks and fighters and other possible champions who want to opt primary into resolve into demolish in that row. everyone used to be locked into boneplating, but now pretty much everyone is locked into demolish for the lack of alternatives. i ask you again: in what context did you make any sort of progress in the system with this change?
as long as you insist on keeping the number of rune options incredibly small and put such niche values on them even to the point where only a few champions of the expected target group are even physically capable of triggering that rune (shield bash needs a kit inbuilt shield to use effectively. even among the tanks, how many of them even have that?), the system will always lack for a number of champions and overly synergize with those who can proc these runes.
both, sorcery and resolve are now primary balanced around being secondary pathes for everyone else but their target group.
there simply need to be more runes in every row to actually give us options to chose from.
here are my suggestions for the new resulting runes:
precision: this path was supposed to support sustained damage, but you simply forgot to support champions that deal sustained damage with spells and not auto attacks. make new runes that support sustained spell damage patterns. every champion with sustained spell damage is pretty much stuck with summon aery still after all this time.
sorcery+dom: delete dark harvest, forget summon aery. the keystones are
comet, predator, phase rush, electrocute (maybe easier to proc so mages can use it better), hail of blades
row 1: cheap shot, taste of blood, manaflow band, nimbus cloak, nullifying orb (adaptive shielding) row 2: zombie ward, ghost poro, eyeball collection, transcendence, celerity row 3: ravenous hunter, ingenius hunter, ultimate hunter, water walking, gathering storm
maybe move nullifying orb to resolve. it fits there better anyway. the ap/ad scaling isnt a big deal anymore, since secondary resolve users have the option to get 20 adaptive force from the stat shards now.
rework or replace the last 2 runes with hunter mechanics if you have to and/or shuffle some runes around.
resolve:
there should be 3 generally usable runes in each row for champions who want to opt primary into the path and 1 or 2 runes for champions who want to opt into it secondary.
celestial body or chrysalis could be brought back and put into r3, next to the old (or at least better scaling) overgrowth.
the old legendary guardian mastery could be brought back and put into r2 as a rune.
inspiration:
get creative. im sure you have a bunch of ideas that could make additional runes in that path.
stat shards:
make stat shards affected by the rune pathes youre taking. meaning inspiration/resolve should yield higher value on the defensive stat shards. the reason why this was originally done is still the same. inspiration still doesnt offer combat power.
cdr needs to cap out at lvl 10, not lvl 18
we need a second health shard in the first row, to get the same health values out of the system as before.