In League of Legends, there’s a wide variety of options to choose from when it comes to your in-game runes. There are five different paths, but players can sometimes feel pressured by the presence of runes. To truly use what a League champion has to offer, runes need to fit the role, the character being played, and the player’s playstyle.
Top lane runes
Top lane is the most isolated position, but as such, it allows the player to be in control of the laning phase and is open to many different picks and playstyles. Players can choose to play a tank and slowly farm toward late-game sustainability or play aggressively with bruisers.
Runes for tanks
The safest picks for a top laner are true tanks such as Ornn and Maokai. These champions require slow play with steady farming through the laning phase and focus on taking the damage for the team, protecting the carries, and holding the frontline in teamfights. To fit this playstyle, top lane tanks go the best with the primary Resolve path since it focuses on giving a champion higher sustain over time and Precision secondary to ensure that you get more tenacity.
Grasp of the Undying is the core rune here, which ensures that you get more health over the entire duration of the game while also dealing a lot of damage every four seconds. Demolish will allow you to take tower plates early on quite quickly and ensure you’re able to splitpush easily in the mid game. Overgrowth will keep your health pool growing as you farm minions, making you an unkillable machine in the later stages of the game.
Triumph will grant you some health back during teamfights, which will be significant due to your maximum health pool and Tenacity will reduce crowd control duration.
Runes for bruisers
This is exactly what the Precision path will offer with its Conqueror keystone rune. A bruiser is expected to be tanky too, though, so the rest of the path will help add to your sustain as long as you’re taking down enemies at the same time.
Conqueror is the bread and butter keystone of such champions, ensuring you get stronger as the combat time grows longer. Triumph will ensure you come out healthy after those early dives while Tenacity makes sure you don’t get crowd controlled for too long. Last Stand helps you be a menace the lower your health pool is. Resolve’s Bone Plating and Overgrowth make you tankier and increase your health pool the longer the game goes.
