League Of Legends Promises More Non-Damage Runes And A New Rune Simulator

The past couple of weeks have introduced several new Keystone Runes geared towards obliterating [...]

By Tanner Dedmon

Runes
(Photo: Riot Games)

The past couple of weeks have introduced several new Keystone Runes geared towards obliterating opponents in League of Legends' upcoming Runes Reforged system, but more utility-based runes are supposedly on the way to appeal to other playstyles.

With the new runes replacing the current rune and mastery system, the options will be more geared towards proccing special effects in-game instead of bringing raw stats into each matchup. There are going to be runes to accommodate each playstyle, but the recently revealed ones certainly favor damage-dealers.

In addition to these new runes, an option to test out the upcoming changes will also be included with a new rune simulator program that'll let players build a rune page through a website instead of waiting till the runes are live in the client to do so.

Recent Runes Focus Heavily On Damage

Darius
(Photo: League of Legends)

With several runes being revealed recently, players have noticed that a lot of them include big bursts of damage or other offensive capabilities, especially those that are Keystone Runes. Riot Meddler agreed with come of the concerns and said that more non-damage options will be announced soon.

"We've seen some feedback recently that our rune reveals each week have felt really heavy on damage options for keystones, leaving people wanting to see more non damage stuff and/or concerned there won't be enough non damage options in the system," Meddler said. "Seemed like really legit concerns. Next week we'll have a couple of regular runes that are non-damage options from the Inspiration tree. Week after that we should have a couple of non damage keystones (probably one from Resolve and one from Inspiration)."

Some of the more recent rune reveals that players will likely recall bring back current Keystone Masteries as Keystone Runes, namely Stormraider's and Thunderlord's, the first of which appears to be a particularly frightening option for brawlers like Darius. Both of these new runes can be seen in detail here as they look to make changes while also preserving their current identity.

Not All Keystone Masteries Will Make The Transition

Janna
(Photo: Riot Games)

For supports, current Keystone Masteries like Windspeaker's Blessing is a must-have if you plan on constantly shielding and healing your teammates. The mastery is a strong pick on champions that need it, but while there may be some similar effects present in the runes, Windspeaker's Blessing and other masteries won't be fully transitioning into Runes Reforged.

"We've got some runes, both at the keystone and normal level, that should be pretty appealing to current users of Windspeaker's," Meddler said about the mastery being turned into a rune like Stormraider's and Thunderlord's were. "Not planning to do something exactly like Windspeaker's itself though."

Janna and Soraka come to mind as those who benefit most from Windspeaker's, but new options for those champs and other supports will likely be coming soon with more rune reveals.

A New Rune Simulator Is Coming

Runes
(Photo: Riot Games)

But reading about all of these runes can only do so much for players if they haven't had the chance to actually visualize the changes yet. A new web page is being planned around the time that the new runes are fully revealed though that'll let players move some runes around and figure out what a full rune page would look like for their playstyle.

"We will be doing an online Rune simulator, sometime around the time Runes hit PBE most likely, that will allow you to go to a webpage and browse through runes/make a rune page using a very similar interface to the in game one," Meddler added. "Mentioning in part since it's a question that's cropped up a number of times in the past that we haven't previously been sure we'd be doing or not."

With the way the new rune page is set up, shown above, giving the players a chance to become more familiar with the updated system will likely be very beneficial to help ease page-builders into the massive overhaul that's in the works.

How Do You Feel About The New Runes?

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