What is the cheapest way to build my runes?
A few suggestions I can give are:
Mostly DPS
- Armor Pen Marks - Desolation
- (very effective early game and useful against most teams. Crits don't give as much if you're not playing Tryn or possibly Gangplank)
- Magic Resist Glyphs - Warding
- (every hero has just about at least one spell that will hurt you)
- or CD reduction Glyphs - Celerity or Focus
- (always nice to have. Personally I've never felt the need to stack up on mana. There are a lot of masteries for that and unless you're going for a heavy healer like Taric or Soraka or siege heavy Heimer you'll most likely get to farm at least an item for mana. Also ninjas and some dps heroes don't need this which makes this a total waste if you're saving IP)
- Evasion Seals - Evasion
- (Evasion helps a lot of heroes, there's only one counter to this and that's SoD which seems like a stable item only for TF. Also stacks additively which means that for heroes like Sivir or Jax you'd have a pretty high chance of attacks missing you)
With Quints you can just about pick anything except those that just give mana or hp/mana regen. I'd suggest you just pick out what defines your playstyle most.
Personally, I wish I'd known about these sooner because I invested in a lot of Crit Runes, Armor Runes and Magic Resist. XD They're pretty fun when last hitting creeps early game or getting a crit on one normal attack but really just flimsy at best unless you play a lot of Tryn or Gang. Now I can't buy new runes because Riot keeps pumping all these awesome heroes every 2 weeks and I get only 200 ip a day on average.
And only, only use the combiner when you have some leftover tier 2 runes that you want to move a tier up.
I used to do the rune mixer route, but I found it to be too random for my tastes. Instead I decided to look up some guides for champions that I enjoyed playing, and then buy runes based on those guides.
Check out mobafire.com for champion guides, and then build rune pages based on the guides :)