Originally Posted by
Stylepoints
If you are playing ranked, and you are bronze level, runes aren't going to make much of a difference. Bronze players "generally" don't have a wide selection of champs and they don't have many/if any rune pages. So you won't notice. But once you get to mid-Silver and higher, you have to have runes to compete. Runes mostly impact early game trades. Late game full builds you won't really notice a difference unless you are running like CDR runes.
Unless you really outplay your opponent or are hard countering your lane, runes are a must.
I just purchased my final champ a couple weeks ago and I had 2 rune pages. I had an AD page and an AP page. Basically AP/AD quints with armor and scaling MR + penetration marks. That is really all you need to start out. I wouldn't heavily invest in runes unless you like to play multiple lanes and multiple types of champs. You can get away with less than 5 rune pages early on. Once you start playing jungle though, that is when you really notice a difference in rune pages. Like flat CDR runes vs scaling cdr, attack speed, health, armor. There are so many viable combinations that depend on playstyle and champion, and even how you build that champion.
TLDR - Runes are important.