Rune cost is absolutely ridiculous

i read it the wrong way... i see it now

But, back to the runes, the rune combiner's discharge from the game was not the best idea in my opinion. Without it, these prices really do need to be WAY cheaper; for all runes.

What runes?

Oh, you mean those things that were in the game for all of a week before they removed them and went "Holy shit those are a retarded idea, aren't they? Man why would any game have those?"

HP seals are primarily useful when:

• You're playing a support and want a really strong early all-in. and
• You have armor quints and MR glyphs.

Otherwise, you're better off going for resists or scaling hp.

I agree with this post. But I think the OP is trying to point out that this junky seal that is rarely used costs more than a champion in IP.

Runes are really quite ridiculous. I've been playing since the release of Skarner and I just unlocked all the champions a few months ago. I've purchased most of the useful runes but I'm still a long way off from owning them all. Runes are ridiculously overpriced considering they are pretty important in ranked play where as you really only need to own a few champs. I suppose this is Riot's plan to hope that people pay for champs with RP.

{quoted}

9 HP seals only give less than 1 level of an advantage (.71-1.11 levels depending champ).

If HP is a concern, the hp5 seals are much better deal. 9 hp seals gives you 72 hp, 9 hp5 seals gives you 5.04 hp5. Takes about 1 minutes to regen the 72 hp, and will continue to benefit during trades whereas once the enemy gets one auto attack off, that 72 hp is gone and doing nothing for you.

The hp5 seals gives a level advantage between 5.04-12.6 levels depending on champion.

Hp5 is also worth more in gold per point than flat HP per point (about 1 gold more per point). In total value, the 9 HP seals are worth 192.24 gold, whereas the hp5 seals are only worth 18.144 gold. Sounds like HP seals are better deal but not really. Having 192.24 gold worth of Hp5 seals would give you 53.4 hp5, or a permanent health potion from level 1.. and if that were the case, hp5 seals would be a default rune on just about every page.

You'd also be doing better to go with armor or mr seals. Just looking at flat MR seals since they have the lowest value (9 armor vs 6.66 mr), we can see they have a larger impact over the hp seals.

Starting hp is 467.6-631.08 depending on champion. 6.66 MR would give an effective health bonus of 31.14-42.03 at level 1 against magic damage. Depending on the champion, this effective health bonus would be between 4.329 and 6.7932 per level after that.

In order for the 6.66 MR to outscale the HP seals, you'd need about 67.5 HP extra at level 1.

Looking at those numbers, the HP seals actually look better for early game. However, if you're that concerned about defense, you're likely to buy an item with HP on it sooner rather than later. The lowest hp on any item is 60 on the doran's ring. That almost reaches 67.5, meaning that once you hit level 2 and beyond, the MR is outscaling the HP seals by a lot just with one HP items.

Since you're playing support, you're likely to buy a gold type item. If you're concerned with your defense, you are likely to get relic shield , which comes with 75 hp. The MR now outscales the HP seals before you even leave the base.

Armor seals have a larger value, so those would outscale it even better.

Even without HP items, the MR or armor seals will outscale the HP seals before you have to worry about being 100-0'd. If you are getting 100-0'd before that, then none of these are really going to help anyway.

That 72 hp you get from max health seals can also be regen'd too (and keep in mind that 2/3 support income items regenerate health, and the one that doesn't, grants mana regen which can be used to cast healing spells). Note that even without those items, every single champion in the game has a base health regen of greater than zero (even Riven after the hp5 nerfs still has positive health regen).

Health regen seals in general are useless for most champions due to them having little-to no effect on a combat scenario (which, as we all know, runes are primarily there to improve combat against enemy champions). That health regen is not going to help you towerdive. There's a reason why tanks build stuff like giants belt and not 5 health potions (even though the hp potions give nearly twice the health bonus). HP regen seals have superior function for pokey champions and champions that have healthcosting abilities, but that's about the extent of the usefulness of health regen.

As far as resists go, if you are going tanky support, then you will most likely get a lot of resistances such as armour through your marks and glyphs. And stacking too much armour can actually be a bad thing; Since the effective health you get out of armour scales with your max health. The more armour you get, the less valuable armour becomes and the more valuable health becomes. Vice-Versa. Optimally, one should be getting both health and armour at the same time.

And why are you comparing magic resists to flat health? Flat health not only has the benefits of providing survivability against magic damage but it also helps to mitigate physical damage.

{quoted} Even without HP items, the MR or armor seals will outscale the HP seals before you have to worry about being 100-0'd. If you are getting 100-0'd before that, then none of these are really going to help anyway.

I'm pretty sure scaling health runes have the highest win rate for most champs in top/mid lane and they're also the most popular in the pro scene for solo lanes according to Phreak. What they basically do is mid game make sure you don't get 100-0ed randomly if you are building offense/synergize with your resistances if you build tanky.

I'm not questioning the math. I'm saying that to get everything out of a game you should not have to play every day for years...