Kleptomancy Rework

iiGazeii·7/6/2019, 6:51:18 PM·1 votes·836 views

A big problem with Kleptomancy and why it's so heavily abused by champions like Kayle and Ezreal is that it allows these champions to accelerate past their weak early game. They get free gold and sustain just for trading with their opponents, so they can stay in lane longer and buy more items to get them past where they're supposed to be weak. This abuse means the rune needs to be balanced around them, so the handful of champions that can proc it very easily keep it from being a viable rune on anybody else. It's also heavily dependent on RNG. Getting lucky with item pulls can make or break a lane, and that doesn't feel satisfying.

Here's my idea to make it so that the rune still gives you extra gold, but it doesn't get you to the mid game any faster.

Kleptomancy

  • Five Finger Discount: Starting at 2:30, you may steal 1 Health Potion and 1 Control Ward from the shop every 5 minutes (cooldown starts when item is stolen, tracked separately for each item type)
  • Thievery: Grants a charge of Theft every 5 seconds, up to 3 charges. Each spell or attack that hits an enemy champion consumes a charge and stores 5 gold in The Bank (only the first tick of a DoT effect counts)
  • Looting: Whenever you kill a unit or assist in a takedown, gold is stored in The Bank (1 gold for minions and monsters, 10 gold for epic monsters, 50 gold for champions, 25 gold for assists)
  • Payout: At 15:00, you gain all the gold stored in The Bank, and you stop storing gold.

This version of Kleptomancy would be usable on nearly every champion (probably not optimal, but usable). By storing the gold gained in The Bank, champions don't have access to it, and can't spend any of it until the midgame. They get a big payout at the midgame if they've been engaging with their opponent and CSing properly, so it makes their midgame spike harder, but doesn't make their early game any shorter. With 100 CS per 10 min and every single charge spent on-cooldown, the payout is roughly 1000 gold, more if you get kills. In reality, it would probably be less than that, since not everybody is a god at CS and you aren't always in range to trade with your opponent.

The Five Finger Discount portion gives the rune some impact before the payout, so you get to swipe an extra potion or pink ward every now and then. It's not huge, but it's something. Nowhere near the sustain provided by the previous version, but also less random.

2 Comments

Nekorus7/6/2019, 7:27:34 PM1 votes

just remove it from the game

SosGrohiik7/8/2019, 1:44:37 PM1 votes

Most runes are a bit less dynamic. I think that if kleptomancy as a first tier rune wasn't how it is it wouldn't work very well. But perhaps if we took your gold idea where at the 15 minute mark you gain gold by placing this rune where free shoes it would force you to choose between getting free boots which is 300 gold or getting a payout that would probably be a bit less strong than your current rates. I feel like getting a free item at 15 minute mark would make some champs who spend a lot of the game power farming like Nasus or Ryze crazy strong and make this a often must pick rune. So lowering it to be a boost of about 500 gold when combined with the rune lower than this you could buy an 850 gold item for free at the 15 minute mark like full boots. At the cost of 2 runes.