Ok I missed a bunch of stuff in the couple of days I was gone so here are my thoughts in a nutshell on all the recent topics:
-Warwick is absolutely terrible. Only time I would ever want to see him on my team is for 2-man level 1 dragon (which as far as I know only myself and Rakarth know how to do).
-Runes aren't supposed to give a large advantage; they're supposed to give an edge. It's a reward for playing, but it doesn't completely overpower the newer players.
-Some runesets are obviously much better than others. +stat/level is better than +stat (except +crit because it's bugged right now). The reason for this is that endgame is when those stats matter, not early game; all +stat/level runes exceed the fixed +stat runes between levels 5 and 7 as far as I know (again, except crit) and you shouldn't be too worried about the trivial stat difference before then anyway.
-Focus on one stat with your runes. I am using a full Force rune page for my Kassadin right now (even though reds and yellows are only about 1/3 as effective as blues for +AP). This gives me +85 AP at level 18, and that is definitely noticeable.
-There's a group of HoN players at my college who I socialize with almost daily and all I ever hear from them about HoN is how the developers are stupid and don't know how to balance a game. "Every time a new hero comes out there's a new busted ****ing mechanic" - a HoN player. Speaking as someone who played DotA extensively and was going to join CAL (but my team went back to playing WoW because they're a bunch of cancers) and later was about to join IHL (but the wc3 patch that made the game not require a disc broke my game and I didn't have the disc anymore right after I applied to IHL and was told I would almost certainly get in).... I'll stick to LoL over HoN.
-If you plan on unlocking more than 1 legendary hero just get the hero bundle, it saves you like $15 in the end.
-Heroes are indeed overpriced though. If not buying the bundle make sure you look at the difference between RP and IP costs; Gangplank and Corki both cost 975 RP, but GP costs 3150 IP and Corki costs 6300 IP, it should be pretty clear which one is ripping you off.
-CD reduction runes are crap except on heroes who absolutely rely on CD reduction. CD reduction cap is 40% and you can get that with masteries + a Frozen Heart.
-Best runes completely depends on champions... pirate should stack as much +crit damage % as possible (I'm expecting to see a ton of whining on LoL forums soon from everyone who wasn't around pre-reset for the days of 400 damage parrrley crits at level 3).
-Regen runes are a waste imo; you are almost certainly going to buy some kind of regen item in the beginning anyway; it deters people from targeting you early game (they don't know what regen runes you have) and it probably goes into something you are going to make anyway. Better off just buying a couple potions.
-Good runes: +health, +mana, +magic pen, +armor pen, +MR, +AP, +armor... it's up to you to decide what your champion needs most.
-+XP runes can be good if you stack them, especially with Zilean on your team since you will vastly out-level your opposition.
-time spend dead reduction runes are horrible unless you're really bad (same with the good hands mastery). First of all you have no idea how much you're going to die unless you die a lot and even then the amount reduced is trivial; it won't stop the enemy team from pushing down a tower/inhib when they have a 5v4 advantage. Most importantly though; a better solution is to stop being bad and learn not to die
-Back when we had full rune pages before the pre-season reset everyone was stacking +MR, +Health, and +Crit damage; just to give an idea of the former metagame which already toyed around with runes.