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 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

The keystones of Inspiration all add powerful tools to enhance your playstyle. The three Inspiration Keystones are Glacial Augment, Kleptomancy, and Unsealed Spellbook.

Glacial Augment: Glacial Augment applies a slow to enemies when you hit them with your auto attacks. This slow is stronger if used by a melee champion than if it is used by a ranged champion. Once you have slowed an enemy champion with this rune through an auto attack, you cannot do so again for a short period of time. This rune also adds an effect to any active item effects with slows on them, such as Hextech Gunblade and Twin Shadows. If a champion with Glacial Augment uses an item effect that slows an enemy champion, a ray will shoot through the afflicted champion, creating a slowing zone that slows all enemies inside by a whopping 60%.

This rune isn't the most versatile, as many champions who can make use of it already have better Keystones available. However, more recently, many mages have started to pick up this rune for increased utility and pick potential, sacrificing damage for reliability. Notable examples of this are Ahri and Taliyah.

Kleptomancy: Kleptomancy is a deceptively simple rune. Whenever you use a spell, your next two auto attacks will have the Kleptomancy buff. If a Kleptomancy auto attack hits an enemy champion (or something coded as a champion, such as Illaoi spirits or champion clones), you will gain five gold OR a random item, ranging from a bag of free gold to mini elixirs.

Kleptomancy is good on champions who can poke hard in lane and take advantage of their already existing lane pressure to rack up copious amounts of gold and useful items. An exceptional user of Kleptomancy is Ezreal and the champion it is used second most on is Gangplank.

Unsealed Spellbook: Every once in a while, you are allowed to switch one of your Summoner Spells out for a single use Summoner. You cannot switch in combat, and you have to swap spells another three times before you can pick the same Summoner Spell again. For example, if you first swapped from Flash to Ignite, you would then have to switch out with three other spells before picking Ignite again.

Row 1

There are three runes in Row 1: Hextech Flashtraption, Magical Footwear, and Perfect Timing.

Hextech Flashtraption: When Flash is on cooldown, it will be replaced by Hexflash. It has a twenty second cooldown and works the exact same way as Flash does, with one caveat. It must be channeled. You must hold down and charge the ability before you blink.

Magical Footwear: You cannot purchase boots. However, after a set amount of time, you will gain them for free and the shoes will come with a bonus 10 movespeed. You can get the boots faster by participating in takedowns. The 10 movespeed bonus will carry over when you upgrade the boots.

Perfect Timing: You start the match with a Commencing Stopwatch. You cannot sell it or use it. Once the game reaches ten minutes, it will turn into a Stopwatch that only contributes 250 gold towards any of the items it builds into. It also reduces the cooldowns of any effects of items it builds into by 15%.

Row 2

There are three runes in Row 2: Future's Market, Minion Dematerializer, and Biscuit Delivery.

Future's Market: You use more gold than you currently have to buy items, putting you into temporary debt, and that amount of gold increases with game length.

Minion Dematerializer: You start the game with three Minion Dematerializers. Once a certain amount of time passes, you can use them on minions. Using one on a minion will kill it and increase the amount of damage you deal to that type of minion.

This rune is good for champions who lack just a little damage to clear a backline with one ability, like Twisted Fate, Lux, and Leblanc.

Biscuit Delivery: At three, six, nine, and twelve minutes, you will get a Total Biscuit of Everlasting Will. These restore a percent of your missing HP and Mana, as well as increase your maximum mana by 40. If you are using a non-mana using champion, it will restore a greater percent of your missing HP.

Row 3

There are three runes in Row 3: Cosmic Insight, Approach Velocity, and Time Warp Tonic.

Cosmic Insight: This increases your CDR, item CDR, Summoner Spell CDR and maximum CDR by 5%.

Approach Velocity: You gain 15% movespeed towards movement impaired allies, as well as enemy champions you afflict movement-impairment on. This rune is good on peel supports and champions who rely on CC to stick to their opponents, such as Tahm Kench.

Time Warp Tonic: When you use a potion, you restore half of the health you would heal from it immediately and put the potion on cooldown until its effect ends. You also gain 5% movespeed during the duration of potions.

Well, that's it! The runes in the Inspiration tree are extremely versatile, and quite universal. Almost any champion can find runes suiting them in this tree. GLHF on the rift, summoners!

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