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The Howling Abyss and The Gold Rush!

Viral Vermin··1 votes·449 views

I have played over 3,000 ARAM games in the past few years and I love it! I recently found something interesting while playing, and it won't last much longer. I started playing ARAM when I was new and looking for a way to work on my team-fighting skills. I don't know if it's still labeled as the game mode for such practice, but I vaguely remember it from before. Now, I can safely say that my team-fighting skills are on point and my reactions have greatly improved. That doesn't mean I'm good in the laning phase though, and that's why I've been thankful for the practice tool. LOL! Anyway, The Howling Abyss has some unique effects because it's one lane and team-fight oriented. Bonus gold over time, altered items and item stats, and varied experience gained. Since The Howling Abyss isn't ranked, I started buying Utility Runes to test them in that setting, and that's when I found something awesome! If I forego the early game for damage and instead, equip the Gold/sec Runes (Both Quints and Seals), by level six and playing a bit safe, I amass almost 8,000 gold! EIGHT THOUSAND! It's ARAM! We're talking nearly 9 mins and 8000 gold! I can give a little early power, because I can recoup it immediately upon my first death! And if I can secure an execution instead of a death, it's made all the better. I played Veigar recently with this set-up and bought Rabadon's and Morello's on my first back. If you're someone that knows how to farm and use your abilities to maintain space between you and your opponents, I suggest giving this a try. When you're a ranged control-mage, the first buy is UNREAL! By that time, most enemies will be completing one item, and you've come back to lane with two or two and a half. Infinitely stacking Veigar with bonus gold to be oppressive from level 9 and on, is a very powerful thing. Has anyone tried this before? On a MUCH smaller scale, I've also added the Experience Quints into the mix for certain champs while playing ARAM. For champions like Cho'Gath that get a power spike from level six and any champion that uses "Catalyst" or "Lost Chapter", the ability to level up faster is invaluable at times. We're talking earlier power spikes and increased sustain. In a place like The Howling Abyss, where you can't recall to heal or shop, power spikes and sustain reign supreme.

HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE!

10 Comments

Minarde1 votes

If I forego the early game for damage and instead, equip the Gold/sec Runes (Both Quints and Seals), by level six and playing a bit safe, I amass almost 8,000 gold! EIGHT THOUSAND! It's ARAM! We're talking nearly 9 mins and 8000 gold!

Quints grant 1 gold per 10s each. Seals grants 0.25 gold per 10s each. That's 5.25 gold per 10s total, meaning 31.25 gold per minute. As such, even in a 20 minute game, that's only 625 gold. Where's this "8k at 9m" figure coming from?

Moreover, for comparison's sake, a common alternative of armor seals plus flat ad/ap quints is worth roughly 416/503 gold.

Viral Vermin1 votes

Are you factoring the bonus gold from the map as well? Also, the gold mastery in the "Cunning" tree and consistent CS are to be taken into consideration. Those bonuses don't apply to Summoner's Rift. Even if you don't kill a minion it's still 5 gold. In conjunction with the runes, I'm serious, 8000 gold at 9 mins. I said in my initial post: "If you're someone that knows how to farm and use your abilities to maintain space between you and your opponents, I suggest giving this a try." I also referenced the bonuses from the map. I didn't think I was declaring that the runes, alone, would give you the massive gold total. I feel confident I also gave the other necessary pieces to amass gold very quickly. You're right though! Runes alone would not give that kind of value in nine minutes. I wouldn't take these to Summoner's Rift, let alone ranked games, because, unless you are Support or Jungle with Gold Income items, it might work, but I don't suggest it. The runes you pointed out, as opposed to the gold ones, are ABSOLUTELY better for any other map. Here though, with team fights and map bonuses, you can get away with it, and become a monster in a VERY short amount of time.

Does that help?

Minarde1 votes

I intentionally didn't include ARAM's passive gold gain or minion kill/death gold because those don't depend on rune setup. As for the Bandit mastery, I didn't consider that one, since I didn't feel like looking up specific minion spawn numbers. For a rough estimate, 6 minions every 20 seconds would give 18 gold per minute, meaning about 360 gold at 20 minutes.

Anyway, my point was that you're exaggerating the effect of gold runes by overlooking the baseline amount of gold. 8k gold at 9 minutes is amazing if everyone else is at 5k, but much less impressive if everyone else has 7.7k gold. It's even less impressive if everyone else is starting out with 400 more gold in stats than you.

If you're going to run an ARAM-specific rune page, Penetration or scaling would generally be more efficient than Gold/10. Similar effect of "better mid/late" as Gold/10, but with more impact early-game.

Viral Vermin1 votes

Passive minion gold isn't 3 for ARAM anymore. It's been changed to 5. That's also for minions that you haven't killed. Since some champions are better late game with scaling abilities for items and levels, it's an ok route to take gold runes. Penetration would be significantly better on some champs, but not all. Still, I keep coming back to this: If you farm well with these runes and masteries, you are likely to come out significantly ahead in gold. I'm assuming you don't play ARAM often, because you would know what it's like to play with and against front-line champions.

Minarde1 votes

I didn't mention anything about passive minion gold because, again, it's not dependent on rune/mastery set-up.

Still, I keep coming back to this: If you farm well with these runes and masteries, you are likely to come out significantly ahead in gold.

And I keep pointing out that that's a flawed conclusion. As previously stated, those runes and masteries are only worth roughly 500 gold at 10 minutes. That's not a significant sum of gold for that point in the game (especially considering you're forfeiting around that much gold in stats via runes) and certainly not the full item advantage that you mentioned in the OP. If you do have a noticeable gold advantage, that's almost definitely from farming minions/champs, which, again, is not coming from runes/masteries.

I'm assuming you don't play ARAM often, because you would know what it's like to play with and against front-line champions.

About 1700 games and holding at about 2k MMR. So not great, but enough to know what I'm talking about.

Viral Vermin1 votes

Are you factoring the bonus gold from the map as well? Also, the gold mastery in the "Cunning" tree and consistent CS are to be taken into consideration. Those bonuses don't apply to Summoner's Rift. Even if you don't kill a minion it's still 5 gold. In conjunction with the runes, I'm serious, 8000 gold at 9 mins. I said in my initial post: "If you're someone that knows how to farm and use your abilities to maintain space between you and your opponents, I suggest giving this a try." I also referenced the bonuses from the map. I didn't think I was declaring that the runes, alone, would give you the massive gold total. I feel confident I also gave the other necessary pieces to amass gold very quickly. You're right though! Runes alone would not give that kind of value in nine minutes. I wouldn't take these to Summoner's Rift, let alone ranked games, because, unless you are Support or Jungle with Gold Income items, it might work, but I don't suggest it. The runes you pointed out, as opposed to the gold ones, are ABSOLUTELY better for any other map. Here though, with team fights and map bonuses, you can get away with it, and become a monster in a VERY short amount of time.

Does that help?

Minarde1 votes

Did you just copy and paste your previous response rather than address any of my points?

Viral Vermin1 votes

Yes. I didn't feel the need to retype the answers to the points you made.

Minarde1 votes

So basically you have no response to the critical oversight I pointed out. Alright then.

Viral Vermin1 votes

LOL!

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