Rework de las runas: Summoner Specialist, Hextech Freezeray y Meteor

That’s right, you can now change summoner spells during the game. Ever wanted to take ignite as a jungler without giving up flash? How about taking exhaust/ignite to win lane, knowing you’ll need teleport later? Well, this one’s for you.

I doubt we’ve even got past the tip of the iceberg in our explorations of how to use this thing, so I can’t wait to see what ya’ll can do with it.

Worth noting, there are still lots of questions to answer here, like what cooldown is the swapped-to spell on? (Currently it inherits the remaining cooldown of the swapped spell.) How exactly does this interact with smite? Is the shop the right place for this? Is this sufficient power to compete with other keystones, or does it need other bonuses attached to casting summoner spells? Etc. But we’re confident that we can answer these in the coming weeks and deliver something new, crazy, and, importantly, balanceable.

Alright, alright, so this one’s a little more tame than swapping summoner spells, that’s fair. But even so, this is the first time we’ve ever offered this sort of power in the pre-game, and that’s pretty big. Now, every champion has the choice to opt out of damage or durability to add this new tool to their arsenal; and with the new power level of other keystones, that’s a LOT of damage/durability lost in this opportunity cost. Can you make that tradeoff worth it by clever use of the Freezeray, adding new synergies to your favorite kits and combos?

And then there’s the active item slow mod. The on-hit-slow, if tuned high enough, may be enough for a rune to stand on it’s own in terms of power, but it’s a very isolated effect with few relations/hooks into other game systems, leaving it a little… uninspired. So there’s thematically a need for something else here, but it also serves a valuable gameplay need, allowing us to distribute the power of this rune between its reliable slow and its delayed/unreliable active item modification. Also, active item slows are well distributed between classes, offering decent options to marksmen, tanks, mages, and supports. The exact effect (slow zone, for now) is still under heavy iteration and might not stick, but we’re very confident in some form of ‘modifies active item slows.’

When Syndra’s Dark Sphere hits Cassiopeia, the meteor fires off from Syndra’s position aimed at the spot where the sphere hit Cassio. Note the red circle that shows up on the ground after Dark Sphere hits.That’s an indicator showing where the meteor’s going to land, giving opponents an opportunity to dodge it. Plus, note the small orange sphere orbiting Syndra before she casts Dark Sphere. It indicates that Meteor is off cooldown and will fire with her next ability. Despite these warnings, Cassio stands still, allowing the meteor to hit her. If she’d walked away before it arrived she could have avoided its damage.

One excellent way to prevent your targets from walking out of the meteor’s path is to stop them from being able to move at all. This gives Meteor excellent synergy with CC abilities like Lux’s Light Binding.

Like Perxie, which we showed off before, Meteor is a Sorcery keystone. We’ll have more to say about the identities of the individual styles soon, but here’s the short version: Sorcery serves champions who want to enhance ability-based damage, especially AoE spells. Our motto for it is “unleash destruction”.

Let’s take a look at some similarities and differences between these two keystones to get a better idea how you might decide when to take one over the other. The first obvious difference is that Meteor does significantly more damage when it hits (40-100 based on level vs Perxie’s 10-40, plus lower AP and AD scaling ratios). That’s because Perxie is more consistent. It always hits its target while Meteor can be dodged. Also, Perxie sacrifices some raw damage for versatility. When you shield an ally with it, you give up its bonus damage until the pet returns. Whereas Meteor, on the other hand, is all damage.

One similarity between the two keystones it that they both play off of your positioning relative to enemies. However, each rune requires very different positioning to get the most out of them. Perxie asks you to move towards your target to get the pet back sooner and shorten the cooldown. When Perxie’s available it automatically hits enemies you damage, but to land Meteor, you have to position your spells with it in mind, placing them so it’s hard to dodge the flaming rock from the sky that follows.