Inspiration tree has mostly runes that only save you gold in the early game and fall off compared to other trees that have consistent damage through out the entire game.
They couldn't have done ANYTHING to make them scale with level or time or something?
It's there for champs who scale really quickly with items. Giving late game runes to a tree line that's about skipping mid game gold gaps would be broken
Glacial Augment CAN be OP on the right champ. With that said, inspiration tree is mostly garbage because he doesn't have any raw flat benefit. It doesn't make you stronger or tougher except for one rune, the +100 health one.
I was under the impression inspiration is more for the interesting quirks than raw power or damage. Klepto is pretty good and gives insane gold value for what you get for being aggressive in lane. Though the randomness nature is a bit weird. The one item you always want but may not get until late game is the elixir of skill. It's a free skill point when you get it. Getting it early gives you a big power spike.
I find it hard to see it's usefulness as a primary path, but as a secondary path I think it can be useful for the majority of champions.
cdr and speed are dead weight? but I can kind of see it, I play support and even I am having trouble finding a use in these utility runes compared to the other ones. why steal consumables or slow when attacking when you can have a pet shield or damage or shield allies?
By going for the inspiration tree you're sacrificing value for tempo. These concepts are usually applied to ccg but it applies to league better than you might expect. You have more power in the early/mid game in order to end before their value comes through. If you know how to end games those runes are extremely strong, but if you are low elo and don't know how to end they look bad because you don't know how to use the lead they give for free. If you took boots + stopwatch you are almost 1k gold in items up at 10 min, which in high elo is a lane ending lead.
Cleaely you haven't tried Glacial Augmet ASol.
TBH both Inspiration and Sorcery just feel bad unless you're after the keystone.
Truth be told, I feel like Riot is really holding back radicalizing new concepts. They just straight up overbuffed what we had but too hesistant to make Inspiration really bend the game.
"Hey heres a free Stopwatch, but it can only be worth 300 gold in the item build because of Magical Footwear"
