A glance at Korean Pros and Runes

So after my article on Korean masteries used in OGN, I received several requests for a similar article on Korean runes. Now, I should mention that Runes and Masteries are different in that Runes haven't been changed by Riot in a very long time, while Masteries were changed at the beginning of Season 3. Because of this, Runes have been very refined and are much more set then masteries. However, play styles and individual preference play a part in runes, just as they do in masteries. So lets start by looking at some overall trends: 

1. Armor Yellows: Across pages and pages of runes, there was only one common trend: +13 Armor. I couldn't find a single example of any other Yellow Seals in use. Now, I was actually talking to Xpecial about this at Worlds, and he told me that the problem wasn't that Armor Yellows were too strong, instead there were no other worthy alternatives. After looking at the other alternatives for yellow, I couldn't help but agree, in terms of cost effectiveness, Armor Yellows were the best. In addition, since having both Magic resistance and Armor is a must in a rune page, Yellows were the best place to put armor.

2. Magic Resist Blues and variations: Unlike Armor Yellows, Magic Resistance Blues were not set in stone and consistent through every page. However, either MR/lvl or flat MR was a theme in almost every single page. However, while most mids ran flat MR, for the other roles, it was more dependent on your lane matchup (flat MR against Corki or Sona was popular) and how many you went seemed to be up to the players. Some top laners liked running a few flat HP/5 blues, and many top laners and AD carries liked running a few (3-5) flat mana regen blues with their MR blues. Also, Faker liked running AP/level instead of MR in certain games, mainly on Ahri. 

3. Jungle Runes: While most roles seemed to like round numbers, and nice even amount of runes, most junglers pages were a cluster of different stats. Junglers would run Armor yellows, and then whatever they wanted. A mixture of AD, Armor Penetration, Attack Speed, and MR would make up their pages. If you're interested in finding specific pages, you can go through runes here. However, AD blues were popular (used in conjunction with MR blues), AD quints seemed standard, and for reds, AD, ArmorPen, and Attack speed. 

4. No GP/10: No Supports ran gp/10. It seems that Professional Supports don't want to sacrifice defensive stats for more gold, instead running armor quints, AP quints, or even flat health quints. Not much more to say, but I think that while in the competetive scene this makes sense, this doesn't necessarily need to be emulated in solo queue, and gp/10 quints can be used to buy wards and snowball vision control. This is just my personal opinion though. 

5. 2 Lifesteal, 1 AD quints.  Every single ADC or Mid Ezreal player seems to prefer 2 Lifesteal Quints and 1 AD. In addition, some Zed players also prefer this setup, notably Faker. In addition, AD reds were also extremely common, as were mana regen blues. Armor Penetration reds were also in use, but were much less common then flat AD. 

6.  Flat AP Quints: Almost ever single AP mage used Flat AP quints, again I feel this is more a lack of good alternatives rather than AP quints being too strong. Movement Speed Quints are also a viable option, especially with assassins being so strong in the current meta, but it seems most professional players prefer Flat AP.

Anyway, I hope everyone found this helpful. Runes and Masteries are a huge part of the game, so I hope everyone enjoyed this two part series! Good luck on the fields of justice! 

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