Dear Balance Team: Don't kill Jayce please

Please don't kill jayce mid. If you want to give some light nerfs targetted at top lane (probably better to target nerf duskblade or mana costs) then that's okay, but please don't kill the champion. Fizz mid has been dead ever since you guys gave him nerfs that were supposed to be targeted at top lane fizz. Fizz was one of my favorite champions. Jayce has been a long time favorite of mine. Please don't kill him by over nerfing or reworking him.

He takes more games than any other champion to mastery. For him to be viable, you have to reliably land your E-Q and be consistent on CS, Roams, etc. To explain what's difficult about mastering E-Q, everyone knows the trick where you press Q and then press E, but there's something that you're supposed to do which is even harder. You pull your cursor back towards your character after casting Q so that you cast a point blank E. You have to do this very quickly, otherwise it's easier for the enemy to dodge a combo. Mastering this alone, to the point that you can do this without messing up once in a game, takes a lot of games. And then, there's the skills of prediction, because of the cast delay.

Jayce top is a competitive reaction to the removal of lane swaps. "What if we played the most snowbally, bursty, lane dominant thing we could possibly pick top lane?" If you don't buy mana items on jayce, then you can't poke. You can't sustain those mana costs without a tear. And you certainly won't be as effective in a teamfight. Playing Jayce top is like playing talon mid. You get one spell rotation. If you kill them you win, and if you dont then you lose. Part of what has allowed Jayce top to emerge is Duskblade.

It's not like Jayce top doesn't have counterplay though. Jayce top (as in Jayce without mana) will lose if he doesn't go off. So if you just play a champion that can stop him from going off, you'll be in good shape. You don't have to pick someone that can match roams, because Jayce isn't a roamer when played in top lane. (Can't just walk bot lane). Darshan is playing poppy because poppy is one of the best things you can pick to stop Jayce from going off.

I just really don't want another one of my favorite champions to die because top laners are cosplaying mid laners again. I even put out a warning post asking to be carful with buffing Jayce because I didn't want him to end up getting over nerfed or reworked as a result. You can find the post (with over 10k views) here: http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/gameplay-balance/cltELZoq-jayce-does-not-need-big-buffs

Please don't kill Jayce. If you want to revert the previous buff, I'd be okay with that. If you want to revert the Q-hammer form buff that came before that, I'd be okay with that too. But please don't gut the champion with nerfs. Jayce already requires a good amount of skill (probably my favorite part of the champion, please don't change that) and he has enough counterplay without the reward for his skill being significantly brought down. Like, Jayce is already the kind of champion that you're unlikely to come back in a game when you, individually, are behind (like leblanc, etc).