When people hear “runes”, most of them think of the Viking alphabet or fortune-telling with stones. In League of Legends they mean something completely different: a system of small, permanent upgrades you set up before every match based on your champion and role. Without them you go into the game with unadjusted default settings, and against an opponent who has put their runes together, you’re giving yourself a harder start for no reason. This guide explains how the system works, which trees and keystones you can choose from, how to build your own page and what to avoid.
How the rune system in LoL works
You pick runes on the champion select screen and they apply for the whole match. They cost you nothing: unlike champions or skins, the rune page system is free for every player from the start. A rune page has two parts: a primary tree, from which you take four runes including one keystone, and a secondary tree, from which you take two supporting runes. On top of that you choose three so-called stat shards, small numerical bonuses such as attack speed, adaptive force or health that fill in what your main runes don’t give you.
Altogether you put together six runes plus three shards before every match, and this combination can be saved as a page and reused next time. The game lets you keep several pages saved at once, so you can prepare different setups for different champions or playstyles and just switch between them between matches.
Runes don’t replace items or skill. They are permanent, small bonuses that work from the first minute of the match, when you haven’t bought any items yet. Your item build changes as the match develops, but your rune page is set once in champion select and stays the same for the rest of the game. That’s why it pays to give your choice some attention before the game even starts, because fixing it later isn’t possible.
The five rune trees and their keystones
Runes are split into five trees, and each one has its own distinctive playstyle. The one you choose as your primary tree has a big impact on how your champion plays: not just the numbers, but also what kind of decisions the game offers you.
Precision
The tree for long fights and reliable, sustained damage from basic attacks. It suits mainly marksmen and fighters who want to drag a fight out rather than end it quickly; the longer the fight lasts, the more it pays off for them. Its keystones are Press the Attack, Lethal Tempo, Fleet Footwork and Conqueror, and each of them rewards a slightly different way of hammering away at your opponent: Press the Attack for a series of attacks on one target, Conqueror for staying in a fight for a long time, Lethal Tempo for stacking attack speed.
Domination
A tree built on burst damage and the ability to reach a target before it can react. It’s typical for assassins and champions who want to take an opponent out quickly, before they can defend themselves. The keystones are Electrocute, Dark Harvest and Hail of Blades: Electrocute for a quick series of three hits, Dark Harvest for finishing off weakened targets, Hail of Blades for a lightning-fast flurry of basic attacks right at the start of a fight.
Sorcery
A tree centered on spell power, long-range poke and better mana management. It suits mages as well as champions who want to open a fight with abilities from a safe distance before they commit to close combat. Keystones: Summon Aery, Arcane Comet and Phase Rush. Aery also helps protect teammates, Comet delivers a single strong hit from range, and Phase Rush rewards you with movement speed after hitting an opponent several times in a row.
Resolve
The tree for durability, stability in lane and the ability to slow or immobilize opponents. It’s the choice for tanks, supports and anything that wants to survive a fight, not just deal damage. The keystones are Grasp of the Undying, Aftershock and Guardian: Grasp rewards surviving long fights with a permanent increase in health, Aftershock gives you a burst of defense after immobilizing an opponent, and Guardian protects nearby teammates too, not just you.
Inspiration
The least mainstream tree. It offers unconventional tools that change how the lane plays rather than simply adding damage or durability. Keystones: Glacial Augment, Unsealed Spellbook and First Strike. What they have in common is creativity: slowing the space around you, swapping one of your summoner spells on the fly, or a reward for being the one who starts the fight.
The exact numbers on individual runes, such as how much damage or what cooldown, change between patches as Riot tunes them. The principle of the trees stays the same over the long term, though: Precision is about staying power, Domination about burst, Sorcery about spells, Resolve about durability and Inspiration about unconventional solutions.
How to build a rune page
First, pick a keystone based on what you want from your champion in that match: a long fight, quick burst, survival or poke from range. The keystone sets the direction for the whole page, and the rest of the primary tree should complement it.
Then treat the secondary tree as a patch for a weakness. A champion with no mobility often takes Sorcery for movement speed, a fragile damage dealer goes for Resolve to survive, and a mana-hungry champion takes mana regeneration runes from Inspiration or Sorcery. Don’t choose the secondary tree in isolation; ask yourself what the champion lacks on their own.
Finally, stat shards fill in the rest. As a general rule, an offensive shard (attack speed, adaptive force or ability haste) makes sense almost every time, while defensive shards (health, armor, magic resist) are mainly useful against opponents who can take you down quickly.
Before you save the page, go through it once more as a whole. The primary tree should answer the question “what do I want my champion to be able to do in this match”, the secondary tree “what are they missing for that”, and the shards “where am I missing a small number that adds up over the whole match”. When all three answers make sense together, the page works. When they contradict each other, for example an offensive keystone combined with three defensive shards for no reason, it’s worth taking a step back.
What runes affect and what they don’t
Runes give permanent but relatively small bonuses: tens of percent extra on a specific stat, not multiples. They definitely won’t make up for bad positioning in a fight, missing farm from your lane or poorly chosen items. A player with bad runes but great decision-making will still beat a player with a perfect rune page who makes mistakes in positioning or target selection.
Where runes do make the difference is in an even fight on a knife’s edge: a few dozen points of health, a fraction of a second of extra cooldown, whether the enemy’s burst kills you or leaves you enough health to escape. In moments like that, the difference between a well-thought-out rune page and a random one really shows in the result of the match.
The most common mistakes when choosing runes
- Copying pro builds without understanding why. A pro player chooses runes based on team composition and matchup at the highest level of play. What works for them may not fit your match at your level.
- Ignoring stat shards. They look like a minor detail, but they add up over the whole match, and a bad choice (for example a defensive shard in a match where nobody can burst) costs you far more value than it should.
- The same page for every match. Runes that work against a slow, positional composition may not work against a fast, aggressive opponent. Your page should change with the situation, not stay static.
- A secondary tree picked at random. A combination of runes that don’t make sense together (for example an offensive keystone with a secondary tree full of purely defensive runes with no connection) robs you of the synergies your rune page would otherwise give you.
- Choosing a keystone by name, not by effect. Rune names on their own tell you nothing about what they do. It’s easy to pick one because it sounds interesting instead of checking what effect it actually gives and whether it fits your champion.
Most of these mistakes have one thing in common: the player goes by habit or gut feeling instead of asking what this particular match and matchup require. A rune page put together on autopilot is always weaker than one where you spent at least ten seconds thinking about who you’re up against.
How to adjust runes to your opponent
A rune page isn’t something you set once and forget. In champion select you adjust it based on who you’re playing with and against. A few principles that apply across roles:
- Against an opponent with lots of crowd control (stuns, slows, roots), it pays to add a rune or shard for CC resistance, or to go for Resolve as your secondary tree.
- Against an enemy who can quickly take you down from low health (typically assassins), it makes sense to strengthen your defensive stat shards or choose a sturdier keystone instead of a purely offensive one.
- Against a slow, positional composition without much burst, on the other hand, it pays to go more offensive: Domination or Precision as your primary tree and offensive shards wherever it makes sense.
- Against an opponent with short ability range, Sorcery helps thanks to mobility and the option to open the fight yourself before your opponent does.
The goal isn’t to have one universal page for everything, but to understand the principle behind each rune well enough that you can pick the one that fits a given match best within five minutes in champion select.
A typical example: a mid lane mage facing a strong Slayer-type assassin takes an extra defensive stat shard and Resolve as the secondary tree instead of the usual Sorcery. The goal is to survive the first all-in, not to maximize their own damage. The same mage against a slow, low-mobility opponent, on the other hand, can tilt both the keystone and the whole secondary tree purely toward offense, because the risk of a quick death is low and it pays to bet on pressure.
Where runes came from: a short history
Today’s rune tree system is called Runes Reforged, and Riot introduced it as a replacement for an older, much more complicated system. In that system players bought and assembled small individual runes separately (marks, seals, glyphs, quintessences) and on top of them chose so-called masteries: a point-based tree with its own key abilities, such as Deathfire Touch or Stormraider’s Surge. Both systems, the old runes and masteries, worked differently from today’s keystones, and their mechanics can’t be translated one-to-one into the current form.
If you want to get a picture of what League of Legends looked like before the switch to today’s system, you’ll find details in separate articles on specific old runes: Deathfire Touch, Stormraider’s Surge and Sword of Blossoming Dawn. They cover individual old runes in depth and are a good complement for understanding why Riot moved to the system you use today.
FAQ
No. The rune page system is free for every player, unlike champions or skins.
Six runes (four from the primary tree including one keystone and two from the secondary tree) plus three stat shards on top.
You don’t have to, but it pays off. Champions with different playstyles need different keystones, and the game lets you keep several saved pages at once, so you just switch between them.
It depends on what you expect from your champion in that match: long fights belong in Precision, quick burst in Domination, poke and spells in Sorcery, survival in Resolve and unconventional tools in Inspiration.
Yes, they only share the name. In-game runes are purely a gameplay system for upgrading your character and have nothing to do with the historical runic alphabet or fortune-telling.
No. Runes are set in champion select before the game starts, and once the match begins they stay the same the whole time. You have to adapt them to your opponent beforehand, not on the fly.
In most cases, yes. Runes give a permanent but relatively small bonus; what matters most is decision-making, positioning and farm. Runes tip the scales mainly in even fights and won’t win a match on their own.
Information verified as of 27 August 2026, patch 26.18. You’ll find specific rune pages for individual champions in separate articles, such as Yasuo runes, Lux runes, Ahri runes or Katarina runes. A complete overview of champions and their classes is in the article on champions in LoL, and the whole hub is in the League of Legends section.