izillah

I feel like this is well trod ground at this point. As general rule EVERYTHING Riot add to the game is more powerful than the stuff that preceded it.

The notable exception in this example is that you cannot really spec into MR and Armour in botlane where it's almost certain you are going to be facing mixed damage.

I'm actually interested in whether other options might be better than arbitrarily going AS|AD|Armour . Especially in some match ups where the AD does mixed or little damage early like Kaisa or Twitch. Or double dipping defence against lanes like Lucian Nami where you will outscale without the 9AD anyway

Mathematically untrue.

When Runes Reforged came out, champions were all compensated for their Seals choice (mostly, just flat Armor, except for mids who were given HP/level). By contrast, mages lost their flat magic penetration marks and other champions lost their magic resist glyphs. That came pretty close to treading water.

There were lots of people, commentators included, who would say things like, "Ah yes, he died because he doesn't have his MR glyphs anymore." That was also fraudulent. For example, most mid laners ran CDR/level runes and so the Runes Reforged base stat changes actually made mages tankier against one another. To claim otherwise means you didn't actually look at pro rune pages and just regurgitated what other people said.

I went so far as to dissect some of the specific cases where this refrain was used, considering all the old runes (Deathfire Touch, Thunderlord's, etc.) they used to run and comparing to the new ones (Aery, Scorch, etc.). The math came out nearly identical. I forget which one came out overall ahead, but it wasn't by enough to be worth remembering.

We fast forward to today's world and the compensation baseline durability buffs never went away when Stat Shards got added. I don't know about you, but if I'm running Nautilus I don't think I'm going AP+AP as my stat choice. CDR/level, Armor, Armor is the most common stat shard setup for Neutilus/Leona specifically, for example. Meanwhile, Ezreal can still take +Armor +MR in his stat shards if he needs. Any AD Carry who cares can have substantially more baseline durability than three years ago.

What about the specific runes taken? Well sure, Aftershock and Cheap Shot exist, which do about 35 total damage in the early game. But it's not like you can't take Bone Plating or Nullifying Orb to negate the entirety of that bonus damage.

(Edited out the last sentence as it was unfairly rude)

Ehler

If youre gonna bash someone for being unable to read patch notes you might wanna read 8.11 yourself.

Replies to a thread about Runes Reforged

References an entirely different patch

Well done.

raie2

It's true we don't don't have access to the numbers the way you do, so I have a few questions for my own curiosity:

1) How differently do the old runes in contrast to the runes reforged perform mathematically in later stages of the game vs. early stages? In early stages of the game, I imagine (off the top of my head with no research done) that you're right about the old runes not being too different mathematically than the runes reforged, but I would think that as the game continues, the runes reforged offer more damage increases and reductions.

2) I'm not sure exactly how to word this, but how are the possible rune combinations affect the math behind what you said? What I mean is before, one restrictions were that MR glyphs offered more MR than any other runes which meant that if you wanted as much MR as efficiently as possible, you couldn't get CD gylphs. So this system created some limitations in what players could obtain. Now with runes reforged, players can only select one option per line and two options in their secondary tree. Also if a player wants, say, electrocute, they are forced into the domination tree. So both runes systems have different limitations to them and how do these limitations affect the damage increases and reductions from runes reforged. In you post you mentioned, that a player can always take bone platting for damage reduction which is true, but like you also implied, players typically also heavily prioritize CD which could makes a player decide between, say, inspiration secondary and resolution secondary. Could the forcing of decisions in trees (secondary typically since the primary tree is usually selected only for keystone, but I think the same argument applies) affect damage done by certain runes reforged options?

Sorry for the long post. I was having a hard time wording my second question and felt I had to give a lot of context.

You have access to the exact same numbers I have. Google "League of Legends old Masteries" as I just did three minutes ago and look up all the old info you want.

Truly, the moment Runes Reforged launched, the itemless PvP combat of the game was unchanged. They fine tuned so hard that they gave Ezreal R 10 flat damage to compensate for the fact that it had a Bonus AD ratio. And again, I went back and spot-checked a few cases and the numbers really came out to nearly-identical. The only thing people really lost was 10% scaling CDR in Glyphs sometimes, and even then that was soft-refunded by the flat MR they gained.

In general, to your second point, people really didn't change rune pages very much. They didn't really even change mastery pages much.

In general, people still don't really make pregame choices because either they don't think to (fair), don't believe it's worth doing (it is), or don't think they know enough to make good choices (also fair). I think the idea of actually tweaking your playstyle with your runes doesn't really exist because by design they're meant to not force you to "Play Electrocute" more than "Play Zed." But on the other hand, players tend to under-rate the actual incremental value of their choices.

In short, I think Stat Shards are probably the single most effective rune system League has had because it crystallizes your choices down to something meaningful and understandable. Electrocute vs. Dark Harvest vs. Hail of Blades vs. Aery is something that players are generally going to just pick once per champion and stop thinking about. I think if less runes tried to do the same thing (provide damage) you'd have better choices. Like Comet vs. Phase Rush actually has some matchup teeth.

imArsenals

Phreak, while the damage/power creep may not specifically be from runes reforged - there is still a damage/power creep and that’s really the “issue” Cody Sun and others are complaining about. And you know that.

I mean if the discussion is "Riot kept buffing AP items like Deathcap and Liandry's and now mage damage is way higher than it's ever been before" then that's a totally different discussion and there's evidence to back up that claim.

But this discussion is "But Electrocute has a higher base damage than Thunderlord's!"

Sgtvangelder

I sometimes run AP+AP as Naut because I don't need the tank stats. I blow up the ADC and unless the enemy support is Leona or Braum, I blow them up too.

As a support main who primarily plays Thresh, Naut, Leona, and this season some Senna I can say that way more times than I can count 1v1 the enemy adc with 0 problem. I always read the patch notes, and mathematically true or not what matters is that it FEELS like damage is way out of control.

I played Aphelios in an ARAM last night, and the enemy AP Gragad could kill me in under a second, while the entire time I am cc'd by uncleansable cc, and don't deal damage back. Playing squishy champs doesn't even feel fair half the time because everyone lives longer and does more damage.

That's fair, and in 2013 you could have run AP Glyphs and Quints all the same. The math still lines up pretty equally to the old options. They generally hit the same targets here, even down to the 10% CDR by level 18 that mid laners used to run.

Aphelios is an interesting case of being one of like three champions with less than 30 MR at level 1. Dude definitely needs a Hexdrinker if you're going to survive a burst mage.

On a different point, I'd also argue that AP Gragas is a squishy champ himself and thus would be similarly killed by a bursty champion. Still though, I commiserate with the frustration of getting oneshot.

imArsenals

The discussion is that there’s powercreep/damage creep. The discussion is that there’s characters like Qiyana that can nearly 1 shot adc’s without ulting (Cody talked about this in the video).

Redditors and others may not know exactly where this damage creep is coming from, and they wrongly place the blame on other things (such as rune reforged). My guess is because it’s a lot more obvious when you get hit by electrocute/dark harvest and die vs. no visual effect when you had old runes but still died. But the entire conversation is still about damage seemingly being higher.

So, while you are correct in saying “it isn’t runes reforged, here’s the math”, it doesn’t address what people are actually finding problematic. What would address it is “the damage creep isn’t runes reforged, it’s X Y and/or Z”. Alternatively, there may not be damage creep at all, though I don’t think this is the case.

There are definitely way more assassin items than there used to be. Hell, Last Whisper used to have attack speed on it back in the day. If Qiyana had 2011 itemization she'd definitely deal a ton less damage. I think that's a reasonable discussion to have. As purely offensive items get more numerous and more efficient, good defensive items need to keep up.

mcasterix123

First, many players who were likely to face little magic damage early would take the scaling MR glyphs to handle mixed damage more effectively after the laning phase. Second, not only did champions get the compsenatory stat buffs, but they also gained more AD or AP through traits throughout S8 that S7 runes offered in the first place.

Also, it's worth noting a lot of the old masteries were very % based IE 3% more dmg to low enemies, 1-5% damage increase upon killing enemies etc. It meant that snowballing was only marginally increased and didn't amplify early leads as much/ make polarised lanes any more polarised.

Second, let's take a look at some of the runes with direct analogues. Electrocute: higher base damage and ratios than thunderlord's. Coup de grace: 8% against Merciless's 3%. Grasp: up from 3% health damage to 4%. What about L: Bloodlines/Ravenous Hunter as compared to Vampirism? Or Swiftness (a rune which required significant investment into the resolve tree) against L: Tenacity which every AD caster and their mum is taking. Bandit vs klepto, Natural talent vs absolute focus, expose weakness vs PTA, Waterwalking vs explorer, Precision vs Sudden impact etc.

And yes, I know some of these are more situational, but I'd argue they're not situational enough to warrant the differences in power.

How about my favourite comparison, Feast vs Taste of blood. Remember when healing a flat 20 hp every 20 seconds was considered too OP so they nerfed it. Twice. And now we have a rune that heals 18 hp + scales with AD and AP every 20 seconds. And that's fine.

Gee whiz it's almost like Riot knew damage was high and allowed healing to remain as a band aid through ToB, Ravenous, and Conqueror. You can see that on a couple of their most of their champions over the past two years. Just a couple y'know, like Aatrox, Irelia, and Akali. And Sylas. And Yuumi. And Pyke. And Senna. And Aphelios.

I know people can come out with some stupid shit on this subreddit, but for Pete's sake, stop acting like there's zero stimulus behind this.

So one big thing that needs to be pointed out is that there are less total runes available. You get a keystone + 5 minor runes. In the old Mastery system you got a keystone + 8. By default the average rune power had better be ~50% more powerful. But also to your point, Feast required you to kill a minion. Taste of Blood requires you to hit the enemy champion, and thus risk being hit back. You can't just ignore the parts of history that disagree with you.

Now, power creep absolutely did happen when they added stat shards. They didn't take back the ~9 AD and Armor (or similar in scaling health/attack speed for other champions) when these changes came through. Stat shards more than made up for the Precision/Inspiration bonus stats and thus overall level 1 champion stats are indeed much higher than they were before RR. But those stats are not in raw base damage and magic penetration.

tpst

I dont think many people would disagree with your logic, but i also think something is missing. The game has undeniably gone from 5D chess to a top-down call of duty.

Take lee sin, for example. Lee never used to be able to R-Q-Q people, it was always Q-R-Q to get the damage necessary for the Q execute. Now he just builds lethality and one shots non-tanks at most stages of the game, with little counterplay, where he used to fall off hard.

Naut and leo never used to kill ADCs in one rotation, now they do. somethings fucky

Well I just spent way too long looking at Leona's entire patch history.

tl;dr - Leona deals the least damage she has ever done in her lifetime. Even taking today's Leona and adding Aftershock damage on top for free deals less total damage in a full Q/W/E/Sunlight combo than pre-7.22 Leona.

josluivivgar

I think what it really boils down to, is that tank champions feel like they do more damage than they used to.

Im purposely using the word feel because before, design on tank usually favored dots over straight damage (think amumu w sejuani old aoe thing etc, shen poking with q).

Damage over time will always "feel" weaker even if the numbers are the same.

The thing is that now everything seems to have their damage front loaded and so it feels like there's more damage. (Stuff like aftershook help with that feeling, even if aftershock has a delay for the damage it's burst damage).

I don't know if damage is the same or not (and tankiness), but the feeling that tanks can burst you is very real

That's interesting because I just got through compiling Leona's entire patch history. I don't have it for every other champion, and I'm not brave enough yet to go look at entire old rune pages so I'm relying on my memory of them being compensated fairly.

Leona deals less total damage per full combo, even counting aftershock for free, in lane, than ever before in her lifetime. By comparison, a sample target like Ashe has more health than she ever used to.

Even beyond that, there was a big sweeping change in 2014 that super beefed up champion base stats at early levels (our current level 1 is 2013's level 1.68, basically). So depending on how long you've been playing, champions should REALLY feel tankier in the early game than before.

TheOmnivious

When they changed the rune system I remember that MR overall was nerfed to match the loss of Magic Penetration runes which were run on a fair number of champs. However, by reducing the overall MR of champions to compensate, it buffed champs that never ran Magic Penetration, such as Nautilus, Leona, etc. Any magic dealing champion was indirectly buffed.

That much is definitely true. However, Leona was compensated her more common Mark choice of +armor. Nautilus, who was compensated +ASpd, got substantially less +Armor.

Now THAT argument could be made, but is combated via the stat shards we have today and the %spell damage and penetration masteries of yesteryear that champions like Leona and Nautilus ran then.

For example, here's IgNar's infamous Fervor Leona rune/mastery page: https://i.imgur.com/fTMiN0u.png

I'd argue today's Leona damage output is weaker than that.

mcasterix123

First up, I get your point about runes needing to be ~50% more powerful to match up, but I'm not sure if the math adds up, or it's at least difficult to quantify. The only old non-keystone mastery I'd consider to have the same value as a rune like Perfect timing is maybe Insight. Inspiration in general is a mess.

Also, they don't carry the same restrictions as the S7 masteries, where the (arguably) more valuable masteries required more points to be invested (again, another advantage of L: Tenacity vs Swiftness).

This leads me into Feast and ToB. I don't really see how I'm ignoring history given I said exactly what happened to it in the patch notes.

Most champions running ToB tend to proc it very safely with ranged autos or abilities IE Kennen, Akali, and Aatrox, plus I'd say its harder to gauge its healing due to its ratios. It's ultimately just made the rune way stronger for those that can run it safely, and not necessarily worth it for anyone else.

My point is less that feast was somehow better designed or even well designed, but more that ToB is arguably stronger on some champions, harder to predict balance wise, and yet it hasn't seen any changes for 2 years. This indicates to me as a player, along with champion design, that they're happy with the amount of healing in the game because there was an increase in damage.

As for stat shards, I'd say it already happened for mages and assassins with S8 traits. Starting with 22 AP or 12 AD with Sorc/Dom Insp was pretty nutty.

I agree it's quite difficult to math everything out in a general case. It's why I did a couple spot checks when the community was in peak "but my MR glyphs!" fervor. The math worked out pretty closely. But trying to contrast a generic 2% spell damage or 5% magic penetration to Scorch is just not reasonable on average.

InHaUse

Then the issue isn't in the runes, it's in the new champions and item changes.

Regardless the true source, damage needs to be nerfed across the board. Perhaps an easy solution would be to just increase base and per level armor and mr for everyone?

So to be clear, if we're saying support Leona and support Nautilus do too much damage, and the only items they buy are Knight's Vow and Stoneplate, exactly how are systemic item and champion changes causing them to deal too much damage? Leona deals the same or less damage than she's done at any other point in her lifetime and runes are pretty close to neutral, too.

Now if your point is specifically Qiyana or AD Assassins are too good, then that's another discussion with different data and different history.

Rockm_Sockm

I love you Phreak but when this has been proven true, especially for adc's being instantly blown up, time and time again you cite math as a shield.

Riot also reduced adc base stats, and gutted shared xp two years in arrow. The non stop buffs to solo laners also impacted the game. Regardless how fed bot lane gets, they are down 2-3 levels at a minimum to a solo laner.

Damage is up in multiple positions and completely down in one. You can take personal shots at Codysun and say the math says otherwise all you want.

Riot reduced ADC base armor and compensated them with health. Champions like Leona and Nautilus deal primarily magic damage.

Like, I'm all for analyzing history and system changes and all of that. But when I can look up literally every single change that Ashe or Leona had and say, "Nope, in 2020 Ashe lives through a combo that would have killed her in 2013" then I really don't think this argument has a good-faith basis.

And to be clear, there may well be different systems changes that have increased damage across the game. But they're not in runes reforged and they're not in support tanks.

LeviZm

Now call me crazy, but IIRC league wasn't released until 2009..? Thats why we just had that 10 year anniversary..

Yeah good call. I keep forgetting it's 2020 and so when I subtract 10 years in my head I hit 2003 instead of 2013

falconstar3

Completely agree for level 1, Leona if she got on you at level 1 in the right matchup would solo you as an adc back in 2013. Now she waits until 2 everytime. Is there a Breakeven of where we're squishier now or that tanks are doing more damage now because of item scaling or something (maybe even just passives on items, less utility more damage these days - Zeke's for instance) Just curious

In the case of specifically when does non-linear scaling go below the old baseline? Around levels 6-12, but by pretty small margins. Mind you, this change was still back in 2014 so good luck remembering exactly how the abilities all felt 5 and a half years ago.

josluivivgar

I think leona is a great example of what I mean.

Leona in the past like you mention had more damage in the past and against squishier champs.

So why does she feel that she's stronger now?

Because of Aftershock, aftershock + her passive work nicely into frontloading all the damage at once.

Combine this with players overall being better at the game and being better at coodinating bursts and you got yourself the reason why things "feel" like they have more damage.

The damage might be the same or even less in the game but it "feels" like it's more because there's more damage being frontloaded instead of over time.

Granted that doesn't mean that that wasn't a thing in the past, champions like malphite are as old as time but always bursted you.

It just things like aftershock and the new sunfire and champions having their damage more frontloaded nowadays that makes the overall feel of league as more bursty.

I do wonder what riot's design teams stand on damage over time vs busts is.

I know in general burst damage feels more satisfying and more powerful than damage over time. DfT was frequently more damage than Thunderlord's, let people took the latter. Malzahar, Brand, and Zyra are routinely overtuned, yet people think they're balanced or weak because they don't see them very often. Really they're just not as satisfying because the damage isn't as obvious.

I think a good direction, and one that's happening, is to reduce the number of DoTs but also occasionally reduce the burst and instead lower cooldowns. Getting to take more total actions, tune them to be satisfying, and find damage numbers where combat remains skillful.

For example, as we mentioned, Leona's burst damage is lower. Her actual burst damage is lower even with Aftershock. Instead, her cooldowns on Q/W/E have gotten lower. Certainly, her overall teamfight footprint is higher, but I don't think that's what people are complaining about. The quote in this thread is "getting one-shot." That specifically is not happening. At least not in the examples I've looked at.

bonly

You don't think naut/leo runes aren't boosting their damage?

Well, according to u.gg, the most common and winningest Leona rune page is:

Aftershock (25-120 damage +8% bonus HP), Font of Life (not damage), Bone Plating (not damage), Overgrowth (not damage), Biscuit Delivery (not damage), Cosmic Insight (not damage), +1-10% CDR based on level (not damage), +6 armor (not damage), and +15-90 Health based on level (not damage).

Meanwhile, this was Ignar's Leona page at Worlds 2017: https://i.imgur.com/fTMiN0u.png

You tell me.

InHaUse

Okay I'll agree that I'm not sure about the difference in tank support damage. I do remember release Thresh and how much damage he did.

I've been playing since season 1 and it just feels like everyone is doing more damage. I don't know if there's a way to quantify this, but looking at professional teamfights it looks like they are way more about burst and less about kiting and sustained damage.

Yeah release Thresh was stupid overpowered.

As for if the game truly has faster teamfights, I'm not completely certain. It can definitely depend on the meta (e.g. are there 3 tanks per team?)

tpst

which is the confusing part isn't it? if leona, on paper, does the least damage in her lifetime why is she currently one of the more contested - and complained about - supports? Obviously there's more complex variables than raw numbers on her kit, but it's interesting.

She definitely provides more than raw damage. She provides crowd control and is a durable initiator, as is intended by her role. She's certainly quite strong. I'm not debating that. But I think people feel frustrated and try to find something to blame that frustration on. It's just that target isn't base stats after Runes Reforged.

Dracoknight256

example, most mid laners ran CDR/level runes and so the Runes Reforged base stat changes actually made mages tankier against one another. To claim otherwise means you didn't actually look at pro rune pages and just regurgitated what other people said.

This here is the problem. You're talking about pro choices. Most people couldn't afford that many runes and just ran two generic pages which for example for botlane had flat armor yellows, MR/lvl or flat MR+Mr/lvl blues, AD bronze ones and quints based on preference for ad/as/armor/ms/pen when they were buying. I definitely do not have ~80 MR at level 18 on ADC like I did back then.

Another thing is you're talking about bases. All runes have some ratios. My question is: Does APC with electrocute do same damage at 20 minutes he did back then with TLD? I'm fairly sure the answer is NO, even if ratios remain the same.

Anyway, I was intrested so I googled. EC has 20 more base, 10%more bonus ad and 15% more ap ratios than thunderlord. Not only that, Mage items had their prices changed and shifted around with some having more AP than before. For example lost chapter went from 25 AP to 40 AP since Runes were introduced. That's why I'm almost 90% sure that TLD at 20 minutes back then did less damage than EC does rn at 20 minutes. Similar for other runes.

On a per-slot basis, the average 2020 rune is stronger than the average 2016 mastery. However, there are less total rune slots than there were mastery tiers in the old system. Also, a lot of the generic damage masteries are gone. 2% flat spell damage is a now-missing mastery. In general, this power got rolled into things like Keystone runes. So while you're right that Electrocute damage is higher than TLD damage, the total damage contribution from the rune page is typically not.

Totaltotemic

Meanwhile, Ezreal can still take +Armor +MR in his stat shards if he needs. Any AD Carry who cares can have substantially more baseline durability than three years ago.

What about the specific runes taken? Well sure, Aftershock and Cheap Shot exist, which do about 35 total damage in the early game. But it's not like you can't take Bone Plating or Nullifying Orb to negate the entirety of that bonus damage.

Do you think the perception that runes are more offensive now comes from people just not making these choices?

I know most ADCs in general these days run some kind of Precision keystone and then take Triumph (doesn't do anything if you're losing a fight) or Overheal (useless until you get some lifesteal), Legend: Bloodline (also useless until later), and then Coup de Gras (also pretty useless if you're losing a fight) so it's often like they just don't have a primary rune tree if someone goes aggressive on them. Then most people just go AS/AP in stats because it makes CSing so much easier.

It feels like such a gamble to go with anything defensive in bot lane because unless you punish the enemy hard for it, they'll just be so much stronger in later fights that they will kill your frontline first. Do you think it's actually worth making the choice to go defensive in runes, or does the current game state push people to go glass cannon?

I think it's a perception issue, yes.

For example, by the end of the old runes/mastery system, most high-level AD Carries ran Resolve (or whatever it was called) as their secondary tree. It's very easy to run Nullifying Orb in Sorcery. We also know that plenty of fighters take Resolve secondary for things like Bone Plating or Second Wind.

I think AD Carries are trained really heavily into sacrificing everything for offense, which is weird, since they're usually happy to dip into Ninja Tabi, Bloodthirster, or Phantom Dancer without a second thought. But they don't typically make this choice in runes.

It's not a ton of data, but Bone Plating has a 55% win rate as a secondary rune on Vayne. By contrast, her most-picked Rune in that slot, Biscuit Delivery, has 53%. Biscuits has about 20x the pick rate of Bone Plating, but there's still over 2,000 games to suggest that Bone Plating's power level is not just random chance. In an attempt to verify that, I looked at Kai'Sa, who's also got a slightly higher win rate on the Resolve options than on Biscuits. I can't tell you definitively that Resolve secondary runes are optimal on marksmen. But I can tell you they're underexplored. So when someone comes at you and says, "Man, there's no way to survive bot lane" ask them if they took Biscuit regen on ~100hp of burst mitigation.

Coolstorylucas

Damage is relative, every piece of damage over a threshold is useless. You may have lost more "damage" but that "damage" doesn't matter if you still hit the threshold needed to kill.

ADCs got GUTTED in resistances so looking at Leona's damage at when she was first presented is dishonest because you have to look at her damage relative to what she is killing.

Saying ADC resistances got gutted when all they did was lose 3 armor and gained more health+health-per-level is worse than dishonest.

tpst

But would you agree the game feels faster specifically time-to-kill?

I just used leona as an example, I don't personally have an issue with the state of bot lane. Ive been playing since s1, and I'm just not sure whether this feeling is based in truth, a result of systemic changes or whether people have simply optimised the game to a point where skill is higher and people are able to execute better, etc.

I'll be honest, I don't really know. It may be the case. And anecdotally damage items seems more efficient than before. But I've played in a version of the game where Hexdrinker didn't exist and level 1 champions had like 400 HP. So even if it's true, you're really just asking "when has the damage been lower?" and not "Is this the highest damage we've ever had?"

Ignisami

Just a thing: CDR is only ‘not damage’ when looking at a single rotation of skills. When looking at a specific timeframe CDR directly translates to damage (as long as it’s long enough to fit +1 skill uses).

Sure, but this is a thread all about high lethality and people being one-shot. Unless you consider four Karthus Q's getting "one-shot" then it doesn't apply to this discussion.

Cooldowns have absolutely gotten lower over the course of League's lifetime. What I'm debating is the burst damage.