There are elements of the new masteries that are good, but also a lot of things that are poorly designed and went too far with changing what did not need to change.

Masteries were a lot better when they were simplified into offense, defense, and utility as players know what these mean and can also lay everything out on one screen instead of having to go through a million different windows to do everything (poor design, it is better to have everything displayed on one screen with minimal scrolling). Runes being more simple is good, but right now lacks customization, same with masteries; which this restricts certain things from being tried out and played.

I am going to showcase my ideas below, but this is NOT the place where I will give any new mastery or keystone concepts, just showcasing a new way for the runes, masteries, and keystones to be laid out that I think will be better for everyone.

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Start with the most simple... Runes!

You will gain 3 (three) rune slots which grant the choice between: ~ Health per level ~ Attack Speed ~ Adaptive Stats (Attack Damage / Ability Power)

You can assign each slot to any of the three choices and the amount of stats you acquire is based on how many runes you took of that rune type. The most stats of taking all three of the same rune will be the equivalent to Precision / Resolve / Sorcery + Inspiration for Attack Speed / Health per level / Adaptive Stats respectively.

The majour difference with this system is that you can get a true mix of health per level, attack speed, and adaptive stats if you wanted a little bit of everything. So offers more customization to how you want to build your load outs, but still keeps things simple for every player.

There is going to be essentially "a (hidden) bonus 4th rune" if you opted out of taking a Keystone and just took masteries instead of make up for the power difference for the different play choice. The bonus stats will be based off of the three runes that you selected, so think of the same boost you would get if Inspiration was your first mastery page now, nothing game breaking, but you do get some extra stats.

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Mastery Time!

Masteries will be top to bottom, with Keystones being at the roots as you work your way down the tree, tier 1 being the fragile branches at the top. Mastery tiers are no longer locked to one per tier per page, you can take as many as you want (abiding to the point limitation) to allow for customization and even opting out of taking a keystone for different strategies, like perhaps you want to take spell vamp, mana flow band, and 45% CDR instead of a keystone (just one example), this allows you to do that!

Masteries will be also all shown on one page, divided up into Offense (red), Defense (green), and Utility (blue). To unlock the next tier of masteries, you need at least one mastery turned on in the current tier in that page (so tier 1 Offense does not allow you to go to Tier 2 Utility, it only unlocks Tier 2 Offense, for an example).

Masteries will grant the player 15 (fifteen) Mastery Points to spend and all 15 needs to be spent: ~ Tier 1 masteries are worth 1 (one) point each. ~ Tier 2 masteries are worth 2 (two) points each. ~ Tier 3 masteries are worth 3 (three) points each. ~ Keystones are worth 4 (four) points each, with the requirement of at least one tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3 mastery turned on for its respective page. Of course the obvious restriction, you are only allowed a maximum of one Keystone.

A shift in masteries is required for better game balance, and with better customization options allows for this as well.

Offense will be things that enhance your damage is some form ONLY, so no more things like Tenacity, movement speed, or healing on these pages.

Defense will be things that enhance your durability and sticks in the fight easier or longer ONLY, healing will be shared between defense and utility. Defense's big change will be about buffing those that build tank items to become tankier rather than immediate tankiness or tankiness for squishies, squishies should be squishy and tanks should be tanks.

Utility will be basically the "other" pile, with things like cooldown reduction, 45% CDR, mana, mana regen, spell vamp, life steal, movement speed, vision, slows, gold, healing and shielding buffing effects and what not, things that proc from your CC, etc. Stuff that does not fit into damage or durability, even if it plays a role with those pages, will go here instead. This will help balance things out as well where squishies will stay squishy since they probably will go between offense and utility, where as tanks will be low damage going between defense and utility to off-set their high durability.

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There is a damage creep problem in the game right now, as well as a lack of tankiness because everyone just melts and there is no such thing as a tank at the moment, just one shot and die slightly slower than one shot. So I wanted to address this issue with actual proposals for solutions, rather than say (or whine) about something and give nothing to how it can be addressed, plus I just want customization back in the game for my load outs because I am someone that actually likes doing different things and being creative with what I can come up with with new strategies for the game to keep things fresh.

So this mastery and rune system is a combination of the new and very old mastery and rune system because there are a lot of things the old system does a lot better, but the new system did introduce some improvements as well, so a mix of the two should (in theory) create the best system to date.