I'll agree with you to an extant that a lot of the time the new runes in an expansion are for themes that could be fixed simply by buffing old champs. Like every time a draksar comes out it takes a spot that could be used for one of the incomplete themes like acid, fire, equips, or myx. Draksar have a billion champs that could simply be buffed to fill the needs of the theme. Need a better support? buff/change broodqueen or bookburner. Range? buff gunner or priest of fury. One of the things that I don't like about the game right now is that it's very easy to figure out what the meta will be just by reading patch notes. It's like every faction gets like 4 buffs and you just find the most overpowered one and build your bg with it (i.e. skywing eminent from last patch). If new runes were released with the intent fleshing out the incomplete themes, while the older themes simply got buffs, I think it would make for more varied and interesting metas. I think we're headed in the right direction though, as the new draksar seems to be designed in mind to help out the equip theme. I will say though that with 30 deckslots there's inevitably going to be a lot of shoebox runes based on role competition alone.
Because the devs balance it for 5v5 teams. But yes that makes less sense as the majority of the player base plays solo q.
