Champion Ability Tradeoffs

The idea of a power budget, where champions have the same amount of ability to influence the game, is a useful one when considering the design of a champion (or other game element). It's not something that's formally plotted out using numbers or a formula though. Trying to assign a numeric value to hard to compare effects is much more likely to mislead than help (e.g. how many points of power do you assign to a vision reduction effect, as opposed to a 25 unit range increase? Easy to estimate some numbers, extremely hard to have a sufficient level of confidence in them).

Discussion of power budget instead focuses on intended areas of strength and weakness (e.g. Braum has strong defensive windows, but brings less kill power than harder engage supports like Leona). Once that conceptual framework has been established it gets tested and, once validated, numbers then get tested and balanced. For the exact numbers other abilities can be useful reference points (e.g. X damage is a good starting point for a point and click nuke, Y range is appropriate if you want X sort of playstyle).