Runes Overview

There are five rune paths to choose from, and each path has three or four extremely powerful runes you can choose from, called Keystones. Below those are three rows of minor runes, with three minor runes choices per row. When selecting runes, you may pick two paths: your primary path and your secondary path. For your primary path, you may select a Keystone rune, as well as one minor rune per row. For your secondary path, you may choose two minor runes from different rows.

Keystones

Domination is primarily described as the path of burst damage, as its Keystones all reflect. The four Domination keystones are as follows: Electrocute, Predator, Dark Harvest, and Hail of Blades.

Electrocute: Electrocute is the most popular Domination keystone by far. It is a three hit passive, meaning that once you hit an enemy champion with three separate auto attacks and/or abilities, it will activate, doing a decent chunk of damage. It's on a relatively short cooldown and not too difficult to proc, so it's a very versatile rune.

Electrocute is taken mostly on burst champions, like assassins, but is also often taken on many junglers thanks to how easy it is to activate and how helpful it is in securing kills early.

Predator: Predator is a very situationally useful rune. It adds an active onto any boots you buy, which when used, starts an easily interruptible channel before granting a decent boost to movespeed which is expended upon actively dealing damage to anything, AND, similarly to Rengar's ultimate, it alerts nearby enemy champions to the fact that someone using predator is nearby. It also has quite a hefty cooldown.

Predator is usually taken on junglers to make absolutely sure that they can get a gank off. It can also be used on otherwise immobile champions to speed up and increase roam potential. However, many of the champions that once made good use of this rune have moved on to other, more fitting keystones.

Dark Harvest: When you damage an enemy champion below 50% of their max HP, you will do bonus damage to them, as well se permanently increase the amount of damage the rune deals. The cooldown on this rune resets 1.5 seconds after you score a takedown as well.

Dark Harvest is best taken on champions who deal high burst damage from far away, and aren't comfortable with having to hit an enemy three times to use Electrocute. Primary users of this keystone are Karthus and AP Shyvana.

Hail of Blades: Your first three auto attacks on an enemy champion will have massively increased attack speed and, if you would exceed the hard cap on attack speed, you temporarily break it for those three auto attacks. The cooldown is relatively short at 5 seconds, but you have to completely stop participating in combat for the CD to start counting down.

Hail of Blades is an extremely situational pick. Only one champion, Vayne, takes this rune with any regularity, because most of the time, another rune will simply be better.

Row 1

There are three runes in Row 1. They are as follows: Cheap Shot, Taste of Blood, and Sudden Impact.

Cheap Shot: When you damage an enemy champion who is movement impaired, you deal a flat amount of bonus true damage to them.

Cheap Shot is usually taken on champion's with reliably CC, but is normally outshined by the other two runes in the row.

Taste of Blood: The most popular rune in Row 1. When you damage an enemy champion, you heal a flat amount.

The in-lane sustain offered by Taste of Blood is good on anyone. Everyone can appreciate a little free healing.

Sudden Impact: When you use a dash or blink, or after coming out of stealth, you'll gain a small amount of lethality and magic penetration for a short while.

This is good on anyone with either spammable mobility or an integral stealth. It's also good on champions who engage with a dash or blink. The bonus damage won't hurt anyone (except your enemies).

Row 2

The three runes in this row are Zombie Ward, Ghost Poro, and Eyeball collection. All three of these runes have the benefit of giving you bonus adapative force, up to a cap, every time you utilize them. All three runes are quite good on any champion.

Zombie Ward: When you kill an enemy ward, it will spawn a zombie ward, a visible ward with one HP that does not count towards your stealth ward or Control Ward limit. Each zombie ward spawned stacks the aforementioned adaptive force.

Ghost Poro: When your wards die without being killed by an enemy, it will spawn a ghost poro. Ghost poros act similarly to Kalista's Sentinels; they'll stay where they were spawned and grant vision in that area until an enemy champion walks into the bush it is in and enters its vision. Each Ghost Poro spawned stacks the aforementioned adaptive force.

Eyeball Collection: When you score a takedown on enemy champions, you will gain stacks towards the aforementioned adaptive force.

Row 3

Unlike the previous two rows, there are four runes in Row 3. They are Ravenous Hunter, Ingenious Hunter, Relentless Hunter, and Ultimate Hunter. All of these runes grow in power on unique takedowns, granting increased bonuses after you've gotten a takedown on an enemy champion for the first time, but they all grant very different bonuses.

Ravenous Hunter: You heal for a percent of the damage your abilities deal, reduced for AOE abilities.

This is good if you are playing a spell vamp champion like Akali or Katarina, or on champions with lots of single target ability damage or true damage. This is because the spell vamp granted by this rune applies in full to all true damage you deal.

Ingenious Hunter: Your active item cooldowns are reduced. Essentially, it grants CDR on item actives, e.g. Youmuu's Ghostblade or Quicksilver Sash's active effects.

This is very good on champions who build items with powerful actives, such as Zhonya's Hourglass or any of the Hextech line of items. It is also extremely good on supports, owing to the fact that many support items, like Locket of the Iron Solari and Twin Shadows have powerful, often have fight-altering active effects.

Relentless Hunter: Grants out of combat movement speed, and a lot of it.

This is very good on roaming champions and junglers.

Ultimate Hunter: Decreased base cooldown on your ultimate ability. Basically, this applies multiplicatively with normal CDR. If Ultimate Hunter is currently granting 20% Ultimate CDR on top of 40% normal CDR on an ultimate ability which normally has a 100 second cooldown, it will not reduce your ultimate's cooldown to 40 seconds. Rather, Ultimate Hunter will make the ability have an 80 second cooldown, and then the 40% CDR will apply, making the final CD 48 seconds.

And that's it! Domination is a powerful rune path, and extremely popular among burst-heavy champions. These runes are extremely impactful, no matter how skilled you may be. GLHF on the Rift, summoners!

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