On the Nature of Runes, Masteries, and Summoner Spells

Runes, Masteries, and Summoner sSells are some of the main things in league that are not found in the traditional Moba genre. As such, I've found myself curious as to what people think of them in general. What kind of role do they fulfill for you? What do you think they should be doing? Are they doing a good job of fulfilling their role? Stuff like that.

If any Rioters want to chime in ... what kind of roles did you intend for these subsystems when they were conceived? What kind of vision do you have for them in the future?

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I've always felt that Runes and Masteries suffer a bit from optimization. Which is to say, when analyzing the Runes and Masteries that give bonuses to basic stats, it is too easy to calculate a mathematically optimal solution. This leads to cookie-cutter builds and harms what I always thought of as the point do these things - customizing your play experience.

The exceptions to this are the Runes and Masteries that provide bonuses that your character does not innately posess. Things like life steal, cool down reduction, and the spell sword mastery all offer something new and exciting to your champion. Something they didn't already have. Those are the bonuses you notice the most. The rest just get subsumed into your champion's level growth bonuses free a few minutes.

In short, I wish Runes and Masteries were more about slightly customizing your champion and less about giving minor stat bonuses.

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Summoner Spells are a different animal, but my thoughts about them largely boil down to the same thing. Part of this is due to the predominance of Flash, but even when I don't take Flash I find myself wishing there was a little more variety.