Main takeaways from the new patch

• Early game defenses are gone. People used to run armor or MR runes depending on matchup, usually having about 10 or 15 of either depending on how heavily they invested in their defense. Now you can get a max of 5 armor/mr early, no other way to get stats, getting health only scales into the game, as overgrowth/grasp scale and require you to make them stack. And it is not as desirable to go into resolve as a non tank anymore, even as a second path, as most of its runes have become exceedingly niche.

• Damage is up across the board, even early. Runes like press the attack, lethal tempo, electrocute, arcane comet, and others only increase the damage that old runes and masteries provided. There are a TON of snowball type runes, whereas runes to bolster defenses if you fall behind or have a weaker early game are gone.

• Tank runes (resolve) are garbage compared to the other trees. It provides absolutely nothing in the early game outside of its static tree bonus stats (130 health) Overgrowth is bad early, and mediocre late. It is literally only decent on Grasp got a minor buff, but it doesnt matter because the rest of the tree doesnt feel good to take.

• Snowballing is worse than ever. You add in more damage, runes that encourage you to snowball, take away early defense, and not buff towers, and you get a game that is effectively over even sooner than the last season.

• Blue essence needs to be included at the end of every game. While champ shards might help new players get access to more champs faster, they dont help people who already have most of the 450 and 1350 BE champs. It now takes longer overall to get a 6300 BE champ, and finishing a game doesnt feel as satisfying because it only gives XP.

• The BE store feels pretty bad and overpriced. The only good item is the warwick skin, which is SUPER expensive. I got the max from the rune refund (95000 BE) and had 30000 BE upon the start of the patch, and I still cannot afford it. And given that it takes about 40 hours to get 6300 BE now, it would take me about 160 hours of gameplay to get to 150K BE. Other than that, it has some chromas, which are ok content, IMO chromas always should have cost IP/BE. Some ward skins/emotes and super overpriced summoner icons, that Riot wont even let you use because you need a different one for the missions, are just mediocre content.

TLDR - Resolve needs some serious buffs in terms of early game usefulness, damage runes need to take longer to scale, the including of snowballing runes is HEAVILY questionable, towers need serious buffs in how much they protect you early (buff only the outer turrets?), need to get BE for every game played, not only from leveling up and then disolving champ shards, BE gain needs to match old IP gains.