Yesterday, Teamfight Tactics players were taken by surprise when a plethora of important and unexpected information regarding the mid-season update was released, promising to completely change this mode. Meanwhile, in League of Legends, the past few patches have only brought minor updates, tweaking a few champion stats without any significant gameplay changes.
However, League of Legends players won’t have to wait much longer, as in the latest PBE update, the first experiments for patch 10.12 have been implemented by Riot Games, and they are quite substantial. Specifically, we have 2 revamped keystone runes and 2 minor runes that have been reworked, enhancing the power of another keystone rune.
Approach Velocity (Inspiration Tree)
Removes the movement speed bonus when moving towards allied champions.
New: Grants 7.5% movement speed towards allied champions who are impaired, which increases to 15% if you move towards an enemy champion that you have impaired.
Tenacity (Resolve Tree)
Removes the ability to gain slow resistance after using a summoner spell.
New: Grants 10% slow resistance and crowd control resistance, increasing to 20% when you are at 30% health (increases by 1% slow resistance and crowd control resistance for every 7% health lost).
Guardian (Keystone Rune in the Resolve Tree)
Shield amount increased from 70-150 to 80-200.
Hunt (Keystone Rune in the Domination Tree)
Effect change: Enhances your boots with “Hunt” activation. When activated, you will gain 45% gradually increasing movement speed over 1.5 seconds while chasing an enemy champion. After the ramp-up time ends, any attack or ability that damages an enemy champion will end this effect and deal an additional 30-90 (+0.2 AD) (+0.1 AP) adaptive damage.
Cooldown: 100-70 seconds.
Summoner Spell: Ghost
Cooldown increased from 180 seconds to 210 seconds.
Removes the wait time to gain additional movement speed.
Additional movement speed reduced from 25-45% to 20-40% based on champion level.
New effect: Each time you participate in taking down an enemy champion, the duration of the effect increases from 4-7 seconds based on champion level.
These updates from Riot Games seem to aim at specializing their keystone runes, making them particularly suitable for certain champions and playstyles. For example, the Approach Velocity rune will strongly interact with the Frostfire build when you have the ability to continuously slow down and move very flexibly in combat. Meanwhile, the Tenacity rune is suitable for champions with strong survivability who need to reduce crowd control effects.
The changes to the Ghost spell are particularly noteworthy as Riot is forcing players to use this spell in fights and to take down opponents within that time to maximize its value. If used solely for running away, Ghost will feel quite weak due to the reduced additional movement speed and increased cooldown. This update may particularly delight Darius players as it aligns perfectly with the gameplay of the Noxian General.
