The season 2 patch introduced several new items. One of the most popularly requested was a magical equivalent of Witchblade, which reduces physical power and attack speed. Our prayers were listened to, and we received the new Runic Shield, which was substantially reworked from last season. Let’s take a look at the new stats:

25 physical power is decent. It’s comparable to Void Shield, a similar bruiser item that grants physical power and physical defense. While it’s not exactly a Jotunn’s Wrath, the power means that ability based gods’ power curve won’t suffer that much relative to building straight power. However, this is the only offensive stat on this item meaning basic attack gods that need to be building attack speed, pen, crit, etc in addition to power might not find this item too appealing.

50 magical protection is probably what most gods that buy Runic Shield are looking for. Relative to other magic defense items, this amount is relatively low. It’s the same amount as Ancile, and surpasses Spirit Robe (which grants 40 magical and physical defense) and Magi’s Blessing (which grants 15 magical and physical defense). In addition, most other magical defense items grant a substantial amount of health. Right now, it’s looking pretty lackluster. However, we should take into account the passive.

So the question is, how many protections is the passive worth? I was able to use some algebra and the damage equation to come up with the equation: (b+nm)(100+p)/(b+n(m-50))-100-p. B represents the base damage of the skill hitting you, n represents the % magic power that contributes to the skill's damage, m represents the enemy's magical power, and p represents your protections. After you plug in all those numbers, you'll get the equivalent protections. However, as an example calculation, a Ra celstial beam at 500 magical power hitting a Guan Yu that has only Runic Shield to grant him magical protections when both are level 20 will mean the Runic Shield passive will grant Guan Yu 11 (10.6 to be a bit mroe accurate) protections.

However, analyzing the equation will allow us to figure out what situations make Runic Shield more effective. I've plugged the equation into a graphing calculator and set all of the various variables to x to see how the protections change relative to change in that variable. We can draw the following conclusions. The lower the base damage, the more effective the passive is. This is pretty reasonable, as the passive doesn't reduce the base damage. The higher the magical power contribution, the more effective Runic Shield is. Once again, this conclusion is pretty easy to draw as the higher that amount is, the more the 50 power reduction has an effect on the damage. We can thus conclude that characters whose skills have low base damage but high magic scaling to compensate are more affected by Runic Shield passive. An example would be Chang'e.

Another piece of information is that as magic power increases, the passive becomes less effective. Combined with the previous conclusions, we can conjecture that the Runic Shield passive becomes less effective as the game progresses as base damages increase with levels and magic power reaches into the 300-600 rage with late game Rod of Tahuti’s. However, an interesting thing I discovered is that as your protections increase, the passive will grant more equivalent protections. That means that building Runic Shield in addition to some other magic defense items makes the Runic Shield passive more valuable.

So the question is, what situations should one buy Runic Shield? Well, one should buy it on ability based Gods rather than basic attack Gods. This means it would be a better buy on Tyr or Guan Yu rather than Osiris. In addition, it is most effective early game, so buying it in the first, second, or thid item slots would be the best time to buy it. In addition, you should buy it when you are against a God that will build lower amounts of magical power (for example when facing a guardian or healer in the solo or support roles). In addition, if you are stacking magic power (for example you bought pestilence to counter healing), Runic Shield becomes more effective.