I dislike the runes system and champion change is happening too quickly.

I figure I've played enough games now to have formed a full enough opinion on how well the current meta-play works, so here it is. You may disagree with me and I'm fine with that (I'm not claiming to be right, I have but one of many perspectives on this subject). But please bear with me while I lay out my point of view and give what insight I can. I do think the system needs to be reconsidered.

Simply put, my observation is this: The current rune system makes champion balance harder, and the accelerated rate at which new champs are changed or introduced really makes this game more effort to learn than it's worth at times. I think slowing down and reducing the role of runes (in the system we currently have) would make the game easier to pick up and more fun to get into... or return to.

Runes and Masteries used to be about rounding out your kit, but now it's about adding boosts in one aspect or another. The mechanism was simplified, but the effects (and balancing of said effects) were further complicated - to the point where changes to runes or champions happen constantly because of how often some effect breaks one or more champs. Changes aren't happening to fine-tune a champion, they're happening because the system is so unforgiving when balancing goes wrong.

That is what I have observed from a technical standpoint.

As for the observations to my personal experience, this game is not as fun as it used to be. Let me nerd out on rounding out my kit, not chasing the best obfuscated combination that will change next week. My feelings are obviously much more complicated than this next statement, but I think it sums up my frustrations well enough.

Rounding things off, here's the big picture:

• 141 champs, each with 5 abilities (705 abilities)
• Maybe half these abilities have passives that need paying attention to (1057 effects/abilities);
• 63 Runes with effects that are complicated enough to need paying attention to (1120 abilities/effects, unless you also want to multiply the amount of champs specific usefulness... which I wildly guess - assuming at least 9 valid runes per champion with their abilities - to be around 9000+ effects/abilities, and they can effect about 50% of the playerbase's ability to win or lose, so 4500+) Tally: 4500+ abilities and effects combinations.
• And a system that changes enough in one update that now I would have to re-memorize nearly 100 of those things every two weeks.

I feel like this game no longer wants to be learned, so why should I learn it?

**BUT!!! For comparison, I should probably count the old system here. **Please keep in mind, my memory isn't recent on that, and I'll take liberties where I think reasonable. If you think I'm wrong that's fine. I'll pretend that the old system had the same number of champs for fairness.

• 141 Champs, each with 5 abilities (705 abilities).
• Maybe a third of these abilities need special attention (937 abilities/effects - keep in mind that runes and masteries didn't effect champs as greatly as they do now, so passives weren't quite as much of a priority for most players).
• 13ish general types of runes (+13x3 - I'm adding this entire value, instead of multiplying, because runes never had specific champ combos/effects, and if they did, the effects weren't great enough to mean the difference between a win or loss for 95% of the playerbase; the 3 multiple comes from certain slot types having stronger effects on certain runes = 976 abilities/effects).
• 34 masteries (which didn't have a great enough effect on champions to mean the difference between a win or loss for 90% of the playerbase, so that brings it to 3319). Tally: 3319 abilities and effects (much higher for those at a high enough play level and much lower for most who don't play at that level).
• And changes, due to how non-critical most of the runes and masteries were to most players, maybe had you re-learn 10 of those things per week.

I'm not saying this is super accurate, my tolerance on the calculations is large, and I embellished both sides (In the current system: I don't actually know how many games are effected by runes currently, I just hear the complaints/"RIP"s a lot when someone chooses the wrong rune page. And in the old system I didn't reduce the masteries as much as I could have, since you went along "paths" rather than seeking individual masteries in most cases).

Still, with over 1000 more things to possibly keep track of, and previously optional things for the majority of players that now have a significant impact on gameplay, it's just overwhelming to me.

Oh, I never talked about items, did I? Welp, my brain refuses to even try that.

Anyway, this may make sense... or I may come across as a moron (wouldn't be the first time), but it still boils down to this: If we can reduce the impact runes have on games, or slow down the creation/re-working of champs, then I think this game will return to its approach-ability and make time for smarter champion changes. I just wanted to shed some light on why I think this way; that's why it took so long to get here.