An old Irelia main's qualms with game balance.

I originally made this a comment to one of the Riot's posts about too much damage in Runes. I felt as if this would be better as a full on post.

So I never comment on these kinds of posts but I have some long standing concerns after a solid almost 9 years of playing this game.

The old runes and mysteries system may have been complex but it offered a lot of creativity that this new system doesn't provide. With the old system I felt as if almost every champion had a keystone that they could take along with a specific rune set up that really rounded out champions. For example I used to play Irelia, and I did every season before this one before the rework, when the runes reforged launched she was left missing huge parts of power that I got and relied on from runes, specifically attack speed reds, quints and scaling/ flat armor and blues. I was able to climb pretty high into diamond and stayed there for several seasons until the runes reforged launched, my champion was left aside discarded until a rework happened.

( and am i allowed to say that after playing the new Irelia for a few months it only has left me more disappointed than from before? I feel like the rework was a huge letdown with how the W works and the q resets feel gimmicky and now she has to be balanced around landing marks which feels satisfying to land but very frustrating in comparison to her old game play patterns of having front loaded early game damage.)

When runes reforged launched there was over 50 champions, mostly "fighters" that were left without a keystone and were forced into sub optimal setups for a more "streamlined" game. It took 4 months before conqueror's inception and as someone who particularly enjoyed fighters in previous seasons was left feeling very unhappy and forgotten about.

There are a ton of champions who feel awkward to play with the most optimal keystone. As someone who now plays a slew of other top lane champions, just to name a few examples, Camille normally takes comet or conqueror. Conqueror is almost redundant to what Camille's game play tries to deliver already, more true damage. Comet has very poor AD scaling and is only used in the laining phase as more damage on a rather terrible ability (W). Fiora already does true damage so Conqueror is redundant here also, kleptomancy was nerfed into oblivion so that is very sub optimal so we're left with Grasp of the undying which was designed for tank champions in mind. My general feeling towards the new rune system is that it is too broad and there aren't enough ways to customize champions to cover their weaknesses and amplify their strengths which is something that was provided in the old runes and mastery system.

The damage is way too high. I agree. The game as a whole has been devolved into whomever one shots the other person first. The laning phase in previous seasons(at least for top lane) was about attrition, calculated trades, CS denying and keeping track of summoner spells.

All in all here is what I'm looking for to be answered: Is there by chance that runes reforged can be reverted or at least the collateral damage of having champions forced into sub optimal setups be mitigated without disrupting core game play elements? I feel as if season 8 as a whole was a colossal failure for enjoyable experiences from a top laner's perspective and the skills that I applied to the game previously are no longer required or applicable. Is it possible for this to change or is this part of the game gone forever?

TLDR the runes reforged IMO is a disappointment from the perspective of someone who really enjoyed the game as far as creativity and customization goes in previous seasons.