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It also provides a quick guide to a champ you may not want to spend hours watching others play. If you just want to try a champ out a 15 minute perusal of a guide > watching lots of boring downtime in streams.
If you just want to try a champ out, why would you read a guide? For what purpose? To see what runes and masteries some other player uses? To see what items they get? That is equivalent to reading a guide on FFXI about how to solo as a ninja and thinking that's the only way to play a ninja.
Your runes and masteries for a champion will change from game to game depending on who you are laning against (obviously this applies to draft-pick/ranked games and not blind pick). Your items will change depending on a few things - who you're against, what they are building, and what your teammates are building.
A guide doesn't really do anything but stop you from thinking for yourself. If you know about all the items in the game, you should be able to figure out for yourself which item would be most ideal for the game that you are in. For example - if you are playing AD ranged... When do you get Black Cleaver instead of Last Whisper? When do you get Guardian's Angel instead of Banshees? When is Madred's viable? Should you get 2 doran's or one? Or none?
AD ranged is the MOST cookie cutter role in LoL and it still has some of these situational questions. If you are solo top or solo mid then you have a lot more to think about because your item build is going to vary a lot more based on who you are laning against and who their jungler is and what items they are getting. Your ward placements are going to vary depending on who the enemy jungler is or what your jungler is doing.
Reading a guide is about as valuable as choosing the recommended items every game.