How to Efficiently Use IP While Leveling Up

nightblue4·Apr 27, 2015·10 votes·2,437 views

Hello Summoners,

I'm Matt, a Nightblue3 fanboy who is very much into the math of League. I still have to work on my mechanics, but can still crunch the numbers for all of you who don't want to do this yourself. This post is for you if you are looking to level up an account, improve your skills, and get rune pages as quickly as possible . . . all without paying a penny! All you need to do is follow these three easy steps. I'll give the TL;DR first, but if you want the real information then read the whole post.

TL;DR

Play "Free to Play" Champions
Buy a couple of them that you enjoy playing, but remember to save your IP for
Tier 3 Runes which you can start buying at level 20. You will need a minimum of 18450 IP to properly fill your two pre-given rune pages. Now for the real post . . .
Play the "Free to Play" Champions to learn their mechanics and basic item builds. You do this by reading about the champion you choose before the game starts on a website such as http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/League_of_Legends_Wiki . It is good to keep in mind your damages and mobility at any stage in the game and this website has all the information you need. You can also look at pro player builds on http://www.lolpro.com/ . I highly recommend looking at these links before playing a champion. Bonus points if you open up a custom game and level your champion to 6 to practice your abilities and animations. You can quit the custom game with no repercussions. Then you are ready to take your champ to normals.
After playing at least 20-25 champions, a few times, if you find one you like save the IP to buy it. You will enjoy the game a lot more if you know a champion inside and out and have fun with her kit. Keep on playing free to play champions, too. Just know that you have your trusty favorite to fall back on! Don't buy too many champions (no more than 4 or 5) until you have gotten enough IP for your rune pages; which brings us to our next section . . .
For a basic, all-purpose Tier 3 rune setup you will need 18450 IP You will need flat health and armor seals, magic resist glyphs, attack damage and magic penetration marks, and attack damage and ability power quintessences. Buy these runes.

Armor Seals 205x4 = 820 IP Health Seals 820x5 = 4100 IP MR Glyphs 205x9 = 1845 IP AD Marks 205x9 = 1845 IP AD Quints 1025x3 = 3075 IP M. Pen Marks 410x9 = 3690 IP AP Quints 1025x3 = 3075 IP

TOTAL: 18 450 IP

This way, make two pages: Both of these pages should have your health, armor and MR seals; your page entitled "Attack Damage," or "AD" should have all the attack damage marks and quints, while your "Ability Power," or "AP" page should have all the magic pen marks and AP glyphs. You can buy more runes and rune pages as needed to optimize your pages for the champions you like to play. http://www.lolpro.com is also a good site to help figure this out.

That's all for today, Summoners. See you on the rift. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below, or add me in game. If you have any constructive criticism or would like to add something that pertains to the topic at hand, then please add me in game, or respond below. If you like what I posted, don't hesitate to upvote :D . Hope you all enjoy the game!

-Matt, aka Nightblue4

18 Comments

Desmond LawApr 27, 20152 votes

Cheaper option to fill out one page: Movespeed Quints Hybrid Pen Marks Flat MR Glyphs Flat armor seals

It has no focus on any class in particular, but provides stats that nearly everyone can use.

ArmsticeApr 28, 20151 votes

Problem with hybrid pen is that you fail to maximize said champions strengths. It's worth the time to grind ad and mag pen.

nightblue4Apr 28, 20151 votes

The particular page that you mention is actually pretty well optimized for TwistedFate mid lane vs AP. The only change I would make for that particular rune page would be changing the flat armor seals to scaling health. However, even a flat AD page taken on an AP champion would be more efficient in terms of useful stats provided in general; ergo easier last hitting and auto-attack trading early, and therefore a better ability to get early items such as item 3027 , item 3089 , etc..

Remember, though, that we're talking about getting the most efficient rune setup for the maximum number of champions for the least amount of IP as possible. I would never take that page as a marksman, for example. My early game would be so weak that I would lose lane as Jinx vs. Caitlyn on an opponent of equal skill. Your rune setup costs 16810, mine costs 18450. I daresay the more games you will win by having a stronger early game will more than likely offset the cost of runes unless you're a challenger smurf. If you're a challenger smurf, then you don't even need to be reading this page lol :D Thanks for the feedback!

WhiskerWowApr 27, 20152 votes

Would it be better to just buy 9 armor seals instead of 5 health? Armor seals are cheaper, and armor is some-what like a general defense because physical damage is in every game through minions and turrets, and considering the meta, also an adc.

junglerboy16Apr 28, 20153 votes

flat armor seals are actually very weak unless you are jungling and need to have it for the damage reduction, or are laning against an AD lane bully (i.e. Pantheon). Getting the health seals is better in most other situations.

Holy FervorApr 28, 20151 votes

{quoted}

flat armor seals are actually very weak unless you are jungling and need to have it for the damage reduction, or are laning against an AD lane bully (i.e. Pantheon). Getting the health seals is better in most other situations.

Advised for early trading top? Health Vs Scaling Armor Vs Normal Armor?

nightblue4Apr 28, 20152 votes

Remember, the topic of this post is "How to Efficiently Use IP While Leveling Up." This is directed toward people who want to learn the game and stay alive doing it. Our focus is going to primarily be on the early game because if you're still learning the game it's better to have a more forgiving setup rather than a mid-late game oriented rune setup. So we’ll deal only with the flat HP and armor seals for simplicity.

In order to address both of your points, we need to look at the definition of "armor" in league of legends.

1 point in armor --> 1% more effective HP against auto attacks and physical damage

Now let's take three examples:

Xerath (Mid lane Mage, Support) Health: 514-1874; Armor: 21.9-81.4; MR: 30 Jinx (Marksman) Health: 518-1912; Armor: 22.9-82.4; MR: 30 Cho'Gath (Mid lane Mage, Top lane Tank, Jungler) Health: 574-1934 (Plus Feast Passive); Armor: 28.9-82.4; MR: 32.1-52.4

Now we'll look at what happens if we use 9 seals of each:

Flat Health: 81 Total HP

Flat Armor: 9 Armor --> 9.37% increased HP against auto attacks and Physical Dmg.

Now for the table below, we assume that we’re carrying 9x glyphs of flat Magic Resist. It lists the effective HP against different types of damage like this:

Champion|Effective HP against Physical DMG (Armor Seals)|Effective HP against Magic DMG (Armor Seals)|Effective HP against Physical DMG (Flat HP Seals)|Effective HP against Magic DMG (Flat HP Seals)

Xerath Level 1 | 699 | 781 | 740 | 904 Jinx Level 1 | 704 | 787 | 753 | 910 Cho'Gath Level 1 | 781 | 872 | 873 | 995 Xerath Level 6 | 1603 | 1588 | 1593 Jinx Level 6 | 1644 | 1493 | 1627 | 1616 Cho'Gath Level 6 | 1789 | 1561 | 1765 | 1810

ChaoticPineconeApr 28, 20151 votes

but the armor can also be used when jungling, and is strong if you go X/21/X. i actually dont even use health, since it relies on you dodging a ton of the enemy's skills and not taking minion aggro. id rather play it safe and go armor.

junglerboy16Apr 28, 20151 votes

that's basically what I just said...

ChaoticPineconeApr 29, 20152 votes

i meant my comment in the context of "9 seals that will be most efficient". i feel that 9 armor seals will be overall more efficient (IP used, roles they are used on) than having 4 armor and 5 health.

WhiskerWowApr 28, 20151 votes

I actually remember why I bought all the armor runes was so I could jungle. :P And I remembered that armor seals got nerfed with the rune rework. Thanks for answering!

Commit SudokuApr 27, 20151 votes

shouldn't those be scaling health not flat health

FedAsFukApr 27, 20152 votes

Depends entirely on champ, which is why flat is safer for general pages. Some champs need early while others (or in specific matchups) can benefit more from scaling, this is just the safest and most cost efficient rune pages you can have. basically the jack of all trades rune pages.

Example my rune pages for Jax/Irelia, one is 6 MR and 3 Mana regen while the other is 9 MR, same everything else, just for different lanes or purposes. Also depends on playstyle personally I am fine with having lower Hp and run scaling HP on almost all my rune pages.

nightblue4Apr 27, 20151 votes

Ty Mezzie! :D

nightblue4Apr 27, 20152 votes

Very good point, Left for Zed. The answer is, it depends. Remember, this guide is for people who are just starting the game. Scaling health yellows are fantastic for zone control mages that can keep their distance at the beginning. Think, Xerath , Zilean , Ziggs , Lux etc. However, flat health will benefit everyone to some extent and, therefore are best for doing an initial rune page. You can add the scaling health runes to more specific, champion/role based pages later on after you grind out the IP for more rune pages. As stated before, this guide is mostly for people who are getting started, and/or don't have the funds to buy tons of rune pages item 3078 and IP boosts item 3301 .

KrigjerApr 28, 20151 votes

Good post.

Best advice I got as a lower level player was to not worry about buying champions and just save 20k IP for runes. And even then, if you really wanted to start buying champs, it's okay to just have one rune page with flat ad for last hitting and some MR/armour to begin with.

ModWulf HelhammerApr 28, 20151 votes

I think one of the most important things to conserve IP while leveling is to find 3-4 champs that you like, and just play them, saving up for tier 3 runes. I already had most of the runes I was going to use for my two pages a few levels lower than I am now, and I have all of them now. (you really only need those 2 pages to start off with. AP page with Magic Pen marks and AP quints, AD page with AD marks [quints are flexible], and both pages have flat armor yellow and flat MR blues). Once you get those two pages filled out, then you can start experimenting by going for more champs or more runes.

AMYS GRAVEApr 29, 20151 votes

http://lolbuilder.net/runes/popular

This page shows the most popular runes among high elo players. Gives you a good idea which runes are worth buying vs. which ones are traps.

Similar to the OP for my first two pages i got

AD marks armor seals MR glyphs AD quints

and

magic pen marks armor seals MR glyphs AP quints

since you can reuse the armor seals and MR glyphs (which are the best marks and glyphs) it makes this setup efficient and economical for "only" 15375.