Riot Games intends to buff up some of the least popular summoner spells and runes in League of Legends to promote diversity, the developer announced in a dev post today.
While the list provided by Riot’s Mark Yetter is a good start, the devs could buff even more underused runes to ensure that every player has agency over their choices instead of being forced into using the strongest rune.
Two important runes that are being buffed are the keystones Guardian and Predator, both of which see play but are underused compared to their counterparts in the same trees.
Guardian will have a much larger radius, giving players some leeway when they’re near an ally. Additionally, the keystone rune will no longer proc on all damage but only on burst damage to make it more appealing to tanky supports. This will allow you to protect your ally without fearing that the keystone rune will proc after an auto attack.
Predator will get a small rework to make it more effective in the current meta. The long channel time will be removed, while the cooldown and damage will be significantly reduced. The intended goal is to keep it strong for junglers while also incentivizing top laners and supports to pick it.
Out of the minor runes, Unflinching will get reworked to grant 10-percent tenacity on a permanent basis, amplified to 30 percent when at low health. This should ensure that you have the rune up constantly instead of being forced to use summoner spells to get the bonus. Approach Velocity will no longer have a movement speed bonus toward allies. The new direction is meant to create a movement speed buff when charging enemies affected by CC, doubled if the CC is on yourself.
One summoner spell that will get a significant buff is Ghost, which has been underused for a long period of time. While the current changes are unknown, one possible direction that Riot is aiming at is reducing the ramp-up time to full movement speed.
These buffs announced by Riot should give more agency to players when choosing suitable runes. The devs should be wary about buffing Predator or Ghost, though. Ghost has been problematic in the past and even overtook Flash as one of the most-picked summoner spells for some time. Predator is also in a strong spot right now. Junglers can have an easy time ganking with it, especially if the ganked champions doesn’t have Flash. The ramp-up time gives you a notification that the champ is coming, but this counterplay would be removed based on the current direction of these alterations.
These changes are far from final and could go through several iterations before they hit the live servers. The current direction is a positive one, though, since summoner spells and runes have been ignored for a long time.
