Environmental Runes: A few ideas.

**Hey everyone! ** I've been keeping track of the new rune system, and really love that they are using it to increase choice and diversity. As someone who loves to fool with game design, I thought I'd share a few ideas for runes. As we have very little info on the strength of each tier so far it's hard to say where they belong and what numbers to put, but I expect them to to be somewhere near Major.

This post will focus on environmental runes. These situational runes provide unique interaction with the rift (sorry other maps) and look to create unique tactical moments based on location.

Note: Names and numbers are placeholders, obviously can be tweaked. Also sorry if this belongs under gameplay, both seemed to be useful.

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Brush Runes These runes are focused around vision and brush control. They modify how wards are used, providing alternate strengths to supportive styles. If used right, they can increase a teams ability to push an advantage in a portion of the map or create a strong defensive area. They are limited only to area's that currently have brush however, so enemies can play around seperate areas. This is used as a current replacement for greenfathers gift and explorer. Each one interacts with each other, creating a stronger effect when combined. Also by using wards, they have to trade off the amount of vision for utility.

**Hunter's trap: ** Wards placed inside a brush set a trap for enemies and become traps. After a 2 second arming, any enemies who step inside the brush set off the trap, and after a .5 second delay, anyone in the brush is snared for a brief period. The ward is then destroyed. Wards placed like this count towards a separate limit of 2. Traps only give vision inside the brush.

This allows you to have additional map control, and set up potential traps for enemies, however due to not being able to buy wards forces a choice: Ward for vision or create a trap. Also you cannot placed wards in brushes any longer, giving fair trade off.

Green Thumb: Wards placed sprout brushes on top of them, but reveal the ward inside. This effect is amplified if near another brush or wall. Grants wards an extra two health. Destroying the ward removes the brush after a few seconds, but disabling it does not.

This creates a massive tradeoff: You lose the ability to place invisible wards, but gain area and vision denial. Also syncronizes well with other brush runes.

Burn and slash: Wards placed inside of brush ignite them, causing them to deal % hp damage over time. Additionally, if this ward is cleared from a brush or a second ward from the same caster is placed, it burns the brush to the ground, removing it from the map for a moderate length of time (90-180???) and destroying both wards.

This creates a threat for the enemy by creating a unscaling zone of damage that can be a threat at all times of the game. The second part creates a strong trade off: If you use the brush, you lose that area of control if it's denied. Similar to Magical forest, it denies the ability to place wards in brush without revealing it is warded. Used offensively you quickly eat up wards to destroy brushes, however it also removes defensive hiding.

Magical forest: Wards placed inside of brushes enchant them for the duration of the ward, granting increased MS to allied champions and slowing enemies. Can only have two brushes enchanted at once across the team. Destroying the ward or disabling it removes this effect.

This improves the strength of laning phase brushes, allowing you to dip in and out of areas of low vision, however, offers lower impact than other wards. Later on in the game however it reveals that brushes are warded.

Mystical Portal: Wards Placed inside a brush link to the next nearby ward placed by the caster. After the second ward is placed, the first is revealed and can be right clicked by allies in order to travel from the first to the second (think bard portal). If one ward is destroyed, both are. This reduces ward health by one.

This creates another interesting utiltiy. Using this can allow allies to get into favorable positions, create new ganking and escape paths. Also opens up to dragon/baron steals. Comes with trade off of having to use two wards and make them easier to destroy.

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River Runes These runes aim to interact with how a user acts with the river. The river is a point of high contest, containing major objectives and connecting paths. This enhances control of the area, but by only being able to stand still the user has to sacrifice their own mobility.

Set fire to the rain: After standing still in the river for 3 seconds, fire begins to spread from the users point across the river, lasting until the user moves again. This fire deals %current damage to enemy champions caught inside. Gives % increase damage in the river.

This can be used to deter enemies from wanting to fight for objectives through damage, while providing no bonuses to the team.

**Water Shoes:**After standing still in the river for 3 seconds, increases all allied movement speed (in and out of combat). Passively Gives flat movespeed bonus while outside of combat in river.

This gives a champion the ability to sacrifice themselves or someone the ability to get their team out of or into a teamfight. Provides no combat bonuses outside though.

Yue's Gift: After standing still in the river for 7 seconds, the user channels and sacrifices % of their max mana and health per second to grant vision of both rivers to allies, and heal all allies AND enemies inside by an amount equal to that given. Keystone level perhaps.

This gives massive potential, but at the cost of possibly losing a member of your team and healing the enemy. Early game can be used to heal up allies psudo globally at the cost of one, however, enemies can also abuse this.

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**Anyways that's all for today! I'll be back with some of the other idea's floating around in my head, and maybe a better explanation of these. Please tell me what you think, critiques welcome and thanks for reading! **