League of Legends preseason 12 rune update: First Strike will be the new budget Kleptomancy

With League of Legends preseason 12 on the horizon, Riot Games have opened up some of the changes players can expect in the next major update.

Some keystone runes will be brought into focus. While Lethal Tempo and Glacial Augment are reworked, developers will introduce an entirely new League of Legends rune called First Strike.

First Strike will allow gold generation for aggressive play. It’s a lot like Kleptomancy but not as powerful or as potent. However, it does not facilitate abuse during laning and mid-to-late game team fights.

That being said, it can enable a lot of lane bullies. Adequately harassing the enemies during the early stages helps players get item leads and gold advantages in just the first 10 minutes of the game.

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First Strike will revive some of the Kleptomancy mechani in League of Legends

To those unaware, Kleptomancy used to be a keystone rune in the Inspiration tree line. Riot Games discontinued it after it went through several patches and was still unbalanced.

Kleptomancy offered passive gold generation and free consumable items if a champion auto-attacked an enemy after using an ability. Hence, this paved the way for picks like Ezreal and Gankplank to abuse the rune and 'flame horizon' their opponents in just under 20 minutes.

League of Legends developers had nightmares trying to balance Kleptomancy. Hence, they eventually decided to remove it from the game altogether, putting Omnistone in its place.

With First Strike, preseason 12 will try and bring back some of the Kleptomancy mechanics and reward aggressive play and well-time harassment. The developers have cited the following stats for the keystone:

“Damaging an enemy champion with an attack or ability before they do so grants 5 gold and First Strike for 3 seconds, causing your attacks or abilities to deal 12% extra damage against champions, and granting 100% (70% for ranged units) of that damage dealt as gold.”

It’s quite a mellowed-down version of the original Kleptomancy, but players who have a more aggressive playstyle in the lane will be happy with this rune. Picks like Ezreal and Caitlyn might make First Strike the keystone of choice.

First Strike will unfortunately not arrive in the League of Legends PBE test environment for a bit. It will be released with the official 11.24 patch on November 17, which also brings with it the preseason 12 update