Flex Slot? More like...slightly different Defense Slot!

DISCLAIMER: I do not pretend to know more than the design team. They do this for a living. Consider the spirit of my words instead of the numbers I give.

  What if I'm an enchanter? I'm forced into Adaptive Force + CDR + random defensive stat without much wiggle room. What if I'm Ivern? I begrudgingly take Force because nothing else really does anything.

  The HP seems like a terrible choice on paper. Usually flat HP is an early game decision, but this is a scaling amount that's never substantial at any point in the game. Scaling HP Seals (Yellows) were almost NEVER taken on anyone back in the days of rune pages. They were only taken on late-game scaling Junglers that had low interaction in the early game, or Janna who had no worries about dying in the early game. Make it a "Veteran's Scars" rune: a flat amount of about 40 that eventually gets out-scaled, and then we'll talk. The counterargument to this is that the flat resists from the other choices amplify the effective HP. This logic is flawed; you are then accepting that another choice MUST be made to make the first sensible.

  I understand completely that the stat shards shouldn't be nearly as close in powerlevel as the runes. Still, it feels as though there are some gaps in the stat array that leave certain champions without any choice in what they get. The second and third tiers of shards are also nearly identical.