Every year, the preseason is usually jam-packed with changes from start to finish to hammer out balance before the pro season begins in January. This year, the new runes system was introduced, and we would have been extremely lucky to make it all the way through the preseason without one of the new runes being completely gutted.
Well, we aren’t that lucky, and Grasp of the Undying is on the block for changes during League of Legends’ 7.24B micro patch, according to the current PBE patch available.
The rune has been dominating the top lane meta lately, and overall, it’s a little broken. One of the goals of the new runes was to make each rune choice a very meaningful and momentous decision. When you select a rune, you should feel that choice actively throughout the game. About half of Grasp fails to accomplish this, and that’s the portion of the rune that adds five health each time you trigger it.
The health gain mechanic is a little unreliable and problematic. After all, you’re not always able to stay in lane and trade for as long as you’d like, and in other situations, you won’t be able to get close enough to your lane opponent to trigger it often, anyway.
On top of that, the health drain feels a little unimportant, and since the rune is so popular, Riot wants to make sure that it feels better to play.
First off, the heal is being increased so it feels more dramatic and more significant to pop, rather than just feeling like a dumbed-down version of Maokai’s passive. It will now heal for four percent of your max health, up from two percent. You can say goodbye to permanent health being stacked by five points every time you trigger the rune, because that feature is going away completely—the same goes for ranged champions gaining two health points.
To replace the permanent health gains, an Adaptive Damage buff is being added to Grasp. Adaptive Damage has been extremely popular this preseason, and can be found on numerous runes throughout the new rune system. It’s a damage buff that adds either AP or AD depending on which stat you have more of.
Each time you trigger Grasp, you’ll receive an Adaptive Damage boost to either AD or AP equal to one percent or 1.25 percent of your max health respectively.
This change will benefit AD split-pushers more than anything else. That is, fighter-type champions that build a mix of health and AD. Champions like Urgot, Yorick, and Trundle will have enough health to receive a significant damage boost using the Adaptive Damage, and they’ll be pushing and trading damage often enough to gain a lot from it. Unfortunately, some champions that run it, namely dedicated tanks like Maokai and Nautilus, won’t benefit as much from this as they did from the previous iteration of the rune.
These changes are expected to go live with a micropatch this week.
