You have the technology to change Mana flow band to Null orb on him, but you can't change Aftershock to Grasp of the Undying? Even if there are cases where Aftershock can be used, Garen can't use it 99% of the time, so why allow him to pick a deliberate power deficit in terms of keystone masteries?
Penns10 votesthere are cases where Aftershock can be used
tho
RiotSparkle30 votesYeah, I mean this is really the answer. We try to only swap runes as a very last resort - when a rune LITERALLY can't be used (e.g Magical Boots with Cass or Riverwalking on ARAM).
We don't want to stifle player choice by swapping runes when they're just "bad" (emphasis on the quote unquote there) on a champion. Some really cool and surprising strategies have come from experimentation that goes against "accepted" strategies in specific cases (MF support off of the top of my head for example) and we would never wanna block that.
EDIT: I called this out in a comment down below but for Aftershock specifically we're going to be adding in the extra protection for champs that can't use it based on their kit. :)
Critmaster Garen10 votes[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mZwinHLW,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2017-12-13T17:49:50.358+0000)
Yeah, I mean this is really the answer. We try to only swap runes as a very last resort - when a rune LITERALLY can't be used (e.g Magical Boots with Cass or Riverwalking on ARAM).
We don't want to stifle player choice by swapping runes when they're just "bad" (emphasis on the quote unquote there) on a champion. Some really cool and surprising strategies have come from experimentation that goes against "accepted" strategies in specific cases (MF support off of the top of my head for example) and we would never wanna block that.
i mean. how about changing aftershock to be triggered by silences? if we want to split hairs, we could argue that its an immobilizing effect for champions with movement abilities.
but more importantly i checked, and every other champion with a silence in the game already has the ability to trigger aftershock with one of their basic abilities. or theyre mages like malzahar, who could still trigger it but there would no reason to ever use it on him.
why not throw garen players a bone and give them a second viable keystone in resolve? adding silence to the list of viable cc for the keystone would really only affect that one champion. id say there are games where i would rather take aftershock than grasp, if i could.
RiotSparkle7 votesThis is a VERY different ask, and one that I can't really speak to.
Wanna be straight up - I don't know enough about the context for the rune crowd control rules and the effects that would have on gameplay to answer this one intelligently. The decision for the types of crowd control on Aftershock WAS made with intent & the help of much testing though.
Alls I got is the answer for the original Q though, apologies.
The Yetii Rider3 votesSee, I can't understand that.
The original Courage of the Colossus was made with a restriction likely to try and prevent abuse by top laners and marksmen. But Aftershock doesn't have the same risk - it's an armor and MR amp, and tanks are pretty much the only champions who stack armor and MR.
So Riot doubled down on locking entire classes out of the rune, but then left champions who are actually IN the class out in the cold (
).
Maybe you could pass these questions along to someone from the Rune development team and they could swing by and tell us why Aftershock needs to be limited to those who have close-range immobilization when the buff itself is practically already locked in to tanks only?
Sinlaire2 votesdoesnt cho knock up and braum passive and ult count as immobilize?
The Yetii Rider1 votesYes but both Cho'gath's Q and Braum's ultimate tend to be used at maximum range, then your Aftershock is wasted because no one is attacking you and your explosion doesn't hurt anyone. Braum's passive works well with it, assuming you can stick, but Braum is more of a peeler than an engage.
My Waifu Vanilla2 votesPretty sure Braum uses Guardian anyway since it works decently well with his W (much like Tahm Kench). I could be completely wrong though.
The Yetii Rider1 votesOh he does, and there's nothing wrong with him preferring Guardian. I just think the activation requirements for Aftershock accomplish nothing (marksmen, juggernauts and divers don't have enough armor and MR to use it anyway) while making it worse on some tanks.
GigglesO1 votesCan we give morde a 0.001 second snare on mordes E or W's second pop? That way he could use aftershock. [sg-ahri-2]
DeathBurst3 votesHum, in what case can Aftershock be used on Garen? He can't proc it at all by himself, and he can't proc it at all with Item Actives, since Actives are only soft CC.
So, as far as I can tell, Garen "LITERALLY can't use" Aftershock. Am I missing something? It sure looks like Magical Boots/Manaflow Band to me.
Salron3 votesProbably if they have a Braum passive on them Don't know if Blast cone counts
RiotSparkle20 votesPenn commented below:
Pretty sure it procs on blastcone thing (cotc did). Its not a good reason to really take it, but its usable.
^ It does proc it.
Like, it's possible we could say "this is way too niche a case" and add in the swapping protection for this one but for our first rule set around swapping we wanted to have a pretty hard line in the sand of "there is no way you could use it ever in any situation", with the examples again being Cass with Boots or ARAM with Riverwalking.
I can bring this example up with the team to make a call on if "can be used with blast cone" is basically experientially equivalent to "can't be used" (because it's not possible to use it in the base kit or through the item system, etc.), but will re-iterate the reason it's not in there right now is that we wanted the rules around the protection swapping to be super clear.
EDIT: Okay, spoke with relevant folks & we're going to add the swapping protection for Aftershock in all modes. :) Thanks for bringing this up!
EDIT EDIT: Going to actually do this work for ANY champion who can't meet the requirement in this case, not just Garen. :D
It's also possible that we further adjust these swaps in the future, wanna put that out there as well.
Critmaster Garen4 votes[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mZwinHLW,comment-id=0000000000010001,timestamp=2017-12-13T18:25:24.400+0000)
Penn commented below:
^ It does proc it.
Like, it's possible we could say "this is way too niche a case" and add in the swapping protection for this one but for our first rule set around swapping we wanted to have a pretty hard line in the sand of "there is no way you could use it ever in any situation", with the examples again being Cass with Boots or ARAM with Riverwalking.
I can bring this example up with the team to make a call on if "can be used with blast cone" is basically experientially equivalent to "can't be used", but will re-iterate the reason it's not in there right now is that we wanted the rules around the protection swapping to be super clear.
ok, but how about just adding silence to the list of viable cc to trigger the keystone...
youre saying youre leaving the option for him to pick it because there are some extreme nieche conditions in which he can trigger it. then you obviously dont have issues with allowing him to use the keystone. just let him use it reliably like most of the rest of the fighter pool.
darius can trigger it with his pull, udyr with his stun, jarvan with his knockup... so why not give garen the option aswell? let him have more than one viable keystone in resolve.
Rabblerouser5 votesBecause it's only meant to be for hard CC. Silence isn't an immobilization.
Critmaster Garen7 votesBecause it's only meant to be for hard CC. Silence isn't an immobilization.
this isnt really an argument. more of an arbitrary restriction.
Sraeg20131 votes"Immobilization" doesn't equal "Hard CC" either.
Penns1 votesGaren already has damage reduction, him point and click proccing Aftershock with such a low cooldown silence (that scales up to 3.5s duration and can be maxed first) sounds potentially way too good imo (see 
)
I mean you could nerf him around having that, but.. yeah.
Critmaster Garen5 votesGaren already has damage reduction, him point and click proccing Aftershock with such a low cooldown silence (that scales up to 3.5s duration and can be maxed first) sounds potentially way too good imo (see
aftershocks use in that case would be restriced by its own cooldown, and not garens silence cooldown.
most of the fighter pool can trigger the keystone off cooldown. i dont see the issue.
why is 
being able to proc aftershock with a 55% damage reduction in his kit not an issue then?
Penns1 votesPoint and click + it stacking with his W would be the 2 main issues. Its gated by the 20s cooldown, but if his Q is around 6s, that means he isnt gonna have to wait as long as some other champs when Aftershock just came up but he already used his CC 3 seconds ago.
Aftershock is WWs highest win rate keystone, but with only like 3% pick rate. I mean I think he is kinda borderline busted in general but most people seem to still take PtA.
Chawoora1 votesYeah...cause champs like Nautilus cannot just activate Aftershock with a simple auto attack...and they don't have any shielding in their kits.
The Yetii Rider2 votesIs triggering Aftershock with Blast Cone even beneficial? There's pretty much no situation where a melee champion can trigger Blast Cone without going along for the ride (that's totally balanced, by the way, thanks for that) so you're already escaping danger with the Cone blast. Does an armor and MR steroid even assist you in that situation? Even in the 1% case where it occurs, is that experientally even occurring?
Mysticman897 votesIf it literally can't be used in ARAM (due to the lack of cones), would it make sense to disable aftershock for Garen (and the multitude of others without hard cc) in that mode?
(Playing devils advocate here; for the most part I tend to prefer letting people have enough rope to hang themselves so to speak, so don't even feel the existing disabled runes need to be.)
RiotSparkle6 votesI think this is very fair and I also think there's a good case for added protection even on SR.
Like, technically correct is not my favorite kind of correct - I would make the argument that 'usable on blast cone' is materially the same as 'not usable'. I think at the very least we'll add the swapping protection for ARAM, if not SR.
Blood Mefist2 votesWhat about it semi-fringe cases such as Yorick and Trundle with Aftershock? They both can technically use it since their terrain can displace people, but they are usually better off with Grasp.
KingDanius1 votesBut they still can use it reliable unless Garen, so they should not be touched when choosing the mastery.
TheBearJew092 votesThis thread should be seen by all. First time I've seen a reasonable post/request and almost immediate reaction from Riot. Gives me hope for the future of Season 8.
Velzard of Koz2 votesHave you thought about rather literally locking certain runes on certain champs/maps, so that the page would be rendered incomplete temporarily and would announce it?
In other words, player enters ARAM select with runepage with Riverwalking, it greys out and locks the rune making no rune be selected in the row and thus it will mark it red announcing that it must be changed like when you save and close incomplete runepage. This might be better for those who are not cautious about it as they know it happens and they have chance to choose replacement instead of it choosing something different hiddenly and possibly not something ideal.
RiotSparkle3 votesSo there are 3 basic issues with this approach (which we actually considered on the UI side earlier in the Runes process):
We honestly can't tell what champion you're actually going to be in the game before you hit the loading screen - things like champion re-rolling in ARAM or swapping a champ with a teammate in draft mode throw this off (and would cause pages to toggle between bad/good or locked/unlock possibly multiple times in one champ select session)
We can't adequately warn you about any pages you make in advance (in the client or Inventory), which results in a weird disconnect between creating the exact same pages in champ select and the Inventory.
We want to be really careful about marking pages invalid or causing players to miss any runes - it's painful to get an entire page swapped out right now (the current solution for a page with a single missing rune). We want to do as much "fix just this one rune" as we can, hence the swapping protection (and we hope to use preset pages to make individual rune swaps someday in the future to also help with this point).
Basically, it's a good proposal, but after weighing the pros and cons we decided to go with the 'swap protection' instead to solve these specific single rune cases.
Kei1433 votesHey Sparkle, totally unrelated topic, I just dodged another PoroKing game cos I thought I locked in my champ, but apparently I didn't. So what do you think about being able to lock in your champ while you are editing runes or some other warning to let you know that you haven't locked in your champ yet?
A new button inside the Rune Edit Window? Shrink the UI? Maybe a new sound / flashing effects ? Keep in mind I kind of play on a potatoe internet and it takes time to click "Save" -> close rune window -> point and click at Lock In.
RiotRiot Stephiroth2 votesHey Kei!
I think what actually happened to you is a bug that we're looking into fixing. You probably did select your champion, which should be enough since the mode is blind pick. However, in this new champ select (blind with bans in front) there seems to be a bug where sometimes other player actions (like attempting to pick a champion that someone has already picked but hasn't locked in) causes it to become de-selected.
This is specifically when you picked your champion during the Pick Intent phase. This really sucks and we're trying to fix it, but I'd recommend trying to lock in more diligently until we can. ^^
Sorry about your dodges. :(
Fertsa1 votesWere there ever thoughts to make 1 or 2 "default" rune pages for each champion to switch to in emergencies or would that be too much work?
Lord Phazanor 1 votes[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mZwinHLW,comment-id=00000000,timestamp=2017-12-13T17:49:50.358+0000)
Yeah, I mean this is really the answer. We try to only swap runes as a very last resort - when a rune LITERALLY can't be used (e.g Magical Boots with Cass or Riverwalking on ARAM).
We don't want to stifle player choice by swapping runes when they're just "bad" (emphasis on the quote unquote there) on a champion. Some really cool and surprising strategies have come from experimentation that goes against "accepted" strategies in specific cases (MF support off of the top of my head for example) and we would never wanna block that.
EDIT: I called this out in a comment down below but for Aftershock specifically we're going to be adding in the extra protection for champs that can't use it based on their kit. :)
I see what you mean, but the thread isn't really on "bad" choices, but rather on unusable ones. I don't really realize how many there are, but I truly think removing them would be a rather cool feature, even if it will mostly benefit beginners or the occasional "oh forgot to change runes".
RiotSparkle4 votesYeah, the point of discussion here was really around the Q "if you can use it through a specific map but not through the base kit of a champion, is the rune considered unusable?" Like we have map-wide protections (ARAM & Riverwalking) and champion specific protections (Cass & Magical Boots) but this is a weird map/champion overlap area in the Venn Diagram.
With blast cone being the only CURRENT thing on a map relevant to the question here, we're going to err on the side of protection. We may change this (or any other swaps) in the future depending on system interactions and evaluations however.
Lord Phazanor 1 votes[{quoted}](name=Riot Sparkle,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=mZwinHLW,comment-id=0000000000030000,timestamp=2017-12-14T02:21:13.075+0000)
Yeah, the point of discussion here was really around the Q "if you can use it through a specific map but not through the base kit of a champion, is the rune considered unusable?" Like we have map-wide protections (ARAM & Riverwalking) and champion specific protections (Cass & Magical Boots) but this is a weird map/champion overlap area in the Venn Diagram.
With blast cone being the only CURRENT thing on a map relevant to the question here, we're going to err on the side of protection. We may change this (or any other swaps) in the future depending on system interactions and evaluations however.
Ok!
MangelinaJolie1 votesOn that subject, in Poro King Hexflash isn’t changed to anything. You take it (for whatever variety of reasons it can happen) you’re shit out of luck.
RiotRiot Stephiroth3 votesThat is an oversight on my team's (maps and modes!) part. Good note! We'll fix that for future releases :)
WaffIeMaker4 votesOr you could like read the runes you chose and realize it was a shit choice m8, riot shouldn't compensate for your own stupidity
ShadowParker2 votesThey'd have to do that to every champion then. This suggestion won't happen as their goal was just give a page that most can utilize.
Garen can still utilize it.
redniwediS5 votesProblem is he cannot utilize it. Aftershock only triggers when a target is immobilized, which is something Garen physically cannot do. Unless Riot adds an item that can give any champion hard CC there is no possible way Garen can make use of Aftershock. The same goes for Illaoi, Morde, Nasus, Master Yi, and many other champions who have no CC or only soft CC.
I'd love it if Aftershock triggered on soft CC, but sadly it does not.
Penns6 votesPretty sure it procs on blastcone thing (cotc did). Its not a good reason to really take it, but its usable.
redniwediS5 votesWell, have to admit you got me there. Definitely a bad idea to be basing your keystone on, but technically speaking you're right.
LittleDemonTrist2 votesEvery champ can proc aftershock with blastcones
Speckleton1 votesJust make it so when you double-tap his spin he ends the ability early with a slight tornado that very slightly pulls/pushes the enemy. Bam, aftershock viable, hahaha.
