User blog comment:Emptylord/Custom runes - New Sabotage Path, plus other tweaks/@comment-4022742-20171116001849/@comment-3974211-20171116050156

Sorry, let me start over - reading back over what I said comes across a little aggressive. I'm not making any claims - I'm giving my reasons. I don't have numbers or arguments - I'm not trying to convince anyone that my opinions are correct. I listed my "thoughts" because when I don't (which is most of the time), I get comments asking me to innumerate my through process - to explain how I came to the decisions I did. I removed Predator because I think it's bad - there's nothing more I can say, that's the reason I removed it. Whether or not you agree with Predator being bad doesn't really affect your ability to assess if what I've done was an improvement - and you're welcome to disagree with my assessment. However, I did not set out to convince you that I'm right - and I don't think I implied to the contrary.

However, after thinking on it, I do actually have a good reason why Predator is bad. Not even counting the fact the Boards generally seem to agree Predator is in a shit state, and we can infer that Riot agrees since Predator is the only rune on the PBE that's been buffed - Predator is bad because it fills the same space as Dark Harvest. Both runes give you bonus damage when you enter a fight. This consequently leads to the situation where the one that's picked will be the one that's the best any given patch. The silly thing is, Predator's main purpose is suppose to be "getting you into a fight" and I could have instead opt'd the rework the Rune to make it distinct from Dark Harvest as a "gets you into fights" rune - but most Assassins don't need this (that is an innate feature of the class), and thus the rune makes no sense in the Assassin Path. I'm not saying it's impossible for Riot to balance Predator - I just didn't want to. Phase Rush was intended as a hit-and-run Rune, as stated in their development blog and in the video the showcases the rune (contrary to what you say) - hit-and-run would be a perfect fit for Predator. As an aside, although you dismissed my claim, the fact Phase Rush and Press The Attack have the same trigger conditions is a bad thing.

Summon Aery and Arcane Comet have a similar issue to the Domination Keystones - they both empower trading, and thus the one that's picked will be the best one this patch. Arcane Comet is meant to be the "burst" option, but Aery not having a cooldown just makes it superior in most cases. Likewise with Predator, Summon Aery was suppose to have a different target user. Unlike Predator, I decided to keep Summon Aery and try to make it more distinguishable from Comet.