CUSTOMIZATION VS TOXIC GAMEPLAY

Tldr; Customizing characters is at odds with rigid team roles. I'm not saying runes are inherently bad, rather I am making a simple game design analysis. Why bother if I'm not starting an argument? I'm a game designer and I get off on it. :P

I see new runes and masteries coming in. Very cool! Very exciting! I love that wild west new frontier feel, but lets not forget character customization can only do so much for a champion. Let's take fizz, who occasionally becomes an extremely toxic tank who won't die but deals a lot of damage and is mobile. This is an example of a champion who has too many strengths and not enough meaningful weaknesses. Normally when designing a character you will give them purposeful strengths and weaknesses so that they have a clear role and counterplay. For fizz, his strengths are high evasion and high damage, with his weakness being low defense. This profile should look familiar, because we call them assassins. Should that weakness be mitigated too greatly without giving up a strength, the champion ceases to function as intended and unhealthy gameplay occurs.

This is where items and scalings coming in. A champion can build items to become more powerful, be it to better perform their role or to try to cover up a weakness. This interaction can be quite healthy in many scenarios. For example, a fizz player who wants AP could build a lich bane or zhonyas hourglass. If they build lich bane they are a much stronger assassin as their damage goes way up. If they build a zhonyas hourglass their damage only goes up slightly, but they gain a lot of survivability. Since champions have only 6 item slots, there is often a choice between damage and defense for the fizz player, as they are not quite able to have both at once. These relationships between champions and the stats they gain from items in enforced primarily through scalings and kit design. A fizz player could build a random omen, but since their damage comes from AP and they have little to offer other than damage in their kit, it is a subpar purchase. This is why riot will reduce a champion's base damage and increase scalings to keep damage dealers from becoming too tanky: it forces them to build damage in order to keep up with the game. When a champion can remove an intended weakness through customization, you fix them by removing their options for customization.

This brings us to the current key stone system. Most of the time it feels like you just pick the one meant for your role, and this largely because they were designed and revised based on the above problems. Thunderlord's decree is for dealing burst damage and only champions who need burst damage will get to make good use of it. Occasionally a versatile champion like Vladimir can have their pick, but if you are playing zed you better have your thundy's. At that point the champions will end up being balanced to function with their key stone because they all carry it and essentially becomes another part of their kit.

So what are you saying then? We will never get to truly customize champions? I can't have two or more playstyles for Karma? What a massive bummer that I disagree with! Down vote this objections garbage! Well hold on to your stones for a moment and remember I gave an example earlier of good customization in the choice between zhonyas and lich bane. Choices with trade offs can potentially allow you to play a champion differently so long as they are losing something else meaningful in return and their role doesn't change so drastically that champion choice ceases to matter. There is also the choice of similar effects that serve the same purpose. A tanky high up c.f. champion could choose between grasp of the undying and the shield keystone and still be bolstering their survivability be relying on different parts of their kit.

So yes. Customization has a place in league. A small one, but its been around too long so you can't take it away now lol.