[2021] The Conditioning rune needs a buff

I'm curious to know why you feel that Conditioning is a weak rune? Its slow stacking nature is definitely a bit harder to feel than other runes that have a clear on/off state. This would explain it feeling a bit weaker than other defensive runes.

Because this rune is something that all champions have access to it actually wouldn't help tanks more than other classes. It's actually a bit worse for tanks, vs other classes. This is because they end up buying extra Armor/MR so the bonus you gain from Conditioning ends up not being worth as much for tanks, because Armor and MR values have diminishing returns, when compared to other classes who don't purchase as much.

Ok, so your issue with the rune is that you feel that the early game is too valuable to risk on a rune focused on the late game. That suggests an issue with the idea of having a late-game defensive rune.

I think that is a fair issue to have but we already have other early game runes and I don't think we would want to change this just to add another.

Though I don't agree that squishy champions need to take Bone Plating or Adaptive Carapace I think it really depends on the match-up. Bone Plating is great against burst or assassins, but if you are not worried about that it isn't worth taking. Whereas Adaptive Carapace is better if you can stay at low health for longer, something squishy champions tend to struggle with. Though it is a fine general defensive rune.

It's also worth noting that it's only the first 5 minutes of the game, generally, you aren't going to be dealing with a lot of burst damage or be at low health this early on.

It's possible that it isn't the best rune if you are constantly trying to teamfight, but the meta can change and I wouldn't want to us to get in a habit of adjusting the philosophy of a rune (in this case, late-game scaling) to better fit a different meta.

Conditioning isn't the most popular defensive rune, though these runes have a better spread than other tiers. But aside from a lower pick rate, it's actually performing just fine.

...Looking into it a bit now I'd argue that it actually could be a bit more niche, while it isn't the most popular rune it is on the stronger side. I'd say this is an issue of satisfaction. Runes like Gathering Storm show you their scaling, and others are more feelable. But the issue here is that once you have this effect you just gain a small, unnoticeable, amount every 2 minutes. I'd bet it would see more play if we showed the values at X minutes (like you see on Gathering Storm) in the tooltip.

...It would also see a lot more play if we put it into more recommended builds. Player's don't deviate from that as much as I would have expected.

You're right that different champions have different ratios and thus things that give AP, in this case, Brutal and Gathering Storm, values changes for each champion but that is going to be the case with any game where you have different characters. There isn't a lot of design space when everything is equally valuable to everyone.

I'm sorry that I used the word "fine" what I was saying is that the rune itself is not weak (it actually might be a tad strong for its slot), the problem is that people undervalue it because it isn't as feelable/noticeable as other runes. That is a problem for sure, but when talking in terms of "balance" it isn't a problem here. As for the meta changing, it does change different regions and elos within those regions all tend to have a different meta. We see this in LolPC all the time, and Worlds is often where these metas clash.

You mentioned that you believe funnel strategies are toxic and should be dealt with maybe we didn't deal with it the way you would like. But we stepped in to respond to both it and early lane swapping because these were uninteractive playstyles that plain and simply stifled other metas and clearly not fun.

Though I think this is a different discussion than player perception around the Conditioning rune.

I don't think your feelings are misplaced, and please don't take what I was saying to mean that they ever were. A player's feelings are actually the most valuable feedback you can give us. This is a bit off-topic but hold with me for a moment.

We often see players generalize their feelings as "All/Majority/Most Players feelings X", but actually tends to work against the person's argument when really the most valuable thing for us as developers is what you the person taking the time to post feel. Don't make an argument on other players behalf, because you are going to be the best person to know how you feel about something.

There are some really great posts on this blog about this, the most valuable ways to give devs feedback, I read this daily and if you are interested in game dev I highly recommend them. So sharing how you feel about a change or feature is super valuable, even if it isn't the "actually X is very strong" we want the strong things to feel strong perceptions is often as/more valuable than the reality.

https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/149466049419/80-20-5
https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/157238832062/i-remember-your-52080-rule-and-it-was-an-awesome

Now to your actual question. Not every rune is going to appeal to every champion. Our hope is that each champion/class has 2-3 options that they can feel good about, looking at our data it does seem that this is largely the case, some better than others (the Domination rune slot is very...pick rate dominated by Brutal) whereas the Resolve slot is in a rather balanced state in terms of power and pick rate. Where as the Inspiration rune slot is somewhere in the middle, no single dominant rune, but people really overvalue Sweet Tooth given its power.

This is where feeling comes in, how something feels can often overshadow somethings actual power. A great example here is Grave's W (Smokescreen), for Graves this actually doesn't feel that great to hit because you don't really see the impact to your opponent. But as the opponent getting hit by Smokescreen can feel impactful (you lose all vision).

Minor runes are a big deal here, as they aren't intended to have a massive impact on your game, they do provide some bonus, but it shouldn't swing a game their own. This is why runes don't have visual effects (with the exceptions of Bone Plating). With these goals it kind of pushes runes to have a lot of invisible power.

You are right that there are situations where we give a larger bonus to melee champions over ranged ones, (Second Wind comes to mind here). Ideally we avoid this but it really comes down to the situation we are in. In Second Wind's case the goal of the rune is to survive poke/harassment in lane. Ranged champions have an easier time avoid poke, and are just generally safer than melee ones. Because of this we didn't want to give them the same tools as a melee champion, who doesn't have the same safety.

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying about AD/AP champions scaling with these runes. If you could explain that a bit more, that would be helpful.

Runes are intended as a way for you to customize your champion outside of the item system. Runes also tend to be more focused on the early game, where items take over more in the mid-late game. Though we do want some scaling rune options for players to opt into.