Gold per second runes

adrian of IMT uses them on soraka sometimes. they are no longer necessary since the advent of sighstone/gold income items. they were more popular back in the day when supports had literally zero income and had to buy wards instead of having a sighstone.

that said, if you want the math side, they are inefficient until about 25-30 minutes in which everything else after that they outscale most other runes but only slightly. they are honestly mainly only good if you are looking to rush a certain item and are willing to forgo stats in lane and know you are safe in said lane. soraka is an easy one cuz you just stand back and heal and you can get your ardent or mikaels sooner.

As a support main, I'll confess that I've put in one or two gold runes in place because the current gold income items have been so unhelpful (though I should note this route is not too bad:

Especially in the lower tiers, there's nothing like being in a game where you are three levels behind the carries and you have roughly 2/3rds of the income of the other players and you are spending your time and what little coin you have on wards. And it's even worse, when your teammates can't be bothered to use their trinkets and complain about the lack of wards in the jungle. (And before someone mentions something negative, I should point out that I've seen platinum and higher tier players using the odd gold rune. I would suggest that this is because the income for the items in these routes: are just not quite paying off quite as well yet.

They used to be core on supports back in season 3 since they existed primarily off passive gold gain.

The more passive gold you gained, the faster you could purchase Philosopher's Stone and Kage's Lucky Pick (to earn even more passive gold).

wow! thanks for the quick response!