Views: 8562 Season 4 AD Carry Runes. Ditch lifesteal quints for Armor Pen Reds.
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EDIT: It would appear that you can also run 5 armor pen marks, 4 flat ad marks and 1 flat ad glyph to have the same bonus ad as the 4 percent lifesteal page. (You still run flat ad quints) Noone would know you were running armor pen and not lifesteal, unless they looked you up.
As Season 4 is picking up speed, I am predicting 6 armor penetration reds, 3 flat ad reds and flat ad quints to become the standard for ad carries once again. These runes were seen as optimal at certain points in time and indeed, it was not uncommon for certain players to run armor pen reds AND quints. As we come to a point where everyone is hitting high amounts of armor late game the similarity to flat damage in the early game and reliability in the late game make armor pen much more attractive these days.
Let's say you even get outlaned by someone with 2 lifesteal quints and you can't justify dropping the lifesteal for early game. The fact is there will always be a most optimal choice for every game and if you get used to armor pen reds and flat ad quints, that may just be the best option for you.
The start for ad carries with armor pen is still going to be dorans blade, but you can run longsword if you prefer the 3 pots.
Everyone builds BT or BORK first now anyway, so I feel like the 4 percent lifesteal and flat ad are kind of wasting the potential of your runeset. Crits hit harder with armor pen runes, attack speed becomes more valuable and lifesteal quints don't do anything to make you hit harder. You can skirt around them and in fact, I think it's a better rune choice for the current ad carry role except that you lose a little bit of flat ad (about 4) to your rival (which also means less damage on towers).
In my opinion, it's worth the tradeoff because you only really feel it early game. Your lifesteal scales with the damage you deal so if you want to compare your 4 percent lifesteal page to an armor pen reds page when you both have bt you will notice that the damage and lifesteal are very similar.
Forget for a second that you lose a bit of lifesteal, you DEAL MORE DAMAGE with this setup because you have about 1.2 less flat ad than someone running 10.8 flat ad and 4 percent lifesteal, but you have 7.7 more armor penetration than they do. You also get access to health regeneration in the defensive tree this season which is not always the case, so you don't feel the loss of lifesteal as badly.
You can also tell your support to pick someone with sustain, and if you have this page set up you will have an advantage for those situations. I run feast on my ad carries, so I don't actually feel much of a difference without it and can catch people off guard with this rune page.
Here is winrar's article about armor penetration changes in season 3:
http://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/vvinrar/22582-the-effect-of-season-3-penetration-rune-changes-on
Check out my stream and other resources @ http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry
As Season 4 is picking up speed, I am predicting 6 armor penetration reds, 3 flat ad reds and flat ad quints to become the standard for ad carries once again. These runes were seen as optimal at certain points in time and indeed, it was not uncommon for certain players to run armor pen reds AND quints. As we come to a point where everyone is hitting high amounts of armor late game the similarity to flat damage in the early game and reliability in the late game make armor pen much more attractive these days.
Let's say you even get outlaned by someone with 2 lifesteal quints and you can't justify dropping the lifesteal for early game. The fact is there will always be a most optimal choice for every game and if you get used to armor pen reds and flat ad quints, that may just be the best option for you.
The start for ad carries with armor pen is still going to be dorans blade, but you can run longsword if you prefer the 3 pots.
Everyone builds BT or BORK first now anyway, so I feel like the 4 percent lifesteal and flat ad are kind of wasting the potential of your runeset. Crits hit harder with armor pen runes, attack speed becomes more valuable and lifesteal quints don't do anything to make you hit harder. You can skirt around them and in fact, I think it's a better rune choice for the current ad carry role except that you lose a little bit of flat ad (about 4) to your rival (which also means less damage on towers).
In my opinion, it's worth the tradeoff because you only really feel it early game. Your lifesteal scales with the damage you deal so if you want to compare your 4 percent lifesteal page to an armor pen reds page when you both have bt you will notice that the damage and lifesteal are very similar.
Forget for a second that you lose a bit of lifesteal, you DEAL MORE DAMAGE with this setup because you have about 1.2 less flat ad than someone running 10.8 flat ad and 4 percent lifesteal, but you have 7.7 more armor penetration than they do. You also get access to health regeneration in the defensive tree this season which is not always the case, so you don't feel the loss of lifesteal as badly.
You can also tell your support to pick someone with sustain, and if you have this page set up you will have an advantage for those situations. I run feast on my ad carries, so I don't actually feel much of a difference without it and can catch people off guard with this rune page.
Here is winrar's article about armor penetration changes in season 3:
http://www.reignofgaming.net/blogs/a-different-view/vvinrar/22582-the-effect-of-season-3-penetration-rune-changes-on
Check out my stream and other resources @ http://www.twitch.tv/cloudcarry
Also ADC's want to stay in lane for a long time at the start of the game. Running Lifesteal quints allows you to recover from trades and stay in lane till you can farm up your BF sword. Going back early in any lane can lose the lane. Bot lane is affected by this even harder because of the all in potential most lanes have at 6 so hitting 6 while your opponents are level 4 or even 5 can be an easy double kill.
My apologies for any misunderstanding. The idea is to have both rune pages set up, not to ditch lifesteal quints entirely. It can be advantageous to run the extra damage in many lanes. You can't universally say that lifesteal quints are always better, because depending on play style and mechanical ability, you can get away with it and be stronger for it.
I typically go for 2 dorans to shore up this weakness, but don't typically ever fall behind in lane otherwise. My first major item isn't really delayed. The only time you have problems is when they take your tower very early, which shouldn't happen because of your lack of lifesteal. If it does, there are things you are doing wrong anyway that would allow for the same occurence.
Lifesteal quints probably are too valuable to swap out. I don't see armor pen taking over because ADC's still need laning power and the ability to last hit under turret (you can't if you have no bonus ad).
You're right, that's why I was trying to suggest having 2 pages for ad carry. The edit at the top is also important. Besides that, if you didn't understand the original article's intent, it does have flat ad already and if you look at the edit, you will see what runes to run to get the same bonus ad as the 4 percent lifesteal page. If anyone looks at you, it will look like you are running standard, but you will know you have an extra 6.6 armor pen. Not really that much, but when you consider you are basically "hiding" this extra damage from your enemy, it's actually quite nice and gives you a bigger power spike (however small) in the mid game which is very important in this meta. Furthermore, your lifesteal amounts in mid game will be similar to the standard rune page, whilst also dealing more damage.
My reasoning is that for all ins, you want more damage. I can easily avoid all ins that aren't favorable to me until I have a vamp sceptre. Since everyone builds bt or bork first now anyway, I don't see it as a handicap to miss out on 4 percent lifesteal.
Also, I was trying to recommend to have both pages set up so you can decide when to run armor pen (like when you have sustain or are against a weak early game ad carry that you want to abuse), so I apologize for the misunderstanding.