i think, with the new legendary consumable system, they are trying to make all items viable, altough it is flawed. and david kim also mentioned, there will be a complex crafting system with materials that you can gather all over the world, so normal items will not be out of the run
also, if you make runewords, they dont have to be like in D2
they could be more special and doing only their own thing, like i tried to interpretate it: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d3/t/runewords-are-very-possible-within-the-new-system