Guys, Are runes really important? Do these runes affect the champions so much? I haven't bought runes yet because I am planning to buy more champions.
Runes should be your priority as well as rune pages. Everyone uses runes and they give extra armor, health, attack, ability power, ability penetration and what not. I made the same mistake of wanting a large champion pool before runes, but after a while you're matched up with people in normals who have runes while you don't. So I'd recommend it.
Runes for the most part control how your early game will turn out. (And not to mention a sliver of your late game.) I used to despise runes and asked the same question, and after I completed a rune page, I witnessed how useful these guys were. With three quintessences of life steal, I have an extra 3% life steal. I hated runes because this bonus looks so little, but after you get into the game and buy some items, those runes could be the difference between life and death! Having a doran's blade and my runes gives me 10% ability power instead of 7%, which can make a huge difference! Sorry if I'm not being clear, but to summarize - having a full rune page will give you enough of a benefit to win you a game depending on how you play early game.
Runes help you with your early game. Some runes scale to late game, which I guess are useful in certain cases. Runes like scaling health and scaling cool down reduction are the best scaling runes in my opinion.
Sub level 20, runes are unimportant. But they do matter for lane matchups at 30, since you are coming in with an extra 10-20 damage depending on your setup or defensive stats. Some champions this matters more than others however, so it really depends on what you're playing but it never hurts to have an advantage.
Both runes and mastery pages are important. They basically decide what the early game will be like. If you do't take masteries and runes, you simply won't win early against players who have them.
I suggest buying the package of runepages for cheaper. Then with the masteries allowing 20 pages (last I knew anyways) with 5-10 runepages you can deck one out for eat individual hero you play like slipping into a custom suit of armor just tailored for your character without spending a set. Between runes and masteries it amounts to a couple extra "items" in stat values. Very important. A naked no mastery no rune champ is much more vulnerable then a fullscaled and opened level 30 account. Remember that.
Depending upon who you're facing, runes can make a great difference. Another team using runes can prove challenging to beat in the early going if your team isn't using runes. There are tons of situations where runes make sense, and then others where they're less important.
Only get runes if you're already above lvl 20. Tier 1 and Tier 2 runes are ridiculously useless. If you aren't already llv 20, make sure to save up for them, as they're quite important. You can buy 2 or 3 runepages and they'll be all you need for quite some time, for example: AD: -AD / ArPen reds - Armor or Health/lvl yellows - M. Resist blues - AD quints / AS quints AP: - M.Pen reds - Health/lvl yellows - CDR/lvl - MR - AP/lvl blues - AP / MS quints if you get these 2 runepages( only need 1 variaton of them), you'll easily be set for a long time.
Darce brings up a very valid point - don't buy runes until after 20 unless you just have loads of spare IP - which you shouldn't, as a new character buying champions. I'd worry about finding a perfect hero fit for you and then going into runes and masteries, watching a guide or two on your champ, doing a practice round VS AI - and then finally, queuing into the "big show" (normal queuing) after you feel you have a firm base grasp and understanding. Also, the pages he suggested fit a wide range of champs, so it's not bad to take a cue from his post and follow along. The majority of champs I play are AP based unless I'm being a tanky douchebag, so both of those setups work.
People answered your question but yes, runes are really important and you also need a lot of rune pages. I have 8 rune pages and it's still not enough for what I want (I have specific ones for Zed and Yasuo though).
There's never enough, FuZy. Never. But holy crap, there's more than enough mastery pages. Maybe give 5 of those as rune pages. But nah, that'd make them lose profit on people buying runepages. Vicious cycle!
