Don't like Runes or Masteries in their current state? How about a build-your-own starter item?

Some thoughts on League's current state:

• The rune system feels terrible, since all but a few runes are crap, and both runes and rune pages take a long time to accumulate.
• The mastery system doesn't feel great, in part because it still has a lot of hidden power and not that much choice, and in part because Keystones are a balancing nightmare. Rebonack makes a good point about Keystones here, and this post builds upon that.
• Fiddling around with rune, mastery and summoner spell setups in the lobby can be stressful and prevents players from interacting with each other, and it can be frustrating as hell to enter a game with the wrong setup just because you were distracted.
• Let's be honest, Flash is essential on all but a very few champions, and the game is balanced around it.

Essentially, all of these systems feel like the components to a secret item every player starts with, offering stats, unique passives and even some actives, yet they're all spread out in ways that make them more difficult to appreciate than they should be, while also adding unnecessary stress and barriers of entry to every game. What I'm suggesting here is to instead allow players to build their own items from scratch at the start of every game. I'm a huge fan of Diablo-style items with customized stats and unique effects, and I think that kind of RPG feel could be added to League. Here's how things would proceed:

1. Lobby: No runes, no masteries, no summoner spells even. You just pick a champion, maybe ban a few, and that's it.
2. Game start -- build your own item: At the start of the game, you'd get asked to craft a special item that would take its own, separate slot, just like a trinket. The components would be as follows: 2.1. Stats: Basically, the equivalent of runes, plus stats from starter items and lesser masteries. You'd get to choose about 4-5 chunks of stats for your item, which could range from AD, AP, health, armor, etc. to Lethality, magic pen, etc., and could perhaps also vary from flat to scaling. You'd get to pick the same stat "chunk" any number of times, though each would count as a separate item, so you could still go for that full flat AP cheese if you really want to. 2.2. Passives: Essentially, the mastery component, plus unique passives from starter items. You'd get to choose a certain number of unique passives to add onto your item, perhaps 1, 2 or 3, and would get to choose each passive only once, but that effect would grant you a Keystone-level effect. 2.3. Active: The summoner spell component. You'd get to choose one active from the current selection of summoner spells, with the exception of Flash, which would keep their current effects and cooldown.
3. Begin!: After crafting your item, the game could probably auto-generate a name based on its stats, passives, active, etc., and you could then start normally, with perhaps a slightly longer setup time (perhaps you could even start crafting while loading). Besides that, every player would start the game with Flash, 2 health pots and 0 gold. Once the item is crafted, it cannot be changed or sold by any means.

TL;DR: Squish every out-of-game system, i.e. runes, masteries and summoner spells, into a fully personalized item you'd get to craft at the start of every match. Not only would you get a sweet new item out of this, but it would take a lot of the hassle out of setting up the right loadout, and you'd get all of the customization of runes, masteries and summoner spells, without any of their current problems of low power appreciation or barriers to entry.

Also, this could be a good reason to reintroduce item sets, since it could at the very least be useful in crafting a full starter item for any given champion with a single click, and allow for a selection of quick choices. If Riot really wants to hold on to locking stats and masteries/summoner spells behind levels and IP, new players could still start out with a selection of "simple" stats, passives and actives to choose from, and would unlock more by increasing their summoner level, and perhaps spending IP on unlocking specific stat chunks. I'm not a fan of these barriers to entry, but if Rito wants to keep them, they'd still work with the above feature.