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Why does a Rune page cost more than a champ when you can play every champ in the game with 2 pages?

SzGamer227··21 votes·3,372 views

Riot have said that Runes are a flawed system that doesn't encourage creativity as much as they would like, but honest to God I don't know how you could expect anything else when Runes are so goddamn expensive that players are using the same three Rune pages to play every champion in the game.

If you go to http://champion.gg and look up basically any champion's most frequent Rune page, it is almost certainly going to be one of these three.

(You'll find the same results on http://op.gg/champion/statistics and http://www.leagueofgraphs.com but the Runes are more clear cut on champion.gg)

If the champion is AD, they will either have:

9 Marks of Attack Damage 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 3 Quints of Attack Damage

...or the same page with 3 Quints of Attack Speed instead.

If the champion is AP, you can be nigh on certain that they have:

9 Marks of Magic Penetration 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 3 Quints of Ability Power

So basically you can play every champion in the game with these two pages:

9 Marks of Attack Damage 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 1-2 Quints of Attack Damage 1-2 Quints of Attack Speed

9 Marks of Magic Penetration 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 3 Quints of Ability Power

...and when a blank Rune page costs just as much as the most expensive champions, and the Runes to go on it only add to the cost, why spend the time and currency to make new pages unless you've already bought every champion that you've had any interest in playing some day? Or have bought all the champions that are worth buying so you can trade in Drafts? Or any champion that you would buy for any stupid reason, just because its more worthwhile than a Rune page that only fits one or two champions?

All I can say is if Riot wants any sort of creativity in their Rune pages, they need to make them cost less, and probably buff the overall amount of IP earned by playing in general, because holy crap, unless you've been playing League every day for several months you're not going to want to spend your IP on anything but general rune pages.

I'd also like to plug my idea for receiving the two Rune pages above as free, fixed, default Rune pages at level 30 so that new players have a reliable set of Runes to use once they enter Ranked, and so more involved players can use their two Rune pages to create specialized Rune pages for the champions they play the most.

24 Comments

Zezockary3 votes

Honestly, I have never had any issues with the current rune system or being creative with them. On tanky champions it is generally better to have scaling health quints. Jinx likes to have attack speed marks and quints. On shyvana I think I have attack speed quints and split pen marks, maybe the other way around. Yasuo has crit chance marks.

That is just to name a few. I don't see why people say stuff is so expensive in this game, getting IP is easy.

SzGamer2272 votes

Easy? Yes, but 1) there are so many champions in the game that you will likely never own them all unless you pump a ridiculous amount of time into the game, and 2) Rune pages are even more expensive than champions are, and impact the game less, so most people find that it's not worthwhile to specialize their pages.

Zezockary1 votes

I mean... define ridiculous? http://wasted-on-lol.com/ says that I have spent 2,335 on league and that doesn't seem too bad. I have even wasted tons of ip on stupid stuff like extra runes that I knew wouldn't work (although spell vamp quints on the old malz were amazing, sometimes I pushed to the inhib solo without ever going B, I'm not joking).

Besides, owning all of the champions isn't even that much of a goal, more just the ones you want to play. The only reason I own all of them is because I ran out of other stuff to spend my ip on. I did rush things a bit when I started getting close, but anybody would do that XD

The best way to do it is to get around five champs you want, then fill your two run pages with runes that compliment your main roles. Then you get more champs you want, as long as you have your two pages it does not matter how many. Then when feel like you have your best roles covered pretty well get a new page. Just kinda balance it out like that.

Sraeg20131 votes

I'm at 1149 and if it wasn't for the fact I have 11 rune pages with lots of different shit, I'd own all champions a year ago.

SzGamer2271 votes

I've been playing for almost year, have a lot of free time, and have 400 hours on League. I own 28 champions and I have never considered spending IP on specialized Rune pages until very recently. Even now I'm procrastinating it, because it's just so expensive that it doesn't seem worthwhile; I'm only really considering it because I'm running out of excuses to spend IP elsewhere, but I can assure you, if there are still champions that I might try one day or wouldn't mind playing in ARAM, I'm going to buy those champions first, even after I go through and buy common champion picks for swapping in Drafts.

BastionKross3 votes

I'd also like to plug my idea for receiving the two Rune pages above as free, fixed, default Rune pages at level 30 so that new players have a reliable set of Runes to use once they enter Ranked

Riot is far, far too proud and stubborn to admit to runes being so homogenized by giving everyone default rune sets. Doing so would be tantamount to Riot admitting fault; you would have an easier time squeezing blood from a stone.

Hell, it took them an entire season to cop to the fact that forcing everyone into DQ was a huge mistake. In fact, they spent the entirety of that season reassuring us that it was the right decision and that the major criticisms we as players had were uninformed and ignorant of Riot's brilliant plan. I vividly remember a certain round table discussion with a distinctly non-round table in it. I wonder how all that crow tasted when Riot begrudgingly brought SQ back.

In addition, Riot will never admit that it's bad enough to the extent that players should get some freebies. If that were to happen, players wouldn't need to waste IP on runes and pages, and instead use that IP to buy champions with instead of RP. When players start buying champions (especially newer, more expensive ones) with IP, Riot twists in pain.

Because you've hit them where it hurts the most, their wallet.

SzGamer2271 votes

Just going to ignore your pessimistic criticisms and respond to your last paragraphs.

If giving out free Rune pages is going to hurt Riot's revenue somehow, it's going to be in Rune page sales. As I said, Rune pages are so expensive that they're simply not worth buying, so IP is already being spent primarily on champions. Assuming this is true, Default Rune pages wouldn't affect how much IP is spent on champions, it would just mean less people pay to skip and get Rune pages faster.

I don't know how much RP people spend on Rune pages, but I imagine it's inferior to skin sales very simply because Runes aren't important once you have a couple of standard pages set in stone.

Sraeg20132 votes

Let's be real. How many people actually ever bought rune pages for RP?

I personally only buy runes when there's that bi-annually 2-for-1 IP deal.

SzGamer2271 votes

I imagine the people who have enough money to drop $100 on RNG Hextech crafting would have enought money to burn on Rune pages whenever they please, provided they are serious about the game and want to perform well.

Sraeg20132 votes

It's a bit different though.

Hextech is gambling. Rune pages are just content.

Weasel Kensei2 votes

His tone is a bit over the top, but not completely wrong.

When a company is in the business of providing a product or service, they are invariably going to get criticism.

Dynamic queue got a ton of criticism, and so do other things. Companies often dont admit mistakes because as soon as they do they admit theyre not perfect and this validates peoples criticisms which just emboldens them to make more criticism.

It would also affect consumption. Market test show that consumers avoid companies that continually make mistakes. So if Riot came out and said they were fucking up 40% of the time, that alone would make people not trust them and avoid their services.

No, the corporate mindset says its just best to never say anything, and if they do fuck up and get caught, they have to say it was unforeseen and a miscalculation based on bad data. To avoid trust loss add something like now that we have new data, we wont be doing that again. If they do do it again though, just let the consumer know that they were very close and that last fuck up was a near miss but we got it now.

Due to trust loss, that corporate mindset isnt completely wrong, but Rito fucks up enough that at this point they would probably endear more respect just admitting it.

The pointless buffing of Xin to a 60% win rate when everyone said dont hes in a good spot, then they buffed him anyway and... well 60% win rate happened because... I dont know, I really dont, just a silly blunder on Ritos part and so many other decisions around the game on and on.

Now we have all the normal complaints of seasons past but have added a serious amount of gameplay specific problems: match quality (problems with autofill), snowballing out of control by 10 minutes, the entire jungle meta (hardest jg ever, few viable champs), 4 man circus bot lane, complaints about entire class of champs (assassin/marksman).

As to rune pages and runes though, I agree, too expensive. Rito makes money off of them, dont expect them to accept to make less money. Want runes faster? Get an IP boost, get them that way. Not what I think, its what Rito thinks.

BastionKross1 votes

The pointless buffing of Xin to a 60% win rate when everyone said dont hes in a good spot, then they buffed him anyway and... well 60% win rate happened because... I dont know, I really dont, just a silly blunder on Ritos part and so many other decisions around the game on and on.

There are many things, in recent events, that you could use as an example. I used DQ; there's the wildly unpopular Morde rework that broke Worlds 2015, the incident that lead to the term "sejuani'd" becoming a thing, Azir being released with more bugs than an ant farm, Kalista and the balance team's futile attempts at making her kit fair, that Harrowing events are no longer obliged to coincide with Halloween, the half-assed "Draven Day" for April Fools last year, the champion favoritism both in balance and in skins, etc.

Those are just the recent ones, you go back even further you discover the Renekton Bar fiasco, and Kassadin's 98% banrate for an entire season, and giving supports AP scaling on their abilities, and invisible spears of death AP Nidalee, and so on.

The Xin thing in particular confused everyone. Xin was fine, and then we saw two or three buffs hit the PBE for him out of nowhere. When questioned, Rioters often said something like "We're testing some stuff for him, and that changes on the PBE weren't written in stone". Turns out, those changes were indeed written in stone. And a healthy, balanced champion was made too strong overnight for no explained reason at all. It was like one of the balance team lost a bet or something.

"Ha! You threw up! That's my win." "I really thought I could eat fourteen bags of Skittles out of the vending machine." "Close, but no cigar. Now you know what I want." "Fine, but if people ban the hell out of him, it's on you." "Deal, now start making Xin OP. I want to hit diamond by the end of the month."

sheldonbunny2 votes

You might want to rethink your opening argument. A page costs 6300 ip as does the highest tier champion. Unless you're going to start whining that all other tiers are cheaper than a page, which then is just plain silly.

In all honesty i've seen people for years make these silly threads. I've never once had issues simply waiting for 2 for 1 sales and buying pages. It's really not that difficult.

SzGamer2272 votes

{quoted}

You might want to rethink your opening argument. A page costs 6300 ip as does the highest tier champion. Unless you're going to start whining that all other tiers are cheaper than a page, which then is just plain silly.

A blank Rune page costs as much as the most expensive champions, but in order to make a new Rune page, you have to factor in the cost of putting new Runes on that page, hence the cost of a new Rune page will always be at least 6505 (unless you're using Tier 2 Runes, in which case the minimum cost is 6301).

sheldonbunny2 votes

{quoted}

A blank Rune page costs as much as the most expensive champions, but in order to make a new Rune page, you have to factor in the cost of putting new Runes on that page, hence the cost of a new Rune page will always be at least 6505 (unless you're using Tier 2 Runes, in which case the minimum cost is 6301).

And? I've never found it difficult to simply budget and save.

{quoted}

Easy? Yes, but 1) there are so many champions in the game that you will likely never own them all unless you pump a ridiculous amount of time into the game, and 2) Rune pages are even more expensive than champions are, and impact the game less, so most people find that it's not worthwhile to specialize their pages.

Been playing since season 3 for about 2000+ hours played. I have 72 champions unlocked, 18 rune pages, and a great deal of runes bought since I do actually specialize my pages playing a wide variety of roles and champs. (2000+ games in aram will do that :P)

Again, it's never been a hardship for me to simply play, save up, and budget accordingly, but I am from an older generation where this ideal is nothing new. Nothing should just be handed to someone but worked for. Gamers today are an incredibly spoiled and overly demanding lot.

Also in the end this is all a moot point because anyone paying attention knows they are changing runes sometime this season. So unless plans change be patient and we'll see what they come up with.

SzGamer2271 votes

I've been playing for almost a year, have a lot of free time, and have 400 hours on League. I own 28 champions and I have never considered spending IP on specialized Rune pages until very recently. Even now I'm procrastinating it, because it's just so expensive that it doesn't seem worthwhile; I'm only really considering it because I'm running out of excuses to spend IP elsewhere, but I can assure you, if there are still champions that I might try one day or wouldn't mind playing in ARAM, I'm going to buy those champions first, even after I go through and buy common champion picks for swapping in Drafts.

(Anyways, in case you were wondering, I wasn't the one who downvoted you; I don't want you to get the wrong idea Xd)

Qiyano Reeves2 votes

You can play any champ on 2 pages.... "Efficiently?" calling b/s

SzGamer2271 votes

You can. Maybe it wouldn't fit your playstyle as well (for example, if you prefer CDR to standard core stats) but those pages are a solid base and benefit every champion in the game that scale with AD/AP.

Sraeg20132 votes

Can confirm.

I have 11 rune pages and while I use more than 4 of them regularly, it means I don't own up to 20 champions I could've buy with that IP.

And I'm only talking about blank rune pages here.

CrazyBear19871 votes

With autofill on

they should at least give us 2 more free pages

  1. Primary role (Jungle)
  2. Secondary role (Mid)
  3. Support role
  4. Alternate role (ADC or Top)
Dynikus1 votes

So basically you can play every champion in the game with these two pages:

9 Marks of Attack Damage 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 1-2 Quints of Attack Damage 1-2 Quints of Attack Speed

9 Marks of Magic Penetration 9 Seals of Armor 9 Seals of Magic Resist 3 Quints of Ability Power

That's exactly what I do, and all you really need to do, yeah. Runes don't make that big of a difference, and don't really have much of any impact on how much you enjoy the game. New champions do, they introduce an entirely new way to play the game. Given the decision, I'll always choose a new champion over new runes. Even faker only has 3 rune pages, 1 for AD, 1 for AP, and 1 for tanking.

as for

Why does a Rune page cost more than a champ when you can play every champ in the game with 2 pages?

Those 2 rune pages are incredibly versatile and can be used across every single champion. You only really have to buy the runes for 2 or 3 and then you're good. Having a semi-high one time cost isn't that big of a deal.

SzGamer2271 votes

That's exactly what I'm trying to say: Why would Riot expect custom-fit Rune pages if buying a new champion is more meaningful to most players and less expensive? It doesn't make sense, and I've never been able to figure out why Masteries are free when Rune pages are not.

Sraeg20134 votes

{quoted} Even faker only has 3 rune pages, 1 for AD, 1 for AP, and 1 for tanking.

http://www.op.gg/summoner/rune/userName=Hide%20on%20bush

While you aren't wrong, these are nowhere near your "stock" runes.

Also his first account has 20 rune pages.

http://www.op.gg/summoner/rune/userName=SKT%20T1%20Faker

Valderis Vandala1 votes

Don't ask for crappy handouts, instead demand a proper solution, the whole system needs to be reworked, how would you like it if you had to spent ip to unlock mastery pages and points? Garbage right? Same goes for runes, the damn things need to be free as well as their pages, and you should be able to make as many pages as you'd like.

Riot needs to get away from its shitty 30 level system as well, it limits what you can do with their rune and mastery systems. ip as a system needs to be dropped as well, all its good for is causing players to use bots for grinding ip and exp.

They said a rework of the rune system is on the agenda, and the mastery system will also see a change to 5 categories (hopefully), lets hope they don't fuck this up.

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