Four Essential Rune Pages For Players On a Budget

In season 4 the rune page changes brought a lot of confusion at first. At the time LifeSteal Quints were very popular but now are not as used. The following Rune Pages are perfect for lower elo players that may not have a suffecient amount of IP. This will also cover changes to these rune pages when you are able to afford other runes but still only using these four rune pages.

 

1. Pure AD Carry Runes

Focus on: early game (CSing and trading)
Total IP price: 8610 not including rune page
Stats:
+12 Magic Resist
+ 8.5 Physical Dmg
+ 9.0 Armor
+ 14% Attacking Speed

First, we will cover the standard Attack Damage Carry rune page. This is pretty standard and what is used for every AD carry in the professional scene. You may ask yourself well why not AD quints? Why attack speed? Well the Attack Speed helps you in many ways. The attack speed allows you to better freeze waves as you will not be doing as much damage per auto attack. But on the other hand it also allows you to throw out more auto attacks over a given time which can highly benifit you when farming under tower or even when two nearby creeps are both low. Yellow Armor and Blue Magic resist are pretty standard. For yellows you won't benifit much from anything else.

Auto attacks from the enemy ADC and Support will just decimate your health bar without the armor yellows. MR Blues also protect you from any magic damage coming in from supports or a roam from the enemy midlaner. These are not as crucial as having 9 yellow armor seals. You can invest in 5 Mana Regen blues and stick with the 4 Magic resist if you so choose. But that is strictly preferance. You don't want to run minimal MR against a Sona Corki lane for example. This page is also ideal for Yasuo, auto attack heavy junglers like Yi, Warwick or Reksai, and Bruiser top laners such as Gnar, Irelia or Jax.

x3 Attack Speed Quints
x9 Attack Damage Marks
x9 Armor Seals
x9 Magic Resist Glyphs
(Optional: x4 Magic Resist x5 Mana Regen Glyphs)

 

2. Strictly Support Runes

Focus on: early game (Taking damage for your carry and harrasing with autos)
Total IP price: 8610 not including rune page
Stats:
+12 Magic Resist
+8.5 Physical Dmg
+22 Armor

Since we're already on the topic of bot lane let's go ahead and talk support. Way back when, people would run gold runes on support because of how starved of gold they would be. But with the gold items we have now such as Relic Shield, Spellthiefs Edges, and Ancient Coin gold isn't really a problem. The good thing about these four rune pages is if you feel the need for damage you can swap out your support page for your mid lane page and it will work just as fine. With this rune page you will simply just be recycling your marks, yellows, and blues. The only thing you're going to replace is your quints which will be substituted for Armor quints. The armor quints help you out a lot in trades since you will not be putting out much damage due to your gold income at the beginning. The attack damage marks are great for getting out auto attacks and putting damage onto the enemy laners. When it comes to seals you want to invest into health seals eventually. They are pricey so this can take some time. But for the time being this is the ideal support page until you can afford health seals.

x3 Armor Quints
x9 Attack Damage Marks
x9 Armor Seals (Eventually upgrading into all Health Seals)
x9 Magic Resist Glyphs (x5 Mana Regen and x4 MR still optional)

 

3. Ability Power Runes

Focus on: Early Game (Utlizing your early magic penetration to harass enemy laner(especially for mages)
Total IP Price: 10455 not including rune page
Stats:
+15 Ability Power
+12 Magic Resist
+9 Armor
+7.8 Magic Penetration

The next page which will be covered is not specific to one lane but can be used for any ability power champions. As we did with the previous rune pages you will be recycling your armor yellows and your magic resist blues. However, this time we will be replacing your marks as well as your quints. The quints will be replaced with Ability power quints for obvious reasons and the marks will be replaced by magic penetration marks. You may ask yourself why not go Ability Power marks like we did with Attack Damage? Well that's because when it comes to physical damage, you are constantly throwing out damage with auto attacks and physical damage spells. Your ability power at lower ranks will not cut through the base magic resist and magic resist gylphs of your opponent. If you are always confident in your skill you can replace the magic resist glyphs for ability power glyphs which are fairly cheap but it is a huge risk. Once you've achieved higher elo and can afford more rune pages the AP glyphs are optimal against AD midlaners. This page can be used for any mage, AP assasin, AP supports, AP junglers, and even AP top laners like Maokai and Rumble.

x3 Abilty Power Quints
x9 Magic Pen Marks
x9 Armor Seals
x9 Magic Resist Glyphs (x9 Ability Power Glyphs optional)

 

4. Heavy Attack Damage Champions

Focus on: Mid Game (Getting your items ontop of your raw AD from base, runes, and masteries will allow you to start destroying the backline)
Total IP Price: 12300
Stats:
+9 Magic Resist at level 18
+15 Physical Dmg
+9 Armor
+ -5.00% CDR

This last page I have the hardest time reccomending because everyone has different playstyles of the jungle. I like to play assasin junglers with the ability to burst down the back line very quickly, such as Khazix and Rengar, and this is the optimal page to do so. In the jungle you have smite buffs and a burn from machete and red buff helping you. This page is also optimal for AD assasins like Top Lane J4, Talon, or Zed. Their burst comes from all physical damage spells that are meant to completely destroy a carry. We are recycling our armor yellows because you cannont survive in the jungle without them. This time we will not be recycling our blues as you will need cooldown reduction and scaling magic resist blues. For the time being the Attack Damage marks are fine but you do eventually want to invest into Armor Penetration marks. The CDR is essential in fast jungle clear as you will be able to cast more spells thus clearing the camp faster. The Scaling Magic Resist is for some more resistances come late game as so little Flat MR won't really matter.

x3 Attack Damage Quints
x9 Attack Damage Marks (eventually you'll want Armor Penentration)
x9 Armor Seals
x6 Cool Down Reduction Glyphs
x3 Scaling Magic Resist Glyphs

 

In conclusion, everyone in lower elo will not have the IP to purchase all the runes nessecary for every single champion that they play. These four are EXTREMELY versatile and are the perfect sets until you are able to afford more. IP comes with play time so fast game modes such as ARAM or Dominion can drastically increase the IP you get per hour. The website www.probuilds.net is an amazing website where you can check out any pro players rune pages when you eventually get the IP for additional pages but always take into consideration that these guys have 20 pages and unless you decide to buy Rune Pages with RP then it will be a very long time before you can do that with also buying champions and the runes themselves. These Runes are just a stepping stone as mentioned earlier. You will eventually want to grab health seals for support and armor penetration for the Jungle/Assasin page.

That being said these 4 pages are perfect for any situation in lower to mid elos. The essential Runes for these pages go as follows:

QUINTESSENCES 

x3 Attack Speed
x3 Armor
x3 Attack Damage
x3 Ability Power

MARKS

x9 Attack Damage
x9 Magic Penetration

SEALS

x9 Armor

GLYPHS

x9 Magic Resist
x6 Cooldown Reduction
x3 Scaling Magic Resist

Total Cost: 27060 IP

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