League Of Legends Reveals New Ally-Shielding Keystone Rune

Making good on their promise to show off more support-based runes instead of damage-delaing options, League of Legends has revealed a new shielding rune called Guardian Soul.

The Keystone Rune that's part of the Runes Reforged system was one that took a bit of tinkering to get right seeing how it introduced a mechanic that hasn't been seen in League before: An interaction that stems from right-clicking a teammate. It sounds like a feature that already might be in the game somewhere, but all point-and-click abilities involve left-clicking an ally.

When developing the rune, the team ran into several problems. They first wanted the shield to proc after bumping into an ally, but the results weren't exactly what they hoped for. As one might expect, this rune is geared towards Enchanters and Wardens supporting their teammates, specifically their ADC in the bot lane, and players spent more time avoiding their teammates than they did shielding them at the right time.

The next iteration involved proccing the rune when landing immobilizing CC, but that seemed much more like the current Courage of the Colossus combined with a shield.

But growing closer to the final version, they decided on a combination of previous ideas: You'll right-click an ally to prime the shield, and walking into them will activate it. It'll only activate if they take damage during the time you've prepped the Guardian Soul rune though, so you won't have to worry about accidental shields being wasted.

[via Riot Games]

As far as numbers go, no specific details have been revealed. Riot Gregab who made the initial post revealed that it'd likely scale with bonus health since most supports typically invest in health items anyway.

"I didn't share the numbers because they're very much in progress (and highly likely to change with future iterations) but you're right it scales with bonus health," said Riot Gregab.

It was also confirmed that it has an AP ratio with it, so if you're a Soraka, Sona, or Janna that already makes good use of shields, you'll soon have one more option.

Some players raised concerns that the rune would give even more options to champions like the ones listed above who already have plenty of shields, but until definite numbers are revealed, the discussion of OP vs. balanced is left open.