Boards›Gameplay

Just remove all pregame systems.

ModCaptainMårvelous·7/29/2019, 7:18:37 AM·57 votes·12,860 views

Save for maybe summoner spells because of how ingrained they are at this point.

Despite all the love (read: Rose-tinted goggles) of old runes, they never really solved anything nor allowed for unique playstyles. There was a "right" rune page in almost every situation save for the person who is going to bring up some gimmick page that worked in 1/1000 of matches due to a very specific lane/champion fight.

The same goes for new runes: Yes, you still have the ability to do some gimmick/unique playstyles but 90% of the time there is a "right" rune page to go for a champion. Granted the results of a bad runepage aren't as detrimental as before but going in with a bad runepage is still a detriment. And of course everyone will want to address how runes/masteries have always tilted balance. See: Massive stat buffs they had to give to every champ after removing old runes. Runes causing odd things to pop up, then they get nerfed after the champ is nerfed blah blah blah. Granted new runes still allow for unique playstyles better than old runes but this is like saying you only cut off your hand instead of your entire arm.

None of these pregame systems promote uniqueness, "choose your playstyle" or make balance easier. Every champion from Season 0 to now has had problems because of the rune pages. Yes, even the old ones where if you didn't have AS reds you were literally unable to jungle.

Honestly? Removing EVERYTHING is the right call. You cut down tertiary factors and make the game easier to balance because there's less to manage. Yeah, you lose balance tuning levers but at the same time you also help reduce frustrating situations where you miss the mark because you should have nerfed a rune/champ when the opposite was true. You also cut down on player frustration because now you can't load in at a massive disadvantage or with the wrong page or otherwise.

If the game is only balanced around the champ you bring in, things will be clearer and players won't be as frustrated.

43 Comments

Critmaster Garen7/29/2019, 8:48:00 AM31 votes

i dont like this. as someone who plays a champion with very little mechanical versatility to deal with my opponents during games, i take every strategic option i can get, and i like that the rune system at least gives me a lot of versatility in playstiles.

Garen predator, phase rush, grasp of the undying, glacial augment.

but it goes deeper than that. without second wind and cookies, how unbearable would some ranged matchups be?

without legend: tenacity, how do i build item 3047 against a 4/5 ad teamcomp and dont get destroyed by the support morganas q?

theyre all giving me different tools to adapt my playstile to my own teamcomp and the team im facing.

the rune system certainly has its flaws. personally, i think we should do quite the opposite of removing it, and its not big enough to give every champion in the game runes that syngerize as well with them as klepto does with Gangplank or conqueror does with Riven

if it were for me, there were 4 or 5 runes in every row in every tree, to guarantee that every single champion in the game has not only one good rune set to chose from, but also alternative runes to pick from.

heck, there should probably even be a second defensive oriented tree, one aimed at vanguards and juggernauts with runes like grasp, demolish and shield bash, and one for wardens with runes like guardian and font of life and generic defense.

the main problem with the rune system is that its too small, and as a natural result some champions are favoured more by it than other champions, because those champions that are left out often just dont have as great rune choices.

WoonStruck7/29/2019, 7:22:36 AM9 votes

And the amount of cheese and emphasis on snowballing would be massively reduced.

Tormentula7/29/2019, 8:41:06 AM8 votes

You have to keep in mind a binary meta isn't an easily balancable one; see all the binary champs that have been problems since the beginning. If you remove runes, the champs do become more binary, and that results in more stat checks as they get over tuned to compensate for lack of runes (expect this for all tanks, mages, and assassins, take away talon's electrocute and suddenly his W does 100 more damage level 2 on PBE).

While that would definitely be the case for electrocute and comet users, you can't necessarily replace those who used runes like glacial augment (essentially you ruin the damage playstyle vs. the utility playstyle ahri and vel'koz mains have, and lock them into getting damage compensation buffs and locked in a single playstyle). This would take away dynamic from these champions and contradict the claim:

they never really solved anything nor allowed for unique playstyles.

There are runes that get swapped game specific;

Taste of blood and Ravenous Hunter can be taken to outsustain an opponent and farm in lane phase longer, or alternatively some players prefer to go inspiration secondary for better gold value to item spike faster in the lane phase, or to use dematerializer to wave clear faster/gain priority for their jungler if they know their jungler will invade.

Nullifying orb can be taken vs. AP heavy comps

Glacial can be taken on almost everyone that can utilitize GLP/Twinshadows, but those users typically can run electrocute, comet, aery, or in cho's case grasp.

Spell book is playstyle based, if you want to play around the rune you can make plays with it (double smite for objectives, more summoner spells than just teleport, etc.). Champs like zoe can go this, aery, dark harvest, whatever the zoe player pleases. Even Twisted Fate can do this, or comet.

Camille is a champ I can personally talk about, she has 5 viable keystones, all matchup dependant;

Grasp and Klepto are good into tanks that can't trade back with her, since all the other runes won't do much damage to them anyway and she stacks extra gold/health all lane phase.
PTA is good for snowballing and outtrading the opponent, as well as bursting squishies later on.
Conqueror while not exactly ideal most of the time, is viable into tanks if you're trying to snowball off them and outduel them.
Comet is good for rough matchups that you want to poke out and spam W with mana flow band.

These are all great options for camille top lane players, so that contradicts this statement a lot;

they never really solved anything nor allowed for unique playstyles.

Akali I don't play, but I do know Akali against squishies does great with electrocute, while Akali against tanks and extended trade matchups top lane do well with conqueror.

Players do legitmately play around their runes, whether its stacking conqueror first before trading, or changing their build entirely around their rune choice (triforce comet ashe, vs. lethal tempo on-hit ashe).

Also how do you replace runes like phase rush for AurelionSol ? You can't without directly injecting more movement speed into his kit then we're in a world of "why the fuck can aurelion sol have built in movement steroids but they haven't given swain any compensation? Is aurelion sol overloaded now or are all previous phase rush users underloaded in comparison now?"

Yes, even the old ones where if you didn't have AS reds you were literally unable to jungle.

Was that rune specific problem, or was that because the jungle was too hard to clear?

Remember back when league first come out riot didn't even intend to have a 'jungle' when they made runes. The jungle role just happened and then later got supported as a role. originally the jungle was meant to just be a bonus with 2 top, 1 mid, 2 bot, so yea the jungle was tough as nails without attack speed since it was never intended to take attack speed runes and play it as a role until they made it easier.

make the game easier to balance because there's less to manage.

Not necessarily, you instead just inject the numbers into each champion individually;

if damage is overall to high: nerf electrocute, balancing everyone across the board

if most electrocute users are fine except a few cases: nerf the few champs.

if runes like phase rush, conqueror, lethal tempo, etc get removed the champs reliant on that instead get that injected into their kits or injected in an item.. which leads to problems with that champion being overloaded, or the meta actually being more snowbally based on who 'bought their rune' first and item spike faster. If champs have less built-in mechanics (runes) then the champ with the better stat check just wins by default unless they fuck up majorly.

Its 5 AM for me so this might be hard to read without proof reading better, but I do think its very tunnel sighted to claim there isn't variety with rune builds, even for the same champion.

Hell I've been swapping secondaries on Elise for the past 2 weeks every few games, depending on if i'm looking to 2v2 their jungler (triumph + coup), make mid game plays or survive hard matchups like kayn and karthus (stopwatch + cosmic), or spam gank and focus on snowballing and taking objectives (absolute focus, waterwalking). System is working fine for me in that regard, and frankly its not unhealthy or game breaking for me being able to do that when the opponent can also do the same and flex nullifying orb.

Malza7/29/2019, 11:51:18 AM8 votes

This would make strategic play much more binary, and hard counters too prevalent in the game. The most broken champions quite possibly wouldn't have countermeasures in anyway besides items (at which point if it's a lane bully, it's already way too late for items to matter).

Every single champion in the game would need base stats and spell damage adjusted to make up for the loss of runes.

Basically, the game would be in the most unbalanced state it's ever been for months on end before LoL would look even remotely playable again, and that LoL that is remotely playable again would have far more frustrating lane matchups, far less build diversity, etc.

DOUBLE TAPPED E7/29/2019, 7:59:58 AM8 votes

I don't really like this idea.

I take Conqueror, Tenacity, and Cut Down into comps with 2+ tanks, or mages that build RoA I take Conqueror, Tenacity, and Coup de Gras into comps with 0-1 tank and heavy CC I take Dark Harvest with secondary Triumph / Coup into full squishy teams I take Dark Harvest with secondary Triumph / Tenacity into full squishy teams with heavy CC I take double Adaptive Force + MR / Armor into different matchups, and some times double armor / MR into VERY difficult matchups

My page is rarely the same every single game, because I know my champion ( Katarina ) in and out, and being able to adapt my playstyle to the enemy composition before the match is very important to my performance. There are some matches where if I didn't have Tenacity or Conqueror, I would be forced to dodge, whereas with runes I can play it out.

I don't have enough time on my hands to wait 3 hours between every game, so I guess if you really really want this to happen, it should come along with removal of the dodge penalty.

preternatural7/29/2019, 3:42:51 PM6 votes

old runes actually provided a lot of flexibility yo. just saying. can't write that off the way you be doin.

GigglesO7/29/2019, 2:27:49 PM6 votes

I call bull shit on the runes offered no play style changes.

I ran some 45 armor&mr at level 18 pages. I ran some 50 AP pages. I ran some 13/5 mana pages, and sometimes anywhere in between.

As someone that owed all the runes I had a huge number of rune combinations that I played with. I even convinced a few of my friends to run about 3blue mana regen runes on some of their champs like alistar 4 on Sona and etc...

Friends never believed me until they tried it and could feel the difference.

The real issue was $$$ of runes and proplay skewing it to be “pick this if you want to win”. The issue of cost and pros really compounded since most players couldn’t afford more than a few rune sets.

Apollogy7/29/2019, 3:36:14 PM4 votes

So, first off, there wasn't always "just one right" page in the old runes system. Perhaps certain champions in certain roles had a specific rune page that was right for most situations... But for the most part, you would switch rune pages. Sure, people could get by with a general rune page, and even I did that... But, there are a lot of knowledge in the old rune system. From switching just a couple runes for a specific matchup to change a specific situation that you'd only know and understand after playing that matchup dozens of times... to just preparing for a different situation defined by the entire game or champ choices.

I ran 12 different pages for jungling. I'd use a general page for mages, enchanter supports, tank supports, ADCs, and whatnot, but since I mained JG, I would run enough pages to cover every situation. Most people weren't aware of how best to use runes. Even had a buddy who thought AD runes were best for any champ that auto attacks. I was able to convince him that for a champion like Warwick, you'd rather have AS runes. (Old WW) Riot seemed to think that runes were "solved", and maybe they were, but there was an enormous amount of knowledge based on the old rune system. It wasn't as cut and dry as most people seem to think.

Riot had been looking to removed runes for a long time, though, and they finally did. Originally, this new "runes reforged" idea completely cut off the old rune system and just reworked Masteries, like they do every other year on average. We call them runes, but these are just masteries. After they realized that general stats attached to specific mastery trees aren't gonna work for every champion... they backed off on that decision and added the old runes back, but in a much, much more restricted way. We don't have Quints anymore, instead of being able to stack one type of stat (defense or damage), but less efficiently in certain slots. (Armor glyphs are weaker than armor seals) But, we still have a defense slot, an offense slot, and what they call a "flex" slot, that can sorta be one or the other. It's important that they allow us to pick the stats we need, because every champion is different and needs a unique combination. Now, many champions will end up with very similar runes, but that's okay.

When it comes to giving every champion a stat buff after they removed the old rune system... Well, the new runes give less stats than before when it comes to armor/damage/attack speed etc... And the entire game had been balanced around those stats we got from the old runes. So, they could have just made the jungle camps easier to kill in general, or give those stats to the champions that struggled. (Not every champ got the stats they needed, so it wasn't a net buff for everyone. Even if a champ got some stats, they might not have been enough stats to make up for it, while another champ did get the right stats, meaning the first champ is nerfed relative to the rest of the roster). It's possible if they changed the game instead of the champions, that you'd see picks that weren't strong enough before, getting picked in weird positions. So it's a much safer option to just give those stats back to the champions and try to start from where they were before, rather than creating a completely new environment to understand and balance. (Like awkward jungle picks because now a champ that couldn't clear, can, because the JG is easier).

By constantly switching the game, they promote adaptability. Adaptability is one of the skills that Riot expects you to have in order to climb. (Which is why an RNG element like elemental drakes was added to the game. It's not so RNG where a game is decided by that alone, because you're not going to lose a game cause the enemy team got all the Ocean drakes they need for their poke comp... you lost that game cause obviously you didn't have very much control at any stage of the game... Also, while ocean drakes promote poke comps, they also counter poke comps. That's pretty amazing).

The new runes are actually really interesting. In the past, Runes were mostly passive and uninteresting stats, and yeah, some of your arguments might hold up against those. (Old runes and masteries). However, one of the goals of the new runes reforged system is to give us something more than just passive stats. These are modifiers that we can interact with in game. They do promote different playstyles, and allow different playstyles. Sure, again, some champs might always go with the same type of runes, but, other champs might have half a dozen possible keystones that are effective in different situations, and among each of those keystones, you'll have different sub-runes for different situations. If I don't need to take Legend: Tenacity, I'm gonna take Legend: Alacrity if I need the dueling power, or Legend: Bloodlines if I need more sustain in fights. (I prefer sustain vs assassins, so I win if I keep fighting, an dueling power vs other fighters, so I get more auto's in).

When it comes to removing everything, you could say that about the entire game. Riot has said before that they could literally just adjust the HP of every champion to make the game 100% balanced. This is a game where all variables are under Riot's control, and so you can solve the balance "problem" with mathematics. But Riot has said previously that their goal isn't to balance this game. Their goal is to achieve perfect imbalance. Imbalance is interesting. It allows people to discover new things. If they wanted to make the game easier to balance, they could remove items, runes, and elemental dragons (go back to a regular dragon that just gives flat gold and nothing else, so you don't need to think about what those stats can do to every champion). But that's certainly not interesting.

Runes are unique, they allow us to express our skill and knowledge before the game even starts. And what's great about them, is that they're friendlier to new players. The other way to express our skill during champ select is in champ selection, team composition (which can require teamwork with a bunch of random people), or summoner spell selection. You don't even know all of the variables sometimes before you get to pick your champion, especially if you're first pick. If I first pick top, I pick my top laner who does well into most every matchup my other top laners will struggle with. Or I first pick my jungle champ that I can play well into anything. If I'm last pick, I can pick to support my comp and still not get countered. However, these are concepts that newer players will struggle to grasp for a long, long time. It takes a lot of experience and knowledge, and knowledge of just about every champion in the game, in order to understand this part of the game. Runes, on the other hand, are more specific to just your own champion, than the rest of the game. Sure, I'll pick a different rune depending on compositions, but I won't be punished very much if I pick Tenacity against a team with no Hard CC, and only silences and slows. It's still okay. Knowledge related to runes and which runes to pick is much easier to come by and find online, than knowledge on how to build a team composition or knowledge on specific lane matchups. It's a way to reward newer players for learning the game in a meaningful way.

Yeah, sometimes there are nightmare situations with runes when they make a change with unaccounted consequences. But the same can be said of any balance change/decision Riot could possibly make. They could leave the game as it is, and never change anything. What's cool about that, is that things we think are strong now, might not be strong a year from now, even if they never change the game itself. You can see this in a lot of older competitive games that no longer get patches. Tier lists change over the years because people discover new things. What might seem strong today, could be really weak once people understand how to play against it. But this is okay. Part of the skill of a game is having that knowledge and knowing what's the wrong decision and what's the right decision. If you could make any decision at all and it'll be okay, then that's not a very interesting or competitive situation. A lot of games actually purposefully have weak options to give newer players the opportunity to learn the difference between strong and weak. It's also rewarding when they first understand why you shouldn't pick that option. But Riot has opted to change their game every couple of weeks, and that's okay too.

To be fair to Riot, they actually do a great job balancing the game. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but it's the truth. When most champions and items, most of the time, have around a 50% winrate, or between 48% and 52%, they've done a pretty good job. Winrates aren't everything, though.

This game is incredibly complex, and to keep things within such a tight margin is difficult. The people constantly complaining about game balance probably really don't understand the first thing about balancing a game this complex. Yeah, changing something that seems strong might seem logical to most people, but there are so many other factors to consider, so many other things that change. Nerf this champ, and who else gets stronger as a result? And is that a healthy trade-off? Or should we buff something else that directly or indirectly counters that champ in some way, or buff something that makes that champ less of a great pick? There's a lot going on, so Riot takes their time to make sure they do it right. They don't always, though, but the people working at Riot are only human, and you can't expect them never to make a mistake.

Shieda Kayn7/29/2019, 9:03:15 AM3 votes

I've been wanting this a lot for one. Also because I don't like having to rush doing my runes at the beginning of each game hoping I will be able to complete them in time and that I didn't mess them up etc. Removing runes would probably require a lot of changes in items, something I'd be really excited about as well.

C9 Scott7/29/2019, 1:44:31 PM2 votes

And people wonder why Riot doesn't take the boards seriously.

Teh Song7/29/2019, 4:02:12 PM2 votes

All imma say is that anything from outside the match (so runes and summoner spells) should be notably less impactful than anything from inside (the champions and objectives).

If the best way to do that is to not have external things, then yes, delete them. But I'd settle for them just being less important.

USG Failsawce7/29/2019, 5:01:23 PM2 votes

they won't do this because the game has to have as many reasons for cheeselords and gimmick%%%s and people who spam yasuo akali riven and literally anything that uses conqueror to play. basically things like this and half the new reworks (irelia) are for all the 10 year olds to be consistently interested in playing.. but screw the rest of the community, the actually 'loyal' to the game and balance community. why would riot ever want to appease those people?

personally im on the fence about "removing" runes.. leaning towards wanting them to stay, but 100% not in their current form. even old runes/masteries would be infinitely better. the fact that conqueror even exists (mostly for reasons above) actually makes me want to puke.

KICK OUT AT 27/30/2019, 7:57:55 PM2 votes

Completely agree. Runes and masteries s6 and onwards have broken the game too many times to count. Let customization come through build path. The less variables for the balance team to juggle, the better. MOBAs shouldn't have RPG mechanics, especially if they want to be called competitive.

I think many would be surprised to find that their champions don't need their runes to find success (if enemy also doesn't have runes ofc). If you didn't play the game before s6 you wouldn't know what the game was like before keystones boosted everyone's power sky high.

Wiented7/30/2019, 11:43:56 PM1 votes

U dumb

CaptainAntiHeroz7/29/2019, 8:05:53 PM1 votes

And this would make it so if every champ isnt viable in pro play they've failed at balancing champs No just no Forget rose tinted glasses, this is poorly thought out, champs will become >or

5050BS7/29/2019, 8:18:34 PM1 votes

I agree

Game can be lost because someone picked the wrong Runes.

MasterDClone7/29/2019, 8:59:56 PM1 votes

Runes make most of my unorthodox stratagy's somewhat successful and allows me to play so many different play styles.

Could i really ryze jg without the gank potential givin from predator and relentless hunter. I can on hit teemo adc without lethal tempo giving me the attackspeed to build more damage. I play a lot of sion adc which is only possible thanks to runes such as bone plating to survive laning, demolish for tower gold since i have to get up close, glacial to kill them in passive, stopwatch to save gold on stats and futures market to have a damage advantage in lane.

people complain a lot about these runes, but the new runes have made possible so many new strategy's if people were bothered enough to experiment

Karn Bishop7/30/2019, 1:27:44 AM1 votes

Runes are something unique to this game i doubt it would even be league of legends anymore if you removed them, there might be a "right path" but the runes provide a flexibility that would otherwise not be seen, other games try to solve this by making all skills OP (dota) or letting you select variations of a skill in game ( Heroes of the storm ) which unfortunately does not provide the same thing and falls flat because of it.

regardless of your opinions on runes they ARE a cornerstone of this game and would not be the same without them.

I doubt this would even have upvotes if not for how popular you are on these forums in general.

Helmight7/30/2019, 1:50:33 AM1 votes

I believe this is most of the reason why they adopted the new balance framework, which generally leaves items/runes alone and mostly focuses on champions. If you're balancing champions around your pregame systems without changing the pregame systems, you'll end up in a spot where it's still mostly about the character you picked.

Chaeor7/30/2019, 6:08:36 AM1 votes

no for 2 reasons . suppose they do as you say you are going to get a 1 sided full on meta that stat hulks or super strong kits are dominant and not innovaive picks TwistedFate klepto ad / Ryze phase rush (that he super needs) if they do some more dps / stat buffs you are going to see him all on top again / Ezreal is never going to finish his items unless his game shoots for the hills over 40 mins but then its still ez but that can be changed . the problem is the champs that get super strong are going to be alot easier to find so ranked or any que is going to be the same 100% champions your going to get not only across a certain lane but almost all lanes . second is they are going to lose a sense of fun and discovery to the point might as well go merge ranked play and normal play together and you are not going to see change and this is going to also lead to further problems along the road.

that is my opinion

Smyrage7/30/2019, 9:23:59 AM1 votes

Have you ever played Heroes of the Storm? That has the system you mentioned. It doesn't work at all. It would just render already less viable picks totally unviable, a troll pick. I agree that certain rune + champion combinations can be disgusting, but at the same time they also allow more playstyles and to counteract weaknesses. I would say we need more rune options other than removing the whole thing.

Hi im 127/30/2019, 9:26:11 AM1 votes

they never really solved anything nor allowed for unique playstyles. There was a "right" rune page in almost every situation save for the person who is going to bring up some gimmick page that worked in 1/1000 of matches due to a very specific lane/champion fight.

yes I would like to have a page with decent amount of sustain and armor in it when I face a pantheon or one of the cancer ranged tops, and anyone saying I shouldn't be able to can fuck right the fuck off.

FF20 Marshmallow7/30/2019, 11:10:23 AM1 votes

while i don't agree with the point of the post, i do agree with most champions having the "right" rune page. Quite honestly i would like rune pages to be reworked for a system where we can pre-set rune pages, so our bought rune pages will be available for each champion, much like you can make item sets for each champion. I would love to be able to make pre-set rune pages for each of my champions. The way rune pages work at the moment its just not worth making them. i just set them up in champ select each and every game and 10% of the time im playing with random runes because it decides to not save.

Shahamut7/30/2019, 3:26:54 PM1 votes

Remove all, add more items and bring back enchantments, but not just for boots.

Let us decide in game how we want to adjust our playstyle to the game at hand.

That's one idea anyway.

Metal Janna7/30/2019, 3:31:48 PM1 votes

Massive disagree with OP. No disrespect, I see where you're coming from, but from my perspective as an Orianna support one trick, runes do far more good than harm. See, my love for Ori support comes primarily from her versatility. She brings a good mix of utility, burst damage, DPS, and CC which allows her to work in most matchups as long as i'm paying attention and changing my runes and build to match the lane i'm in.

There is a "right" runepage for support Ori (it's Sorcery/Inspiration with Aery keystone 80% of the time). Aery plays into Ori's enchanter aspect (shields and poking), while inspiration covers her mana weakness and further enhances her shielding ability by reducing the cooldown. Guardian too can play into Ori's enchanter aspect, but trades most of her poking power for a stronger, less reliable shield. BUT There's the matter of counters. As an enchanter/mage support, hook supports are Orianna's natural enemy. When I play Orianna as a pure enchanter, they simply ignore my damage and CC and walk past the minions for an easy all in. So what I usually do is trade Aery and Manaflow Band for Hail of Blades and Cheap Shot. By sacrificing some of Ori's enchanter strength, I can get more DPS mage strength. This is most effective against Thresh (best designed hook support, btw). If Thresh attempts a walk up past minions there's a good chance he'll die unless he lands his hook. Other hook supports, Pyke Blitzcrank Nautilus , have too much tank and can usually shrug my damage off and escape. I suspect Pyke will always hard counter Ori due to her lack of hard CC to secure the kill, but having typed for so long about it an idea occurs for a new Press The Attack rune page to spec even harder into DPS to mitigate the disadvantage. The idea fills me with excitement.

None of these pregame systems promote uniqueness, "choose your playstyle" or make balance easier.

Sort of agree. I chose my playstyle when I chose to main Ori support. But which aspect of it I can make the most of varies from match to match, and I like my ability to choose to enhance one aspect or another before the match starts. Without that ability, seeing a hook support across the lane would just be instant GG. Base Orianna just does not have the damage to deal with any hook support, unless she and her carry can dodge hooks for 15 minutes straight and not eat one. At that point it's really just player skill beating a hard counter. I hate hard counters. I don't think the game should ever be decided when champions are locked in, before runepages and summoners are picked.