If you’re confident about giving up the sustain and rushing through top purely with damage, make sure your runes are in line with that thinking. AP champions, like Ryze and Vladimir, or AD champs, like Vayne and Lucian, that are played in the top lane call for damage burst from the beginning, poke, and overall dominance over the opponent.

Movement runes help with easier roams and more sufficient movement in lane trades. If your champion relies heavily on mana, picking Manaflow Band instead of Nimbus Cloak is a good idea. The goal with AD damage dealers is practically the same.

Your bot lane duo will be grateful if you pick a tanky support to protect your carry and control the fights. Runes that fit champions like Nautilus, Blitzcrank, and Leona fall under the Resolve path that strengthens supports’ engaging abilities. As a secondary path, Inspiration will provide assets for an easier laning phase.

Coup de Grace is the best rune here since Katarina is meant to go in, assassinate the person with the lowest HP and jump to the next person. Last Stand isn’t really worth it with the current items (such as The Collector) since you’ll usually die before you manage to take advantage of it.

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Though mages tend to focus on killing prime targets in combat, they can also fall back to their innate crowd control and utility to manipulate key opponents, protecting their team from them or setting them up for a takedown, and in the right circumstances can damage and control multiple enemies at a time.