Brand runes: a setup that makes sense, and why
A rune page for Brand reasoned from its class, range and damage type — with the thinking shown rather than a win-rate table.
Start from what the champion is trying to do
Rune pages get copied far more often than they get understood, which is why they stop working the moment the matchup changes. Brand is a mage whose job is to land a cooldown for a burst of damage, then be safe and largely useless until it returns.
550 attack range means Brand wins by not being where the fight is. Spacing is the whole skill, not a detail of it.
Runes, and why these ones
Sorcery — Mages trade with cooldowns from range. A keystone that procs on ability damage rewards exactly that, and is forgiving when the trade is poke rather than a kill.
Arcane Comet
Damaging a champion with an ability hurls a damaging comet at their location.
Axiom Arcanist
Your Ultimate has increased damage, healing, and shielding. Scoring a takedown on an enemy champion reduces your Ultimate's current cooldown.
Transcendence
Gain bonuses upon reaching the following levels:Level 5: +5 Ability Haste Level 8: +5 Ability Haste Level 11: On Champion takedown, reduce the remaining cooldown of basic abilities by 20%.
Scorch
Your first damaging ability hit every 10s burns champions.
A starting point reasoned from class and range, not a win-rate ranking. Matchups change it.
Skill order, and how to reason about it
Take Pyroclasm at levels 6, 11 and 16 — the ultimate is always worth the point it costs.
For the basic abilities, Conflagration (E) gains the most from being ranked: its cooldown falls by 4 seconds between rank 1 and max, which is the largest improvement in the kit. That is the usual argument for maxing it first.
This is reasoning from the cooldown data, not a win-rate ranking — a matchup that punishes you can invert it.
- Q · Sear — cooldown 8/7.5/7/6.5/6s, improving by 2s across its ranks
- W · Pillar of Flame — cooldown 10/9.5/9/8.5/8s, improving by 2s across its ranks
- E · Conflagration — cooldown 13/12/11/10/9s, improving by 4s across its ranks
When to change it
The page above assumes an even matchup. Against a lane that beats you up early, survivability runes buy you the levels you need; against one you outrange, damage runes compound the advantage.
Brand is mana-gated, which is the real limit on how often you can contest a wave early.
Riot's own notes on playing Brand
These are the designers' words, not ours — the tips shipped in the client for Brand.
- You can deter enemies from standing near their minions by setting them ablaze, due to Conflagration.
- You can use Brand's abilities in a variety of combinations to maximize his damage in different situations.
- Pyroclasm bounces randomly between enemies, so try to cast it on a small group of enemies if you want to hit the same target multiple times.