Reign of Gaming

I like the DOTA format, but would rather break it up even more, and stick with 6. Each time bans 1, then picks 1. Each time bans a second, and picks a second. Each team bans a third, then the rest of the picks were made. It would make it so that the 1 or 2 horribly OP outliers can still be consistently removed from play, but helps to deny the ability to stop comps, or ban around individuals, which I think is less healthy for the game. Banning because something is OP is fine, but I'm less okay with banning because an individual is good, or a champion "annoys" you, or you plan on picking somebody with a small pool of counters, who you intend to ban out.

Personal example. I love playing Morgana. I'm very good with her, and I've loved her for 2 years. She's had her ups and downs, but only about 2 months ago did she start actually being possible to play in ranked. That was after 2 nerfs when she was already at under a 50% ban rate. 6 bans is already enough that people aren't super careful is who they pick. They'll stick to tried and true "oh, always ban her" philosophies, which may not really be the best choice. Over the course of 4 months, in about 40 5 queue games in which my team was happy to first pick her for me, I played her once. That's lame, and it's unfun. If a champion is horribly OP, it's to be expected that they'll be unavailable for a while, but "ban memory" persists long beyond that.

You're using "begging the question" wrong. :/

Fun fact. He did that because the guy was making extremely disparaging comments about his sister, and after hearing the explanation, the French basically all agreed that he did the right thing. He's lauded as a hero.

It will tickle me to no end if Rengars stop building it and their entire Kha'zix interaction goes to waste.

What I don't get is why they feel that Deathcap first is the "proper" way for APs to operate. When they nerfed Abyssal, they complained that people were finding it to be a better first choice than Deathcap. Given that Deathcap scales with existing gear, it seems silly that it would still be the strongest choice when you don't have any other gear save a ring or two.

Compare Rengar to live. It's straight nerfs. The "increased" merely refers to being less of a nerf than was previously on the PBE.

Last Whisper will be built very consistently on the AD carry, but Void Staff isn't actually a super common pick. Because MR numbers tend to be lower and there is more flat pen available, you can do well with 50 flat pen (10 from runes, 20 from boots, 20 from abyssal). Sure, you don't pump out a ton against a tank sporting Force of Nature, but by that point in the game, killing the tank is the AD's job, and he's quite pleased that the tank is investing in MR. For the more typical build with 100MR, 50 flat does a good enough job, and allows you avoid having the relatively cheap Void Staff filling up a slot.

So you're asking why different champions are different, then? It's not like this is a first. I would note that it's only 3/4, unlike Riven's 5/4.

I would love to see the hybrid pen runes they added get buffed. Pen is just such an expensive stat for anybody doing heavily mixed damage, such that nobody really itemizes for it (Which is perhaps why about 3 champs build any degree of hybrid). 60% ArP and MPen is scarcely better than just going 50-50 with the regular runes, which nobody would ever fathom. Bring it up to 75% of each and I imagine you'd start seeing them used more on champions with mixed damage, like Tristana or Kog'maw. Corki has a fair amount of magic damage, but that AD scaling true damage steroid is always going to cut down on the benefit of pen. I think a Void Staff/Last Whisper combo could also be fun (perhaps 30% pen for each). As it currently stands, you'll see Katarina and Akali build a Gunblade to get the ball rolling, but it's all straight AP from there.

A couple of points. 1 AD (in terms of itemization) is worth about 2 last hits. At level 18, the scaling AD marks are worth about 1.5 more AD than the flats, making it about 3 last hits. 9 marks means that by end game, you are 27 last hits ahead of where you would be with flats. Not insignificant, but it's important to remember that you will miss out on early last hits, especially as early money helps you get more money later, so being 10CS ahead at level 8 may indeed be enough to make up the gap at 18. Additionally, the gold from early last hits is worth more than the gold equivalent in AD, since being money ahead lets you get stat multiplication online faster, as is obvious from the fact that nobody builds four BF swords. The 7 AD advantage flats gives at level 1 gives you about a 10% damage increase for the first few levels. How many last hits is that worth? Hard to say. Much like GP10, I think scaling is much more justified if you're going to play a passive lane, like a Vayne. It's a terrible idea for a Caitlyn, who will try to drive the enemy AD out of lane as fast as possible. 10% extra damage does that well over 10% faster. If the enemy AD limps off with 30hp after a level 3 gank, it probably would have been a kill, which is worth more than the entire difference all by itself. It's a hard situation to judge, but the more aggressive your AD is, the better off they will be in taking flats.

Regarding GP10 runes, I would point out that they actually pay for themselves in less than 15 minutes. By 15 minutes, the support will have generally gotten a hold of 2 GP10 items. If you rune for GP10, you get those faster, which is again, more gold. If you get your 1st a minute early, that's an extra 30g. 30g and the 2.25 continuing to tick of course gets you number 2 that much faster.

Also, your 2 references to MR runes for bruisers seem to flip back and forth when referring to flat vs. scaling. You might want to clean that up.

"some "inefficient" runes are commonly accepted by players as standard, such as flat AD for carries or scaling magic resistance for bruisers"

"you can see that they completely ignore scaling MR"