New Runes will further reduce Mage build variety

The loss of the current runes is going to severely weaken mages while simultaneously reducing build variety for them.

Presently, rune sets for mages often contain anywhere from no CDR to 20%. This has made it possible to fit in more or fewer CDR items while still reaching the cap (something Riot has made near necessary for mages). I myself usually use 20% CDR in my runes, and drop down to lower levels when I plan to throw a Banshee's Veil and/or Zhonya's into my build.

With the new rune system, there so far appears to only be one option for CDR, a max of 10%. This will mean that mages will have to get that last 10% from somewhere, further reducing the possibility of a purely offensive build such as . Now mages will definitely have to build at least one of these , where presently that is purely optional based upon the game.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZsqO8_C9hE0/WTBYTUBt2uI/AAAAAAAAmTQ/TMnrKmRilw0qFkn6Zjqpo02tCfFcT0PaQCLcB/s640/69.png

If I had to guess, I'd say a lot of mages will be using almost every game again. The issue here is the massive loss in magic pen that will likely result from this. Not only will that be 15 less magic pen from the boots, but there will be another 8 magic pen lost from runes (Riot seems deeply against stat-focused runes). This is a total loss of 23 flat magic penetration. Overall, mages will lose a ton of damage and build variety with this change.

The only way I could see Riot fixing this issue is abandoning this tree idea which is exactly the same as masteries are (really this Rune and Mastery rework seems like a Mastery rework with Runes being simultaneously removed), and allowing players to grab multiple copies of the same rune if they so desire. This will provide the possibility of 20% CDR from runes again, and keep build variety at least somewhat realistic. If they still wanted to discourage the stacking of similar runes, they could make some of the secondary effects into "unique passives" for the runes. For instance, the CDR rune idea they have also provides 2 AP (or some amount of ad) for every % over the cap you go. They could make that part "unique," to make stacking less desirable but still an option.

TLDR: Mages will likely lose a lot of magic penetration and build variety. Riot could potentially solve this and actually increase build variety if they abandon the skill tree idea, and allow players to stack multiple of the same rune (with perhaps reduced efficiency if they so desire).