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Anyone Else Feel Runes/Masteries Aren't Exciting?

A Tall Joke·10/1/2014, 12:07:56 AM·1 votes·606 views

Just a personal thought but doesn't it seem that Runes and Masteries aren't very exciting? For one, there are such few options. And two, most of them are raw stats. Masteries revamp helped a lot but there are still a lot of things that are raw stats (5% attackspeed/cdr).

Personally, I just feel that pregame customization shouldn't just be me buying stats to benefit the champion I'm playing. They should be more exciting than that. Offense's spellblade for example is really cool; it gives more AA power to caster based champions. Glass Cannon mastery? Makes sense. Now look at CDR, Attack speed, Spell pen, etc.

A large part of the reason why people gravitate towards 1 or 2 different rune/mastery builds per champion is because stats are so clearly optimized for their champions. Shouldn't we be aiming for more utility rather than buying stats only to do as well as your enemy? It sucks that pregame customization isn't some pregame battle of minds between you and your opponent to optimize your utility for combat. Instead, it's just "what are my optimal stats?"

6 Comments

YGW Caspie10/1/2014, 1:16:38 AM2 votes

I actually find runes kind of exciting but that's because I like numbers and messing around with different rune setups. For example my Leona rune page is something that I've never seen ANY other support run on Leona and yet I do... and it fits for me. Also whenever I look at rune pages for someone there is always differences aside from a few but generally speaking its about playstyle and finding the runes that fit your playstyle.

Just in case anyone is curious here are my runes + masteries for Leona.

Marks: Flat Armor Seals: Flat Health Quints: 1x Flat CDR and 2x Flat Armor Glyphs: 9x Flat CDR

That's 10% CDR from runes and for masteries I run 4/5/21 to get the other 10% this gives my 20% cdr at lvl 1 while still having respectable defensive stats. At level 3 you get your Q+W+E combo up about 2.5 seconds sooner and as soon as you get FoTM + kindlegem you have 40% cdr. This puts your ult on a REALLY low cooldown, now if only I was a godlike Leona.

Chromatic Eagle10/1/2014, 12:26:44 AM1 votes

Honestly I just google guides that tell me how to customize. Compared to items, that's a pretty bad way to promote creativity imo.

Dryditch10/1/2014, 12:28:53 AM1 votes

This guy does: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/r59fjafU-why-do-runes-exist

Travistyse10/1/2014, 9:07:34 AM1 votes

Perhaps runes/masteries which allow one to gain specific traits in specific situations are in order? (Movement speed boost after dealing 30% of an enemy's maximum health within 2 seconds). I'd recommend these are self-buffs rather than enemy nerfs (Movement speed slow after dealing 30% of an enemy's maximum health just feels like "I nailed you and now my team's going to pick you off") because your choices which are invisible to others should feel good to YOU not feel restrictive on other players when they didn't even know you had that ability.

As for Masteries, why can't we just get rid of the 3 lists and create either:

  1. A 1 massive paged system. Things can still demand other things as prerequisites (monster reduction > monster dmg reflection for instance) but it allows for greater customization and tradeoffs. Your 30th point goes into one of (more than 3 plssss) the last tiers (it takes 29 points to reach the final tier). You could also make it so that players can choose 2-3 out of, say, 9 possible "final tier" options. Just an idea.

  2. A point value system where you spend your (limited) points to get an ability. Each ability has a point value. Lots of balancing ensues.

^^^ Neither are perfect but just a thought.