CLG HUHI
ON THE NEW RUNE SYSTEM

by Robert Wery

Are there any runes that jump out to you as funny, OP or trash?

Personally, I’ve seen lots of people running Kleptomancy and also as a team, CLG members, we joked about how we were playing Hearthstone and League at the same time because you just auto people and you randomly get a sack of gold, pots or elixirs. It’s pretty RNG, you can actually win lane if you get lucky, especially in the early game. It doesn’t really have a cooldown you just auto attack after casting a spell, any spell. It’s pretty funny. I actually really like the Arcane Comet. It basically shoots a little meteor, but when I used it it’s pretty fast and hard to juke.

I accidentally picked Teemo and that’s the premade rune page I was given, so I was just playing my laning phase and it was pretty funny whenever I Q’d the enemy champion there was a meteor going over. Also when I got my ultimate mushrooms and just planted mushrooms everywhere, whenever a person walked by a mushroom even though I’m so far away it starts shooting at them. Especially with the mushroom is synergizes well because it also slows you when you step on it, and does more damage. I also heard people used it with the Karthus ultis there are just five meteors going over. I’m not sure if it actually works, someone in solo queue just told me that, but if it does it’s extra damage for Karthus ulti.

I think anyone can use any runes, because especially right now, people are figuring out, I see a lot of ADCs use Kleptomancy to get more gold or more pots early in laning phase but also more gold in general so they get items faster and scale faster. Obviously I also see ADCs go normal builds in Precision, which is meant for them, so I see a bunch of experiments, but it’s hard to tell what is the right fit right now.

Photo Credit: Riot Games

Do you think the trees are set in stone for the lanes or is there any mixing and matching?

I feel like every champion will have its own unique runes now because before for AD Carries especially you would just go the 9 AD and 14 Attack Speed with Armor and MR and we always joke around how Trevor only has to make one rune page but I have to make 10 or 20 and now even for him he has a lot more options to experiment with and to benefit his own play style, not only the champion himself. I think lots of new runes can be used to benefit the player, not the champion itself. For example the roaming around runes I’d like to take because I’m a roaming player as well. In that aspect it’s really interesting and it’s making the game refreshing, it’s not the same thing over and over again, it’s a whole new system.

What about Future’s Market? Going into debt to buy items.

I have yet to use it, but runes like Future’s Market, Kleptomancy and Perfect Timing just turn into gold. Take Perfect Timing for example, if you don’t have that rune and try to buy that item in game to build Zhonya’s you have to spend 600 gold in order to build it. Basically, if you have that rune technically it will earn you 600 gold when you’re building Zhonya’s. So runes like these provide you a bunch of gold everywhere. And there are a bunch of pots just flying around, while you’re laning you can get your health and mana back.

There’s also a rune called Mana Flow Band, which gives you lots of mana sustain. I see a lot of poke supports take this so they don’t have mana problems in lane. There are a lot of runes for roaming champions as well, like Predator or Waterwalking which gives you faster movespeed in the river.

Keeping in mind that you’ve had very little time to try them out, and knowing that the optimal builds will likely change, let’s make some pages for five champions!

Talon

Talon is an assassin melee champion in the midlane that wants to roam around or dominate your lane. So Electrocute helps with your nuking damage and to proc it you have to hit three separate attacks, which is really easy to do as Talon. You’ve got Q, auto, W and ulti as a combo, you always do that to nuke someone. Next I chose Sudden Impact because whenever he dashes it gives you more Lethality which means more bursting for damage. Whenever you use your E, Q, I’m not sure how your ulti will work with it, but especially your Q it helps provide more damage.

The next was between Zombie Ward and Eyeball Collection, but I chose the latter because Talon usually goes Duskblade, and whenever there’s a ward nearby it’ll pop and it’ll tell you where it is and you’ll probably kill it. So whenever you kill a ward you’ll get about 3 AD, and you scale better. For the last one I went Relentless Hunter for movespeed and help snowball a lead once you get it. Say you killed people top lane and now you have the extra movespeed to further roam.

For the second tree, I went Sorcery with Waterwalking for more movespeed in the river because usually whenever you go mid to bottom or mid to top you cross the river area. So having faster movespeed gives you a better chance of success in a roam. It also gives bonus stats if you’re fighting in the river, which is always good. Celerity gives us more movespeed as well, but the more we have, the more AD we have; combining with the previous runes we’ve selected.

Karma

Here we’ll start with Sorcery and finish with Inspiration. Starting with Summon Aery as it matches with Karma’s kit so well. Then The Ultimate Hat to reduce her ulti CDR, and if you max it out and do one R+Q your ulti is back up no problem. You can even start stacking in the beginning of the game by ulting in fountain. It should be her keystone because it benefits her so much. For the third one I went Transcendence, granting more CDR, helping you quickly reach max CDR but it also frees up room and gold to build something like Rabadon’s. Whatever champion that needs 40% CDR, Karma included, this rune is essential.

Lastly I went Gathering Storm. I haven’t had much chance to try it, and it seems like it takes a long time to feel the benefit but Karma can be a really dumb champion later in the game, you shield so often that having the increased late game AP helps provide a stronger shield. As long as you don’t lose the game in like 20 minutes I think this rune will be good for this champion.

For the second tree I went Cosmic Insight for the extra max CDR, again key for Karma. Then finally with Hextech Flashtraption, I think it’s pretty broken, you can just jump around the map without a dash skill as an escape, or a roaming tool. It’s up every 20 seconds so don’t be afraid to abuse it.

Orianna

For Orianna initially I chose Arcane Comet, but after spending more time with the new system, I’ve found Summon Aery to be the better choice with her poke and shielding abilities. Next I went The Ultimate Hat (insert sombrero meme here) because having Orianna’s ulti in teamfights more often is game changing because if your ulti is up or not decides if you can go for a fight or not.

With Transcendence you can buy Void Staff into Rabadon’s later in the game because if you don’t have 40% CDR on a champion like Ori it feels really bad later in the game. If you don’t have this rune you’re kind of forced to buy Zhonya’s, Banshee’s with Morellonomicon which will probably not allow you to build something like Rabadon’s. Having this frees up an inventory slot for something like a pink later on. Lastly I went Scorch to poke even harder in your laning phase. With Q+W, Arcane Comet and Scorch coming together, it’ll hurt a lot.

In the second tree I went Magical Footwear because there didn’t seem to be anything else that fit Orianna, and having a free 350 gold potentially later in the game is pretty beneficial, you just scale faster than other champions. And it helps with poking in lane. Finally I went Biscuit Delivery for more sustain in lane but I’ll say only against AP champions. If you’re against an AD champion you should probably go Perfect Timing, so you can build Zhonya’s easily against Zed, Talon or Lucian mid.

Teemo

Like Orianna, I ended up favoring Summon Aery. I’ve found you can never go wrong with Aery. Then I went The Ultimate Hat, giving more cooldown on his ulti so you can spam it and be as annoying as possible. This fits Teemo perfectly because the more ultis you drop the faster you can drop them, and the more comets that proc.

For the third one I went Absolute Focus for the increased AP and AD above 70% health. My idea here is if you’re spamming your ulti later in the game, try to not get hit and stay near full health you’ll have extra damage in the backline. I didn’t really see any benefit in the other choices like Celerity and Transcendence here, so we go with Absolute Focus. I’ll say if you don’t want Absolute Focus you could go Celerity for the bonus movespeed that synergizes with your W. For the last one I went Scorch for the bonus magic damage, matching great with the mushrooms, and providing more poke in lane with your Q and dot poison.

In the Inspiration tree, we’ll go Magical Footwear. Usually you don’t need boots on Teemo in the early game because you can abuse your W but with the boots you can be even safer. Then we’ll go Cosmic Insight to help further max out CDR to spam even MORE ultis. With this setup your mushroom CDR is absurd!

Aurelion Sol

I went Inspiration and started it off with Glacial Augment because usually A-sol goes Hextech Protobelt, and Glacial Augment helps you do even more damage and slow with Protobelt’s active. It slows longer and really enhances the item. Also in the early laning phase whenever you autoattack, it’ll slow the enemy champion. On Sol movespeed is really important so you can hit your orbs, so you’re faster, or the enemy is slowed. Then I chose Perfect Timing because Sol is pretty weak against dashing, assassinating champions so Zhonya’s is really good to build in the endgame as well. It also gives some survivability in the laning phase, which is really valuable because you need to be alive to roam around.

For the third one I went Minion Dematerializer to take care of the melee minions so Sol can have easier waveclear, which translates to easier roaming. Push the wave, wave control, all helpful for Sol. Lastly I went Approach Velocity, giving me movement speed towards a slowed allied champion or enemy champions you’ve slowed. It matches well with Glacial Augment, as well as one of Sol’s usual items of Rylai’s, which is where Approach Velocity benefits the most because they won’t be able to escape from you; it helps your kiting and chasing.

For the second tree I went Sorcery with Nullifying Orb, providing more survivability in laning phase. Like I said, Sol’s weakness is assassination champions and this runes helps you survive in lane against opponents like Malzahar, Syndra, even Annie, any nuking champ in lane. For the last one I went Celerity for more movespeed into more AP.

Do you think the rune changes will cause any champion shifts in power?

I feel like lots of runes synergize with specific champions that weren’t meta, and will probably make them meta in the future. For example Ezreal jungle was already meta, but became even stronger with Dark Harvest. Basically what Ezreal jungle can do now is just farm up, get Duskblade with Triforce and with Dark Harvest rune in late game he just Q’s and does 2000 damage and one shots people. Some of the runes are making some champions even more broken.

Overall, what do you think of the new rune system? Is it a change for the sake of change, or is it a genuine step forward?

I’ll say that right now it’s a little chaotic because there’s so many changes, obviously. But I think these kinds of changes are pretty good for enabling champions that are dead. Who knows we might see an old champion come back into the meta again because of the new rune system.

Are there any runes that you think need changing right off the bat?

For now I don’t really know about the balance yet, so we’ll have to figure out what’s overpowered and what’s not.

Photo Credit: Riot Games

In the past pro players’ accounts maxed out level and began gaining IP with nothing to buy. Does the new infinite level scaling and IP system change anything for you?

Well for me it didn’t really seem like a big change in that aspect, because usually when we’re in season we usually play in the tournament realm anyway, so we can’t really climb up we just play the game. But the only cool thing is now we can buy the Urfwick, the really rare Warwick skin, I’m trying to get that.

What’s the biggest thing you’re looking forward to in the upcoming season?

I’ll say literally everything. There’s a lot changing, starting from the new NA LCS teams, new format, back to bo1’s, we might have a new CLG facility, and the new runes. Everything is pretty much brand new so I just really want to play now. I still enjoyed the game before, but now it’s like ‘oh let’s try this out, let’s try that out.’ We have more options and more possibilities to be creative.

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