We are currently in patch 10.6, which brings numerous large and small changes after 6 major updates of season 10. Regardless of the changes, the meta of League of Legends is gradually forming, and it’s completely normal for players to overlook and avoid using champions, items, or runes that are too weak. You might have seen many bizarre runes during the preseason, but not anymore; players have lost the motivation to experiment.
One of the most frequently tested runes is likely Sorcery Stone, the substitute for Thief’s Edge. This rune is widely used on champions like Jayce, Corki, Vladimir, and of course, Ezreal too, but its effectiveness hasn’t been that great. The randomness of Sorcery Stone makes players skeptical, even leading Ezreal players to switch to Conqueror or Fleet Footwork instead.
Therefore, in the latest updates of League of Legends on the PBE server, Sorcery Stone along with several other runes have been significantly buffed. It seems Riot Games does not want to leave their beloved creations in a “forgotten” state as they currently are. The specific changes include:
Hunger for Gold (4th line of the Domination tree)
The cooldown reduction stat for items increases from 15% to 25%.
The cooldown reduction stat for each stack increases from 5% to 7%.
Now the effect from this rune has only half its effect on trinket items.
A powerful buff for the Glacial Augment rune as the Hunger for Gold point will significantly reduce the cooldown for the Hextech Gunblade and Twin Shadows duo. However, aside from champions using the Glacial Augment rune, Hunger for Gold will struggle to compete with other runes of the same tier. Partly because the remaining runes provide immediate power, and partly because players tend to be “lazy” to use active items.
Phase Rush (Keystone rune in the Sorcery tree)
Bonus movement speed for melee champions increases from 30-50% to 40-60%.
The Phase Rush rune has received a significant buff for melee champions, with 40% bonus movement speed at level 1 being extremely large. It’s likely that in upcoming patches, jungle or top lane champions who need to keep up with opponents, such as Xin Zhao, Tryndamere, or Nasus, will use Phase Rush more frequently.
Condition Control (3rd line of the Resolve tree)
The time to receive additional armor stat increases from 10 minutes to 12 minutes.
Sorcery Stone (Keystone rune in the Inspiration tree)
The cooldown time between two rune swaps reduces from 5-3s to 3s, while for ranged champions it reduces from 9-7s to 7s.
Although the cooldown reduction is significant, especially for melee champions, the inherent randomness of Sorcery Stone remains a problem, and it does not change the effectiveness of this rune much. Perhaps some players who enjoy taking risks will test it out in the next patch, but its effectiveness is likely to remain at a very low level as it currently is.