Preseason is about balancing?

I'm going to start this off with a blunt fact. Season 7 keystone masteries were not easy for you to balance. I and others believe they are ridiculously out of balance. Keystones are THE least "choice" involved customization feature you've ever had. They are mandatory because of their power level and because all champions have different tools, the benefits are very far from equal. Riven with stormraider's is stupidly unfair in laning due to lack of counterplay. What do you think will happen if you give a 60% AS boost to Darius?

The new keystones you've revealed are going to break this game while simultaneously removing one of the only theory craft elements involved. Because screw having to think, just slap this thing that obviously makes sense on even if it isn't good because the other dude has it and you'll be slightly less screwed if you do too.

Runes have never been hard to balance. They've been hard to learn to optimize. Look at the rune diversity this season. I see tops at high level running drastically different pages from one another. The basic cookie cutter stuff isn't optimal in all situations on champs that aren't AD casters(15AD good here).

What you are doing is making your game more approachable and harder to balance. These changes are going to make the meta even narrower, further lower optimal pick diversity, and give us more of these pendulum swings in power levels as you "balance" these masteries throughout the season. What's flavor of the month guys? Keystones, to date have seen more frequent changes and complete reworks than any other aspect you've introduced. Every time they change, you later have to adjust champs and items to deal with the blowback(or people just continued ignoring the weak keystone). ADCs with DFT blowing numbers out of orbit, already mobile resourceless burst casters being even more mobile and hard to slow, on-hit fervor with how many on-hit item reworks? The past two years have been fun in some aspects, but its never been a balanced game. Its always pushed way too far in one direction, then you give another part of the player base a turn. What happens is the majority always feel shafted.

Balancing, described by you, is akin to a complex machine controlled by a multitude of levers. When a particular lever is assigned a wider area of effect and power, then it throws everything else out of adjustment.

If you want to make runes more diverse for AP mids, then do that. What I've seen the past two seasons is people being very creative in a lot of different positions with them and really pushing the limits of gain/loss out of their early game. Do I want scaling because I have to play safe because of a counterpick or do I go for flat resists stacked hp with regen? That is meaningful. Having to always take fervor on a melee AA champ because the game is balanced for it isn't.

And what are you thinking letting people change summoners? Bronze games in the millions are going to be lost because some doofus thinks he should give up smite for tp or ignite. Do you really want to balance the game around EVERYONE potentially being able to swap to flash/tp after tower first blood? Has this year's development team played this game for more than 18 months? 60%AS buff!? Built in Frozen Mallet!?

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, but its completely impossible to. I was hoping to see keystones toned down... It really looked like you were heading in a good direction aside from keystones.

These are changes that no serious player wants. You are going Capcom on this and what it will do in the long run is make competitive play illegitimate. You know, that thing that has given you hype, fame, fans, and profit for years.