OLD League of Legends Was Flawed, But More Interesting 

Sign up for this free tournament! Repeat.gg is running a $5,000 USD Prize Pool Tourney :) Join with my link! - rpt.gg/exil

If their argument was that runes were too expensive and yes, they were, they could have just made them free for everyone.

SIV HD made one video using only crit dmg runes for Ashe. Her old passive was that she increased her crit chance when out of combat and this would eventually guarantee critical strike when attacking and it hit like a truck. This is one example where the old system let you think out of the box which was cool. I miss this aspect of League.

This is literally my biggest issue with all of League, it has hundreds of problems, but it feels like I'm doing the same few runes every single game.

What I also loved about the masteries is that you had points to spent. Technically could get a little bit of every mastery but also, what most people did, is max out on one mastery. The idea that one effect has multiple tiers gave me excitement.

Damn I do really miss old school League. The fact that everything feels so mandatory now with runes has been bothering me for a while. I used to love playing around with my rune and mastery pages to figure out cool new mini tweaks to my strategy.

Runes wanted to be a choice Now have become a predetermined necessity

More and more I'm wanting a "classic" version of league, maybe season 3 or 4. Even if you personally wouldn't like it, it could allow riot to see some of the old features people actually enjoy and should be brought back.

I had holiday runes for a few pages. I also remember having the correct combination of runes on a page specifically to have both of Akali's passives active at the start of the game.

hey man, not sure if youre still checking these but I really enjoy all of the videos you do about OG LoL things. I started playing around 2010/11 and played almost everyday until around 2016 because my internet in college was so terrible. Anyways, I totally agree that the old runes and masteries were so much better than they are now; I remember having to grind enough games to unlock all 30 rune and mastery slots and waiting until I got enough mp (I think they were called mp at the time) to buy runes for my 2 pages at the time since there was no way I was going to get more that 2 pages worth, you know? and I remember how many silly masteries there used to be as well which really makes me feel like OG LoL was such a different game both in play-style and in appearance. Anyways, just wanted to share how your videos always bring out the nostalgia for me and I really appreciate it.

Man, seeing those old mastery and runes sure brings back some old memories, the retired friends that play from morning to night, the tube monitor that I have, and the ambience of my old house kekw.

5:12 you cannot compare it with the older runes. The difference is that the mythic items cost 3000+ gold. While runes where you start immediatly from lv 1 with the max lethalty. Huge difference.

I remember loving the Thunderlord's Decree mastery on Morgana back then, still miss it.

I still fondly remember my old rune page. I was a support main with a 5 gold per rune page, bandit mastery, and a in-game 5 gold per item. Good times.

7:45 I remember this one time I was midlaning with Diana. I actually forgot I jungled with her prior to the game so I didn't realize that my runes and spells were all wrong. I was, quite literally, beaten to a pulp without any defense cause apparently having smite means you get no benefits from farming minions early game.

I started playing in season 6 I believe, I remember the old runes and have been playing with the new ones for 5 years. My approach has always been "Look up what I should run and then adapt to it" rather than the other way around. And I don't think the runes/masteries are to blame, it's just me being me. I'd say I'm a competitive (not good, competitive) player in every online game, especially when my choices could potentially waste my teammates' time. World of Warcraft did an update to their version of runes a few weeks ago. They did pretty much the opposite of the 2017 LoL rune changes, they expanded their talent rows from like 6 choices to a proper talent tree with 60 points to spend - more choices, yet I still choose to just not experiment and be efficient with mine and everyone else's time by playing what's objectively the best

Back then there was no "expererimenting according to your playstyle", there was only the meta mastery page for AD, AP and Tank, and one point here and there varying. Today there are more options that are actually good, today you can actually adapt your build according to playstyle.

i dont remember too much of the old runes cause when i played back then i was very young, but i still miss courage of the colossus gnar, that was such a fun rune. It makes me a tad jealous that i never understood those older runes because they seem so fun, ive played a lot of rpgs and those just scratch that itch, being able to really min max for your specific playstyle is just nice

Thinking about it i feel like the main problem with the current rune system is that each row have a theme: choose how you get your damage, choose when you get extra tankiness, choose what ressource you want sustain in, ... This is all about minmaxing, not opening new gameplay options. Currently each rune option is about grabbing an extra edge, while it should be about mixing things up.

I had 12 rune pages and different pages for tons of different styles of play, i miss that league so much. Like move speed rune page vlad and rushing boots would blow peoples mind.

i remember in the old old old days of league, i was a Kat main and would go 13 potions mid and i had like a 75% win rate on that character in ranked, it was insanely fun but i imagine less so for my opponents. i also have fond memories of when after like 3 Ryze reworks, he ended up so hidden OP that he got pulled out at LCS, permarooted his opponent, and then got perma-banned the rest of the split, good times.

old league was more fun. saving up for runes and rune pages and putting time and effort into them for each champ you play. now i owne very champ and click a button for preset masteries page

way more interesting. i haven't even played since 2013. when i played the most all the way back in 2010-2011 AD kassadin was still a common strategy

Hi, an hardcore player from the season 3 here. I really do understand ur point and I find it really interesting : letting player play like they want to play. If u remember, at the beginning we had a strange stat : dodge. A little percentage to dodge an auto attack letting the skill out and luck in. The runes change isn’t in purpose of the casual player who want to try out something, but for the higher player who just want to let odds and random out of the game. Old masteries and runes added this kind of randomness and gambling at high elo but at low elo and casual level it was another experience, more fun and play style. I could go like 10 phrases in depth to explain but it s isn’t the purpose of this comment

Taking away runepages and creating a mythic / legendary tier made the game feel like an uninspired phone game while simultaneously making counter building 10x worse if not impossible in most early game scenarios

I miss my old scaling ad/level runepage, as well as my gp5 runepage... It had so much variety

The nostalgia seeing that old rune page at 2:16 dang

i really liked the old system... that grinding towards new pages etc was a lot of fun for me.... like any grind in a rpg it was a grind that inproved your play so it was fun since you constantly got stronger on different new champs

Thank you for the hard work on these videos!

One big problem with runes was also that you could change Masteries in champ select, but you couldn't change runes. Even if you bought everything and had a clear idea how to change those according to matchup and were quick enough to do so... you had no chance. I personally had 9 runepages for different roles and types of champions in the role, e.g. 2 to 4 were for diff support types as supp were always my main focus. New runes system is cool as you can always adapt at least a bit for enemy team. My favourite ones are Neeko and Lissandra who can use at least 2 different Keystones and be effective in different team compositions as you can kinda play different playstyles. Damn, Neeko can even go on-hit a-speed build and be great :) PS Exil finally back with videos not once in a lifetime, that's great, missed you man

Maybe it would be possible to reintroduce the old runes back into the new system so that we have expanded options. Major runes aside, I think that the minor runes are so tunneled into so few choices that if instead of having rows of 3, we had rows of 5 or 7, there'd be a lot more to play around with. Being able to pick more than 3 minors on your main tree and 2 on the secondary might also be feasible too, depending on how how everything's balanced of course. I'm thinking 5 main, 3 sub.

I would absolutely wanted for Riot to make an LTM with the current map demake and old runes. Runes-wise, put them on the rotation so each X weeks in changes seasons. Also keep all the current mobs on the map, but change the textures. This kind of LTM would definitely play on nostalgia of old players while also show how different the game was for the new ones

I remember the season, when you could litereally split your Points between AD and AP for Hybrid Stats from runes... The old System was way more fun to play around with... I miss Season 1 and 2.

I have 6 rune pages. 1 for my "practice" pick for each role (shen, nunu, tf, ashe, nami) so I don't have to fuck around getting back into the game. And a 6th page that changes every game I'm not playing one of those 5. And usually in ranked, rather than picking meta runes, I'll pick a few runes that specifically counter my lane opponent.

It’s funny i didn’t even realize masteries were a thing until shortly before they were changed and introduced TLD and Warlords and stuff

Funny because one time in ranked I forgot to change my runes and played aery Caitlyn against a draven and we won bot hard with the poke. Wrong runes are sometimes uncovered gems.

I think part of the point missing here is Runes Reforged added clarity to what you're dealing with. Much less hidden power, while maintaining variety of "player choice" (even if there isn't so much). Almost every rune in reforged has a clear visual in that if you don't read what your opponent has, you quickly will see it. That being said, I do agree runes like second wind are better left to items or champion stats. Second Wind is just a Doran Shield. Any runes that falls under mandatory should be considered for innate to champions or items. Manaflow Band too.

Riot changed runes and masteries to make league which is already a difficult game to learn a bit easier to pick up for newer players.

courage of the colossus yasuo was hype like i rarely proc but like its cool to see having a big ish shield when ulting people.

Nulifying Orb, Bone Platint and Overgrowth on Blue Kayn is a completely different champion 😈 runes are a massive part of the game, correct runes, boots and first item always has the potential to win any game

i never played during the 2013 era but the mastery tree seems to fun and unique, screw the new runes system

Tbh I loved the old system. I started playing League in Season 3 2013 and I encountered with that 2013 Runes and Masteries. I LOVED them so much. The only problem was the costs. They could've just made them all free. Because old system was better(at least for me). As a top laner, nowadays, you must take either Resolve or Inspiration as your second Rune Path. In Resolve, you usually choose Conditioning/Second Wind/Bone Plating + Overgrowth/Revitalize/Unflinching and in Inspiration you usually take Magical Footwear and Biscuits. There is no other options for the most of the top lane champions. Only champions like Riven would take like Sorcery as her second Rune Path and take Transcendence + Gathering Storm. Because she is a rare champ who needs to build CDR like Gragas or even Aatrox(for my opinion). CDR is another thing that went obsolete after the CDR changes. Because if you build more and more CDR, the much lower cooldown reduction you get(for example Riven's E has around 2.83 secs cooldown with 93 CDR and has around 2.1 secs cooldown with around 140 CDR, so Spear of Shojin is a trash item too fot example, because more CDR is not "efficient" anymore). But that's not the subject of today. Back to the runes. Like I said, in Top Lane, especially Bone Plating or Second Wind is a must option for most of the top champs. Or Biscuits and Free Boots, because Biscuits are the emergency HP pots in laning phase and free boots means free 300 gold. I personally don't like the obligation to take these runes. I just want to go whatever I want or enjoy but nah, I can't do that because it's literally trolling and throwing the game. The old rune system was better, you just get flat stats that's all and you had freedom to choose what flat stats you want to get. In current rune system, you can only take max 1 attack speed, max 2 adaptive force, max 2 armor and mr. But in the old runes, I could just ignore defense and went insane attack speed with a little bit attack damage for Yone or Yasuo. You could also get Health Regen or Mana Regen which is so good for Ryze, Nasus, Veigar etc. Nowadays, we don't have any Mana Pots and the only Mana Regen items are belong to Enchanters like Soraka, Sona, Seraphine, Janna etc. For Health Regen, you can only get that from either Heartsteel, Spirit's Visage or Warmog which is a completely useless item in Summoner's Rift and actually a useful item in ARAM. League of Legends has so many problems and balance issues. And for so many years they couldn't fixed them. Runes are one of the problems in my opinion. I loved the old rune system and mastery system man, those were the good times...

I miss old league so much, they should bring it back as a gamemode or a stand alone game or something

I remember having tier 3 complete 5 rune pages at season 7 which was me basically being a celebrity

The beauty of lol at its start was that you could alter the base stats of champions way more drastically. It was really funny.

I remember picking up warkick or lee sin, some defensive runes and going straight to solo drag while the enemy jungler was still making its first clear, it was fun

idk, not sure how much i agree with this. At the end of the day even back then there were optimal and suboptimal runes to take. Just like now there are optimal and suboptimal runes to take. I think people just liked old league because the game wasn't as solved as it is now. If you took the same rune system from old league and put it in now. im sure it would turn into the exact same issue where people take the same runes every game. And im not sure the new runes are overpowered as much as player skill has just improved so much that if you don't take optimal runes your gonna lose because players are just better so you need to play correctly to win. Silver/bronze today is probably like gold/plat in seasons 2 and 3 lets be honest. And with average player skill increasing so much then yeah, you need every advantage to win. Paragon just got rereleased. im playing it literally because i know since its new everyone will be bad and I can do whatever I want and still have a chance at winning haha because we are all so bad(myself included)

The old system was just objectively healthier for the game. Runes Reforged gave the game its ultra powercreep, more damage, more healing, and these runes do not define playstyle but more on covering the weaknesses/amplifying champion strengths. Pure coincidence that healing became a problem since this, things like Triumph just made 1 to 1 trade near impossible and tower diving very potent (because you heal one tower shot as you walk out, they had to buff turret damage later on, powercreep, etc.), as well as Ravenous Hunter how that Rune even exist. Old system made it easier to keep everything in check, now champion balance is tied specifically on the runes they take (Akali energy nerf because Presence of Mind was broken, etc.). Bring back Season 6 runes and mastery system, remove omnivamp (very unhealthy stat), they have alot of work to do

I used to run a pretty decent tank veigar build back in the days, with all armor/magic res runes, and deep in the defensive talent tree. Today my team would just report me for doing something other than the 2 permitted veigar builds

20% crit chance set up was fun... imagine that on Yasuo, gets rune page and one crit item for 80% crit on first item purchase... or Senna having 20% crit chance at start how much sooner will her range boost kick in

i loved the full armor pen page i was so useless as rengar vs jungle mobs but could easily one shot the enemy jungler now you can do both

Ol gangplank with a full crit rune page was my go to.

I remember full Armor Runepage against Riven and Garen. You got +40 Armor

I remember times when in team must be at least 1 clearvision. Just to know WHO went to what line. I'm really missed those time. When every pick was unpredictable.

11:37 meanwhile bard beign able to build anything ,any ruin in any lane of any matchup (except bot carry it still the one weakness i need to solve)

I rimember playing nocturne with fizz amsteries and runes and I didnt felt that bad as if now I wouldnt have lethaltempo and ultimate hunter...

I miss running exclusively crit runes on mundo top, starting the crit glvoes and E and just 2 shotting people at lv 1

dude old league was fun. It had 3v3, dominion and actual gamemodes that ware not random urf or spellbook ._. Now all my games look the same, same itemization, same runes etc,

i loved playing rumble with movement speed big runes and vamp lithe runes. It was the only way i could beat riven top, being able to chase her down or escape thanks to +movement speed and slight more sustain. I never got better at this match up after they changed the runes

Nah. I started League since Season 1 and I don't want the old runes to comeback. It's just boring system were you are forced to pick the optimal runes. AP rune page for mages. AD rune page for ADC and a mix of AD, MR and Armor for tanks. That's a lot of grinding to do. I feel like players today simply forgot how much people complained about grinding for IP just to buy runes and rune pages. What League really needs to do is to stop reinforcing the meta every time someone comes up with a unique way to win the game.

Beautiful explanation on the runes. Runes and Keystones never incentivised different play styles. A support cannot suddenly play midlane thanks to his "lose all shielding and healing and convert it to on-hit damage" rune or not even "focus on stuns because your stun gets slightly better, and your slows worse. One champion has one best set of runes with a miniscule derivation based on the match up. At best, it builds on the champions strengths, at worst, I just deletes a champions designed weaknesses. Now, after these months, Arena has kinda shown, how REAL runes look with the perk choices, but at the same time, it cannot be implemented in a game such as league cannot work with a randomness factor. I would die for more fun choices in the rune tree and the ability to go for a full movement speed setup, or a full CDR setup just to have a fun time with characters like Zilean or light speed Warwick. But it's not an option. Fun builds are not a question of viability, fun builds simply do not exist anymore. The game forces you into balances extras. By that, the only option is to be vaguely balanced, or jsut take the one, ptimal combination. It's boring is what it is!

Holy fuck seeing the thunderlords icon fucking sent me back in time

Yup, this is totally true. Back in the day with runes and mastery's you had more build variety, I remember when trick2g made popular some utility builds for champions where you would put alot of CDR on runes and max it out early. My only issue is how much power is tied into these runes. For example taking the wrong keystone on a champion can almost ruin an entire game for you rofl.

Efficiency plays a big role in this. You can't just be very creative with your runes because if the other dude knows his champ and the matchup in and out, they're gonna win 8 times out of 10, there's no point in going Darius with first strike or something if the other guy is going to stomp you. You could still however invent something different and have some success with it but it would have to make sense considering meta, items, champion abilities and strengths etc. This whole thing is always going to be important in a game as competitive as League of Legends. Where I do agree is that masteries are too strong. If they weren't so strong we would see more freedom in how we use them but then again we would be more dependent on champion stats and items. There needs to be a balance between champion strength, masteries and items which feels right and rewards players for being creative and precise in their decisions and mechanics and not because they have the latest info on what's strong. It almost feels like the world of finance lmao.

I always used to think the Bandit icon was a bunny puking gold.

i had a full set of crit rune i used to buy as first item the crit % and i had 25% crit at lvl 1 with gang plank getting my Q it was fking insane.

My friend had a 1 rune where in the start of the game his lvl 1 Fiora with E/W skill(i forgot which one) has a massive 104dmg.

it is time for LoL classics. Few patches of older seasons are cycled. This might also work well in tandem with Riots plan to make 2 ranked seasons per year. So Season 1 and Season 3 in one year and S2 and S4 in the next, while some cornerstone patches (with their adjustments) are cycled

So earlier this year I went back to league (I go back every few months to play for a couple weeks then drop it again when I've gotten my fill) I got pretty good with Gwen, or at least I did for my skill level. So I made a rune page for her with conquerer that made me do really well both for level 1 cheese and to keep doing well later on. Every time I have fucked up and forgotten to swap to my Gwen rune page I ALWAYS do badly and I'm willing to bet it has to do with not having runes doing what I need them to do. I have always hated the rune and mastery systems but I think I'd much rather have the old system but with runes all being free and masteriesball being unlocked level 1. I would much prefer that over what we have now. I actually hate the current rune system and I'd much rather see it either removed or reverted to the old system but free.

Yeah the old runes actually made the characters feel like they were truly yours

I miss buying Runes and Masteries. Sure it was toxic to be that close to pay to win mechanics, but it gave me reason to play. I would grind out normal games, always excited for the next game because I’d be stronger thanks to newly bought runes. So many build paths and runes to buy, it was fun to think about stat-checking harder on the next game. Even if i lost or someone on my team was feeding, it didn’t matter that much to me. Now i play League and it’s like “what am i getting out of this? points on a crummy battle pass for a skin i won’t afford in the end and don’t even want anyway?”

I still got a clip from me drawing first blood because of the 1% crit rune thing and I was playing Anivia

Ive got a different perspective on this. I played a lot of Dota 2, where runes do not exist. I've never liked that you have this extra step before getting to play? Like the more your doing outside of the game that effects the game, the less your in game ability matters. (To a degree) My personal way to fix this is to remove the boring runes, bring back some of the more overtuned or interesting runes, then convert them into items instead? Of all different stages, early, mid, late. I feel it would add more to the itemisation (Something I think is currently boring and just stat boosts) Like imagine a new mage item lets you launch a meteor at someone if you hit an ability, but you have to earn it, not just click on it before the game starts. Im sure it would be a balancing nightmare though.

the last time I was this early Aatrox still has a revive

I have ten pages runes for troll and my main. Miss the old masteries

Another issue I found was that second wind is just too broken. Take Tryndamere for example, if he is ever meta, it's him taking a bad trade getting low hp (full dorans shield + second wind value) and q's afterwards. "Whoopsie, my bad. Anyway." You take second wind with precision tree on almost every single champion nowadays because you can't fall behind in lane. And champs that have so much inbuild healing can abuse the fact that certain runes give huge sustain advantages.

I've been saying this for a long time to my friends who are new to the game. Old runes and mastery was unique in their own way. Yeah I guess you had to buy them and that was a pain but the individuality of the masteries and runes gave the opportunity to do something fresh and new on your champ. I do remember when they were releasing the new rune pages and from the looks of it looked like it was going to hit the target on "being unique and giving more choices for champions" but clearly they never achieved that. It does suck that even riot now is supporting the idea that there is clearly only a correct way to setup rune pages for champions instead of giving the players the freedom to do what they want. Great explanation Exil! Thanks for making this video.

The tree system was definitely a lot more interesting than the current one

i just get blitz up, pick the runes with the most winrate and play the game. league really lost a bunch of fun mechanics, i really miss the old game, it was so much more open to experiments and trying out fun stuff, thats prolly why i watch off meta youtubers now, brings back the old memories 😭

I loved the flexibility of the old rune/mastery system, and I feel like Riot was limiting player's choice with the new system. Like you said, the masteries was the perfect way to experiment with different champions, being a little creative and finding a build that worked well for YOUR playstyle, not a general playstyle. Had they made the runes free instead, I think more players would experiment with different champions, finding awesome rune/mastery combos that worked well, or maybe found a complete off-meta pick, that could dominate with the right setup. I remember seeing a video one time of a player doing a full XP build on Zilean, and was consistently 1-2 levels ahead of their opponent. *this was back when Zilean had his old passive

Dude old runes where you could take exp quints and hit lvl2 on talon after 6 minions and get first blood easily since your enemy wouldn't expect the level up spike xD

ughhhh i remember in 2011 or 2012 garena tried to promote league on internet cafe i used to play, calling it a new dota or hon. then we see that you have to buy hero and leveling runes. we all played for promotion on 1 day and back to dota or hon the next day

There were also very cheap runes, but were a little bit worse. When I bought my final runes, they were all scaling with levels. Classic season 5-6 top lane. We were sitting there till the game is over, farming easily with zz' rot. Good old times. Good old aatrox 😭.

While I'm not entirely convinced that the old Rune system wasn't a knowledge check, it was definitely more flexible because picking 1 rune didn't mean that you couldn't pick another in the same row. I think they could have went even further with the old Rune system, where maybe you could take "curses", which would adversely affect your stats, but for each curse taken, you open up that many more rune slots.

Hey exil, I love your content but I was wondering is it possible that the reason that runes are so anti customizable is because the player base has gotten so good that we now know how to counter certain runes and choices? Like if we had masteries put back in it might not actually change the knowledge check simply because there are masteries that are objectively better and if you don't take those you can get punished hard.

I'll always miss my HP/5 quints and 4.5% movespeed quints.

While I still love experimenting with different runes for ARAMs, if you want to play Solo Q, you would never experiment like that since it's sub-optimal.

I miss 1% crit runes. It was always a spicy way to sometimes cheese a fight top.

2009 to 2013 were the good ol days for league

To be fair, if Riot removed the cost of old runes and gave more pages by default, the old Rune / Mastery (modern runes are based off S6 Masteries, Electrocute used to be "Thunderlord's Decree" and everyone used it, I remember "League of Thunderlords" and the original Grasp on tanky-AD Fizz / Akali

I quit playing because of runes reforged tbh. The game peaked for me with Keystones, but these runes have become such a pivotal part of the game that they have taken over the character of champions and even worse, the individual style of players

man... im missing them days where i was playing crit dmg runes trynd and full attack speed aatrox, etc ...!

I had a page full of crit chance. 20% from level 1, just there now for the rest of the game.

Yeah this points out the obvious flaw with League these days - the push to standarize everything so that the scaling is much easier to keep track of. Old League allowed so much room for creativity back then - but nowadays League will force those metas out if they don't fit with the "intended champ design." This is one of the reasons why other modes like ARAM and URF are so popular - creativity is allowed and even encouraged.

Man I was soo happy I had a full runepage for jinx, I used it for every other champ. Except for yasuo I took a 1% crit rune lol

I'm going to have to put my dog of 14 years down tomorrow just wanted to say thanks for the video it was great to be able to it this if off my mind for a small bit

In the example of Azir vs Akali - who picked first? That is very relevant information. (Also, Akali was insanely broken for a very long time. Are we really pretending that runes were the problem?)

It was the best era of league for me, system and gameplay-wise. I hated the rune system, but the talent and masteries was cool. Never truly readapted to the game after this season.

Idk if this is a smart idea on League but DOTA's talent tree is something i think League could benefit from.

Wouldn't old runes face the same problem now days? Places where you could find the right choice were less common back then, maybe the number of right choices would be bigger, but I doubt people wouldn't be just copying the higher winrate choice too.