Edit 11/13/15: I have updated my mastery pages due to the revamp to the system during the 2016 preseason. You can find those here.

It has come to my attention that for the past couple of years I have received much of my traffic via search engines, specifically pointing to a few posts I made regarding Runes and Masteries in League of Legends. It’s nice to earn the traffic boost, but unfortunately as the game is in a constant state of flux information tends to become less viable as a result. There has also been a recent change to the Defense Mastery Tree, and I have been watching a bunch of videos with advice and tips on the subject, so I have completely redone my pages. As such, I am prepared to share these changes with you, and I will provide links to this article on the other articles that have been getting the most hits, so if you are arriving here via those links, this information should be more viable. With that said, let’s dive right in.

Runes:

For beginners just starting out with the game, you won’t have access to endless rune pages, and they do cost a bit of IP/RP so you might not want to invest right away. If you’ve just hit level 30, there are some basic runes that you should pick up right away that will be viable for all champions. You’ll need a minimum of two pages to cover all champions, and the runes you’ll need are as follows:

9x Attack Damage Marks
9x Magic Penetration Marks
9x Armor Seals
9x Magic Resist Glyphs
9x Ability Power per level Glyphs
3x Attack Damage/Speed Quintessences
3x Ability Power Quintessences

For Attack Damage based champions, you’ll want the Attack Damage Marks, Armor Seals, Magic Resist Glyphs (flat or scaling is up to you), and Attack Damage or Attack Speed Quints.

For Ability Power based champions, you’ll want Magic Penetration Marks, Armor Seals, Ability Power per level Glyphs, and Ability Power Quints.

This will work for all champions, you just need to know if you’re playing someone who is AD or AP based. From there, you can add pages as you like and become more specialized. I have done such specialization, and have settled on 7 rune pages, and 7 mastery pages to compliment them. Since we’re talking Runes for now, we’ll start there.

For all AD based champions, this is the basic rune build that I described earlier. AD Marks, Armor Seals, I prefer MR per level Glyphs, and Attack Speed Quints. The early boost to AD and AS will help you last hit and harass during the laning phase, and the Armor and MR will help you sustain their harass. Pretty simple, no? I’ll use this on all carries, but some bruisers in the top lane will benefit from the same setup.

Admittedly, I don’t play the jungle role much. I did more often in seasons past but I prefer other roles. This is the same setup as the previous rune page, but I swapped out the Attack Speed Quints in favor of Movement Speed Quints. I basically have this page for when I play Hecarim, as his passive benefits from movement speed, and I play him quite often in the top lane. However, I believe most junglers would benefit from the movement speed as this can help them avoid buying boots early, but allow them to get around the map quickly. Still, this is basically my Hecarim page, so you might find it unnecessary.

This is my basic AP carry page, for most mid lane champions (aside from the AD assassins, they should run the AD Carry page). It is exactly how I described the basic AP page earlier, however I prefer running Mana Regen Seals as opposed to Armor Seals. I suppose either would work fine, but I like being able to spam abilities more often. Flat AP Quints give you a nice AP boost to start and the AP per level Glyphs will give more as you level keeping your power high. Magic Pen helps with getting though early Magic Resist, stack more MP if they happen to be stacking MR.

I made this page specifically for champions who are Ability Power based but don’t use Mana as a resource. Think champions like Vladimir, Akali or Katarina. I play Vlad pretty often, so I have tailored this for him, mostly. Flat Ability power Quints give you some early base AP, and Magic Pen Marks are standard as well. MR and Armor too, though I have split the Seals between Health per level and Armor. The extra health helps you as you level up, and Vlad has a nice passive that gives more AP per Health and vice versa. On the others, it’s just a little boon to help with sustain.

In all honesty, I very rarely play hybrid champions. I just had 7 rune pages and needed to fill up the last one, so this was the result. Still, I believe this would be viable on someone like Akali, Jax, or Evelynn who have some hybrid tendencies. I mixed AD Marks with AP Quints, the Health per level and Armor seals, along with Magic Resist per level and Ability Power per level Glyphs. This gives a nice mix of hybrid damage and defensive stats.

For all of your top lane or jungle tanks, this is what I came up with. It’s full tank, so you’ll notice there are no combat stats (AD or AP). This means it can be used on either AD or AP focused tanks without wasting stats, and will also allow you to focus on combat items first, or just stick with full tank items all around. Armor Marks and partial Armor Seals give you extra early game tankiness. Health Quints give immediate impact, and some scaling Health Seals help during leveling. Round that out with MR per level Glyphs and you’re not taking damage ever.

I found myself getting annoyed with having to use two different Rune pages for when I play support. I play the role quite often, and typically switch between squishy ranged mages like Morgana and beefy tanks like Nautilus or Braum. I was always using the support page for the former, and the tank page for the latter. I have since modified this page so that I can theoretically use it for either type of support, giving stats that should benefit both. So, we start with Hybrid Penetration Marks, which give both Armor and Magic penetration, and allow you to hit harder with basic attacks along with spells. AP Quints help with early damage, as you typically aren’t building AP items til mid-late game. Armor and MR are standard, but I also threw in a few Health per level Seals for extra sustain in lane.

Masteries:

Moving on to Masteries, I have 7 more pages that will directly compliment each of the above Rune pages with the vision I had for each.

I used to run all of my AD carries with 21/0/9 masteries, taking the movement speed and mana regen just to help in lane. That used to work just fine, but I decided that the extra defensive stats would probably help more during early trades and have since switched to the 21/9/0 build you see here. You’re basically picking all of the AD related perks, along with the few points on the right side for extra minion damage and sustain, along with doing more damage to low health targets. In the defense tree you’re getting health and regen, along with less damage taken from minions. Combined with the AD and tank stats from your rune page, you should be sitting pretty.

This is a similar tree to the first, but is suited more for someone who isn’t building as many AD-centric items, and more tank items. Because of this, we drop the points put into warlord which gives more AD based on bonus AD, and instead put points into Sorcery for extra cooldown reduction, along with a point into Double-Edged Sword. DES provides extra damage at the expense of taking more, but I find that with the tank items/stats you’ll have, it actually benefits you in the long run. In the Defense tree we swap out the health regen for reduced damage from jungle monsters to help with early clears. I should also note that I don’t typically play AP junglers, so in the event that you do, you could make some basic changes to the Offense tree, though I find that most AP junglers are tanks and should use tank masteries. More on those in a bit.

AP carries are going to be more dependent on Utility than Defense, as their abilities typically keep them further from the front lines. You’re going to focus on the right side of the Offense tree, grabbing anything that gives you bonus damage or bonus AP. In the Utility tree, you’ll want mana regen, upgraded biscuits for sustain, and just because of how the tree works, throw a point into move speed and a couple into cooldown reduction on summoner spells. Done and Done.

Again, for champions like Vladimir, Akali, Katarina, etc who have no mana, you’ll build the same exact page as the previous, but instead of using Utility, use Defense. This keeps you from wasting points on mana regen, and also gives you more tank stats to compliment your rune page. Pretty self explanatory there.

As I mentioned earlier I don’t typically play Hybrid champions, so this page was copied directly from a video I was watching. Apparently it is popular on junglers like Nidalee and Evelynn, as it provides both AD for autos on jungle camps, but also AP for when trying to poke/gank with abilities. Either way, I see champions with hybrid kits benefiting from the general them of extra AD/AP plus tank stats, especially when combined with the rune page I set up.

The full on 9/21/0 build. The Defense tree was recently changed around, but the biggest change was the removal of one segment and the addition of Adaptive Armor, which gives you 4% bonus MR if you have more Armor, or 4% bonus Armor if you have more MR. Helps keep your defensive stats in order. Otherwise it’s the same first 9 points, but adding in extra Armor and MR where possible, taking Tenacious, Evasive and Oppression, and of course the end ability Legendary Guardian which gives Armor/MR per enemy champ nearby. In Offense it’s just the right side stuff giving extra CDR and some AP. Tank Junglers would also benefit from this tree, especially those who are AP based.

This is still basically the same Support tree I’ve used for a couple of years. It’s the standard 0/9/21, the 9 points in Defense should look very familiar to you by now. In the Utility tree, I focus on grabbing up mana regen and gold generation, along with CDR, biscuits, and the movement speed buff at the end of the tree. Another big one that was buffed at some point and I wasn’t using for some reason is Inspiration, which gives 20 xp every 10 seconds while near an allied champion that is of higher level. As the Support, you’re going to be under-leveled pretty much the entire game, so this will help pull you back in line, especially when playing from behind.

So there you have it. My updated Runes and Masteries. Hopefully this is more helpful than some of the articles you may have found yourself on.

#leagueoflegends #strategy #metagame #runesandmasteries