[FEATURED GAME MODE} The Rune Wars
Long before the time of Summoners (RETCONNED, I KNOW--STILL IN DENIAL), great powers battled across Runeterra in epic wars that shook the land. Those years were known as The Rune Wars and now you can experience the mighty powers that once ruled!
Quick Summary: Players can build up team-wide powers and gain extra stats from items.
BREAKDOWN
Part One: Runic Powers
One of two main features in The Rune Wars is team-empowering Runes. These Runes are not in any way associated with champion runes (Marks, Seals, Glyphs, and Quints). Instead, they are enhancements which can be purchased from the store. Think Black Market game mode, but instead we have a Rune Store. The main idea of these Runes is to enhance team compositions, such as poke/siege and diver. There are several variations for acquiring runes, but here is the setup I have come up with:
- There are X amount of Runes (thinking 5 or 6)
- Each Rune can be ranked up to X amount of times. (Thinking 5)
- Runes are ranked up through points acquired by minion, monster, epic monster, and champion kills (no assists.)
- After acquiring any amount of points players can return to the store and donate the points into any Rune of choice. Once enough points are contributed towards a Rune it will be unlocked and/or level up.
Here are a few examples of Runes:
Rune of the Sentinel Mana is the well of life. The more Mana one possesses the greater their life spans. Champions gain 20% / 30% / 40% / 50% / 60% of the value of their maximum mana added to their HP.
Rune of the Elder Lizard Let the flames purge every corner of the land. Champions deal 10% / 20% / 30% / 40% / 50% of their total AD or AP (greater of the two values) as AoE true damage every 3 seconds.
Rune of the Stars The Stars grant life to those who acquire their blessing. Stars shine their light upon champions, healing them for 5% / 10% / 15% / 20% / 25% of their maximum HP every 5 seconds.
As far as unlocking and leveling up each Rune we can say minions and small monsters = 1 point, large monsters = 3 points, epic monsters = 10 points, and champion kills = 15 points. Level 1 Runes are unlocked when a team contributes 50 points, Level 2 at 100 points, Level 3 at 150 points, and so on.
"So how do Runes affect team comps?" Poke/Siege comps get stronger with heavy sustain. So they would want to rank up Rune of the Stars to poke out their enemies all day, every day. Divers love to get right into the fight and having Rune of the Eldar Lizard's AoE damage will only make their ability to dominate brawls all the more effective. Sustained damage dealers, such as Anivia and Swain, need mana and health to dominate fights so they would want Rune of the Sentinel. Of course there will be other Runes that offer bonuses which favor other comps, such as tank/bruiser heavy teams and hard carry teams. I just haven't come up with those yet.
Part Two: Enhanced Items
Before Summoners enforced their restrictions, the power of items was much greater than we know them to be. Items grant twice their normal amount of stats. Whether or not Unique Passive and Active powers should be doubled is up for debate. Maybe Uniques can be a case-by-case balance. For example, Luden's Echo will deal 200 (+20%AP) magic damage, but Rabadon's Deathcap will still grant 35% bonus AP instead of 70% (cuz holy hell is that beyond broken). And what about armor and magic penetration? Do we want to grant 80% armor penetration in a world where Rammus can acquire almost 1000 Armor? These are the questions we must seek the answer to!
New Effect: OVERFLOW! When the maximum cap is reached for a certain stat it will OVERFLOW!
Excessive Damage After reaching 100% Critical Strike Chance, all extra CSC is converted into Critical Strike Damage.
Excessive Firepower After reaching 2.5 Attack Speed, all extra AS is converted into...either % increase in total AD or a flat amount of AD. Can't decide which is better/healthier.
Excessive Limits After reaching 40% Cooldown Reduction, all extra CDR is converted into a percent-increase in ability base values. What does this mean? Let's take a champion who loves CDR, like Ezreal. Say Ezreal builds Iceborn Gauntlet, Black Cleaver, and Essence Reaver. He will have 100% CDR. That is 50% extra CDR. At rank 5, Mystic Shot's base damage is 115. The base damage will be increased by 50% to 117.5. The AD and AP ratios will remain unchanged. The same applies to healing and shielding abilities. Also, abilities such as Tristana's Rapid Fire which grants % AS will also increase in the same way. In the same example, rank 5 Rapid Fire would grant 165% AS instead of 110%. Not that Tristana would build those items, but I'm just saying.
Questions to consider:
So how is all of this extra firepower different from URF? URF is about abusing ridiculously low cooldowns with very little or no gating on spell casts (HP costs and death being the most notable gates). The Rune Wars is about building your individual champion into either an indestructible titan loaded with health and resistances or a devastating carry that goes around one-shotting squishies in addition to granting your team almost-godly bonuses.
What about abuse-cases? So ban Karthus, amirite? I don't know every single abuse case off the top of my head, besides the obvious one I just mentioned, but the champions can be either unavailable on the map or receive small nerfs, such as a small reduction to scaling ratios. Can you imagine a 1k armor Rammus with 500 AD going around 1v1-ing the poor ADCs?
In conclusion, I believe the concept of The Rune Wars, though unpolished, has potential to be a fun and enjoyable Featured Game Mode. There are plenty of details I have left out, such as re-adjusted ambient gold and kill/assist gold, experience gains, and even buffing turrets. Hey! Maybe there can be a Rune for boosting structures? For the teams who like to turtle. Maybe Baron and Dragon could get buffs or we could see an entirely new set of Epic Monsters unique to The Rune Wars
tl;dr -- New team bonuses, called Runes; Items grant double stats; potential map changes to balance the game mode.
