League Classic Runes Guide: Every Mark, Seal, Glyph and Quintessence

League Classic runes are the first real decision the mode asks you to make, and they are made before you ever load into a game. Nine Marks, nine Seals, nine Glyphs and three Quintessences sit in front of you, the shop wants Influence Points for every single one, and nothing in the client tells you which of them actually matter. This guide lists every rune in the mode with its exact value, works out the maths that decides between the flat and scaling versions, and gives you a finished rune page for each role.

The numbers here are taken from the League of Legends Wiki rune tables and Riot's own Classic runes and masteries article, then checked against each other. That matters more than it sounds like it should, and there is a section at the end explaining why.

How the League Classic rune system works

A League Classic rune page has thirty slots split across four rune types: 9 Marks, 9 Seals, 9 Glyphs and 3 Quintessences. Marks lean offensive, Seals lean defensive and resource-based, Glyphs cover magic and cooldown reduction, and Quintessences are worth roughly three ordinary runes each. You equip a page in champion select, and the stats apply from the first second of the game.

The slots unlock as you climb the Classic Level track:

The single biggest change from the original system is that every rune in Classic exists at one potency, equivalent to the old Tier 3. There is no Tier 1 and Tier 2 grind. Riot's FeralPony put it plainly: the runes that used to be off-colour or inefficient are now simply greyed out and labelled minor runes, but they still deliver Tier 3 stats. A minor rune is not a weaker rune, it is a rune sitting in the wrong slot colour, and it costs 650 IP instead of 500 for the privilege.

You start with three rune pages and earn one more at Classic Levels 13, 17 and 20, for six free pages in total. Additional pages beyond that cost 1,500 IP each.

Riot has also confirmed that empty rune slots grant bonuses, so an unfinished page is not the disaster it would have been in 2013. The exact per-slot values have not been published, so ignore any guide that quotes them to two decimal places.

Every rune in League Classic

Four tables, every rune, exact values. Scaling runes are written per level, with the level 18 total for a full row of nine in brackets.

Marks (9 slots)

Seals (9 slots)

Glyphs (9 slots)

Quintessences (3 slots)

Flat or scaling? The exact level each one wins

Six runes come in both a flat and a scaling version, and every guide tells you scaling is "for late game" without saying when late game starts. It is a division problem, and the answers are tighter than most players assume.

Every single crossover lands between levels 7 and 9. That is a much earlier break-even than the "flat for lane, scaling for teamfights" framing suggests, and it reframes the choice completely. You are not deciding between early game and late game. You are deciding whether the first seven levels are the ones that decide your game.

For a lane you expect to be close and decided before your first back, take flat. For a scaling carry, a jungler who is not fighting at level 3, or any champion whose plan is to reach two items, the scaling version is ahead for eleven of the game's eighteen levels and by a wide margin at the end. Scaling Magic Resist Glyphs at level 18 give 32.4 magic resist against 12.6 from the flat version, which is more than two and a half times the value.

The best League Classic rune pages by role

Three pages cover the entire roster if you build them right. Start with an AD page and an AP page, then add a third once you know which role you actually queue.

ADC rune page

• 9 Attack Damage Marks
• 9 Armor Seals
• 9 Magic Resist Glyphs
• 3 Attack Damage Quintessences

Level one totals: 15.75 attack damage, 9 armor, 12.6 magic resist.

The Armor Seals are not optional. Every trade in the first five minutes of bot lane is physical damage from an enemy marksman, and this row is the cheapest answer to it in the game. The Magic Resist Glyphs look wasted early and are not, because the enemy support is usually the one who kills you.

Two variants worth owning. Against a poke lane, split the Quintessences into two Life Steal and one Attack Damage for 11.25 AD and 3% life steal. On attack-speed carries like Vayne, Tristana or Kog'Maw, swap the Marks to Attack Speed and the Quintessences too, for a combined 28.8% attack speed at level one.

Mid lane mage rune page

• 9 Magic Penetration Marks
• 9 Armor Seals
• 9 Magic Resist Glyphs
• 3 Ability Power Quintessences

Level one totals: 9 magic penetration, 9 armor, 12.6 magic resist, 15 ability power.

Magic Penetration Marks are the correct opener for almost every mage because your opponent's magic resist is at its lowest and flattest in lane, which is exactly where flat penetration is worth the most. Armor Seals again, because the mid laner who kills you at level 2 is usually an AD assassin and because jungle ganks arrive with auto attacks.

The Glyph row is the real decision here. Flat Ability Power for a champion that wants to win level 3, scaling Ability Power for one that wants to be a level 16 problem, or Magic Resist if you are staring down a mage matchup you expect to lose. All three are defensible, and the crossover table above tells you where the line sits.

Jungle rune page

• 9 Attack Speed Marks
• 9 Armor Seals
• 9 Scaling Magic Resist Glyphs
• 3 Movement Speed Quintessences

Level one totals: 15.3% attack speed, 9 armor, 4.5% movement speed.

Classic jungle camps hit considerably harder than modern ones and there is no forgiving jungle item to bail you out, so Armor Seals here are closer to mandatory than they are anywhere else. Attack Speed Marks speed up the opening clear, and Movement Speed Quintessences pay off twice: faster camp-to-camp routing and faster gank approaches on a map where wards are scarcer.

Top lane rune page

Top is matchup-driven rather than fixed. Attack Damage or Magic Penetration Marks depending on whether you are AD or AP, Armor Seals against an AD laner and Health Seals against a poke mage, Scaling Magic Resist Glyphs because top lane teamfights arrive late, and Health or Movement Speed Quintessences.

Flat Health Seals give 72 health at level one, which is roughly one extra trade survived. Scaling Health Seals give 210.6 by level 18. If you have the IP for only one row, buy the scaling version, because top lane games are decided after level 7 far more often than before it.

Support rune page

• 9 Minor Armor Marks
• 9 Armor Seals
• 9 Magic Resist Glyphs
• 3 Gold per 10 Seconds Quintessences

Level one totals: 16.2 armor, 12.6 magic resist, 3 gold per 10 seconds.

This is the one page where minor runes earn their 650 IP price tag. Stacking armor in the Mark row on top of the Seal row gives a tank support 16.2 armor at level one, which changes the entire shape of a bot lane trade.

The Gold per 10 Quintessences are worth doing the maths on. Three of them produce 18 gold a minute, so 540 gold over a thirty minute game. Add Gold per 10 Seals on top and the page runs 5.25 gold per 10, which is 945 gold across the same game. In an economy where Season 3 support items were built around exactly this kind of trickle, that is a real item.

The maximum stats runes can give you

Worth knowing where the ceilings are, because several of them are lower than returning players expect. Every figure below is a full page dedicated to that one stat, at level one unless noted.

The three at the bottom are the ones to internalise. Magic penetration, lethality and cooldown reduction have no Quintessence, so their ceilings are set by a single rune row and there is no way to push past them. If you remember running magic penetration Marks and Quintessences on a 2013 mid laner, that page no longer exists.

What the old rune system had that Classic does not

Classic is a rebuild, not a restoration, and the gaps are deliberate:

• No armor penetration. It was replaced by Lethality, a stat that arrived in 2018 and never shared a patch with the original rune system. This is the clearest signal that Riot built Classic as a cross-era greatest-hits rather than a snapshot of one patch.
• No magic penetration, lethality or cooldown reduction Quintessences.
• No tiers. Everything is Tier 3, so there is no Tier 1 filler to buy at low level.
• No rune combining. The old system let you fuse duplicates upward. With one tier, there is nothing to fuse.
• Your old runes are gone for good. They were converted into the Reforged system in 2018 and Riot has confirmed they are not being restored. Everyone starts from zero.

What a rune page actually costs, and how long the grind takes

Here is the number that should shape your first week: a complete rune page costs 17,250 Influence Points. That is 27 runes at 500 IP for 13,500, plus three Quintessences at 1,250 for 3,750.

Now compare it to what the mode pays you. Adding up every Influence Points reward on the Classic Level track from level 0 to level 30 gives 23,500 IP. The one-time starter missions add another 3,500 IP. So completing the entire free progression track, all the way to the level 30 Blitzcrank skin, leaves you with roughly 27,000 IP, which is one full page and a bit over half of a second.

If you want both an AD page and an AP page, you are 7,500 IP short and you close that gap with repeatable missions:

• Daily mission (win one Classic match): 500 IP per day
• Weekly missions: 2,250 IP per week combined

Dailies alone cover the shortfall in fifteen days. Running dailies and weeklies together brings in 5,750 IP a week and closes it in nine to ten days.

Buy Armor Seals first. One row, 4,500 IP, and it belongs in the ADC page, the mid page, the jungle page, the top page and the support page. There is no second purchase in the mode with that hit rate. Marks second, because they are the row that changes most between AD and AP. Quintessences last, once you know which role you are actually queueing.

Why so many League Classic rune guides have the wrong numbers

This is worth flagging, because it will save you from building a page around stats that do not exist. A large share of the rune guides currently ranking for League Classic are quoting Season 3 values, not Classic values.

The tell is easy to spot once you know it. If a guide says a full ADC page gives around 8.6 attack damage and 12.7 armor at level one, those are the 2013 numbers: the old flat AD Mark gave 0.95 and the old armor Seal gave 1.41. Classic rebalanced both to a clean 1, so the correct totals are 15.75 attack damage and 9 armor. Another common tell is a guide recommending "armor penetration Marks", which Classic does not have at all.

The pattern is a decade-old rune table being republished with a 2026 headline. Cross-check anything you read against the wiki's live tables, and treat exact stat totals in a guide as a claim to verify rather than a fact.

Getting started without the grind

Runes are the part of League Classic that rewards planning over reflexes, and one well-built page carries further than five half-finished ones. Buy Armor Seals, pick one role, finish that page, and only then start on the second.

The one thing Influence Points cannot buy you quickly is champion coverage, since ownership is the single thing that carries over from your main account. If your existing account is thin on the 2009 to 2013 roster, browsing League of Legends accounts is the fastest way to start Classic with the champion pool already unlocked, and the wider game accounts category shows what full-roster coverage typically looks like. For the mode itself, our League of Legends Classic guide covers the roster, progression and what carries across.