Rework Suggestion of the Rune System - Keeping it Simple and Making it Less Stale

In my opinion there exists one fundamental flaw with the rune system. Instead of enhancing your stats and abilities in a cool way like masteries do, they instead have to make up for the lack of base stats you have.

This comes appearant the most when you look at armor seals. At this point they are so mandatory that you have to take them every game except for very few exceptions in the midlane. Because of the way diminishing returns work, having base armor is really important. Yet the base armor champions have by nature just isn't enough to make them survive the early game. So this way everyone who is not a ranged midlaner matched against a magic dealing midlaner HAS to take them.

There are also a lot of other cases where runes don't give you a lot of options. For example, marks give plenty of options for physical champions but the only option magic dealing champions can go for is magic penetration.

The roles of specific rune "groups" is also not clearly defined. If marks are supposed to be the offensive option, why do they not give you bonus AP or something along those lines? If they are the physical archetype and glyphs are the magic archetype, why do they give you magic penetration in the first place? How do you even expect the physical and magical archetypes to work if that basically means that one of the two will have next to none options for either physical or magic damage dealing champions?

So before I get to the rune system itself there has to be made one more change to adress these problems. EVERY champion in the game has to get base armor buffs and armor per level nerfs to not make armor seals as mandatory anymore. This is the only condition to make the rune system of below work.

The basic idea of the rune system is basically the same - you get your stats enhanced to make you be able to better create your own specific play style. Marks are the offensive archetype, seals the defensive one and glyphs will grant you utility. Quints on the other hand cover all the runes that every other rune type can give you.

It also has to be mentioned that all runes that don't belong in a rune group, for example critical strike chance glyphs, will be flat out removed. They have historically always been a trap for new players to dump their IP on and they have always made the whole rune system unnecessarily crowded and unclear.

The next topic I want to talk about is tier 1 and 2 runes which are basically the next noob trap. They are absolutely unnecessary too when you won't be able to fill your rune pages with them anyway before you are able to unlock tier 3 runes. Instead of just flat out removing them though, I think that giving them out for free to basically just make them an introduction to the rune system for new players instead is a better way to deal with that problem.

Another thing that has to be done is equalizing the prices of runes. It does not make sense that one quint costs 2000 IP while the next one costs 500, when all runes are supposed to be equally strong anyway.

On the topic of costs there also has to be addressed that no one really has any idea what to do with the existing runes once the system gets reworked. Removing all runes and rune pages will mean that millions of players will have wasted a lot of money on it while just giving out all runes for free instead will mean that Riot will lose out on a lot of money, since people still pay tons of RP for IP boosts and rune pages to this day, just to finish their runes and rune pages more quickly.

My take on fixing that problem is that for every rune that a player has bought, he will be able to pick a new rune of any type for free. So for example, you have bought 9 armor seals. Now that the rune system gets reworked you will be able to pick to pick 9 seals of any type. You will also keep all rune pages you've bought.

Some might say that the rune system I present is really simple but I think that is the beauty of it. There are a lot of players who don't want to have everything super complicated and would rather be able to make their rune pages without thinking about them for hours on end. On top of that, this will also make it more easy for players to edit their runes in champion select, another feature that is long overdue.

With all that out of the way, let's get right into it:

Marks - Offensive Rune Archetype:

• Attack Damage ( + scaling )
• Ability Power ( + scaling )
• Attack Speed ( + scaling )
• Cooldown Reduction ( + scaling ) ( If Cooldown Reduction is taken as Marks, it can't be taken as Glyphs )
• Lethality
• Percentage Armor Penetration
• Flat Magic Penetration ( + scaling )
• Percentage Magic Penetration
• Lethality/ Flat Magic Penetration ( + scaling ( only Flat Magic Penetration ) )
• Percentage Armor Penetration / Percentage Magic Penetration
• Physical Damage On-Hit ( + scaling )
• Magical Damage On-Hit ( + scaling )
• Critical Strike Chance ( + scaling )
• Critikal Strike Damage
• Percent Magic Damage Increase
• Percent Physical Damage Increase
• Percent Damage Increase
• Percent Base Attack Damage
• Lifesteal
• Spellvamp
• Omnivamp ( like on Gunblade )

Seals - Defensive Rune Archetype:

• Armor ( + scaling )
• Magic Resist ( + scaling )
• Health ( + scaling )
• Percent Base Armor
• Percent Base Magic Resist
• Percent Base Health
• Percent Damage Reduction
• Percent Base Health Regeneration
• Percent Base Health Regeneration Out Of Combat
• Tenacity
• Slow Resistance
• Percent Damage Returned To Attacker
• Percent Healing And Shielding Increase

Glyphs - Utility Rune Archetype:

• Flat Movement Speed
• Percent Total Movement Speed
• Percent Base Movement Speed
• Flat Movement Speed Out Of Combat
• Percent Total Movement Speed Out Of Combat
• Percent Base Movement Speed Out Of Combat
• Percent Base Mana Regeneration
• Percent Base Mana Regeneration Out Of Combat
• Energy Regeneration
• Energy
• Cooldown Reduction ( + scaling ) ( If Cooldown Reduction is taken as Glyphs, it can't be taken as Marks )
• Mana ( + scaling )
• Gold Per Second
• Bonus Starting Gold
• Gold Per Unit Kill
• Percent Crowd Control Duration Increase
• Percent Slow Strength Increase

Quints - All-Rounder Rune Archetype:

• Every Rune Above

Let me know what you guys think.