Runes should be following the old rune organization, not mastery trees.

As cancerous as the old rune system was, it allowed for better playstyle choices then these new runes do. The old pages had 4 areas, each with their own specialized stats. Sure you could put other stats in other rune slots, but hyper focusing like that was less efficient statwise, and was only used in fringe cases in game.

The red slots were damage focused, yellow defense, and blue ability focused. The purples were essentially keystones, and allowed for all of those stats and some unique effects. You could pile on the armor runes or crit damage, but generally matching the slots was optimal. This gave you options for pregame. Want some defense? Grab armor yellows. More attack speed? Use your reds. Even more attack speed? Now recommended, but you could put them in your blue slots.

The new runes, however, force specialization. If you want to do a little more damage, you have to do a lot more damage, and you get shafted on everything else. If you want some utility, you either do drastically inferior damage or pop when someone looks at you funny. Some champ kits can overcome these deficiencies, but many can't, and the meta will be defined by who can abuse runes as opposed to kits in general.

How do we fix this? Instead of picking a tree to specialize in, make the rune slots aligned, much like the old rune style. This would let everyone pick their situational defense, offense, and utility runes while still being able to specialize at reduced effectiveness. Some champ kits require a variety of pregame assistance, and they aren't getting that variety with these trees.