zkylon
Oh no I've been mispronouncing your name in my internal monologue this whole time sorry senpai
no need to call me senpai but i do appreciate you having internal monologues with me as the subject
rune stuff is pretty fun, been toying around a bit with different builds for champions like ori, syndra, lizzy, talon and cassiopeia. they're more or less the same (well, not talon) core with some changes, but that's ok, it would actually be kind of annoying if you had to switch up all your runes every game
i think having the statistics at the end of the game is gonna be really important, some stuff i can just translate to gold in a way that makes it easier to compare, but some stuff i'm just gonna need to test it out. i also find it's difficult to go through all the trees this way, i think either the icons should more quickly convey what the runes do (maybe using something like the UI shown in the last devblog) or maybe having descriptions next to them or something
thoughts on sorcery since that's the tree i'm gonna be using 90% of the time:
- familiar sounds really bad on most mids, i kind of wish it didn't take a sorcery slot since i feel it doesn't really fit anyone except like lulu or karma and those are not played very often midlane anyways. the rest of the tree seems a lot more suited for midlaners with lots of scaling and damage, so idk, i feel familiar guy feels weird, like it traps you to pick that if you're going for support lulu and then you have a bunch of mildly useful stuff but not as support oriented as some of the braum stuff you see in the resolve tree. also it takes a spot for cool midlaner keystones so i'd rather have that
- i liked thunderlords better than comet, comet feels really uninteractive in comparison since there's not that back and forth of trying to get three hits while not letting the other mid get theirs. this just feels kinda lame tbh, like just a bit of extra dmg
- new stormraiders i'm not sure, it's not too much to ask to auto once with cassi while chasing someone but i did enjoy fanging ppl until i got that boost and then getting the hell out. this won't change that much, but not sure if that mastery needed changing
- group A is kind of cool, the ultimate hat just sounds awesome, so it's gonna be hard letting go of that one if you're playing lux vs leblanc or something, but the mini hexdrinker is pretty neat and will probably save your life. the mana rune feels kind of lame in comparison to the other two, but this group is more about the one you want to get (ultimate hat) vs the ones you need to take (hexdrinker/mana), so it's about how greedy you are and if you can get away with it. i think i'm probably gonna take the greedy route cos that's one of the most fun sounding masteries of the entire thing
- group B also has good choices, but i think every mid is gonna take the free cdr to replace cdr/lvl blues. celerity might be interesting for like aurelion sol or something who doesn't care so much for the cdr and gets boots 3. absolute focus sounds like a lux/xerath thing for super high range champions, tho i still feel like having spells more often is better
- group C feels like the weakest, the river ability is kinda neat but i get the same ap with gathering storm in the whole map. scorch i don't like, feels like a mini version of comet which is pretty boring and also doesn't lead to fun laning patterns or anything, it's just more damage
overall i think the tree is fine, i mostly find comet disappointing compared to the more interactive thunderlords and i think the rest is alright
i think most mids will go into precision tree for secondary to get dangerous game and merciless, those two feel like really good all-around abilities to have. i could see domination happening with like ghost poro + cheap shot on someone with a lot of cc like lizzy or something? inspiration also might be useful on certain situations, miniflash sounds pretty good for lizzy, stopwatch is good against zed, things like that. but 9/10, it's gonna be dangerous game + merciless
not looking super hard into numbers cos that's all gonna change and hard to appraise atm
(btw requiring 80% for a rune called "last stand" feels a bit dramatic lol... like, you're, c'mon, not even that hurt... that's like one health potion away from full hp)
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as for the rest, i don't like compulsive elements in games, even as an improvement over the current system, i think the best thing is to play the game for the game, which is already great and kept me playing for 5 years without the need of loot, leveling, missions or anything, just regular updates by a loving developer and the strength of its design
i also really appreciate simplicity in design, and i think all the metadesign in league has been anything but simple in the past few years and that's really unfortunate cos it's often overwhelming, confusing and exhausting to parse