Hextech rental sucks. I have ideas to make it more fair and useful.

Right now hextech rental is absurdly overpriced. You can lose 1820 RP worth of a skin shard (before essence is considered) just to rent it. Losing the shard to rent it makes no sense.

The most fundamental appeal and purpose of rental is to test it out to see if you want to purchase it so you have it forever. You shouldn't have to lose the shard just because you're not sure if you want to spend essence on it. You're better off dusting the skin and buying a skin permanent than losing the shard for rental. It's just an awful deal.

There are several ways to improve it, because let's be honest it couldn't be any worse than it is.

1. Allow each shard to give 1 free rental game without using up the shard. I don't see a reason not to. Riot still gets paid in the end because you're still gonna have to purchase it, and players can see if they really like the skin/champion enough to buy it. Hextech crafting is already so random that I feel this is completely fair.

2. Have rentals charge a very small amount of essence instead of using up the shard. This way you keep rentals somewhat costly without them being straight up terrible like they are now.