Photo Credit: Riot Games
With the 2017 World Champions coming to an end, Season 7 has also come to a close. With the finale of the season, Riot has implemented the preseason changes they had been working on with several major changes to gameplay and hextech crafting system.
Runes Reforged
The biggest gameplay change in preseason has got to be the entire reworked runes system. Runes now combines both masteries and runes to create a new system where players can choose four runes from a main path and two runes from a secondary path to reflect their playstyle. Players can choose from five different paths from burst heavy Domination, attack focused Precision, ability focused Sorcery, tanky Resolve, to creative Inspiration. Many old masteries have direct counterparts to these current runes such as Fleet Footwork under Precision for Warlord’s, however, there are many brand new runes such as Kleptomancy in Inspiration which gives players a chance to earn gold and consumables after hitting an enemy.
Hextech Crafting and Leveling Changes
Riot has also overhauled the leveling system and crafting system in League of Legends. Blue Essence and Influence Points have now been combined together to have only Blue Essence in the new system. Everything previously bought with IP can now be purchased with Blue Essence such as champions. Also, the store now has certain skins, emotes, and ward skins for purchase available to players who have stored lots of BE. Leveling has also been changed with the Level 30 cap being removed. Players can now obtain an infinite amount of levels with each level up being rewarded with a champion shard capsule and milestone levels such as 10, 50, etc. being rewarded with special capsules. However, with the IP and BE changes, finishing a game will no longer give any rewards except experience towards a level up.