New Runes Are worse?

2 years?

Son, the rune system has been a part of the game ever since it started, so you're looking at 6+.

We've had the mastery system for 2 years.

Exactly. Do people really think we have play every single possible rune page in the span of...a few hours?

The basics are better from a gamedesign pov but that's all. New runes are mostly badly designed, I'm not talking about balance but e.g. replacing Stormraider's with two very similar but more restricted runes will just mean less real options and more balance troubles. And I think the team designing the new runes cared a lot about ADCs and assassins, didn't really like tanks and supports and perfectly forgot about unusual champs/builds like Kayle and such. On top of these they said they want to get rid of the barrier for new players what runes meant but they make them grind for mastery pages now what is an even bigger disadvantage for them. So, despite all my high hopes, I think, if the reason wasn't to make LoL more grindy/greedy, then this update is very badly executed.

If true, that will still be easy to fix, I think.

People have already pointed out that Mirror Shell and Iron Skin (or whatever they're called) give pretty sad bonuses. If tanks are weak, all they have to do if buff those.

Once again, people are going to fall into the trap of thinking that because these runes didn't release as balanced, they're bad. We knew they weren't going to be balanced on release, but they have TONS of levers to tune balance now. It's really too early to say definitively if this has been a success or not.

Tanks are obsolete because we no longer have the ability to use scaling armor/MR. I had one page that gave me 40 armor alone. I don't have that anymore. And its very noticeable in the game play.