Talk:List of runes (Historical)/@comment-66.191.11.88-20121025161130/@comment-121.162.99.211-20121216172749

It's the ones that are the most expensive for in-game items. The most common is anything related to sustain. If sustain runes were cheap, everyone would go a full set of sustain runes and go solo top. The health regeneration/lifesteal/spellvamp would be so high it would ruin the other laner's game.

Continuing with sustain, health is a major issue. Three health quints and one person can hold anywhere from 80 to 150 more health. This makes it that much more difficult to die and thus the player is punished less for their mistakes, just like with sustain. Same thing for movement quints. People can run out of sticky situations without using flash thanks to them, while other people would have been caught by a small range.

On the other hand, double penetration is 2k. It gives the greatest stats for any rune, and is the ONLY rune that is not granted by a single mastery/item. A player with double penetration runes on characters such as Jax hold the larger advantage over a Jax with only armor pen or magic pen.

And of course, more energy means a ninja or Lee Sin to smash out full combos without using their energy regain skill. Not quite overpowering as the rest, but it is the ONLY source of bonus energy.

The 2050 runes give a player a large advantage over other players from the beginning. Just like the lifesteal quints can give a jungler a larger advantage (i.e. Trundle) for a safe first clear, they're rewards for players who constantly work away at the game after unlocking whatever else they need to unlock, not for the people who want everything immediatly. Advantages are given to those who deserve it.