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Runes that need to be removed

HuskyKurai··2 votes·327 views

TL;DR Some runes cause problems for other champions to be picked/played and removing them clears up a lot of problems, even champion balance issues.

Certain runes have caused a problem that has been happening for a very long time now. The most notable cases are LeBlanc's having this level 2 burst or Nidalee's spear doing a lot more damage then expected. Now LeBlanc had her silence removed and Nidalee got a rework. This of course does not stop the specific runes from causing problems and allowing certain champions to be used for the wrong reasons. The runes are: Flat AP/AD Seals and Glyphs along with the scaling AP/AD Seals and Glyphs. In total there's 8 of them that cause problems.

The issue that they pose is that they allow champions who can attack from a safe distance, champions that need to wait a while before they can engage and champions who can cause more burst damage then you can, to deal more damage to you then they will receive in return.

Normally you would expect Armor Seals and Magic Resist Glyphs to counter this damage but it is not able to. The numbers for defense and offense for seals and glyphs are as follows: 9 flat armor for seals -------------------------------- 12 flat magic resist for glyphs 6.39 flat AD seals and glyphs -------------------16.02 Flat AP seals and glyphs 16.38 Scaling AD seals and glyphs --------- 43.74 Scaling AP seals and glyphs The numbers may seem small but to Riot, adjusting a champions base stats by 1 or 2 points is a nerf they needed. Even 5 damage from an ability at rank 5 is significant.

It also should be noted at how many points of MR/Armor it takes to reduce the damage by a percent. 50 - 33% 100 - 50% 200 - 67% 250 - 71%

For someone like LeBlanc, damage reduction is not a very strong counter early on when you have 12 Flat MR. With her Q, W and E she is able to take the 16.02 Flat AP and multiply it by 240% AP scaling when each ability deals full damage. Toss in her 15 AP Quintessences as well, along with 7.8 Magic Penetration marks and you have a lot more damage then you could negate with just 12 MR. As a more basic example Lissandra can get 165% scaling from her Q W and E. Follow the system above and it's still quite a lot of damage that you cannot reduce very well.

AD champions will also use flat and scaling ad seals/glyphs to get the auto attack/ability advantage over an enemy. If a Zed can use Q's to poke until his enemy is weak enough and finish them with his ultimate, then less (if any) defense from runes helped Zed secure a kill. Caitlyn, Ashe, Tristana, Kogmaw and Jinx all have some form of longer auto attack range. Knowing this, they are able to adjust runes to be more offensive and harass an enemy adc out of lane with little to no problems.

By removing the runes what will change? Mid Mages should be dealing more damage in several shots instead of one single burst (LeBlanc lv 2 and Nidalee spear before rework). If they do not want defensive runes then cooldown reduction along with mana regeneration runes should be chosen. More ability spam, less recalling to get more mana and you will no longer need to buy a low powered AP item just for that last 10% cooldown reduction.

AD carries would be less of a range game and more of a kit game. If Caitlyn is not over powering a Vayne early on with both power and range, then Vayne's will have more chance to go in and out for CS and maybe even Q/Tumble at a Caitlyn to give her an empowered auto attack to make her back off.

Top lane would be about health, health regeneration, armor penetration and cooldown reduction runes. Ranged AP tops would either follow the same system's mid mages do or in the cases of Vladimir, Mordekaiser and Mundo, they can go for health and/or health regeneration to stay in lane longer. AD tops like riven might go for cooldown reduction and armor penetration. Top is already the area for tanky champions so armor penetration is already balanced against them.

How does this change Riots balance system? At the moment nerfing or buffing a champion is not exactly easy. Nerfing LeBlanc's damage would stop her from being able to assassinate her target so the silence was removed. Nidalee has the same issue so her cougar form was buffed while her spears were nerfed. A champion who can go on sprees all the time might be on sprees due to the runes they use compared to others who favor defensive runes and are not able to do the same. If a champions damage is reduced then they may become ineffective for anyone without the specific rune setup. This is an alternative to the effect of, 'It needs a DFG or it is unable to be viable at all' which is not something Riot would want.

If a champion becomes out of control with too much cooldown reduction then it is easier to increase the cooldown of the abilities at early levels. While it seems like it's the abuse all over again, cooldown reduction is tied to abilities. Unlike auto attacks, abilities will most likely be up several seconds longer then their own cooldown. Late game when Riven wants to use her shield and Q to run away, the cooldown will be the same at max rank. Mana regeneration is the same. There will be a point where you have enough mana or a mana regeneration item to handle normal team fights and the runes will just assist in letting you stay away from the base longer to farm up for your Void Staff.

I know it is a lot of text but I wanted to give lots of detail into this issue. If you are unable to understand how it would work just think about using alternative runes yourself and it should come to you.

Also, in your next game if there's an enemy that is quite fed, check their armor and magic resist. If they have less then 9 armor and 12 magic resist (after removing the stats from the items they have), then you have your answer as to why they are fed. Won't always be the case but it's a factor to be noted.

6 Comments

AyRe CoNteMpT2 votes

just wanna mention that you are silver ; )

i give you an example without explaining much. if a leblanc has flat AP seals and you have armor seals and you go in to trade with her and you trade 1 or 2 extra auto attacks, you get in more bonus damage from those auto attacks than she got from the bonus ap. also, you can go and trade more auto attacks with her since they dont cost mana and thus, FORCE her to trade with her spells whenever you want since she cant just stand and auto you. if your champion isnt complete trash, you will be able to outtrade a noob leblanc who didnt pick armor.

also, those runes leblanc picked are not very much scaling for anything. if you play against a champion who is full on earlygame snowballing and you picked some lategame champ (as they call it) like kogmaw or xerath or velkoz or whatnot, dont be greedy. dont pick those AP quints for "more earlygame damage". pick magic resist quints. pick armor seals and flat MR glyphs. go full early-game-survival runes.

why should it be fair that you can run your greedy scaling runes on a scaling champion but cant get punished for it?

HuskyKurai1 votes

I just wanna mention that the ranked season is not over. Also I'm still on this seasons placements so you can tell how much care I have for ranked at the moment.

You are trying to compare bonus AP to auto attacks so obviously a tiny 16.02 ap is going to be outdone by 50+ ad. You need to compare the combinations power to auto attacks and considering LeBlanc's level 2 was a hellish nightmare for many I'm pretty sure her burst was stronger then those two auto attacks. LeBlanc is not standing around saying 'please hit me'. Neither is katarina, akali, caitlyn, tristana, ashe, fizz etc etc. If you are playing a mage mid then auto attacks are not going to be your source of damage. Speaking of ranked, you know what enemy you will fight. You can choose a set of runes that lower the damage vs the enemy and leave bonus AP open. (vs ap. take mr glyphs, vs ad take armor seals. whichever is left is ad or ap.) The scaling of LeBlanc is 240%. Try finding champions with higher AP scaling on just Q, W and E.

Picking defnesive runes would be nice except that they are not as storng as I have pointed out in the post. This is kind of the point as to why damage runes are beating defensive runes. 12 MR is not much. It's pretty weak. It's that sliver of hp you have left as you flashed away from the enemy who thought their ignite was going to kill you. Maybe you should read the post before you talk about something you clearly don't understand. Course you had to call rank as if it's a requirement. You know what else is required in ranked? Those champions/skins you are forced to have on your account even if you don't want them after getting gold or higher. Have fun with morgana/elise who you don't like playing as being on your profile forever.

AyRe CoNteMpT1 votes

  1. lol that last sentence about skins. i dont even remotely understand what you are trying to say with it. did you buy skins for your favorite champions and now cry because they arent "viable" ?

  2. the 12 flat MR are the equivalent of the magicpen on her reds. she has 7,8 magicpen on those. thats pretty low and gets EASILY countered by your +12. now from her quints she will get 15 ap and you can get another 12 magic resist to counter that. she gets another +16 ap from her yellows and blues. that is a HUGE investment as it basically gives her the AP of a dorans ring in exchange for big defensive stats she could have gotten or even scaling offensive stats. to counter that, you can either go flat health yellows which gives you like 87 health or so, or you go scaling health which gives you 216 total. if you are so afraight of her early, you should probably go with the flats. also, you can run 15/15 masteries which allows you go still get a good bit of offense while also gaining the bonus magic resist which is another +5. you now have +29 MR, +117 flat health and +3% total health. start with a dorans ring, get another +60 health and there's a high chance you wont feed her too hard.

  3. i played leblanc a lot for years even when she wasnt "viable" according to lcs standards and now when i play against her, i go for full offense in any way possible and 0 defense and just stay out of her range. since i played her that much, i know her range pretty well and it works well in my elo as i dont exactly play against Faker. also, i think defense is really just for noobs to not feed her, but if you know her power well enough, you can beat her without that. tho on some champions, its really funny to just tank all her mana. get better.

HuskyKurai1 votes

I had to try and figure out your logic on your first post. I'll dumb this down for you. Not everyone wants to have an elise/morgana on their account. It's not a requirement to own every champion and skin but if people want to they can. 12MR obviously counters out 7.8 magic pen. You say that 7.8 magic pen is low but its only a few more points from 12. They are both low numbers. Adding another 12 mr isn't going to negate 15 ap from quints. 15 is multiplied by the total kits % ap scaling which will more then likely be over 100%. It takes 50 armor/mr just to get 33% resistance. Dorans rings themselves are picked quite a lot. That dorans ring is apparently more effective as 15 ap to lots of players, even the pro players. Buying HP is a good investment but it's no different then being hit but not hitting back. This is why LB was insane in the first place. Hits without being hit, more damage then damage given back. If it was not the case then Riot would have never nerfed LeBlanc at all. Adjusting masteries to counter out a burst mage is not an effective strategy. You don't play Annie and go half offense and half defense because you don't want to farm under tower. In a fight you wouldn't be very effective at killing or posing a threat to the LeBlanc or other mid lane. LeBlanc was always viable. The lcs never had anything against her except that she was good at tanking out squishy targets and the meta has been bruiser/fighters. Elo is also removed in favor of MMR.

You also talk about going full offense and yet your understanding of defensive runes is lacking. The first post gave you plenty of information to work with and yet you assume that a 12 which is converted down to 7%MR is stronger then a 16 that is multiplied by over 100% and many times with an ultimate, over 200%. In LeBlancs case that 16 ap becomes 57.6 more damage. That 7% reduces the damage to 53.56. Wow. 4 magic damage was reduced. But because she has 5% ap is converted into magic damage for auto attacks she gets that 4 back just from stronger auto attacks. Now for the scaling ones you can get 157.46 more damage which is reduced to 146. Please tell me how that 216 HP is going to help you survive a LeBlanc when you put all your power into survival instead of being a threat to her. This applies to many mid champs. AD and AP. If you took the time to understand you would have gotten it.

AyRe CoNteMpT1 votes

even in another universe where you were right, you should look at our standpoints. you are crying "mäh mäh impossible plz remove" and im actively giving you suggestions on how to play and even telling you how i play against her having no trouble whatsoever.

and man, you are silver and im diamond. you could imagine that the leblancs i play against are better than the ones you play against and i STILL WIN LANE AGAINST THEM. so either im just magically super skilled or leblanc has weaknesses too that you can exploit. i mean even pros feed faker when hes leblanc but that doesnt mean the champion is broken (check her winrate ón lolking for example, its TERRIBLE), it just means that many times that champion stomps her lane because 1. that is exactly her power and 2. that power gets disrespected so much, you allow her to do that.

its the same thing as when any champ splitpushes bot. you can either try to stop him or you can use his absence to do something else. in many, many situations, or rather in most, its the WORST THING to go and try to stop him because that is just playing into his hands. i mean he is in the lane before you and he has time advantage so if you go there, you cant catch up in that time advantage, so rather than chasing after him, you try to get an advantage in another way by exploiting number advantage.

its the same thing as if you would magically get into LCS with your 4 silver friends and you would try to beat the progamers with their own champions and their own style of play. even if you would practice for 10 years, they would always have the experience advantage and practice advantage on you. so instead of beating them on their own terms, you have to find their weaknesses and your strength and play on your own terms, force them to compromise and out of their comfort zone. its the same thing with leblanc. if you try to play on her terms, you will lose, because she is the strongest champion on those terms, maybe together with some other champs like zed and fizz.

so its up to you now. you can either learn and improve yourself as a player and as a person. or you just cry about leblanc and stay silver forever. cuz thats whats gonna happen. and ill be master soon.

HuskyKurai1 votes

You keep saying the same thing and I keep telling you that it's not what I'm talking about. If you don't get it then your 'diamond' must not be that polished.

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