User blog comment:Lykrast/Runes: why I hate them/@comment-24022269-20140328045241

Just to get this out of the way, I don't play fully serious much since I tend to not use my top-tier champs. What I mean by that is I have a number of champs that I am skilled with, in comparison to my skills playing other champs, but I elect to not use them all that much. I also don't play ranked because I don't want to get obsessed or stressed over wins and losses during the school year, and I wasn't playing league last summer so never had a summer vacation to go worry-free rank-grinding.

Now, with that being said (and de-weighing my opinions). I think runes are helpful early game, but they are only a factor in games, taking lesser place compared to other factors such as skill level, counters, luck and alertness (sometimes maybe you're sleepy or maybe you're also listening to radio like I do sometimes during sports events). Personally, speaking as a certified Wood V, I don't find playing without runes in norms to be difficult in general. If you're content playing norms (or bots) you should not find yourself desperately needing runes to win. It's not really game-breaking, per se, for something that's acquired via more games played (and no other way, really. though you can make the case for someone who buys IP boosts all day). Therefore I'm afraid that I do not share your view (or many other views) that "the opponent cannot do anything about this unfair advantage".

Long story short: Do I find runes to be helpful in winning games? Yes. Do I personally think that having runes and not having runes makes up the difference caused by other factors? Not at all.

P.S.  "about masteries, they are free and I really find them weak, so it's not really that much a problem"  Erm say you get 15 AP and 5% CDR via runes (3 AP quints and a few cdr blues),  masteries provide 5% for 4 points in offensive masteries, and 15 AP is like 300~400 AP + 4 points in % bonus AP mastery. I fail to see why you'd see masteries as weak while seeing runes in a vastly different way. I'm too lazy to get into full detail but I'm pretty sure you're not totally correct in that regard.