League players convinced “worst” rune is purposely ignored by devs

Predator has had a huge fall from grace since its prior prominence in the League meta, and players believe Riot are ignoring the rune on purpose due to them being unable to balance it in a healthy way.

League of Legends‘ vast amount of rune types and keystones give players a ton of flexibility as to what kind of playstyle they want to go for and what they want to specialize in on their champion.

However, when it comes to ways in which players could spec their runes, Predator was one of the most impactful runes in its heyday. For gank-heavy junglers, it was busted and a must-have.

It was nerfed into the ground long ago, though, and players are claiming that Riot have kept it that way because they aren’t sure how to make it viable without breaking the game.

League players think Predator should be removed

Riot Games

Finding ways to keep games at the “right” length in League of Legends is hard. While snowball-y games that end quickly or long, late-game scaling slugfests that go too long are unavoidable at times, finding a meta that tends to fall somewhere in the middle is ideal.

Predator is the sort of rune that rapidly accelerates the pace of the game, giving junglers and some support champs the tools to take over the entire map and influence lanes in a way that’s impossible to match with additional movement speed and damage at the press of a button.

Or, at least, that’s what it did when it was good.

Season 12’s nerfs to the rune killed its early game gank potential in many ways. Taking the early cooldown from 90 to 120 seconds and nerfing its overall scaling was a real blow to its usefulness, and a Redditor who wants the rune to be viable was met with swift backlash.

Potential way to buff Predator to make it slightly less non-existent
byu/Lowsmithy inleagueoflegends

OP claimed that Predator’s lack of synergy with Magical Footwear was a big sticking point, and that the need to have boots to activate it is keeping Predator from having the early game relevance it’s good for. However, players weren’t having any of these solutions, and they feel that Riot not touching this rune may be for the best.

“It should be replaced. It can’t be healthy for the game when good,” one user claimed.

“They’re intentionally keeping it sh*t and forgotten for an eventual removal. Everyone hates predator meta,” another asserted.

“Just toss it. Its not salvageable in today’s meta,” said yet another user.

And, though this opinion is months old, Riot August claimed that this was the team’s philosophy before Season 14 kicked off, and that keeping the rune in the game was for the sake of “illusion of choice”. Whether or not Riot decides to fully remove the rune in the future remains to be seen.