Should runes even really exist?

Why not just remove runes entirely? If there were no runes to worry about, you could make masteries feel more impactful, and at least there is an in game way to see roughly what masteries they went. As far as runes go, you can only do that by memorizing an unrealistic amount of base stats.

Nothing inherently feels good about runes at all, its just something we -have- to do. They don't do anything interesting(unless you count spellvamp now that that's been mostly axed), its all just boring base stats, and on top of that, there aren't even many options when you consider how the slots work combined with the champion you're preparing to play.

Not to mention that there are over 6 times the amount of champions than the maximum amount of rune pages, so if you need something specific, it's also a pain to have to constantly go overwrite whichever one gets less use. It also seems to me that if runes didn't exist, the whole game would become at least a little easier to balance for Riot.

What do you guys think?

Edit: Well, I tried. Yay boards :P